2nd July 2025
Hello! I thought I would write a post detailing some of the stuff I've put on the website recently, and also gush about Latin for a bit.
So firstly, I put a bunch of Tacitus up- it's a bit scattered, with many sections missing, because it's the prescribed bits for A-level Latin. They detail the end of Claudius' reign, and the beginning of Nero's, specifically his attempted and eventually succesful murder of his mother in 59 C.E.
I generally get more excited about poetry than prose when it comes to Latin- reading history (especially if I already know it) is never as interesting as a fun piece of mythology, and I much prefer the rhythm and snappy nature of poetry. That's not to say that writers like Livy for instance are bad- far from it- but I personally find it more difficult to properly get into a given extract of his work, than say Ovid's.
But Tacitus is... kind of brilliant. He is very much a prose author, but he carries a lot of poetic techniques over into his work. His sections are always short, making it very satisfying to work through, and his grammar also feels more poetic than you would expect. He is also a master at actually making his writing gripping. His characters are clearly defined, and very sympathetic, and reading the annales is exciting!
Tacitus is also genuinely funny many times. He doesn't offer his opinion very frequently, and he is a mostly neutral narrator, but at times he will sneak in a snide little comment at the end of a section, and these are always great fun, in a very dry kind of way. I think my favourite one has to be:
et fixum est aere publico senatus consultum quo libertinus sestertii ter milies possessor antiquae parsimoniae laudibus cumulabatur.
His work is dramatic, engaging, and witty. Its usefullness as a historical source is debateable, but to me that's a secondary concern to its literary genius. We've got to remember that history to the Romans was a literary style, not the scientific profession we think of it as today, and Tacitus' work is very clearly that. His aim is not so much to record events, and analyse cause and effect, but to tell an engaging, moral story, that makes a reader question the structure of the principate, and the character of key individuals in what was to him recent history.
So yes, even though it is not poetry, I have grown to love Tacitus very much, and I really enjoyed reading annales. I will probably do some more translations of some other bits at some point.
But then of course the other thing I've put up recently is another huge chunk of Aeneid book II. This is also on the A-level specification, although this time I filled in all the bits that the exam board left out, and I will at some point finish the rest of the book as well.
And I mean, Virgil is kind of like Shakespeare: you can take just about any line of his work, and it will be loaded with technique and subtlety. Aeneid II is an intensely tragic and dramatic book, and it only gets better in Latin.
I suppose it's not really any surprise that I like it so much- I love the Aeneid, I love Virgil, and I love the Iliad. There's always more to notice with it, and always something to analyse. From the recurring motifs of fire and snakes, subtly used in both positive and negative ways to tie into the poem's broader themes, to the use of meter and word order to convey the mood in a single moment, Virgil is a master of every scale.
I was a little disappointed that lines 250-267 were left out of the A-level. They just describe the Greeks coming out of the wooden horse and letting in the army, but I find it a beautifully vivid piece of description, and its calm juxtaposes the violence before and after it in a really tragic way. I suppose it isn't a necessary section, and doesn't fit with the focus of the prescribed bits, but I think it's still a shame.
So yes, I love Aeneid II. A shockingly controversial opinion, I know.
What next? Well, I've got a film review half-written, and many more translations in various stages. You can also expect some Greek in the near future!