rations is too rigid. Nonetheless, Ginsburg’s fundamental insights into Tacitus’s
procedures remain valid, as Rich likewise stresses. This is especially clear in the
way Tacitus systematically reduces the consuls’ role in the narrative from that of
actors to ciphers. Instead of leading offthe year in the nominative and being pro-
jected into actually doing something, as regularly in Livy, Tacitus’s consuls are
cited in the ablative absolute construction as a mere date: this narratological move
is the historiographical correlative of the consulship’s demotion from office to date
in the Fasti Capitolini.^106 Further, even in terms of the comparison with Livy, this
is a case where the later author is himself performing an act of reductionism on his
predecessor in order to highlight his own departures. It is Tacitus, after all, not just
Ginsburg, who keeps speaking of annalistic technique as a confining norm and
affecting to chafe at its restrictions.^107 As Rich says, it is only at Annales6.31 – 37
that Tacitus for the first time explicitly comments on his including material from
more than one year in one section, so carefully does he go through the motions of
adhering to the format whose meaninglessness he illustrates.^108 Tacitus, in other
words, needs to posit a hyper-Republican and hyper-annalistic Livy in order to
heighten his own ironic contrasts between Republican sham and imperial reality in
the period he is treating.^109 The very first sentence of annalistic history in Tacitus’s
oeuvre is already driving wedges into the fault line between Livian form and
Tacitean content: Initium mihi operis Seruius Galba iterum Titius Vinius consules
erunt(“The beginning of my work will be Servius Galba (for the second time) and
Titius Vinius as consuls,” Hist.1.1.1).^110 Tacitus is “forced” to begin on 1 January
with the entry into office of the new consuls. This is a formally correct date for
beginning, but it is at odds with the fact that the narrative should “really” have
begun with the real transfer of power six months earlier, when Nero died. The first
of these consuls, after all, has actually been emperor since June of the previous
year, and the sentence at first looks as if it will shape up into something like “The
beginning of my work will be Servius Galba as emperor.” It is the word iterumthat
derails this “other” opening; you can be consul for the second time, but not
emperor.
One can observe this technique in operation in a rich passage from early in the
reign of Nero (13.10 – 11). Here Tacitus lays hold of all three of his interrelated
inherited time charts (both kinds offastitogether with the annalistic historio-
graphical format) and shows them all buckling and cracking under the new dis-
pensation, so as to reveal the radical incommensurability between the imperial
monarchy and the fundamental rhythms of Roman time. Immediately before the
passage in question, Tacitus carefully reminds his readers of the Republican annal-
The Years of Historiography. 191