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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Tacitus's "The Annals" is a monumental work of historiography that chronicles the history of the Roman Empire during the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Written in a terse yet eloquent style, the narrative intertwines political intrigue with sharp observations of human nature, reflecting contemporary concerns about power and morality. The text exemplifies the annalistic form, characterized by a chronological recording of events, yet Tacitus employs a sophisticated rhetorical strategy, using anecdotes and character sketches to deepen the reader's engagement with historical figures and events. This work not only serves as a political history but also as a philosophical commentary on tyranny and the fragility of freedom within the imperial system. Tacitus, born circa 56 AD, was a senator and a magistrate in Rome, which bestowed upon him direct insights into the political machinations of the time. His writings are deeply influenced by his experiences and observations of the moral decay within the Roman elite. The somber tone of "The Annals" reflects Tacitus's disillusionment with the corruption of Roman power and his desire to document the realities behind the pomp of imperial rule, providing a critical legacy for future generations. For those seeking to understand the complexities of Roman history and the human condition within the context of political power, "The Annals" is an indispensable resource. Tacitus'Äôs masterful prose and penetrating insights invite readers to reflect on the nature of authority, governance, and the ethical dilemmas inherent in the exercise of power. This profound work remains a timeless exploration of the dynamics that shaped an empire and continue to resonate today. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Annals
Table of Contents
Introduction
In the polished chambers of empire, public virtue can become a performance while private fear quietly governs every decision.
Tacitus’s The Annals stands among the classics because it turns the history of Rome into a searching study of power, character, and the fragility of political freedom. Its prose is renowned for compression and intensity, moving from scene to judgment with an energy that feels at once forensic and tragic. The work has endured not only for the events it records but for the moral pressure it applies to those events, forcing readers to weigh ambition against duty, loyalty against survival, and law against force. In doing so, it helped shape what later ages would recognize as political history written as literature.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman senator and historian, composed The Annals in the early second century CE, during the era of the Roman Empire. It is a retrospective narrative, written long after the reigns it treats, and it reflects the perspective of an author deeply attentive to institutions, reputation, and the costs of autocracy. The title commonly used in English refers to its annalistic structure, organizing the narrative year by year, though the work’s scope and analysis go beyond simple chronology. What matters most is the sustained attempt to explain how a society of laws can be bent by the will of a single ruler and by the ambitions of those nearest to him.
The central premise is the history of Rome under the first emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, beginning with the death of Augustus and continuing through the reigns that followed. Tacitus is concerned less with battlefield glory than with the operations of rule: the Senate’s shifting role, the influence of the imperial household, and the ways in which information, accusation, and favor circulate at the center of power. He treats politics as a human drama enacted through procedures, ceremonies, and trials, where outcomes may hinge on perception as much as on policy. Without revealing later turns, the opening situation is Rome adjusting to a new political reality that still claims republican forms.
The Annals earned classic status in part because it refuses to let history become comfortable. Tacitus examines the language of public life—decrees, honors, and official expressions of gratitude—and shows how such language can conceal coercion or enable complicity. He draws sharp portraits of rulers and courtiers, but the larger subject is the system that rewards certain traits and punishes others. The result is a work that reads as both narrative and critique, inviting the reader to notice how fear can be normalized and how a community can learn to applaud what it once would have resisted. Its ethical intensity has made it a touchstone for readers of political writing ever since.
As literature, The Annals is influential for its distinctive manner: spare, controlled, and often severe, yet capable of sudden vividness. The narrative moves through episodes that expose the tension between public spectacle and private motive, while the author’s judgments are woven into the selection and arrangement of material. Tacitus’s approach has been admired for the way it can suggest an atmosphere—uncertainty, suspicion, opportunism—without relying on extended explanation. This stylistic force helped define a tradition in which historical writing aims not merely to record but to interpret, emphasizing causation, responsibility, and the moral temperature of an age. Later historians and essayists repeatedly looked to Tacitus as a model of intensity and precision.
Enduring themes run through the work and help explain why it remains widely read. One is the transformation of civic institutions under concentrated power: how a Senate can retain procedures yet lose independence, and how legal forms can be deployed to intimidate rather than protect. Another is the psychology of authority, including the pressures on those who rule and those who must live close to rule. Tacitus is attentive to the machinery of denunciation and to the social incentives that can make injustice appear orderly. He also explores the instability of reputation, showing how honor can be granted, withheld, or manufactured, and how public memory can be contested even within a single lifetime.
The Annals also matters because of its influence on later writers who sought language for tyranny, surveillance, and the corrosion of civic life. In early modern Europe, Tacitus became a major point of reference for political reflection, and the term “Tacitean” came to suggest a keen, sometimes unsettling realism about courts and regimes. His history offered later readers a vocabulary for reading between the lines of official narratives and for tracing how power organizes information. Without claiming a single line of influence, it is clear that his method—probing motives, questioning public statements, and emphasizing the consequences of fear—helped shape political commentary and historiography across centuries. The book’s afterlife is part of its classic status.
Because it is a work of history, it also demands attention to what it is and is not. Tacitus writes from within Roman elite political culture, and his perspective is that of a senator reflecting on an imperial system that limited senatorial autonomy. He presents his narrative with a strong authorial presence, selecting and arranging material to expose patterns of conduct and governance. Readers come not only for information about the early empire but for an argument about how states change and how individuals adapt. The Annals is therefore a demanding text: it asks the reader to consider evidence, assess character, and recognize how moral judgments can operate alongside historical narration.
The setting is Rome at a moment of transition, when imperial rule has become established yet still must justify itself in traditional terms. The work examines how authority is displayed—through ceremonies, public decisions, and the management of crises—and how that display interacts with anxieties about legitimacy. It also attends to the imperial household as a political arena, where personal relationships can have public consequences. The narrative’s annalistic rhythm reinforces the sense of time passing under a regime whose pressures are repetitive and cumulative, year after year. In this framework, seemingly small acts—an honor proposed, an accusation accepted, a silence maintained—can carry significant weight.
