Laudator Temporis Acti

Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 397-398:

A remarkable piece of rhetoric is the speech which Tacitus attributes to Cn Piso, visiting Athens in A.D. 18. It is, of course, impossible to say whether Piso said anything like this, or whether Tacitus merely thought he might have spoken like that, which in itself would not diminish its significance. Piso was aggravated at Germanicus's courtesy towards Athens—"not the people of Athens, who indeed had been exterminated by repeated disasters, but a miserable medley of tribes."⁹⁵ Here then an absolute distinction is made between historical Athens and the contemporary people of Athens which was but a medley, an "impure mixture" as the dictionary of Lewis and Short translates conluvies. Another point of interest in this passage: there is no doubt regarding the immediate association of this description for any Roman well read in Greek literature, and for Piso's Athenian audience. The old Athenians were autochthones, of pure lineage, but the city population in the first century was a mixture, a rabble of good-for-nothings.

⁹⁵ Tacitus, Ann. 2.55: At Cn. Piso . . . civitatem Atheniensium turbido incessu exterritam oratione saeva increpat, oblique Germanicum perstringens, quod contra decus Romani nominis non Athenienses tot cladibus extinctios, sed conluviem illam nationum comitate nimia coluisset . . .

The quotation from Tacitus in n. 95 is faulty: For extinctios read extinctos. Here is an image of the footnote:

Labels: typographical and other errors