This is a highly self-referential moment, for Tacitus’s whole description of the fire
is modeled extensively on Virgil’s description of the fall of Troy.^225 Aeneas could
escape from Troy and initiate a drive toward a new future; but now, Roman for-
ward progress into the development that is possible in constructive history is
always being blocked by an endless return to prototypical mythic patterns of
action from which, it appears, there is no escape.^226
We are back, then, with Troy, where this chapter began. The dialectic between
myth and history often begins with Troy, even if the templates evolved for dis-
criminating between myth and history can be brought to bear productively on any
period, from the age of heroes to the recent past, or the present. In the next chap-
ter we shall return to Troy, and to another way of configuring rupture and conti-
nuity, as we investigate the myths of the Fall, in the transition from the Age of
Gold.
Republic and Empire. 107