Readers often find The Annals bracing because it does not treat politics as a realm of abstract principles alone; it treats it as a realm of incentives, risks, and calculations. Tacitus repeatedly returns to the question of how people behave under conditions where open speech may be dangerous and where advancement may depend on pleasing the powerful. He explores the costs of conformity and the temptations of opportunism, while also showing the limits of individual agency within a larger system. This attention to conduct under pressure gives the work a tragic realism: not all choices are noble, not all compromises are equal, and not all survival is a victory. The result is a sustained meditation on character in public life.
At the same time, The Annals remains compelling because it recognizes complexity. Tacitus is alert to how rulers can be both capable and destructive, how institutions can be both meaningful and hollow, and how public order can coexist with profound insecurity. He portrays a society in which information is power and where the interpretation of events can be as contested as the events themselves. The book invites readers to consider how narratives are formed, how blame is assigned, and how political communities remember. It is history that insists on scrutiny: not only of emperors and ministers but of the subtle habits by which a public becomes accustomed to what once would have shocked it. That insistence keeps the text alive in new contexts and new debates, because it trains attention as much as it conveys knowledge. Themes of surveillance, propaganda, institutional drift, and the personal costs of political pressure resonate wherever authority must be checked and where dissent carries risk. Tacitus’s Rome is distant in customs and structure, yet familiar in its moral dilemmas: how to speak, when to comply, and what it means to be free under a system that promises stability. The Annals endures because it offers more than a record of a past empire; it offers a language for thinking about power that remains unsettlingly applicable, and a form of literary history that continues to reward careful reading. Its lasting appeal lies in this union of narrative force, ethical inquiry, and political insight.
Synopsis
Tacitus’s The Annals is a Latin historical narrative of the early Roman Empire, written in the early second century CE and arranged in year-by-year form. It begins after the death of Augustus and turns immediately to the problem of how a state that once claimed republican traditions is now governed by a single ruler. Tacitus frames his account around public institutions, elite competition, and the management of armies and provinces, while also attending to rumor, fear, and the pressures of court life. The opening establishes Tiberius as successor and sets the tone of cautious inquiry into motives, power, and the costs of stability.
paragraphs of the narrative then track Tiberius’s consolidation of authority and the uneasy balance between the emperor, the Senate, and Rome’s leading families. Tacitus presents political life as a contest shaped by dependence and suspicion, where formal debates may mask coercion and self-preservation. A recurring focus is the role of prosecutions for offenses against the state, which become entwined with personal rivalry and the pursuit of favor. Alongside urban politics, the narrative keeps attention on the provinces and frontiers, where imperial control relies on loyal commanders and disciplined legions. These interlocking arenas introduce the central conflict between governance and liberty under monarchy.
The early books also move outward to major military and diplomatic concerns, especially in the German and eastern regions, to show how imperial authority is tested beyond Italy. Tacitus links battlefield success and failure to political standing at Rome, suggesting that commanders’ reputations can strengthen or unsettle the ruler’s position. Episodes of mutiny and unrest underscore the fragility beneath imperial order, while ceremonial responses at the capital reveal how the regime seeks legitimacy. In these sections, Tacitus juxtaposes the demands of security with the moral and institutional compromises that accompany concentrated power. The narrative’s steady rhythm of annual events builds a sense of accumulating tension.
As Tiberius’s reign progresses, The Annals emphasizes the growing prominence of the imperial household and the influence of advisers and favorites. Tacitus pays close attention to the mechanisms by which information is controlled and decisions are shaped, including private access to the ruler and the management of public opinion. The Senate remains central in form, yet its debates increasingly occur under the shadow of imperial preference and fear of accusation. Tacitus’s portraits of leading figures illustrate how ambition, caution, and resentment interact in a court-centered system. The narrative continues to interweave domestic politics with developments in distant provinces, reinforcing the empire’s vast, interconnected vulnerability.
The middle portion of the work turns to the succession crisis that follows the end of Tiberius’s rule and the rise of a new princeps, Gaius (Caligula). Tacitus treats the transition as an opportunity to probe how expectations of renewal can collide with the realities of unchecked authority. Although The Annals is unevenly preserved for this period, its broader sequence maintains focus on the institutional consequences of personal rule and the volatility of elite alignment. The narrative shows how quickly political climates can change when power is concentrated in one person and mediated through court networks. In doing so, Tacitus sustains his inquiry into the endurance and erosion of Roman political norms.
With the accession of Claudius, Tacitus shifts to a reign marked by administrative attention and the significant role of the emperor’s household, including freedmen and family members. The narrative highlights how access to the ruler can become a political resource, reshaping patronage and decision-making. Tacitus traces senatorial careers, judicial proceedings, and public measures to show both the continuing functions of governance and the strains imposed by palace influence. Provincial affairs and questions of citizenship and integration remain part of the story, reflecting the empire’s ongoing expansion and complexity. Throughout, Tacitus maintains a skeptical, analytic stance toward appearances of legality and the realities of power.
The Annals also gives sustained attention to foreign policy and military operations during Claudius’s era, including campaigns that display Rome’s capacity for organized conquest and the political uses of victory. Tacitus presents such enterprises not merely as battlefield narratives but as events that reverberate through Rome’s elite politics, prestige economy, and claims of legitimacy. Administrative choices in the provinces are portrayed as tests of imperial competence and justice, with local conditions influencing outcomes. The interplay between center and periphery serves Tacitus’s larger theme: that imperial authority must continually be performed, defended, and managed, often at moral and institutional cost. These episodes keep the narrative grounded in the empire’s practical demands.
The later surviving books concentrate on the reign of Nero, where Tacitus examines the dynamics of youthful rule, guidance by advisers, and the shifting boundaries between public governance and personal desire. The narrative chronicles political trials, factional struggles, and the heightened importance of court favor, while also depicting cultural and social currents that intersect with politics. Tacitus treats extraordinary public events and crises as moments that reveal the regime’s strengths and weaknesses, and he traces how responses to danger can reshape authority. Provincial unrest and military concerns continue to appear, reinforcing that domestic instability and frontier pressures are mutually influential. The tone remains one of moral scrutiny and institutional diagnosis.
