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TIBERIUS AND THE TASTE OF POWER: THE YEAR 33 IN TACITUS

More than two decades have now passed since Sir Ronald Syme published his paper entitled ‘The Year 33 in Tacitus and Dio’.1 Under this dry rubric, and in the highly allusive manner which became characteristic of him,2 the greatest Tacitean scholar of modern times discussed the year in question as described by these two historians writing roughly one hundred years apart. Tacitus describes the year during the course of Book 6 of the Annals (6.15–27). The book ends with Tiberius’ obituary notice, where his career as emperor is divided by Tacitus into four periods, each one worse than the last and each designated by the death of a relative or friend (6.51.3).3 The penultimate period ends in the year 31 with the execution of Sejanus, who had appeared to be Tiberius’ faithful minister until he was discovered in treachery; but the narrative of this crucial episode is missing from our text since almost all of Book 5, in which the episode was placed, has been lost. When Book 6 begins, we are already embarked on the final and worst period of Tiberius’ life, which will last until his death in A.D. 37. The year 33 thus occurs roughly a third of the way through this final period, and it has been described by Koestermann as ‘the high point of the reign of terror’.4 Syme was attracted to the year 33 for two principal reasons.5 First, he believed that the year was important for its own sake, because it constituted a pivotal moment in Tiberius’ rule: its numerous deaths saw the settling of old scores and a break with the past, while its various royal marriages looked forwards to the future. Second, the year offers one of the relatively few occasions on which Tacitus’ account of Tiberius can be compared in detail with that of Dio. Describing Tacitus’ exposition as ‘a marvel of coherence and variety’, Syme saw his narrative of 33 as divided into two parts (6.15.1–20.1 and 23.1–27.4), separated by a digression on the art of astrology (6.20.2–22.4).6 Tacitus mentions four royal 175