For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

Tacitus is known to be scornful of the aristocracy at the time of Nero, of which he himself was a member, and Nero was usually at odds with the Senate during the later parts of his reign.

According to Richard Carrier, Tacitus explained who Christians were because it gave him an opportunity to be spiteful about them and Pontius Pilate in one go. Pilate's Rank

One of the persistent drums Tacitus beats throughout his entire Annals is that it was shocking (why, just shocking!) that lowly equestrians were being given the official powers of senators. As business managers, procurators were only ever equestrians, or often even commoners or slaves; no senator would disgrace himself by taking such a servile job (again, imagine the President of the United States taking a job as a “common” real estate agent). But Tacitus was annoyed even by the idea of prefects running things. Procurators were just an even bigger insult. Since an imperial procurator was the legal agent of the emperor, he literally had power of attorney to represent the emperor in court and contracts. Which meant that in practice, lowly procurators could tell mighty consular senators what for. It’s not like a senatorial governor is going to cross the emperor. Thus procurators often wielded in effect imperial scale power. And that pissed off consular senators like Tacitus. His Annals is full of morality tales illustrating how so really disastrous and awful this was.

Tacitus deplored depravity and corruption but he loved writing about it.

He clearly chose to call Pilate a procurator and not a prefect in this passage as a double insult: on the one hand, his aim was to paint the Christians as pathetically as possible, and having their leader executed by a petty business manager was about as low as you could get (and Tacitus would never turn down a good juicy snipe like that);and on the other hand, he was always keen to remind the reader of his persistent protest against granting equestrians real powers, and thus calling Pilate here a procurator does that,

People in Tacitus's time would have got the reference but it's lost on us today unless we're aware of what are now obscure details concerning the running of the Roman Empire.

Nero is clearly a tyrant according to Tacitus, possibly insane.

Dio Cassius and Suetonius had the same opinion of him.

Writing of christian persecution might well have strengthened this notion if Tacitus were in favour of, or even indifferent to christianity, but so far as I'm aware he had no particular opinion towards christianity.

After his catty comment about Pilate he went on to say -

and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

Rome was the cesspit of the known world. He loved saying that as well. I found a ridiculous rambling passage of his about a theatrical entertainment. which relates to his opinions of degeneracy and the awful aristocracy. (I've hidden it because it's quite long.)

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In Nero's fourth consulship with Cornelius Cossus for his colleague, a theatrical entertainment to be repeated every five years was established at Rome in imitation of the Greek festival. Like all novelties, it was variously canvassed. There were some who declared that even Cnius Pompeius was censured by the older men of the day for having set up a fixed and permanent theatre. "Formerly," they said, "the games were usually exhibited with hastily erected tiers of benches and a temporary stage, and the people stood to witness them, that they might not, by having the chance of sitting down, spend a succession of entire days in idleness. Let the ancient character of these shows be retained, whenever the praetors exhibited them, and let no citizen be under the necessity of competing. As it was, the morality of their fathers, which had by degrees been forgotten, was utterly subverted by the introduction of a lax tone, so that all which could suffer or produce corruption was to be seen at Rome, and a degeneracy bred by foreign tastes was infecting the youth who devoted themselves to athletic sports, to idle loungings and low intrigues, with the encouragement of the emperor and Senate, who not only granted licence to vice, but even applied a compulsion to drive Roman nobles into disgracing themselves on the stage, under the pretence of being orators and poets. What remained for them but to strip themselves naked, put on the boxing-glove, and practise such battles instead of the arms of legitimate warfare? Would justice be promoted, or would they serve on the knights' commissions for the honourable office of a judge, because they had listened with critical sagacity to effeminate strains of music and sweet voices? Night too was given up to infamy, so that virtue had not a moment left to her, but all the vilest of that promiscuous throng dared to do in the darkness anything they had lusted for in the day."

Oh, the horrors of vice which this theatrical entertainment might lead to and how degenerate the youth of his day had become. He'd have hated rock 'n' roll.

Many people liked this very licence, but they screened it under respectable names. "Our ancestors," they said, "were not averse to the attractions of shows on a scale suited to the wealth of their day, and so they introduced actors from the Etruscans and horse-races from Thurii. When we had possessed ourselves of Achaia and Asia, games were exhibited with greater elaboration, and yet no one at Rome of good family had stooped to the theatrical profession during the 200 years following the triumph of Lucius Mummius, who first displayed this kind of show in the capital. Besides, even economy had been consulted, when a permanent edifice was erected for a theatre, in preference to a structure raised and fitted up yearly at vast expense. Nor would the magistrates, as hitherto, exhaust their substance, or would the populace have the same motive for demanding of them the Greek contests, when once the State undertakes the expenditure. The victories won by orators and poets would furnish a stimulus to genius, and it could not be a burden for any judge to bestow his attention on graceful pursuits or on legitimate recreations. It was to mirth rather than to profligacy that a few nights every five years were devoted, and in these amid such a blaze of illumination no lawless conduct could be concealed."

