you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

Sejanus forewarned Tiberius that Drusus would try to poison him. So when Tiberius was offered a cup (poisoned by Sejanus) at a banquet, he passed it on to Drusus, whose subsequent death was taken as proof of his guilt (not of his innocence) on the ground that he had drunk it to commit suicide because Tiberius' refusal to drink showed that his attempt at murder had been detected (Ann. 4.10). That is to say: Tiberius is induced to misunderstand the offer of the cup and to attempt unnecessary self-defense, which, in fact, becomes the apparently unintended murder of Drusus mistakenly seen as suicide for a failed attempt to murder Tiberius by Drusus himself, who is in fact murdered by Sejanus. (Paul Plass 1988 Wit and the Writing of History U-Wisconsin.)

Got it?

Courtesy of Cicero's second Catilinarian: "How can these men endure the Apennines and that hoar-frost and snow? Unless they think perhaps that they will bear winter more easily because they have learnt to dance naked at banquets!" (In the original: "Quo autem pacto illi Apenninum atque illas pruinas ac nivis perferent? Nisi iddcirco se facilius hiemem toleraturos putant, quod nudi in conviviis salter didicerunt!")

So I found that NAXOS has the Globe cd set in their catalog -- my day is made.

And now more Latin-y things. I was poking around Pliny's letters this afternoon, and I found this one, which seems really neat. But I can't find an English translation of Book VII on-line, and I am too lazy to go to the library to check one out. Thereofore, I must translate for myself (oh the horror!):

( Book VII, Letter 20 -- original Latin and my translation )

Tomorrow I may have to go and find a good translation; I am very uncertain about a bunch of places, and, well, I am generally sloppy. (If any of you want to correct my mistakes, I'll
"bear reproofs patiently" (and gratefully!))

As I said, I was browsing, and the first couple of sentences caught my eye. I love the idea of Pliny and Tacitus "peer-reviewing" so to speak, each other's work, for one thing. But it's also the friendship that comes through here (and in the other letters I've read (in English) from Pliny to Tacitus). Yes, it is a little overwrought, and perhaps I am a bit too sentimental, but I was getting a fuzzy, happy feeling the entire time I was working on it. I've been thinking a lot about letters, recently, too, and friendship, and whether or not I'm a "good" friend and so on, so it struck a chord there.

Of course this is a letter meant to be read for posterity, and so it doesn't probably reflect reality completely, but it seems to me such a perfect declaration of friendship. Although they do seem to have been close friends, and they were certainly colleagues. I think that's part of it. I really like Tacitus, and I rather like Pliny, and the idea that two writers whom I tend to think of as abstract authors were interacting regularly and in a friendly way is wonderful and amazing. I wish more of the Histories were extant, so I could see how Tacitus incorporated the account Pliny the Elder's death that Pliny gave him, and see whether he included Pliny's smackdown of Bæbius Massa. Damn it -- WHY did the library at Alexandria have to burn?