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, with four emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian--emerging in succession. Based on authoritative sources, The Histories vividly recounts the details of the "long but single year" of revolution that brought the Roman empire to the brink of collapse.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the...

The Germania of Tacitus is the most extensive account of the ancient Germans written during the Roman period. This new translation, introduction, and commentary provides an up-to-date guide to the relevant literary and archaeological evidence, and discusses the methodological issues involved in understanding this important historical source.

The Histories is the first historical work by Rome's most accomplished and challenging historian, Tacitus. It narrates the brutal civil wars which broke out in AD 68 9 across the Roman Empire after the suicide of the last Julio-Claudian emperor, Nero. Book II covers the bloody finale of the war between two of those emperors, Otho and Vitellius, and the emerging challenge from the eventual victor, Vespasian. The progression of events, kaleidoscopic and gripping, unfolds over a broad geographical sweep and is presented by Tacitus with consummate artistry. This commentary on Histories Book II...

Book 11, the first of the later books of the Annals to survive, narrates two years in the reign of Claudius, AD 47-8. While Claudius is busy with the duties of his censorship, his wife Messalina is having a very public love affair with the young aristocrat Silius that eventually ruins her. In a book that also treats German, eastern, and other Roman internal affairs, a third of the surviving narrative is devoted to the destruction of Messalina. Here we encounter the classic portrayal of a Claudius ignorant and manipulated by those around him in an extended narrative that shows Tacitus at his...

The first work of any great historian has always commanded attention, and Tacitus was ancient Rome's very greatest historian. His biography of his father-in-law, governor of Britain in the years AD 77-84, is a literary masterpiece: it combines penetrating political history with gripping military narrative and throughout poses the question (still very much alive today) of how one should live one's life under a tyranny. This is the first commentary in English on the Agricola for almost half a century: in keeping with the aims of the series, particular attention is paid to the understanding of...