istic norm by creatively transgressing it.^111 Tacitus has just been narrating foreign
affairs, in Armenia. Ostensibly in order to preserve the coherence of the mini-
narrative about that piece of business he has continued the story until the next con-
suls, narrating the events of 54 and 55 in sequence as one unit, when he should
strictly have split them up into one year: quae in alios consules egressa coniunxi
(“Events extending into other consulships I have here linked together,” 13.9.3).^112
Once the annalistic norm has been reinforced by this mild violation, Tacitus then
shows us the Senate proposing to jettison altogether the fundamental basis of annal-
istic history and of civil life: they vote to change the beginning of the year from
1 January to Nero’s birthday on 15 December, even though Nero, still in his “good”
phase under the tutelage of Seneca and Burrus, declines this honor: quamquam
censuissent patres ut principium anni inciperet mense Decembri, quo ortus erat Nero,
ueterem religionem Kalendarum Ianuariarum inchoando anno retinuit(“Although the
fathers had voted that the start of the year should begin in the month of December,
in which Nero had been born, he retained the old reverence for the Kalends of
January to initiate the year,” 10.1).^113 The closeness of the escape is straightaway
brought out at the beginning of the next section, when Nero and Antistius, in the
ablative absolute, mark the new year as the consuls of 55 (11.1). Of course, one of
these consuls is only a consul, and the other one is the emperor. Unlike the begin-
ning of a new year in Livy or in the Republic, with this new year no power is trans-
ferred, no change in the underlying realities takes place; the names are in fact
reduced to being a date.^114
The pressure exerted by the new regime on both kinds offastiis brought out in
a devastating pun in Annales4.70, finely elucidated by Morgan (1998). Here, on the
first day of the new year 28, the emperor Tiberius appropriates the consuls’ pre-
rogative of inaugurating the new year by taking over their prayers for the state in
a letter to the Senate (sollemnia incipientis anni Kalendis Ianuariis epistula precatus,
4.70.1). The letter turns to denounce one Sabinus, who is forthwith condemned
and led offto execution; as he is led away, Sabinus cries out “that such was the
year’s inauguration, these were Sejanus’s victims that were being felled in sacri-
fice” (sic inchoari annum, has Seiano uictimas cadere,70.1). As Morgan shows, the
name of Tiberius’s henchman here hides the name of the god who should be
receiving proper attention as custodian of ordered Roman time and procedure,
namely Janus, the custodian of the calendrical fastiand the god who receives first
sacrifice from the new consuls: “It was a token of the smooth and proper running
of the Roman state that sacrificial victims fell in honour ofIanuson 1 January, but
in the corrupt circumstances of A.D. 28 the sacrifice, of Sabinus, is to Se-ianus.”^115
- Years, Months, Days II: Grids of the Fasti