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In Letter 5.8 Pliny shows that in the post-Domitianic era historia has become an impossible genre, both as a vehicle for conventional moral wisdom and because of the authoritative narrative voice it necessitates. The letter's literary strategies of deferral express these problems even as its content appears to argue positively the merits of historia and compare it with those of oratio. Pliny emphasizes the insufficiency of the narrative “I”, suggesting instead the importance of dialogue as the means both toward the ethical reconstruction of post-tyrannical discourse and the literary fame for which Pliny also hopes.

According to Tacitus, Petronius' last act was to send to Nero a list of the latter's sexual partners and activities. Petronius' list in Annals 16 illuminates the structure of the Book, which conveys the tyranny of Nero's last years as a list of deaths and punishments. The nature of these lists—series of elements whose connection their authors decline to spell out—mirrors the arbitrary nature of imperial power under Nero and Domitian, which punishes according to no le- gitimate judicial logic. Tacitus' interest in Petronius extends beyond the latter's list to his function as Nero's elegantiae arbiter, a seemingly superficial position that Tacitus suggests actually illustrates the important function of pleasure in the principate. I. WHAT'S IN A LIST? alt H oug H incomplete as we H ave it, what remains of Book 16 of the Annals can be read as a list of the deaths, suicides, and punishments that occurred in the last part of Nero's principate. The narrative compo- nent of this book is supplied in the accounts Tacitus gives of the victims' backgrounds and the circumstances of their demise, but otherwise he pro- vides little that relates one death to the next or makes one episode follow consequentially upon the previous. The connection he draws between the first three scenes of death is exemplary: at 16.5 many of the spectators of Nero's performance at the Quinquennial Games are either trampled to death in the disorganization of the crowds or succumb to illness rather than offend Nero by leaving the venue; at 16.6 Nero murders Poppaea. The lead-in to the latter is simply post finem ludicri ("after the end of the festival"). Following this, Cassius and Silanus are exiled (16.9) with a mere tunc ("then . . ."). While there is nothing uncommon about a historian using temporal clauses or connectives to move his narrative along, the death and destruction Tacitus relates in Book 16 are particularly unal- leviated by a sense of the emplotment of these episodes in some larger scheme. About the closest we come is his statement at the beginning of the

Traditional energy and material technologies can have unwanted environmental impacts, so researchers seek greener alternatives in nanotechnology. During the past decades of research, nanomaterials have been explored for applications ranging from solar panels to fertilizers. It has yet to be determined if they are a safer alternative to the energy generation and production methods that are currently in use. Real-world nanotechnology application is limited, but it will increase with time, and it is essential that the field expands in a way that minimizes damage to living organisms. To assess the consequences of nanomaterials on human health and the environment, researchers must look at their production, service life, disposal, toxicity, and persistence. It is challenging to assess even the most common nanomaterials, such as graphene, titanium dioxide, and zinc oxide, because of the interdisciplinary work required. Sciences from chemistry to physics, biology, and ecology are needed to extrapolate from the interactions of particles and cells to the organism-scale consequences of exposure, and from there to an ecosystem scale. Researchers have employed laboratory experiments, mathematical modeling, and the practical examples that are available to outline the possible consequences of nanotechnology. This chapter provides a glimpse of this ongoing research and some future directions.

Haynes analyses how Tacitus responds to the problems of speaking, writing, and remembering after a period of terror, comparing this response with modern parallels, such as the psychological aftermath of Pinochet's regime in Chile. In particular, the paper considers what the figure of Agricola as constructed by Tacitus might represent for the survivors of Domitian (and what that literary construction can tell us about Tacitus's own guilty feelings). The memorable description of those who outlived that emperor as nostri supersites, "survivors of ourselves" (Agricola 3.2), suggests that tyranny (even after it has gone) generates a kind of death, even for those who did not actually lose their lives. In this context, Tacitus's Agricola can be read as an assertion of self, or a self-representation, after a time when terror has almost erased the possibility of speaking about oneself or anything else. Yet this is still a cautious work, even a paradoxical one: rather than writing about Domitian himself, Tacitus instead chooses as a subject his father-in-law, who represents the victims of the Domitianic era without actually having been murdered. Even Agricola himself is an ambiguous figure, whose virtues are advertised by sententiae that leave the reader on the ropes. In the end, Agricola occupies a dual role in the text that bears his name: he serves to exemplify both the best one can do under a tyrant and the worst that such a "best" represents. Thus Agricola is used to articulate Tacitus's morally ambivalent feelings about his own conduct under Domitian. The paper concludes that what was good about Agricola will be remembered because Tacitus wrote about it, but shows how the price of writing was the difficult plumbing of his own tortured past.

The fact that vocabulum appears with far more frequency in Tacitus9 texts than in any other author except for the encyclopaedists argues for his idiosyncratic usage of the term. This article argues that imperial discourse, nearly identical in structure and expression to that of the Republic but divorced from Republican connotations, provided an empty site where Roman fantasies of self-definition took strong hold, and that Tacitus uses vocabulum to indicate words and concepts that illustrate this process, particularly with reference to representations of the foreign and the past. Such a discourse was congenial for the concentration of power in the hands of one person, as it no longer expressed the conflicting desires of a community engaged in public affairs, but collectivized the public desire for an image of Roman superiority. Thus Germany and the old Republican past were easily mythologized as what Rome desired to be, but feared it was not. Tacitus9 use of vocabulum highlights the words in imperial discourse that betray the gap in the political unconscious between Romans9 idea of themselves as masters of the Empire and as slaves to one ruler. Nor does he position himself as an outside observer of this process, but creates an experience of it for the reader through gaps and inconsistencies within his narrative.