As the narrative approaches its preserved end, The Annals continues to map how fear, ambition, and competition operate within an imperial system whose formal structures persist but are repeatedly strained. Tacitus’s method remains annalistic, yet his larger aim is interpretive: to show patterns of cause, consequence, and character in the evolution of early imperial rule. He repeatedly returns to the question of how a political community adapts when open deliberation and shared power are narrowed. Even when describing administrative actions or external wars, he underscores the human motives and systemic incentives that drive them. The surviving text concludes without covering the full span originally intended, leaving the arc incomplete in transmission rather than design. Tacitus’s enduring significance lies in his penetrating analysis of power’s effects on institutions, ethics, and historical memory, offering a foundational account of how empire reshapes public life.
Historical Context
Tacitus’s Annals is set in the early Roman Empire, chiefly from the death of Augustus in 14 CE to the end of Nero’s reign in 68 CE. Its geographic frame is centered on Rome and Italy, but it constantly reaches to the provinces where armies, governors, and client kings shaped imperial power. The dominant institutions are the emperor’s household and court, the Senate as Rome’s traditional governing body, the equestrian bureaucracy, and the professional army. Tacitus narrates how these institutions interacted under a monarchy that still preserved republican forms, creating tensions that define the work’s political atmosphere.
The Annals was written in the early second century CE, when Tacitus was a senior senator under the so‑called adoptive emperors. He served as suffect consul in 97 CE and later governed the province of Asia (about 112–113 CE). His career thus spanned the Flavian dynasty and the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, periods marked by renewed senatorial participation alongside strong imperial authority. This later vantage point matters: Tacitus looks back on Julio‑Claudian rule through the memory of earlier civil conflicts and recent experiences of autocracy, using history to examine how power had altered Rome’s political culture.
The immediate background to the Annals is Augustus’s creation of the Principate after the civil wars of the late Republic. Augustus maintained the Senate and traditional magistracies but concentrated military command and key powers in his own hands, presenting monarchy as a restoration of order. This arrangement generated a durable ambiguity: senators could still speak of “liberty” and republican custom, yet the reality of decision-making increasingly followed imperial preference. Tacitus highlights this contradiction by recording senatorial debates, decrees, and public rituals that preserved republican language while accommodating one-man rule, showing how constitutional forms could mask a changed political substance.
The opening transition from Augustus to Tiberius reflects a fundamental imperial problem: succession without an accepted republican mechanism. Augustus had arranged the succession through adoption and the accumulation of offices for Tiberius, but the new reign still required consent from armies and the Senate. In 14 CE mutinies broke out among legions on the Rhine and in Pannonia, demanding better conditions and testing loyalty. Their suppression underscored that imperial stability rested on disciplined soldiers and reliable commanders. Tacitus uses these episodes to illustrate how the emperor’s authority depended on military obedience and how unrest could be leveraged within Roman politics.
Foreign policy and frontier warfare form another historical layer. Rome’s memory of the disaster in the Teutoburg Forest (9 CE), where Varus lost three legions, shaped strategy on the Rhine. In the early years of Tiberius, Germanicus conducted campaigns beyond the Rhine (around 14–16 CE), recovering standards and fighting major engagements, before operations were curtailed. These campaigns mattered not only militarily but symbolically, as public expectations about glory, vengeance, and Rome’s destiny were tied to commanders’ reputations. Tacitus reflects these pressures by linking battlefield narratives to court politics and senatorial responses in Rome.
Within the city, the Senate remained a central stage, even as its autonomy narrowed. Trials for treason (maiestas) expanded in the early Principate and became a political weapon, often driven by informers (delatores) and the competitive search for favor. The Senate sat as a court in many prominent cases, making senators both judges and potential targets, which intensified fear and opportunism. Tacitus records how accusations could arise from speech, association, or alleged disloyal intentions, and he notes the corrosive effects on public life. His narrative echoes contemporary anxieties about legal process under autocratic pressures.
The emperor’s household and inner circle—freedmen, favorites, and powerful officials—were increasingly significant in governance. Under Tiberius, the praetorian prefect Sejanus rose to exceptional influence during the 20s CE, demonstrating how control of the Praetorian Guard and access to the emperor could shift policy and reshape elite careers. After Sejanus’s fall in 31 CE, the climate of suspicion sharpened, and political survival often depended on reading imperial moods. Tacitus treats these developments as symptoms of a court-centered system where personal proximity outweighed formal rank, and where secrecy and denunciation could substitute for open deliberation.
The Annals also reflects the importance of administrative and legal structures that sustained imperial rule. Roman governance depended on provincial taxation, judicial authority, and a network of municipal elites who carried out local administration. Senators and equestrians held governorships and procuratorships, while imperial freedmen sometimes managed financial and household business. This bureaucracy did not eliminate corruption or conflicts of interest, and Tacitus notes disputes over extortion, provincial grievances, and the balance between local autonomy and Roman control. His attention to provincial affairs underscores that imperial politics in Rome had direct consequences for subjects across the Mediterranean.
Economic and social forces appear in episodes concerning grain supply, public spending, and crises. Rome’s large urban population depended on imported grain, and emperors were expected to maintain stability through provisioning and public order. The empire’s monetary economy, long-distance trade, and taxation systems supported both the capital’s needs and the army’s pay, yet disruptions—from fire, famine scares, or administrative failure—could quickly become political issues. Tacitus includes such moments to show how practical governance and public expectations shaped legitimacy. The imperial image was built not only on victories and law, but also on managing everyday necessities.
Religion and public ritual were integral to statecraft, and Tacitus records how emperors and senators used religious language to authorize decisions. The imperial cult, honoring the emperor and deified predecessors, strengthened loyalty in provinces and shaped ceremonies in Rome. Traditional priesthoods, auspices, and prodigy reports remained culturally potent, even as elite attitudes varied. Tacitus often treats omens and religious controversies as windows into public psychology and political manipulation. By noting consultations of the Sibylline Books, temple affairs, and disputes about honors, he illustrates how sacred traditions could be enlisted to buttress authority or discredit opponents.
