Agricola and Germania

Tacitus studied rhetoric in Rome and rose to eminence as a pleader at the Roman Bar. In 77 AD he married the daughter of Agricola, conqueror of Britain, of whom he later wrote a biography. 
 
J. B. Rives received his PhD in Classics from Stanford University (1990) and taught at Columbia University and at York University in Toronto before moving to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is Kenan Eminent Professor of Classics. He is the author of Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage (1995) and Religion in the Roman Empire (2006), as well as numerous articles on aspects of religion in the Roman world. He has also published a translation, with introduction and commentary, of Tacitus' Germania (1999) and, for Penguin Classics, has revised Robert Graves' translation of Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (2007). 
 
Harold Mattingley was born in 1884 and died in 1964. He is best known for his study of Roman coinage at the British Museum where he worked from 1920 to 1948. He wrote over four hundred articles and books and his Roman Imperial Civilization, first published when he was seventy-two, embodied the reflections of a lifetime devoted to the study of the Roman world.

The Agricola is both a portrait of Julius Agricola - the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus' well-loved and respected father-in-law - and the first detailed account of Britain that has come down to us. It offers fascinating descriptions of the geography, climate and peoples of the country, and a succinct account of the early stages of the Roman occupation, nearly fatally undermined by Boudicca's revolt in AD 61 but consolidated by campaigns that took Agricola as far as Anglesey and northern Scotland. The warlike German tribes are the focus of Tacitus' attention in the Germania, which, like the Agricola, often compares the behaviour of 'barbarian' peoples favourably with the decadence and corruption of Imperial Rome.

Annals and Histories

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

This new Everyman edition includes Tacitus's complete historical works - The Annals, the Histories, the Agricola and the Germania.

Tacitus (ca. 56 - ca. 117) was a senator and historian of the Roman Empire. 
 
Robin Lane Fox is Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at New College, Oxford and author of Alexander the Great and The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome. 
 
Eleanor Cowan is Lecturer in Ancient History at Leicester University.

Tacitus was the greatest historian of the Roman empire. Born in about AD 55, he served as administrator and leading senator. This career gave him an intimate view of the empire at its highest levels, experience brought to bear on his writing. 
His major works are the Annals and the Histories, both of which have come down to us incomplete. Between them, they cover a period of about 80 years, from the death of the first emperor, Augustus, to the death of Domitian in 96AD. In addition, Tacitus also composed two short historical books or essays, the Agricola (about his father-in-law, a distinguished provincial governor) and the Germania, an account of the tribes beyond the Rhine. 
Tacitus is a brilliant narrator and master stylist who had ample material for his story in the dramatic, violent and often bloody events of the first century. His portraits - especially those of Tiberius, Nero, and Nero's immediate circle - are unforgettable, his scene-setting masterly, his psychological analysis as acute as any novelist. He is also a fierce critic of the decadence and corruption which marked struggles for the imperial succession. As Robin Lane Fox writes in his brilliant introduction, 'Above all Tacitus was supremely wary of the distortions and "spin" of official announcements. He had no illusions about the capacities of presidential, one-man rule.' Napoleon disliked him, not surprisingly. 
Everyman reprints the classic translation by A.J. Church and W.J. Brodribb, with extensive notes considerably revised and updated by Dr Eleanor Cowan.

The Histories

Tacitus was born c.55 AD and probably survived the emperor Trajan who dies in 117. Known in Rome for his impressive oratory, he maintained a political career as a sentor under Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. 
 
Rhiannon Ash is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Merton College, Oxford. After taking an MA in Medieval Latin at the University of Toronto, she returned from Canada to Oxford, where she wrote a doctorate on Tacitus' Histories. Her publications include Ordering Anarchy; Leaders and Armies in Tacitus' Histories (1999) and a comentary, Tacitus Histories Book II (2007), in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series. She has also written articles on Naevius, Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius and Plutarch. 
 
Kenneth Wellesley was, until 1981, Reader of Humanity (Latin) at the University of Edinburgh. He contributed a number of papers to learned journals on various aspects of Roman history and literature. Most of the sites mentioned in the Histories were familiar to him from personal knowledge, and he was co-editor of the standard Teubner text of Tacitus (Leipzig). He died in 1995.

In AD68 Nero's suicide marked the end of the first dynasty of imperial Rome. The following year was one of drama and danger, though not of chaos. 
 
In the surviving books of his Histories the barrister-historian Tacitus, writing some thirty years after the events he describes, gives us a detailed account based on excellent authorities. In the 'long but single year' of revolution four emperors emerge in succession: Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian - who established the Flavian dynasty. 
 
Rhiannon Ash stays true to the spirit of Wellesley's prose whilst making the translation more accessible to modern readers.

The Annals of Imperial Rome

His last work, regarded by many as the greatest work of contemporary scholarship, Tacitus' The Annals of Imperial Rome recount with depth and insight the history of the Roman Empire during the first century A.D. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Michael Grant. 
 
Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome recount the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus up to the death of Nero in AD 68. With clarity and vivid intensity he describes the reign of terror under the corrupt Tiberius, the great fire of Rome during the time of Nero, and the wars, poisonings, scandals, conspiracies and murders that were part of imperial life. Despite his claim that the Annals were written objectively, Tacitus' account is sharply critical of the emperors' excesses and fearful for the future of Imperial Rome, while also filled with a longing for its past glories. 
 
Michael Grant's translation vividly captures the emotional patriotism of Tacitus' moral tone, offset by a lucid understanding that Rome is doomed, and conveys with cinematic vigour the lives of the great Emperors who laid the foundations of modern Europe. 
 
Tacitus (56-117) studied rhetoric in Rome and rose to eminence as a pleader at the Roman Bar. In 77 he married the daughter of Agricola, conqueror of Britain, of whom he later wrote a biography, Agricola. His other works, all available in Penguin Classics, include the Germania and the The Histories. 
 
If you enjoyed The Annals of Imperial Rome, you might like Herodotus' The Histories, also available in Penguin Classics.

Tacitus studied rhetoric in Rome and rose to eminence as a pleader at the Roman Bar. In 77 he married the daughter of Agricola, conqueror of Britain, of whom he later wrote a biography. His other works includethe Germania and the Historiae. 
Michael Grant's academic titles include Chancellor's Medallist and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and President of the Classical Association.

Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome recount the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus up to the death of Nero in AD 68. With clarity and vivid intensity he describes the reign of terror under the corrupt Tiberius, the great fire of Rome during the time of Nero, and the wars, poisonings, scandals, conspiracies and murders that were part of imperial life. Despite his claim that the Annals were written objectively, Tacitus' account is sharply critical of the emperors' excesses and fearful for the future of Imperial Rome, while also filled with a longing for its past glories.

Tacitus

Books by Tacitus

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