Tacitus

Tacitus was the greatest historian of imperial Rome and the principal source for the emperors from Tiberius to Domitian. Born around AD 56, probably in Gallia Narbonensis to an equestrian family, he trained as an orator, married the daughter of Agricola, the governor of Britain, in 77, and held office steadily under the Flavians — quaestor, praetor, and a priesthood — reaching the consulship in 97 and later the proconsulship of Asia. That career is central to his writing. He held office under Domitian, whom he detested, and the guilt of having advanced under a tyrant runs through the work. He wrote that they had shown what silence could achieve, and that it is the mark of servitude to have survived. The Agricola of 98 is a biography of his father-in-law and a defence of serving the state honourably under a bad emperor. It contains the speech he gives to the Caledonian leader Calgacus, who says the Romans make a desert and call it peace. The Germania of the same year describes the tribes beyond the Rhine, partly as ethnography and partly as reproach to Roman softness; it was later seized on by German nationalists in ways he could not have foreseen. The Histories covered AD 69 to 96 and the Annals AD 14 to 68, and both survive only in part — the whole of Caligula and much of Nero and Claudius is lost. He claimed to write without anger or partiality and did not. His method is compressed, ironic and psychological, attributing motive relentlessly, and his portrait of Tiberius as a dissembler has fixed that emperor's reputation permanently. He probably died around 120.

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