Cultural life in the early empire included spectacles, patronage, and literary production that were closely linked to politics. Emperors sponsored games, building projects, and public entertainment, which provided both popular appeal and opportunities to display power. The aristocracy cultivated rhetoric and historical memory, yet frank speech could be dangerous under suspicious regimes. Tacitus’s own craft belongs to this world: he writes in a senatorial historiographical tradition attentive to character, motive, and moral consequence. The Annals reflects the pressures on elite communication—how praise, silence, and coded critique developed when open opposition carried severe risks.
The reign of Claudius (41–54 CE) introduces themes of administrative expansion and the role of imperial freedmen and the palace in decision-making. Claudius is associated with significant legal and bureaucratic activity, and with policies affecting the provinces and the Senate’s composition, including the admission of some provincial elites to senatorial rank. These developments reflect a broader imperial trend toward integrating the provinces and professionalizing governance. Tacitus reports debates and decrees to show how the state adapted, while also noting how court influence and factionalism could distort policy. The narrative thus connects institutional change to personal power at the center.
Provincial society and client kingdoms appear in the Annals as arenas where Roman authority was negotiated. Rome ruled through a mix of direct provincial administration and allied or client rulers, particularly in the East. Conflicts in places such as Judaea, Armenia, and North Africa, and tensions among local elites, could draw in Roman governors and legions, turning regional disputes into imperial issues. Tacitus uses these cases to demonstrate the empire’s reach and the limits of control, as distance, local politics, and military logistics shaped outcomes. The work thereby links Roman internal politics to its imperial responsibilities.
The reign of Nero (54–68 CE) is framed by the interplay of youthful monarchy, court rivalry, and changing cultural expectations. Early in Nero’s rule, policy was influenced by senior advisers and established administrative routines, while later years saw intensified court conflicts and a more conspicuous emphasis on performance, spectacle, and personal rule. Tacitus records how elite norms reacted to these shifts: senators measured conduct against ideals of moderation and civic responsibility, and anxieties about moral decline were tied to concerns about arbitrary power. The Annals uses such contrasts to critique the gap between traditional aristocratic values and imperial realities.
A major event echoed in Tacitus’s narrative is the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE and its aftermath, including rebuilding efforts and public controversy. The fire had enormous social and economic consequences, affecting housing, temples, and public spaces, and it became a flashpoint for rumor and political interpretation. Tacitus reports subsequent measures and tensions within the city, showing how disaster management and public trust were inseparable from imperial legitimacy. In this context he also notes actions against particular groups as part of the broader response. The episode illustrates how urban catastrophe could intensify suspicion and become entangled with power.
Military loyalty and provincial command were recurring pressures, culminating in the instability that followed Nero’s fall. Although the Annals does not extend through the full civil wars of 69 CE, its narrative background makes clear that the army’s allegiance was decisive and that provincial governors commanded resources capable of making or unmaking emperors. Earlier mutinies, frontier conflicts, and the political uses of the Praetorian Guard all anticipate this problem. Tacitus’s focus on command appointments, honors, and military reputations shows how empire-wide forces converged on Rome. The work thus situates personal rule within structural dependence on armed power.
Tacitus’s method and sources are part of the historical context. As a senator and public official, he had access to elite networks and could consult public records such as senatorial proceedings (acta senatus) and other documentary materials, alongside earlier histories. Roman historiography emphasized moral and political analysis, and Tacitus writes with that tradition’s interest in how character and institutions interact. He is also shaped by the experience of earlier emperors closer to his lifetime, particularly the Flavian period and Domitian’s notorious reputation among senators. This background informs his sensitivity to the dangers of fear, flattery, and coerced consensus in public life.
Author Biography
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a leading Roman senator and historian of the late first and early second centuries CE, active under the Flavian emperors and the early Antonines. He is remembered for a tense, incisive Latin style and for histories that interrogate the dynamics of power, fear, and moral compromise under autocracy. Tacitus wrote in an era shaped by civil war’s aftermath, the consolidation of imperial rule, and debates about senatorial freedom. His surviving works, especially the Annals and Histories, became central to later understandings of the early Roman Empire and to enduring reflections on political authority.
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Tacitus’s early life is only partly documented, and ancient sources leave key details—such as his birthplace—uncertain. He received the rhetorical education expected of an ambitious Roman elite, training in oratory and legal argument that later informed his compressed, epigrammatic prose. The intellectual culture of his time prized declamation and the moralizing traditions of Roman historiography, and Tacitus positioned himself within that lineage while also sharpening its critical edge. He acknowledged earlier historical models, and his work shows familiarity with both Roman and Greek approaches to narrative and character. His surviving writings suggest a deliberate craft shaped by public speaking and close reading.
Tacitus pursued a public career that combined senatorial office, forensic activity, and literary production, moving within the political institutions he would later scrutinize. He is securely known to have served as suffect consul in 97 CE and to have governed the province of Asia as proconsul around 112–113 CE. These posts placed him near the center of imperial administration and exposed him to the mechanisms of patronage, prosecution, and provincial rule. Tacitus also maintained a public profile as an orator, a role that helped establish his authority as a commentator on civic life. His historical writing draws strength from this experience, balancing insider knowledge with a marked ethical seriousness.
Tacitus’s earliest surviving works include the Agricola and the Germania, both written around the late 90s CE. Agricola is a biographical and political portrait of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, presented in a way that reflects on virtue, restraint, and the costs of service under a suspicious regime; it also contains important material on Roman Britain. Germania is an ethnographic account of the peoples beyond the Rhine, shaped by Roman categories and moral contrasts. These works show Tacitus experimenting with concise narrative, pointed characterization, and implicit political commentary. They also reveal his interest in how identity is constructed—by geography, custom, and the gaze of imperial power.
The Dialogus de oratoribus, generally attributed to Tacitus, treats the perceived decline of eloquence and the changing conditions of public speech under the Empire. Cast as a dialogue, it explores education, cultural taste, and the relationship between political freedom and rhetorical ambition. Whether one reads the work as nostalgic, analytical, or both, it complements Tacitus’s histories by examining how institutions shape language and public life. Across these writings, Tacitus’s method combines moral evaluation with attention to systemic pressures; individuals matter, but so do incentives, fear, and ambition. His style varies with genre, yet it consistently favors density, irony, and sharp contrasts.
