Tacitus’ Tiberius: The state of the evidence for the emperor’s Ipsissima Verba in the Annals By: David B. Wharton Wharton, David. “Tacitus’ Tiberius: The State of Evidence for Tiberius’ Ipsissima Verba in the Annals.” American Journal of Philology 118.1 1997, pp. 119-125. http://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.1997.0017 © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0); https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract: Ronald Syme first proposed that the style and vocabulary of some of the speeches attributed to Tiberius in the Annals were strongly influenced by those actually uttered by the Emperor, as preserved in the acta senatus. Keywords: Tacitus | Tiberius | Tiberianisms Article: Ronald Syme first proposed that the style and vocabulary of some of the speeches attributed to Tiberius in the Annals were strongly influenced by those actually uttered by the Emperor, as preserved in the acta senatus. Syme said, Tacitus’ vocabulary was liable to be influenced. Certain “Tiberian” words occur in the speeches, recur in the hexad and never again. Thus compello, diiudico, exsatio. . . . To render Tiberius, Tacitus made a careful choice of words, not only the rare and arresting, but also less obtrusive words, alien from his own manner. 1 Syme also suggested (700) that the speeches of Tiberius display a higher frequency of abstract nouns of a Ciceronian type, and of compound verbs. Although Syme never actually tried to test his hypothesis, N. P. Miller did, and published her results in 1968’s American Journal of Philology. In “Tiberius Speaks” she compares the number of “solitaries” (that is, words that appear only once in the extant Tacitean corpus) occurring in the speeches, both recta and obliqua, attributed to Tiberius, with the number occurring in the speeches attributed to Nero. She concludes, “. . . we may . . . with some reason postulate that the high proportion of Tiberian solitaries indicates a connection with Tiberius’ [actual] speeches” (19). Although Syme’s and Miller’s hypothesis has not been universally accepted, neither has it ever been fully rejected, and it has continued to haunt a small corner of Tacitean scholarship. All subsequent opinion on the subject, moreover, has assumed at least that Miller’s evidence is valid, 1 Syme 1958, 702.