Accounts of Northern Barbarians in Tacitus' "Annales": A Contextual Analysis

Doctoral Dissertation. This study comprises analyses of accounts of northern barbarians in Tacitus' 'Annales'. The main aim is to analyse and explore the functions of these accounts, that is, how they are connected to the structure of the books in which they appear as well as of the 'Annales' as a whole. Although my main material consists of accounts of northern barbarians, I do not aim to extract information from these accounts about those barbarians as they existed outside the text of the 'Annales'; the aim is not to uncover any 'historical reality' beyond that of the text itself, nor to determine the historical trustworthiness of Tacitus as a source for the events described in these accounts. I am interested in the northern barbarians solely as literary characters, more precisely in how the accounts in which they appear fit into the 'Annales': which themes they bring up, how they interact with other parts of the text and with other texts, and what their non-Roman setting allows in terms of adopting different perspectives on recurrent themes. I will not use Tacitus' accounts of northern barbarians as a source on northern barbarians, but as an entry point to investigate the structure and discuss some key themes of the 'Annales'.