Tacitus’s major historical achievements are the Histories and the Annals, composed in his later career. The Histories, surviving in part, begins with the year 69 CE and narrates the upheavals that followed Nero’s death, including civil conflict and the rise of the Flavian dynasty. The Annals, also incomplete, treats the Julio-Claudian period from Tiberius onward. In both works Tacitus interweaves political narrative with studies of character, rumor, and institutional decay, often highlighting how terror and flattery distort civic life. Ancient and later readers admired his force and penetration, even as his severity and pessimism invited debate about balance and intent. His influence on political thought owes much to this blend of narrative drama and analytical skepticism about power’s effects on morals and truth-telling.
The Annals
BOOK I. A.D. 14, 15
Rome at the beginning was ruled by kings. Freedom and the consulship were established by Lucius Brutus[1][1q]. Dictatorships were held for a temporary crisis. The power of the decemvirs[2] did not last beyond two years, nor was the consular jurisdiction of the military tribunes of long duration. The despotisms of Cinna and Sulla[3] were brief; the rule of Pompeius[4] and of Crassus soon yielded before Caesar; the arms of Lepidus and Antonius before Augustus; who, when the world was wearied by civil strife, subjected it to empire under the title of “Prince[5].” But the successes and reverses of the old Roman people have been recorded by famous historians; and fine intellects were not wanting to describe the times of Augustus, till growing sycophancy scared them away. The histories of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred. Hence my purpose is to relate a few facts about Augustus — more particularly his last acts, then the reign of Tiberius, and all which follows, without either bitterness or partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed.
When after the destruction of Brutus and Cassius there was no longer any army of the Commonwealth, when Pompeius was crushed in Sicily, and when, with Lepidus pushed aside and Antonius slain, even the Julian faction had only Caesar left to lead it, then, dropping the title of triumvir, and giving out that he was a Consul, and was satisfied with a tribune’s authority for the protection of the people, Augustus won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and all men with the sweets of repose[2q], and so grew greater by degrees, while he concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and the laws. He was wholly unopposed, for the boldest spirits had fallen in battle, or in the proscription, while the remaining nobles, the readier they were to be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion, so that, aggrandised by revolution, they preferred the safety of the present to the dangerous past. Nor did the provinces dislike that condition of affairs, for they distrusted the government of the Senate and the people, because of the rivalries between the leading men and the rapacity of the officials, while the protection of the laws was unavailing, as they were continually deranged by violence, intrigue, and finally by corruption.
Augustus meanwhile, as supports to his despotism, raised to the pontificate[6] and curule aedileship Claudius Marcellus, his sister’s son, while a mere stripling, and Marcus Agrippa, of humble birth, a good soldier, and one who had shared his victory, to two consecutive consulships, and as Marcellus soon afterwards died, he also accepted him as his son-in-law. Tiberius Nero and Claudius Drusus, his stepsons, he honoured with imperial tides, although his own family was as yet undiminished. For he had admitted the children of Agrippa, Caius and Lucius, into the house of the Caesars; and before they had yet laid aside the dress of boyhood he had most fervently desired, with an outward show of reluctance, that they should be entitled “princes of the youth,” and be consuls-elect. When Agrippa died, and Lucius Caesar as he was on his way to our armies in Spain, and Caius while returning from Armenia, still suffering from a wound, were prematurely cut off by destiny, or by their step-mother Livia’s treachery, Drusus too having long been dead, Nero remained alone of the stepsons, and in him everything tended to centre. He was adopted as a son, as a colleague in empire and a partner in the tribunitian power, and paraded through all the armies, no longer through his mother’s secret intrigues, but at her open suggestion. For she had gained such a hold on the aged Augustus that he drove out as an exile into the island of Planasia[7], his only grandson, Agrippa Postumus, who, though devoid of worthy qualities, and having only the brute courage of physical strength, had not been convicted of any gross offence. And yet Augustus had appointed Germanicus, Drusus’s offspring, to the command of eight legions on the Rhine, and required Tiberius to adopt him, although Tiberius had a son, now a young man, in his house; but he did it that he might have several safeguards to rest on. He had no war at the time on his hands except against the Germans, which was rather to wipe out the disgrace of the loss of Quintilius Varus[9] and his army than out of an ambition to extend the empire, or for any adequate recompense. At home all was tranquil, and there were magistrates with the same titles; there was a younger generation, sprung up since the victory of Actium, and even many of the older men had been born during the civil wars. How few were left who had seen the republic!
Thus the State had been revolutionised, and there was not a vestige left of the old sound morality. Stript of equality, all looked up to the commands of a sovereign without the least apprehension for the present, while Augustus in the vigour of life, could maintain his own position, that of his house, and the general tranquillity. When in advanced old age, he was worn out by a sickly frame, and the end was near and new prospects opened, a few spoke in vain of the blessings of freedom, but most people dreaded and some longed for war. The popular gossip of the large majority fastened itself variously on their future masters. “Agrippa was savage, and had been exasperated by insult, and neither from age nor experience in affairs was equal to so great a burden. Tiberius Nero was of mature years, and had established his fame in war, but he had the old arrogance inbred in the Claudian family, and many symptoms of a cruel temper, though they were repressed, now and then broke out. He had also from earliest infancy been reared in an imperial house; consulships and triumphs had been heaped on him in his younger days; even in the years which, on the pretext of seclusion he spent in exile at Rhodes, he had had no thoughts but of wrath, hypocrisy, and secret sensuality. There was his mother too with a woman caprice. They must, it seemed, be subject to a female and to two striplings besides, who for a while would burden, and some day rend asunder the State.”
While these and like topics were discussed, the infirmities of Augustus increased, and some suspected guilt on his wife’s part. For a rumour had gone abroad that a few months before he had sailed to Planasia on a visit to Agrippa, with the knowledge of some chosen friends, and with one companion, Fabius Maximus; that many tears were shed on both sides, with expressions of affection, and that thus there was a hope of the young man being restored to the home of his grandfather. This, it was said, Maximus had divulged to his wife Marcia, she again to Livia. All was known to Caesar, and when Maximus soon afterwards died, by a death some thought to be self-inflicted, there were heard at his funeral wailings from Marcia, in which she reproached herself for having been the cause of her husband’s destruction. Whatever the fact was, Tiberius as he was just entering Illyria was summoned home by an urgent letter from his mother, and it has not been thoroughly ascertained whether at the city of Nola he found Augustus still breathing or quite lifeless. For Livia had surrounded the house and its approaches with a strict watch, and favourable bulletins were published from time to time, till, provision having been made for the demands of the crisis, one and the same report told men that Augustus was dead and that Tiberius Nero was master of the State.
