The Annals of Imperial Rome [Paperback]

Tacitus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2007

Synopsis The Annals of Imperial Rome offers a dramatic vision of imperial Rome during roughly the first half of the first century AD. Starting with the death of Augustus, Tacitus describes how the Julio-Claudian dynasty consolidated its grip upon the empire, only to end suddenly in AD 68 with the suicide of its last representative, the emperor Nero. Tacitus explores how increasingly decadent behavior by the emperors alienated the upper classes. He spares the reader no court intrigue, even while expressing his own scepticism about the accuracy of reports of scandals such as Nero's incest with his mother. Tacitus also describes the impact of the dynasty upon Rome's provincial subjects and its wars of expansion, including Claudius' conquest of Britain and the subsequent revolt led by the British queen Boudicca. Biography Tacitus was born ca. AD 56, probably in northern Italy or southern France, and made his way in Rome as a newcomer. He rose to the highest political rank of consul, and subsequently acting as governor of the prestigious province of Asia. Before The Annals and The Histories, Tacitus wrote the Agricola (a historical biography of his father-in-law, who played an important role in the pacification of Britain); the Germania (an ethnographical description of the Germans living on the fringes of the Roman empire); and the Dialogue On Orators (an exploration of the declining role of rhetoric in contemporary society).

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble (2007)
• ISBN-10: 0760788898
• ISBN-13: 978-0760788899
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,596,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The book on Imperial Rome, March 11, 2000

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Annals of Imperial Rome (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

The Annals is without a doubt the most important book ever written on Imperial Rome, and the most important one dealing with the Julio-Claudian emperors. Focusing on the reign of Tiberius (14-37 CE) and ending suddenly during the reign of Nero (54-68 CE), Tacitus pulls no punches in this history. Extremely critical of the emperors, Tacitus is at his best describing the terror of the trials that began under Tiberius and which eventually paralyzed the Roman state. Tacitus also relates in detail the various military campaigns undertaken during the period. A word of advice---know your Roman history when you start this book. All the names and places can be extremely confusing to the novice. Unfortunately the section on Caligula is lost, although it is not hard to guess what Tacitus would have said about him. Read this book!

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Account Marred Only by Missing Years and Bias, December 14, 2000

By 

R. A Forczyk (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Annals of Imperial Rome (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Tacitus (AD c.55-117), a Roman senator of the 2nd Century AD and famed historian, has written a brilliant year-by-year account of the Roman Empire from 14 AD to 66 AD. The book begins with the last year of Augustus and the assumption of power by the new emperor Tiberius and concludes with the final years of Nero. While certainly not the fault of either Tacitus or the contemporary editor, it is unfortunate that the book is missing vital chapters that have been lost over the centuries. This is particularly galling because the gaps come in vital transitional years. Thus, the loss of the chapters covering 30 and 31 AD leaves us without a description of the fall of Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guard under Tiberius. It gets worse, with the nine years of 38-47 AD also missing. This excludes the entire reign of Caligula and the first six years of Claudius' reign. Finally, the last chapter is missing the years 67-69 AD which cover the fall of Nero and the beginning of civil war. These missing years make the book painful to read because just as a particular section is reaching a climax, the main even is deleted. Thus what remains of the history is mostly the middle years of Tiberius, Claudius and Nero.

There is no doubt that Tacitus is a biased historian, despite his claims to impartiality. According to him, Tiberius, Claudius and Nero were all pretty poor emperors, marred by gross personal and moral flaws. This is far too simplistic, particularly given that nowhere does Tacitus espouse pro-Republican or anti-oligarchical opinions. Claudius in particular comes off worse than most readers would expect, after a generally favorable modern image due to Robert Graves' I Claudius. Tiberius is a highly controversial figure due to his aloof personality, but the portrait of him as a paranoid sex-obsessed maniac is more hostile than objective. Tacitus fails to mention that the last century of the Roman Republic was marred by violence that affected most if not all of Roman society. One man rule had given rulers the ability to eliminate most opposition but it had also centralized violence. The beginning of the Pax Romana - the greatest gift of the principate to World history - is not apparent to Tacitus.

The book does have interesting chapters on Germanicus' retribution campaign in Germany, a cohort that is decimated for cowardice in Africa and the revolt of Queen Boudicca in Britain. When the British are defeated in 60 AD and 80,000 are slaughtered, Tacitus proudly notes that, "the Romans did not spare even the women. Baggage animals too, transfixed with weapons, added to the heaps of dead. It was a glorious victory..." Some of Nero's part-time hobbies make interesting reading, too. Nero liked to disguise himself and go out with a gang of thugs into the city of Rome at night and harass or assault people at random. After several incidents where he himself was roughed up by his intended victims, Nero began taking gladiators along as bodyguards. There is also a brief mention of Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate, the only Roman mention of this trial. However the book tends to drag down in places, like the treason trials of Tiberius and the purges of Nero.

As far as this translation by Michael Grant, the translator has taken far too many liberties. Readers familiar with the Roman Empire will be annoyed by Grant's clumsy use of "brigade" instead of "legion", "battalion" instead of "cohort" and "company commander" instead of "centurion". Grant drifts further from the true meaning by referring to a legion plus its auxiliaries as a "division" and there are a number of other substitute terms. These substitutions add nothing to reading clarity and it gets confusing when he refers to brigades and divisions simultaneously. On the plus side, the maps at the end of the book and the appendices were quite useful.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars corrupting effects of absolutism, January 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Annals of Imperial Rome (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Reading Tacitus' Annals, I frequently remembered Thucydides' account of the Peleponnesian wars. An important theme of the latter work was the corrupting effects of prolonged war on the morals and intellect of the Athenian people, who were ultimately degraded so much that they voted the destruction of the people of a small island just because they had chosen to remain neutral. Tacitus, on the other hand, seems to have dedicated himself in this work to examining the corrupting effects of absolutism on the Roman people after the fall of the Republic. He shows how absolute power brought out the worst traits in the character of rulers like Tiberius and Nero, who grew more tyrannical with every year on the throne, and how members of the illustruous Roman senate and other sections of the Roman political society turned into a horde of spineless sycophants, informers and debauches. There were still a few honourable individuals, but as Tacitus shows in an endless series of judicial and non-judicial murders, most of these paid the price of sticking to the ancient traditions of liberty and honour with their lives. Tacitus also deals at length with the relations of the Romans with the subject peoples. I may be wrong here, but it seems to me that in such passages Tacitus draws a parallel between the fate of these enslaved peoples and that of the enslaved Roman people -the first a slave to the Romans, the second a slave to the tyrant and his bureaucracy, made up of ex-slaves. Many subject peoples rebelled and some like the Cherusci under Arminius (towards whom he does not seem averse at all) could succesfully preserve their liberty against the intrusion of the Romans. On the other hand, those Romans who dared defy the tyrant, and especially those who could wisely remain independent and yet stay alive, were far fewer, Tacitus seems to imply. Insofar as it demonstrates how closely liberty (including liberty of thought) and morals are intertwined, this work is still relevant today as a central work of liberal humanism.