Flavian epic and Trajanic historiography : speaking into the silence
Journal: St Andrews Research Repository (St Andrews Research Repository)
Year: 2018

Tacitus’ proem to the Agricola characterises the Flavian period as one lived through by a “silent generation”, and his contemporary Juvenal rails against the pointlessness of contemporary mythological epic (Sat.1.1-11). It seems at first glance then that Flavian epic, and in particular the mythological epic of Valerius Flaccus, might have no role to play in analysis of Tacitus’ depiction of Domitianic Rome – itself a pointed refraction of a new Nervan-Trajanic world order in which Tacitus is fre