Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II

About this book

AD 69 was the 'Year of the Four Emperors'. After the death of Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and finally Vespasian seized power one after another, as Roman armies marched against each other, Rome itself was fought over and the great temple on the Capitol burned. Tacitus tells this year of civil war, and the revolts in Gaul and Germany and the war in Judea that followed, in his concentrated, ironic style, showing, as he puts it, that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome.

Context and significance

Tacitus wrote the Histories in the first decade of the second century, and only the first books survive, covering the years 69 and 70. This translation, in two volumes, is by W. Hamilton Fyfe. Read his Germania and Agricola and Josephus's Wars of the Jews.

About the author