Histories, Book 2

Book 2 of Tacitus' Histories continues the narrative of AD 69 from early spring to late summer. It moves between the East, where the Flavian challenge was forming, and northern Italy, where Otho and Vitellius fought for the empire.

Titus, sent to greet Galba, hears of his death and turns back, consulting the oracle of Venus at Paphos on the way. Tacitus compares his father Vespasian, commanding in Judaea, with Mucianus, governor of Syria, and describes a false Nero who briefly stirs the Aegean. In the West, Otho's fleet ravages the Ligurian coast, and Caecina's Vitellian army crosses the Alps and fails in its assault on Placentia. After an Othonian success at Castores and quarrels among Otho's generals, Otho chooses to fight at once; his army is beaten near Bedriacum in April, and Otho, refusing to prolong the civil war, takes his own life, the one act that Tacitus sets against his earlier vices. Vitellius' troops plunder Italy, the senators are endangered at Mutina, and Vitellius makes a slow, gluttonous progress to Rome, visiting the battlefield where the dead still lie unburied. In the East Vespasian weighs his chances, and Mucianus urges him to claim the throne.

The account of Otho's death and Tacitus' reflections on the ancient lust for power are the best-known passages. The Latin is dense and fast-moving and needs attention, but the narrative is gripping.