The first crime of the new reign was the murder of Postumus Agrippa. Though he was surprised and unarmed, a centurion of the firmest resolution despatched him with difficulty. Tiberius gave no explanation of the matter to the Senate; he pretended that there were directions from his father ordering the tribune in charge of the prisoner not to delay the slaughter of Agrippa, whenever he should himself have breathed his last. Beyond a doubt, Augustus had often complained of the young man’s character, and had thus succeeded in obtaining the sanction of a decree of the Senate for his banishment. But he never was hard-hearted enough to destroy any of his kinsfolk, nor was it credible that death was to be the sentence of the grandson in order that the stepson might feel secure. It was more probable that Tiberius and Livia, the one from fear, the other from a stepmother’s enmity, hurried on the destruction of a youth whom they suspected and hated. When the centurion reported, according to military custom, that he had executed the command, Tiberius replied that he had not given the command, and that the act must be justified to the Senate.
As soon as Sallustius Crispus who shared the secret (he had, in fact, sent the written order to the tribune) knew this, fearing that the charge would be shifted on himself, and that his peril would be the same whether he uttered fiction or truth, he advised Livia not to divulge the secrets of her house or the counsels of friends, or any services performed by the soldiers, nor to let Tiberius weaken the strength of imperial power by referring everything to the Senate, for “the condition,” he said, “of holding empire is that an account cannot be balanced unless it be rendered to one person.”
Meanwhile at Rome people plunged into slavery — consuls, senators, knights. The higher a man’s rank, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at the decease of one emperor nor sorrow at the rise of another, while he mingled delight and lamentations with his flattery. Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Apuleius, the consuls, were the first to swear allegiance to Tiberius Caesar, and in their presence the oath was taken by Seius Strabo and Caius Turranius, respectively the commander of the praetorian cohorts[8] and the superintendent of the corn supplies. Then the Senate, the soldiers and the people did the same. For Tiberius would inaugurate everything with the consuls, as though the ancient constitution remained, and he hesitated about being emperor. Even the proclamation by which he summoned the senators to their chamber, he issued merely with the title of Tribune, which he had received under Augustus. The wording of the proclamation was brief, and in a very modest tone. “He would,” it said, “provide for the honours due to his father, and not leave the lifeless body, and this was the only public duty he now claimed.”
As soon, however, as Augustus was dead, he had given the watchword to the praetorian cohorts, as commander-in-chief. He had the guard under arms, with all the other adjuncts of a court; soldiers attended him to the forum; soldiers went with him to the Senate House. He sent letters to the different armies, as though supreme power was now his, and showed hesitation only when he spoke in the Senate. His chief motive was fear that Germanicus, who had at his disposal so many legions, such vast auxiliary forces of the allies, and such wonderful popularity, might prefer the possession to the expectation of empire. He looked also at public opinion, wishing to have the credit of having been called and elected by the State rather than of having crept into power through the intrigues of a wife and a dotard’s adoption. It was subsequently understood that he assumed a wavering attitude, to test likewise the temper of the nobles. For he would twist a word or a look into a crime and treasure it up in his memory.
On the first day of the Senate he allowed nothing to be discussed but the funeral of Augustus, whose will, which was brought in by the Vestal Virgins[10], named as his heirs Tiberius and Livia. The latter was to be admitted into the Julian family with the name of Augusta; next in expectation were the grand and great-grandchildren. In the third place, he had named the chief men of the State, most of whom he hated, simply out of ostentation and to win credit with posterity. His legacies were not beyond the scale of a private citizen, except a bequest of forty-three million five hundred thousand sesterces “to the people and populace of Rome,” of one thousand to every praetorian soldier, and of three hundred to every man in the legionary cohorts composed of Roman citizens.
Next followed a deliberation about funeral honours. Of these the most imposing were thought fitting. The procession was to be conducted through “the gate of triumph,” on the motion of Gallus Asinius; the titles of the laws passed, the names of the nations conquered by Augustus were to be borne in front, on that of Lucius Arruntius. Messala Valerius further proposed that the oath of allegiance to Tiberius should be yearly renewed, and when Tiberius asked him whether it was at his bidding that he had brought forward this motion, he replied that he had proposed it spontaneously, and that in whatever concerned the State he would use only his own discretion, even at the risk of offending. This was the only style of adulation which yet remained. The Senators unanimously exclaimed that the body ought to be borne on their shoulders to the funeral pile. The emperor left the point to them with disdainful moderation, he then admonished the people by a proclamation not to indulge in that tumultuous enthusiasm which had distracted the funeral of the Divine Julius, or express a wish that Augustus should be burnt in the Forum instead of in his appointed resting-place in the Campus Martius.
On the day of the funeral soldiers stood round as a guard, amid much ridicule from those who had either themselves witnessed or who had heard from their parents of the famous day when slavery was still something fresh, and freedom had been resought in vain, when the slaying of Caesar, the Dictator, seemed to some the vilest, to others, the most glorious of deeds. “Now,” they said, “an aged sovereign, whose power had lasted long, who had provided his heirs with abundant means to coerce the State, requires forsooth the defence of soldiers that his burial may be undisturbed.”
