The Histories + The Annals

Uniting Tacitus' two great historical works, The Histories and The Annals trace Rome's passage from Julio-Claudian autocracy through civil war and the Flavian settlement. The Annals anatomize the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero; The Histories, surviving chiefly for 69-70 CE, expose the brutal instability after Nero's fall. Tacitus writes in a compressed, ironic, morally charged Latin, fusing senatorial historiography with tragic insight and political psychology. Publius Cornelius Tacitus ...