Tacitus wasn't fooled by all the arguments in favour of the event. He just knew that everyone was hoping the nobility would take their clothes off and hold boxing matches.

This entertainment, it is true, passed off without any notorious scandal. The enthusiasm too of the populace was not even slightly kindled, for the pantomimic actors, though permitted to return to the stage, were excluded from the sacred contests. No one gained the first prize for eloquence, but it was publicly announced that the emperor was victorious. Greek dresses, in which most people showed themselves during this festival, had then gone out of fashion.

He must have been very disappointed that there wasn't any notorious scandal. I love the idea of the populace being underwhelmed by it all because the pantomimic actors weren't allowed to compete.

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Anyway, I've been doing a bit more research. (The site I used for Suetonius references is down at the moment so I've had to find other translations) It appears that the Christian writer,Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225 AD), believed that Nero had persecuted Christians.  Unfortunately, it's from his lost works so there's only some quotes from Eusebius (AD 263 – 339).

Tertullian - Lost Works

The Roman Tertullian is likewise a witness of this. He writes as follows: "Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine, particularly then when after subduing all the east, he exercised his cruelty against all at Rome308. We glory in having such a man the leader in our punishment. For whoever knows him can understand that nothing was condemned by Nero unless it was something of great excellence." (NPNF; =Apol. ch. 5. NPNF note 308 indicates that the Greek translator did not understand the Latin here)

HE III, 20, 9:

9 Tertullian also has mentioned Domitian in the following words: "Domitian also, who possessed a share of Nero's cruelty, attempted once to do the same thing that the latter did. But because he had, I suppose, some intelligence, he very soon ceased, and even recalled those whom he had banished." (NPNF; =Apol. ch. 5)

Suetonius's account of Domitian's reign presents him as being as awful as Nero. Maybe Domitian wasn't that bad in Tertullians eyes, though, because he convicted people for all kinds of trivial reasons and, according to Dio Cassius, only Flavius Clemens and his wife, Flavia Domitilla, were charged with atheism because they'd drifted into Jewish ways.

It's possible, of course that Severus forged the Tacitus passage in the 5th century to back Tertullian/Eusebius up and somebody else added the line to Suetonius to back Severus up.

There's still the question of why most scholars regard Tacitus's account as authentic so I've tried imagining being a pagan Roman at the beginning of the second century. This is a time when atrocities were committed in the arena for public entertainment so Nero's spectacle wouldn't have been anything special. Suetonius doesn't spend much time on Christians.

Many abuses were punished severely, or repressed during his reign, under a spate of new laws: limits were set to private expenditure; public banquets were replaced by a simple distribution of food; and the sale of cooked food in wine-shops was limited to vegetables and beans, instead of the wide range of delicacies available previously.
Punishment was meted out to the Christians (from AD64), a group of individuals given over to a new and harmful set of superstitions.
Nero ended the licence which the charioteers had enjoyed, ranging the streets and amusing themselves by robbing and swindling the populace, while claiming a long-standing right to immunity. He also expelled the pantomime actors and their like from the City.

Was anyone newsworthy executed at the spectacle? No. It was just a few nameless Christians who were rounded up and it's likely that other undesirables got rounded up as well to make a bit of a show. Suetonius seems to have regarded it as having as much importance as limiting the sale of food in taverns and banishing pantomime actors from Rome.

Tacitus, on the other hand, specialised in making drama out of trivia, especially if it gave him an opportunity to be spiteful, and he was writing a gothic novel type of buildup to the plot to assassinate Nero. He didn't say that attending the spectacle was compulsory so only people who enjoyed that kind of thing would have turned up. Is it likely that the spectators would have felt pity for the victims? The way I see it, they were more likely to have thought that human torches were a fun idea. Tacitutus, however, put some pathos into it to make it appear that even hardened blood sport fans were shocked by Nero's cruelty.

Tacitus then went on to say that the empire was going downhill and there were rumours that Nero had tried to poison Seneca. Some gladiators attempted to escape and this supposedly led to everyone talking about Spartacus's rebellion. The fleet was wrecked and then there's portents of doom - Suetonius reports the comet but doesn't mention all the urban legends.

At the close of the year people talked much about prodigies, presaging impending evils. Never were lightning flashes more frequent, and a comet too appeared, for which Nero always made propitiation with noble blood. Human and other births with two heads were exposed to public view, or were discovered in those sacrifices in which it is usual to immolate victims in a pregnant condition. And in the district of Placentia, close to the road, a calf was born with its head attached to its leg. Then followed an explanation of the diviners, that another head was preparing for the world, which however would be neither mighty nor hidden, as its growth had been checked in the womb, and it had been born by the wayside.

Anyway, I'm off to see what else Tacitus wrote - I've become a fan because he's such fun to read.