The Annals and The Histories
Overview
The makers of Encyclopaedia Britannica bring you one of the Great Books of the Western World. This text captures major ideas, stories, and discoveries that helped shape Western culture.
Top Highlights
“I remember to have heard old men say that a document was often seen in Piso’s hands, the substance of which he never himself divulged, but which his friends repeatedly declared contained a letter from Tiberius with instructions referring to Germanicus, and that it was his intention to produce it before the Senate and upbraid the emperor, had he not been deluded by vain promises from Sejanus. Nor did he perish, they said, by his own hand, but by that of one sent to be his executioner. Neither of these statements would I positively affirm; still it would not have been right for me to conceal what was related by those who lived up to the time of my youth.” (Page 48)
“Many authors, I am well aware, have passed over the perils and punishments of a host of persons, sickened by the multiplicity of them, or fearing that what they had themselves found wearisome and saddening, would be equally fatiguing to their readers. For myself, I have lighted on many facts worth knowing, though other writers have not recorded them.” (Page 87)
“So much more earnest among our ancestors was the honour paid to virtue, and the remorse that waited on crime. These and like instances, drawn from the recollections of the past, I shall mention not irrelevantly, whenever the subject and the occasion shall call for some example of goodness or some solace in the presence of evil.” (Page 255)
“He completed thirty-seven years of life, twelve years of power, and he is still a theme of song among barbarous nations, though to Greek historians, who admire only their own achievements, he is unknown, and to Romans not as famous as he should be, while we extol the past and are indifferent to our own times.” (Pages 44–45)
- Title: The Annals and The Histories
- Author: Cornelius Tacitus
- Edition: Second Edition
- Series: Great Books of the Western World
- Volume: 14
- Publishers: Robert P. Gwinn, Encyclopedia Britannica
- Print Publication Date: 1990
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Rome › History--Julio-Claudians, 30 B.C.-68 A.D; Rome › History--Flavians, 69-96; Rome (Empire)
- ISBNs: 0852295316, 9780852295311
- Resource ID: LLS:GBWW14
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:11:09Z