Histories

Translated by KENNETH WELLESLEY. Revised with a new introduction by RHIANNON ASH.

'The period upon which I embark is one full of incident, marked by bitter fighting, rent by treason, and even in peace sinister'.

In AD 68 Nero's suicide marked the end of the first dynasty of imperial Rome. The following year was one of drama and danger. In the surviving books of his Histories the barrister-historian Tacitus, writing some thirty years after the events he describes, gives a detailed account of the 'long but single year' when four emperors emerged in succession: Galba, the martinet; Otho, conspirator and dandy; Vitellius, the unambitious hedonist; and the ultimate victor, Vespasian, who established the Flavian dynasty. With great vividness and emotional power, Tacitus' gripping narrative lays bare corruption, injustice and folly, and sheds lasting light on the nature of power.

This revised version of Kenneth Wellesley's translation has sensitively updated it to render it more accessible to the modern reader. This edition contains a new introduction by Rhiannon Ash discussing Tacitus' life and his contemporary audience, a note on the text, further reading, a glossary of place and peoples, expanded notes and a chronology.