Then followed much talk about Augustus himself, and many expressed an idle wonder that the same day marked the beginning of his assumption of empire and the close of his life, and, again, that he had ended his days at Nola in the same house and room as his father Octavius. People extolled too the number of his consulships, in which he had equalled Valerius Corvus and Caius Marius combined, the continuance for thirty-seven years of the tribunitian power, the title of Imperator twenty-one times earned, and his other honours which had either frequently repeated or were wholly new. Sensible men, however, spoke variously of his life with praise and censure. Some said “that dutiful feeling towards a father, and the necessities of the State in which laws had then no place, drove him into civil war, which can neither be planned nor conducted on any right principles. He had often yielded to Antonius, while he was taking vengeance on his father’s murderers, often also to Lepidus. When the latter sank into feeble dotage and the former had been ruined by his profligacy, the only remedy for his distracted country was the rule of a single man. Yet the State had been organized under the name neither of a kingdom nor a dictatorship, but under that of a prince. The ocean and remote rivers were the boundaries of the empire; the legions, provinces, fleets, all things were linked together; there was law for the citizens; there was respect shown to the allies. The capital had been embellished on a grand scale; only in a few instances had he resorted to force, simply to secure general tranquillity.”
It was said, on the other hand, “that filial duty and State necessity were merely assumed as a mask. It was really from a lust of sovereignty that he had excited the veterans by bribery, had, when a young man and a subject, raised an army, tampered with the Consul’s legions, and feigned an attachment to the faction of Pompeius. Then, when by a decree of the Senate he had usurped the high functions and authority of Praetor when Hirtius and Pansa were slain — whether they were destroyed by the enemy, or Pansa by poison infused into a wound, Hirtius by his own soldiers and Caesar’s treacherous machinations — he at once possessed himself of both their armies, wrested the consulate from a reluctant Senate, and turned against the State the arms with which he had been intrusted against Antonius. Citizens were proscribed, lands divided, without so much as the approval of those who executed these deeds. Even granting that the deaths of Cassius and of the Bruti were sacrifices to a hereditary enmity (though duty requires us to waive private feuds for the sake of the public welfare), still Pompeius had been deluded by the phantom of peace, and Lepidus by the mask of friendship. Subsequently, Antonius had been lured on by the treaties of Tarentum and Brundisium, and by his marriage with the sister, and paid by his death the penalty of a treacherous alliance. No doubt, there was peace after all this, but it was a peace stained with blood; there were the disasters of Lollius and Varus, the murders at Rome of the Varros, Egnatii, and Juli.”
The domestic life too of Augustus was not spared. “Nero’s wife had been taken from him, and there had been the farce of consulting the pontiffs, whether, with a child conceived and not yet born, she could properly marry. There were the excesses of Quintus Tedius and Vedius Pollio; last of all, there was Livia, terrible to the State as a mother, terrible to the house of the Caesars as a stepmother. No honour was left for the gods, when Augustus chose to be himself worshipped with temples and statues, like those of the deities, and with flamens and priests. He had not even adopted Tiberius as his successor out of affection or any regard to the State, but, having thoroughly seen his arrogant and savage temper, he had sought glory for himself by a contrast of extreme wickedness.” For, in fact, Augustus, a few years before, when he was a second time asking from the Senate the tribunitian power for Tiberius, though his speech was complimentary, had thrown out certain hints as to his manners, style, and habits of life, which he meant as reproaches, while he seemed to excuse. However, when his obsequies had been duly performed, a temple with a religious ritual was decreed him.
After this all prayers were addressed to Tiberius. He, on his part, urged various considerations, the greatness of the empire, his distrust of himself. “Only,” he said, “the intellect of the Divine Augustus was equal to such a burden. Called as he had been by him to share his anxieties, he had learnt by experience how exposed to fortune’s caprices was the task of universal rule. Consequently, in a state which had the support of so many great men, they should not put everything on one man, as many, by uniting their efforts would more easily discharge public functions.” There was more grand sentiment than good faith in such words. Tiberius’s language even in matters which he did not care to conceal, either from nature or habit, was always hesitating and obscure, and now that he was struggling to hide his feelings completely, it was all the more involved in uncertainty and doubt. The Senators, however, whose only fear was lest they might seem to understand him, burst into complaints, tears, and prayers. They raised their hands to the gods, to the statue of Augustus, and to the knees of Tiberius, when he ordered a document to be produced and read. This contained a description of the resources of the State, of the number of citizens and allies under arms, of the fleets, subject kingdoms, provinces, taxes, direct and indirect, necessary expenses and customary bounties. All these details Augustus had written with his own hand, and had added a counsel, that the empire should be confined to its present limits, either from fear or out of jealousy.
Meantime, while the Senate stooped to the most abject supplication, Tiberius happened to say that although he was not equal to the whole burden of the State, yet he would undertake the charge of whatever part of it might be intrusted to him. Thereupon Asinius Gallus said, “I ask you, Caesar, what part of the State you wish to have intrusted to you?” Confounded by the sudden inquiry he was silent for a few moments; then, recovering his presence of mind, he replied that it would by no means become his modesty to choose or to avoid in a case where he would prefer to be wholly excused. Then Gallus again, who had inferred anger from his looks, said that the question had not been asked with the intention of dividing what could not be separated, but to convince him by his own admission that the body of the State was one, and must be directed by a single mind. He further spoke in praise of Augustus, and reminded Tiberius himself of his victories, and of his admirable deeds for many years as a civilian. Still, he did not thereby soften the emperor’s resentment, for he had long been detested from an impression that, as he had married Vipsania, daughter of Marcus Agrippa, who had once been the wife of Tiberius, he aspired to be more than a citizen, and kept up the arrogant tone of his father, Asinius Pollio.
Next, Lucius Arruntius, who differed but little from the speech of Gallus, gave like offence, though Tiberius had no old grudge against him, but simply mistrusted him, because he was rich and daring, had brilliant accomplishments, and corresponding popularity. For Augustus, when in his last conversations he was discussing who would refuse the highest place, though sufficiently capable, who would aspire to it without being equal to it, and who would unite both the ability and ambition, had described Marcus Lepidus as able but contemptuously indifferent, Gallus Asinius as ambitious and incapable, Lucius Arruntius as not unworthy of it, and, should the chance be given him, sure to make the venture. About the two first there is a general agreement, but instead of Arruntius some have mentioned Cneius Piso, and all these men, except Lepidus, were soon afterwards destroyed by various charges through the contrivance of Tiberius. Quintus Haterius too and Mamercus Scaurus ruffled his suspicious temper, Haterius by having said —“How long, Caesar, will you suffer the State to be without a head?” Scaurus by the remark that there was a hope that the Senate’s prayers would not be fruitless, seeing that he had not used his right as Tribune to negative the motion of the Consuls. Tiberius instantly broke out into invective against Haterius; Scaurus, with whom he was far more deeply displeased, he passed over in silence. Wearied at last by the assembly’s clamorous importunity and the urgent demands of individual Senators, he gave way by degrees, not admitting that he undertook empire, but yet ceasing to refuse it and to be entreated. It is known that Haterius having entered the palace to ask pardon, and thrown himself at the knees of Tiberius as he was walking, was almost killed by the soldiers, because Tiberius fell forward, accidentally or from being entangled by the suppliant’s hands. Yet the peril of so great a man did not make him relent, till Haterius went with entreaties to Augusta, and was saved by her very earnest intercessions.
