Book description
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.
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.
