A Correspondence Course in Tyranny: The Cruentae Litterae of Tiberius

A consideration of Tacitus's use of the epistolary genre when it is transplanted to historiography and how letters (especially the imperial variety) function as a component of (rather than a source for) Tacitean historical narrative. Above all, Tacitus punctuates his Tiberian hexad with the emperor's letters, culminating in the grim epistolary climax of Annals 6. This paper first offers a discursive sketch of the unfolding epistolary narrative of Annals 1-6, and then considers the ways in which the letters of Tiberius, the "internal epistolographer," confound normal expectations of the genre (particularly in the enactment of amicitia). Finally, the paper argues that Tacitus's renditions of Tiberius's letters endow the emperor with a distinctive satirical voice, as he trenchantly teases and satirises his craven contemporary senatorial readers.