Great too was the Senate’s sycophancy to Augusta. Some would have her styled “parent”; others “mother of the country,” and a majority proposed that to the name of Caesar should be added “son of Julia.” The emperor repeatedly asserted that there must be a limit to the honours paid to women, and that he would observe similar moderation in those bestowed on himself, but annoyed at the invidious proposal, and indeed regarding a woman’s elevation as a slight to himself, he would not allow so much as a lictor to be assigned her, and forbade the erection of an altar in memory of her adoption, and any like distinction. But for Germanicus Caesar he asked pro-consular powers, and envoys were despatched to confer them on him, and also to express sympathy with his grief at the death of Augustus. The same request was not made for Drusus, because he was consul elect and present at Rome. Twelve candidates were named for the praetorship, the number which Augustus had handed down, and when the Senate urged Tiberius to increase it, he bound himself by an oath not to exceed it.
It was then for the first time that the elections were transferred from the Campus Martius to the Senate. For up to that day, though the most important rested with the emperor’s choice, some were settled by the partialities of the tribes. Nor did the people complain of having the right taken from them, except in mere idle talk, and the Senate, being now released from the necessity of bribery and of degrading solicitations, gladly upheld the change, Tiberius confining himself to the recommendation of only four candidates who were to be nominated without rejection or canvass. Meanwhile the tribunes of the people asked leave to exhibit at their own expense games to be named after Augustus and added to the Calendar as the Augustales[11]. Money was, however, voted from the exchequer, and though the use of the triumphal robe in the circus was prescribed, it was not allowed them to ride in a chariot. Soon the annual celebration was transferred to the praetor, to whose lot fell the administration of justice between citizens and foreigners.
This was the state of affairs at Rome when a mutiny broke out in the legions of Pannonia, which could be traced to no fresh cause except the change of emperors and the prospect it held out of license in tumult and of profit from a civil war. In the summer camp three legions were quartered, under the command of Junius Blaesus, who on hearing of the death of Augustus and the accession of Tiberius, had allowed his men a rest from military duties, either for mourning or rejoicing. This was the beginning of demoralization among the troops, of quarreling, of listening to the talk of every pestilent fellow, in short, of craving for luxury and idleness and loathing discipline and toil. In the camp was one Percennius, who had once been a leader of one of the theatrical factions, then became a common soldier, had a saucy tongue, and had learnt from his applause of actors how to stir up a crowd. By working on ignorant minds, which doubted as to what would be the terms of military service after Augustus, this man gradually influenced them in conversations at night or at nightfall, and when the better men had dispersed, he gathered round him all the worst spirits.
At last, when there were others ready to be abettors of a mutiny, he asked, in the tone of a demagogue, why, like slaves, they submitted to a few centurions and still fewer tribunes. “When,” he said, “will you dare to demand relief, if you do not go with your prayers or arms to a new and yet tottering throne? We have blundered enough by our tameness for so many years, in having to endure thirty or forty campaigns till we grow old, most of us with bodies maimed by wounds. Even dismissal is not the end of our service, but, quartered under a legion’s standard we toil through the same hardships under another title. If a soldier survives so many risks, he is still dragged into remote regions where, under the name of lands, he receives soaking swamps or mountainous wastes. Assuredly, military service itself is burdensome and unprofitable; ten as a day is the value set on life and limb; out of this, clothing, arms, tents, as well as the mercy of centurions and exemptions from duty have to be purchased. But indeed of floggings and wounds, of hard winters, wearisome summers, of terrible war, or barren peace, there is no end. Our only relief can come from military life being entered on under fixed conditions, from receiving each the pay of a denarius, and from the sixteenth year terminating our service. We must be retained no longer under a standard, but in the same camp a compensation in money must be paid us. Do the praetorian cohorts, which have just got their two denarii per man, and which after sixteen years are restored to their homes, encounter more perils? We do not disparage the guards of the capital; still, here amid barbarous tribes we have to face the enemy from our tents.”
The throng applauded from various motives, some pointing with indignation to the marks of the lash, others to their grey locks, and most of them to their threadbare garments and naked limbs. At, last, in their fury they went so far as to propose to combine the three legions into one. Driven from their purpose by the jealousy with which every one sought the chief honour for his own legion, they turned to other thoughts, and set up in one spot the three eagles, with the ensigns of the cohorts. At the same time they piled up turf and raised a mound, that they might have a more conspicuous meeting-place. Amid the bustle Blaesus came up. He upbraided them and held back man after man with the exclamation, “Better imbrue your hands in my blood: it will be less guilt to slay your commander than it is to be in revolt from the emperor. Either living I will uphold the loyalty of the legions, or Pierced to the heart I will hasten on your repentance.”
None the less however was the mound piled up, and it was quite breast high when, at last overcome by his persistency, they gave up their purpose. Blaesus, with the consummate tact of an orator, said, “It is not through mutiny and tumult that the desires of the army ought to be communicated to Caesar, nor did our soldiers of old ever ask so novel a boon of ancient commanders, nor have you yourselves asked it of the Divine Augustus. It is far from opportune that the emperor’s cares, now in their first beginning, should be aggravated. If, however, you are bent upon attempting in peace what even after your victory in the civil wars you did not demand, why, contrary to the habit of obedience, contrary to the law of discipline, do you meditate violence? Decide on sending envoys, and give them instructions in your presence.”
