books, between 106 and 109 A.D. Only the first four and a half books
survive to us. They deal with the years 69 and 70, and are known as
_The Histories_. _The Annals_, which soon followed, dealt with the
Julian dynasty after the death of Augustus. Of Augustus' constitution
of the principate and of Rome's 'present happiness' under Trajan,
Tacitus did not live to write.

_The Histories_, as they survive to us, describe in a style that has
made them immortal one of the most terrible and crucial moments of
Roman history. The deadly struggle for the throne demonstrated finally
the real nature of the Principate--based not on constitutional
fictions but on armed force--and the supple inefficiency of the
senatorial class. The revolt on the Rhine foreshadowed the debacle of
the fifth century. Tacitus was peculiarly well qualified to write the
history of this period. He had been the eye-witness of some of the
most terrible scenes: he was acquainted with all the distinguished
survivors: his political experience gave him a statesman's point of
view, and his rhetorical training a style which mirrored both the
terror of the times and his own emotion. More than any other Roman
historian he desired to tell the truth and was not fatally biassed by
prejudice. It is wrong to regard Tacitus as an 'embittered
rhetorician', an 'enemy of the Empire', a 'détracteur de
l'humanité'.[1] He was none of these. As a member of a noble, though
not an ancient, family, and as one who had completed the republican
_cursus honorum_, his sympathies were naturally senatorial. He
regretted that the days were passed when oratory was a real power and
the consuls were the twin towers of the world. But he never hoped to
see such days again. He realized that monarchy was essential to peace,
and that the price of freedom was violence and disorder. He had no
illusions about the senate. Fault and misfortune had reduced them to