Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

First, he will explain how a situation arose by setting out the background and this may lead him to consider events in an earlier year... he may pursue it to its conclusion or at least until he reaches a natural break, even if this extends into a later year, before turning to events elsewhere in his original year. 

Certainly he does both. Although neither, I think, explains why he should place Corbulo's Armenian campaign of AD59, including the summer operations leading up to the capture of Tigranocerta, very firmly in AD60. In this case he apparently wants to relate the action to Corbulo's grant of the governorship of Syria in 60, so shifts the entire set of events to that year.

This creates a problem, perhaps, with what follows: he needs to show that the Boudica revolt was after the Armenian war, especially as he claims that Suetonius Paulinus's actions at Anglesey were in emulation of Corbulo - so clearly they cannot have happened simultaneously. So I would think it quite possible that he has just shunted the action forward into AD61, to relate it directly to Turpilianus's grant of Britain in the same way as he has just done for Corbulo's grant of Syria.

I see no reason to disbelieve his unequivocal statement that it occurred 'Caesennio Paeto et Petronio Turpiliano consulibus', i.e., in AD61.

I spent many years saying the same thing, so I can see the benefits, and you may well be right. But nowadays I am less convinced of Tacitus's unambiguity.

However, we will surely not agree on this, so we should probably let others move on without further debate!