LI.
Celeberrimos auctores habeo (celeberrimos auctores habeo …: ‘I have very famous authors state that …’. Whether the information came from Vipsanus Messala or Pliny the Elder, the only two historians Tacitus mentions by name, it is not known.) tantam victoribus adversus fas nefasque inreverentiam fuisse ut gregarius eques occisum a se proxima acie fratrem professus praemium a ducibus petierit. nec illis aut honorare eam caedem ius hominum aut ulcisci ratio belli permittebat. distulerant tamquam maiora meritum quam quae statim exolverentur; (distulerant tamquam maiora meritum quam quae statim exolverentur: ‘they got rid of him on the grounds ([they said]) that he was deserving greater rewards than what might be paid on the spot’. tamquam is used here with causal sense, as often in Tacitus. meritum is not perf. participle of mereo, but the adjective meritus, ‘deserving’, in indir. speech.) nec quidquam ultra traditur. ceterum (ceterum: slightly adversative, ‘yet’) et prioribus civium bellis par scelus inciderat. nam proelio, quo apud Ianiculum (Ianiculum: a hill of Rome on the west bank of ths Tiber, therefore not included in the original seven hills on which the ancient city was built. Its location is south of the Vatican. In the battle fought there in 87 B.C., Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompey the Great, defended Rome against Cinna. ) adversus Cinnam pugnatum est, Pompeianus miles fratrem suum, dein cognito facinore se ipsum interfecit, ut Sisenna memorat: (ut Sisenna memorat: Cornelius Sisenna, famous Roman historian, praetor in 78 B.C.) tanto acrior apud maiores, sicut virtutibus gloria, ita flagitiis paenitentia fuit. (tanto acrior apud maiores, sicut virtutibus gloria, ita flagitiis paenitentia fuit: lit. ‘just as the glory in virtue was so much keener among our ancestors, so also [was] the atonement in evil deeds’; sicut and ita lead in the two parts of a comparative sentence’.) sed haec aliaque ex vetere memoria petita, quotiens res locusque exempla recti aut solacia mali poscet, (quotiens res locusque exempla recti aut solacia mali poscet: ‘as often as the subject and the occasion shall demand the examples of goodness or the alleviation of evil’) haud absurde memorabimus.