Histories, Book 1

Tacitus wrote the Histories in the first decade of the second century AD. They covered Rome from AD 69 to the death of Domitian in 96, but only Books 1 to 4 and part of Book 5 survive. Book 1 begins on 1 January AD 69, the year of the four emperors, which followed the fall of Nero.

After a preface promising a work 'rich in disasters' and written without bias, Tacitus surveys the state of Rome and of each army and province. The elderly emperor Galba, unpopular for his meanness and severity, adopts the young aristocrat Piso as his heir and gives him advice on ruling. Otho, passed over and deep in debt, bribes the praetorian guard; on 15 January he is hailed emperor in the camp, and Galba, misled by false reports, is cut down in the Forum, with Piso and Titus Vinius killed soon after. Tacitus sums up Galba as a man everyone would have thought fit to rule, had he never ruled. Meanwhile the legions on the Rhine have already proclaimed Vitellius, and his generals Valens and Caecina march on Italy, plundering Gaul and crushing the Helvetii. The book follows Otho's first measures at Rome, the end of Nero's henchman Tigellinus and the exchange of letters between the rival emperors.

Tacitus' Latin is concentrated, ironic and full of sudden turns, and repays slow reading. This is political history at its most penetrating, with the mutinous soldiers, the senate's flattery and the city mob drawn as sharply as the emperors.