Abstract

This article considers the role of gardens in Tacitus Annales Book11 as performative and transgressive space. Tacitus' account posits garden space as a nexus of narrative uncertainty between historia and fabula. This relationship is considered in the context of the transformative potential of performative space and concludes that the narrative interaction between gardens, transgression, and transformation both reference and foreshadow Julio-Claudian mythic enactments and the politics of performance.