Tacitus

Tacitus was a Roman senator and historian of the first and early second centuries. His Histories and Annals examine imperial rule from the Julio-Claudians through the civil wars of AD 69, focusing on power, fear, military loyalty and political speech.

Tacitus combined a senatorial career with historical writing shaped by the experience of imperial government. In the Annals and Histories he examined how autocracy affected political behaviour, elite freedom and the reliability of public institutions, while works such as Agricola and Germania explored conquest and peoples beyond Rome. His compressed, ironic style and sceptical analysis made him one of antiquity’s most influential historians of power.