HistoriesTacitus
About Histories
The is Tacitus's earlier major work of imperial history. In complete form it ran from the civil wars of 69 to the death of Domitian in 96. Only the first four books and the opening of the fifth survive, covering 69 and the first part of 70. The surviving narrative is the Year of the Four Emperors: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian, in rapid succession, and the first months of Flavian rule.
Book 1 opens with Galba's short reign and his failure to secure the armies, then Otho's coup and the threat from Vitellius on the Rhine. Book 2 carries Otho to defeat at Bedriacum and suicide, Vitellius's rise, and Vespasian's challenge from the East. Book 3 brings the Flavian advance into Italy, the collapse of Vitellian forces, and Vitellius's murder. Book 4 treats the unsettled start of Vespasian's reign and the Batavian revolt on the Rhine. Book 5 turns to Titus and the Jewish War, with a brief ethnographic sketch of the Jews that records educated Roman attitudes of the period, before the text breaks off.
Tacitus writes soon after Nerva and Trajan had again shown that an emperor could be made by adoption and by the consent of the armies. He holds that only a capable princeps can keep the legions in order and the empire whole, yet he fills the with the violence, flattery, and bad faith of 69. The work is the chief continuous source for that year. Read with the , it shaped how later ages understood the early Empire. Its lesson is political as well as narrative: imperial power now rested wherever the legions were strong enough to name a master.