Tacitus

Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus was born about AD 56, probably in Gallia Narbonensis, and rose through the senatorial career under Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. He married the daughter of Gnaeus Julius Agricola in AD 77, was praetor in 88, consul in 97 and later governor of the province of Asia. He was also among the leading orators of his day and a friend of the younger Pliny. He died about AD 120.

His great works are the Histories, covering the years of civil war and the Flavian emperors, and the Annals, a history of the Julio-Claudian dynasty from the death of Augustus; both survive incomplete. His Dialogus de oratoribus discusses the decline of eloquence. Writing in a compressed, ironic Latin, Tacitus judged the principate and its courtiers with a severity that has shaped the picture of imperial Rome ever since.

The two short works given here are his first. The Agricola (AD 98) is a memoir of his father-in-law, governor of Britain, and the Germania (AD 98) a short account of the peoples of Germany and their customs. Both are presented in the English translation of Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876).