(no subject)

I'm sure it's simply bad luck that I'm doing some secondary reading on Tacitus this morning. On the simulacrum libertatis at Ann. 1.77:

I would argue that this interpretation of the simulacrum as 'prospective', as holding out hope for future change, can be operative even within the most ironic readings of Tacitus. The simulacrum of liberty marks the absence of liberty in the present, but can gesture toward a future presence of liberty. To put it another way, we can conceive ironically of the senatorial dispute as an empty semblance of liberty, which is enacted in the full knowledge of its meaninglessness in contemporary life, but in the hope of its potential to regain meaning in a future which it could thereby transform. The enactment of the simulacrum by the senators, and its transmission to the future by Tacitus, allows misreading and meaninglessness to become bearable in the present because the charge of redemption has been placed on the shoulders of future readers. And the charge to the future gives meaning to the servitude and loss of political language experienced in the present.

--O'Gorman, Irony and misreading in the Annals of Tacitus. Cambridge, 2000.

And yes, I am doing some substantial misreading myself here.