Book XVI of Tacitus' Annals is the last of the surviving books of the great Roman historian's monumental account of the reigns of the emperors from Tiberius to Nero. The unfinished book offers a stunning portrait of Nero in his last years, a man now free of the restraining influences of his mother Agrippina and tutor Seneca. Annals XVI presents such unforgettable scenes as the spectacle of Petronius' suicide, and the mad quest of Nero to find the gold of the Carthaginian queen Dido.

This edition provides a commentary to the entire book, with notes carefully aimed at...