The Annals of Imperial Rome

809 Pages·1996·2.4 MB·English

by  Cornelius Tacitus

THE ANNALS OF IMPERIAL ROME
ADVISORY EDITOR: BETTY RADICE
PUBLIUS (or Gaius) CORNELIUS TACITUS was born in about AD 56 or 57 and
may have survived the emperor Trajan, who died in AD 117. His Roman
education, with its elaborate series of exercises in different kinds of
public speaking, turned him into an impressive and famous orator, and
one of the extant works attributed to him, the Dialogue on Orators, is a
discussion of oratorial style. Much of his official career as senator took
place during the black years of Domitian (AD 81–96), but he survived to
enjoy the consulship in AD 97 and, fifteen years later, the governorship of
western Anatolia (Asia). His short monographs, the life of Agricola and
Germania, appeared within a short time of each other in about AD 98. Of
his major historical works the Histories told the story of the Roman
emperors from Nero’s death in AD 68 to AD 96 (though only 68–69 are
preserved); the Annals were intended to cover the years AD 4 to 68, a
period of great significance, though part of Book V and the whole of
Books VII–X are missing and Book XVI breaks off in AD 66. Tacitus was a
friend and teacher of Pliny the Younger. In AD 77 he married the
daughter of Agricola – Governor in Britain AD 78 to 85 – but he never
mentions her name.
MICHAEL GRANT has been successively Chancellor’s Medallist and Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Humanity at Edinburgh
University, first Vice-Chancellor or Khartoum University, President and
Vice-Chancellor of the Queen’s University of Belfast, and President of the
Classical Association. His writings include translations of Cicero’s On
Government, On the Good Life, Selected Works, Selected Political Speeches
and Murder Trials, Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars and Tacitus’ Annals, and
he revised Robert Graves’s edition of The Golden Ass by Apuleius, all for
Penguin Classics; Roman Literature (Penguin); The Climax of Rome; The
Ancient Historians; Gladiators; Latin Literature and Greek Literature;
Cleopatra; The Jews of the Roman World; Roman Myths; The Army of the
Caesars; The Twelve Caesars; The Fall of the Roman Empire; Cities of
Vesuvius; Saint Paul; Jesus; History of Rome; The Etruscans; Greek and Latin
Authors 800 BC–AD 1,000; The Dawn of the Middle Ages; From Alexander to
Cleopatra; The Roman Emperors; Greece and Rome: Guide to the Ancient
World; The Rise of the Greeks; The Classical Greeks; The Visible Past; Greeks
and Romans: A Social History; Readings in the Classical Historians; Julius
Caesar, Nero; The Antonines; Art in the Roman Empire; and The Severans.
TACITUS THE ANNALS OF IMPERIAL
ROME
TRANSLATED
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
MICHAEL GRANT
Revised Edition
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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This translation first published 1956
Reprinted with revisions 1959
Revised edition 1971
Reprinted with revisions 1973, 1975, 1977
Revised edition with new bibliography 1989
Reprinted with revised bibliography 1996
46
Copyright © Michael Grant Publications Ltd, 1956, 1959, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977,
1989, 1996
All rights reserved Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser
EISBN: 9781101488546
CONTENTS
*
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
1. The Life and Works of Tacitus
2. What Tacitus Inherited
3. Tacitus on Empire and Emperors
4. Tacitus and the World
5. The Style of Tacitus: Translator’s Note
IMPERIAL ROME
PART ONE: TIBERIUS
1. From Augustus to Tiberius (Bk, I. 1–15)
2. Mutiny on the Frontiers (I. 16–49)
3. War with the Germans (I. 49–II. 26)
4. The First Treason Trials (II. 27–52)
5. The Death of Germanicus (II. 53–III. 19)
6. Tiberius and the Senate (III. 19–76)
7. ‘Partner of My Labours’ (IV, V)
8. The Reign of Terror (VI)
PART TWO: CLAUDIUS AND NERO
9. The Fall of Messalina (XI)
10. The Mother of Nero (XII)
11. The Fall of Agrippina (XIII, I–XIV. 13)
12. Nero and his Helpers (XIV. 14–65)
13. Eastern Settlement (XV. 1–32)
14. The Burning of Rome (XV. 32–47)
15. The Plot (XV. 48–74)
16. Innocent Victims (XVI)
LIST OF ROMAN EMPERORS
LISTS OF SOME EASTERN MONARCHS
KEY TO TECHNICAL TERMS
KEY TO PLACE-NAMES
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
FURTHER READING
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES
LIST OF MAPS
1. Italy
A. Old Latium
B. Campania
2. North-western Europe
3. Germany
4. Western Anatolia
Inset: South-eastern Anatolia
5. The Middle East
6. North-western Africa
7. Egypt
8. The Balkans
9. South Russia
Plan of Rome
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
*
1. THE LIFE AND WORKS OF TACITUS
THE powerful personality of Cornelius Tacitus has survived in his
writings, but we know extremely little of his life or his origin. Indeed,
we are not even sure whether the first of his three names was Publius or
Gaius. His family probably came from the south of France or from
northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul). If so, Tacitus – like other leading Latin
writers – may not have been of wholly Italian ancestry. But we have no
conclusive evidence. His father may have been an imperial agent at Trier
or at Cologne, and paymaster-general for the armies on the Rhine; but
again we are not certain.
At all events, Tacitus was born in about A.D. 56 or 57 (when Nero was
1
emperor), and was a member of the provincial upper class who found
new prospects of careers open to them under the imperial regime. He
lived and worked until the end of the emperor Trajan’s reign (A.D. 98–
117), and probably for some years into the reign of Hadrian (117–138).
Much of the official career of Tacitus as a senator took place in a time of
unhappiness and even terror for high officials, the black years of
Domitian (A.D. 81–96). But Tacitus survived to enjoy the highest
metropolitan post, the consulship, in A.D. 97 (during the short reign of
Nerva, 96–8), and the governorship of the great province of western
Anatolia (‘Asia’) – the climax of a senator’s career – some fifteen years
later.
He had received a careful Roman education. In his day that meant,
particularly, an elaborate series of exercises in different kinds of public
speaking, studied in the remarkable detail which we learn about from
the treatises of Cicero and Quintilian; for advocacy in the courts was
traditionally the most respected civil career. As a young man, Tacitus
evidently studied at Rome with the leading orators of the day. He
himself became one of the best known speakers of his time, and a
1
lifelong interest in oratory emerges clearly from his writings. Indeed,
one of them – if, as is highly probable, Tacitus is its author – deals
explicitly with the subject. This is the Dialogue on Orators, in which four
historical characters, two lawyers and two literary men, very
interestingly discuss the claims of oratory against those of literature, and
the reasons why eloquence had declined during the century and more
that had elapsed since Cicero’s death. One reason of course – as is
pointed out – was that this sort of impassioned disputation had much
less part to play under emperors than amid the clashes of the outgoing
Republic.
The Dialogue is dedicated to a consul of A.D. 102, and is likely to have
been published then or soon after. Meanwhile, however, Tacitus had
already begun to make it clear to the world that, even if oratory could
never achieve its past glories again, the same was by no means true of
history. The monographs with which he initiated his career as historian,
the Agricola and Germania, were published within a short time of one
another in c. A.D. 98. The Agricola to some extent recalls a familiar Greek
2
tradition – that of the semi-biographical, moral eulogy of a personage;