The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II
by Caius Cornelius Tacitus

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Title: Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II

Author: Caius Cornelius Tacitus

Translator: W. Hamilton Fyfe

Release Date: October 23, 2005 [EBook #16927]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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TACITUS
THE HISTORIES

TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
W. HAMILTON FYFE
FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME I

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1912

HENRY FROWDE
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

TO D.H.F.

'The cause of undertaking a work of this kind was a good will in
this scribling age not to do nothing, and a disproportion in the
powers of my mind, nothing of mine owne invention being able to
passe the censure of mine owne judgement, much less, I presumed, the
judgement of others....

'If thy stomacke be so tender as thou canst not disgest Tacitus in
his owne stile, thou art beholding to one who gives thee the same
food, but with a pleasant and easie taste.'

SIR HENRY SAVILE (A.D. 1591).

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

INTRODUCTION 5
TEXT: BOOKS I, II 17

VOLUME II

TEXT: BOOKS III-V 9

INDEX OF NAMES 231

MAPS

INTRODUCTION

Tacitus held the consulship under Nerva in the year 97. At this point
he closed his public career. He had reached the goal of a politician's
ambition and had become known as one of the best speakers of his time,
but he seems to have realized that under the Principate politics was a
dull farce, and that oratory