Thesiss

In this dissertation, I argue that Tacitus used humor as an important rhetorical strategy in his historical works. Well-known features of Tacitus’ style, including variatio, weighted alternatives, and appendix sentences, can create and are used to create humor. I employ a combin…

Attempts to understand Tacitus’ treatment of Roman soldiers have tended to focus on his aristocratic bias towards the lower-class citizen soldiers. These studies used evidence from throughout Tacitus’ corpus which show the historian describing the unruly, ruthless, and often vio…