Tacitus

I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. In the Histories, Tacitus brings to life the events of one of the most tumultuous periods of the Roman empire. After the suicide of the Emperor Nero in AD69, Rome entered into a period of extreme civil unrest. Four emperors, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian, successively ruled the empire as each one rose...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. The Annals of Imperial Rome offers a dramatic vision of imperial Rome during roughly the first half of the first century AD. Starting with the death of Augustus, Tacitus describes how the Julio-Claudian dynasty consolidated its grip upon the empire, only to end suddenly in AD 68 with the suicide of its last representative, the emperor Nero. Tacitus explores how increasingly...

These three vibrant texts show different sides of the Roman historian Tacitus (c56–c102 CE), best known for his principal (and much longer) legacies of The Annals and The Histories. Agricola was a successful general and governor of Britain (77-83CE), a task which he carried out with firmness and probity - in contrast to much of the corruption and repression in place during the reign of Emperor Domitian. Included in his account are the prebattle...

"The Agricola and The Germania" are two important historical works by Cornelius Tacitus, an ancient Roman Senator and historian. The Agricola is a biography of the Roman general Gnaeus Julius Agricola as well as a geographic and ethnographic history of Ancient Britain. "The Germania" is an ethnographic study of the people believed by Tacitus to be part of the ancient Germanic tribes. While not as famous as Tacitus's "Annals" or "Histories", "The Agricola...

Ancient Roman senator and historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus is known throughout Western history as one of the greatest historical writers of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He lived during the first century AD and was the son of a wealthy aristocratic family. Not much is known about his personal life; however, it is clear that both Tacitus and Pliny the Elder were acquaintances and even possibly childhood friends, though there is no substantial...

The Annals, the last and greatest achievement of Tacitus, records the history of the Julio-Claudian emperors from the death of Augustus, 14 A.D. to the reign of Nero, 54-68. These are stories of mutiny and murder, of whole armies disappearing beyond the Rhine, of an unstable and gloomy frontier. Tacitus brings us Nero himself, whose reign saw the burning of Rome and the mass slaughter of Christians, and whose vices still captivate and startle us with...

Publius Cornelius Tacitus: Germania – Über Ursprung und Sitten der Germanen Neuausgabe 2022 Mit einem Vorwort des Herausgebers, Nachwort des Übersetzers und mehr als 130 erläuternden verlinkten Fußnoten Tacitus' ›Germania‹ spielt eine ganz besondere Rolle in der Genese der deutschen Nation, denn sie bildete von Anbeginn das einzige konsistente ethnographische Werk über dieses Volk, das eigentlich keines war. Und sie prägte den Mythos...

"In AD 68 Nero's suicide marked the end of the first dynasty of imperial Rome. The following year was one of drama and danger. In the surviving books of his Histories the barrister-historian Tacitus, writing some thirty years after the events he describes, gives a detailed account of the 'long but single year' when four emperors emerged in succession: Galba, the martinet; Otho, conspirator and dandy; Vitellius, the unambitious hedonist; and the ultimate...