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The story of Dido’s treasure at Annals 16.Iff. has not received much scholarly comment, with the notable exception of D. Braund’s ‘Treasure- trove and Nero’.[1] To his interesting speculations there on what might have made Nero find the tale attractive, may be added its literary aspects; but the connection with the Aeneid has further significance than that. There are numerous thematic links (several of them striking) and some verbal similarities to the epic’s lines on the queen,[2] and whether these Virgilian parallels were just taken over from his source(s) and exploited by Tacitus or developed to a greater or lesser extent by him,[3] they have real point and come together to form cutting condemnation of Nero and his world. At Annals 16. Iff. Tacitus tells how Caesellius Bassus (Carthaginian by origin and mentally deranged) had a dream about buried treasure, took it as a promise of a certainty, went to Nero at Rome and told him that he had found on his estate a deep cave containing a large quantity of ancient gold bullion, speculating that Dido after fleeing from Tyre and founding Carthage had concealed this wealth, to prevent her people being corrupted, or hostile Numidian kings going to war with her for the treasure. Nero accepted the report without checking and sent ships to collect the gold quickly. Meanwhile he was praised by orators as a favourite of the gods (who supposedly produced the riches for him), his extravagance grew on the strength of this vain hope, and he squandered vast resources. Bassus, however, could not find the cave on his estate or nearby. Astonished that he had been deceived when none of his earlier dreams had proved false, he escaped his shame and danger by committing suicide (or some say that he was arrested and later released after his property had been confiscated in lieu of the treasure). A quick summary of salient features in Virgil’s lines on Dido will help elucidate the similarities in Tacitus. After Aeneas had been driven by the storm to the coast near Carthage, Venus (in disguise) met him and (at 1.338ff.) told him how in her home city of Tyre the ghost of Dido’s husband (murdered by the king) had appeared to her in a dream, urging her to flee and showing her buried treasure (a mass of ancient silver and gold), and how she then (obviously believing the dream) had unearthed it, fled to north Africa with the wealth and founded Carthage amid warlike Libyans. Aeneas subsequently met and began an affair with Dido, after she had been driven mad with love[4] by Cupid, but had to leave her, briefly deceiving her by concealing his preparations for departure, and finally rowing off in haste.0 The queen then committed suicide, demented by anguish. Mention of Dido would automatically have made Tacitus’ readers think of the famous lines on her in the Aeneid, and by way of clear reinforcement Dido’s Virgilian epithet Phoenissd’ occurs in Annals 16.1 (Dido Phoenissam). Then there are all the parallels. Like Dido, Bassus was Carthaginian, had a dream about buried treasure, consisting of a mass of ancient gold (antiquo pondere and opes, 16.1; cf. “veteris . . ./thesauros, ignotum argenti pondus et auri” and opes, Aeneid 1.358f., 364) and believed it; he was also mad, spoke to and got involved with a Roman leader (cf. the proto-Roman Aeneas) in an initially amicable but ultimately disastrous relationship and (in the account foregrounded by Tacitus) committed suicide largely because of that leader. Bassus also made a long journey (to Rome) and was deceived (by his dream). There seems to be an Aeneas at Annals 16.Iff. too—his descendant Nero.[5] As well as meeting with the Carthaginian, at first being friendly but finally being responsible for the Carthaginian’s suicide (in the preferred version), the Roman leader was told about Dido’s flight from Tyre, founding of Carthage, wealth, warlike neighbours and dream of buried treasure, and he also got his ships rowing off quickly.[6] The parallels are intriguing and bizarre and have a decidedly mock-solemn impact. A romantic and momentous episode of high drama and pathos from lofty epic (with divine involvement) reappears as a shabby and ludicrous little incident (set squarely in the sordid human sphere), and in place of revered and illustrious heroic figures engaged in a great love affair we find one clown and madman taking in another in a scramble for loot—so degenerate and unheroic was Nero’s world. There is also the black comedy of the absurd lunatic Bassus in the role of the noble and tragic queen Dido. The linking of Nero with Aeneas is even more grotesque and economically brings out many of Nero’s failings by way of contrast, intimating how far short he fell of his eminent ancestor (who was renowned for pietas, put the good of his people before himself, was a genuine favourite of heaven, was a great warrior, with many moral qualties, had a loving relationship with his divine mother, and so on and so forth). [1] In Greece and Rome 30.1 (1983), 65-9. [2] For the presence of Virgil in Tacitus see e.g. B. Walker The Annals of Tacitus: A Study in the Writing of History (Manchester, 1952), 71-4; R. Syme Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), I 357f.; R.M. Ogilvie and I. Richmond Comelii Taciti De Vita Agricolae (Oxford, 1967), 28; R.T. Baxter ‘Virgil’s Influence on Tacitus in Book 3 of the Histories’, Classical Philology 66 (1971), 93-107; J. Bews ‘Virgil, Tacitus, Tiberius and Germanicus’, PVS 12 (1972-3), 35-48 and Enciclopedia Virgiliana V (Rome, 1990), s.v. Tácito. [3] There is a much shorter version of the story with far fewer epic reverberations at Suetonius Nero 31. [4] Am. 4.69, 78, 101 etc. ‘ Nero was also likened to his ancestor Aeneas in the lampoon mentioned by Suetonius (Nero 39): “quis negat Aeneae magna de stirpe NeronemP/sustulit hie matrem, sustulit ille patrem”. [6] There are other (less conspicuous but still possible) ties: at 16.1 for inlusit. . . per vanitatem cf. Aen. 1.352 vana spe lusit amantem, and for Tyro profugam cf. Am. 1.340 Tyria . .. urbe profecta\ so too Bassus’ dream is called an imago (cf. imago of Sychaeus’ ghost in Dido’s dream at 1.353), he buys an interview with Nero (aditum emercatus; cf. the Carthaginians’ purchase of land, mercatique solum, at 1.367), the cave in his dream may look to the cave in which Dido and Aeneas began their alfair, and there is mention of lust for gold (cupidine auri\ cf. auri caecus amore at 1.349); for spe inani at 16.3 compare vana spe at 1.352, and for Bassus’ pudor in that chapter cf. Dido’s feelings of shame at 4.550ff. and 596f. More information pleáe go to http://law.oxy.co/
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