AnnalsTacitus
About Annals
The is Tacitus's history of Rome from the death of Augustus in AD 14 to the end of Nero's reign in 68. He wrote it after the , probably into the second decade of the second century. The work was arranged in at least sixteen books; books 7 through 10 are lost, as are portions of books 5, 6, 11, and 16. What survives covers Tiberius (books 1-6, incomplete), Claudius from the later years of his reign (books 11-12), and Nero down to 66 (books 13-16). The narrative is year by year. The original title was something like Ab excessu divi Augusti, books of history from the death of the divine Augustus.
Tacitus holds that the Principate was necessary after the civil wars, yet he records the cost: the decline of senatorial freedom, the rise of informers, and the corruption of public language under fear. His portrait of Tiberius is built gradually through deeds, rumors, and asides rather than by a single set speech. Sejanus's ascent and fall, the death of Germanicus, the retirement to Capri, and the purges that follow fill the first hexad. Under Claudius the surviving books turn to Messalina's fall, the marriage to Agrippina, and Nero's adoption. Under Nero come the murder of Agrippina, the fire of Rome in 64, the persecution that followed, the Pisonian conspiracy, and the forced suicides of Seneca, Lucan, and others. Book 16 breaks off mid-sentence. The final years of Nero are gone.
As a senator Tacitus had access to the Acta Senatus and other official records. He also used earlier historians and the memory of a ruling class that had lived under Domitian. The became the standard literary account of the early Empire for later ages. Its concentration on the emperor's court, its suspicion of official virtue, and its compressed style set the terms for much subsequent political history.