The Annals

by Tacitus, Alfred John Church (Translator), William Jackson Brodribb (Translator)

Overview

One of the most important historical records from classical antiquity, “The Annals of Imperial Rome” chronicles the history of the Roman Empire from the reign of Tiberius beginning in 14 A.D. to the end of the reign of Nero in 68 A.D. Written by Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman Senator during the second century A.D., it is a detailed first-hand account of the early Roman Empire and an important source for a modern understanding of that time. It is believed that as a Senator, Tacitus had access to the records of the Roman Senate and thus had a very accurate basis for his history. The work begins with the death of Caesar in 14 A.D. and in brutal and unflinching detail Tacitus describes the decadence and corruption of the Roman Emperors, as well as the equally corrupt Senatorial aristocracy, who Tacitus saw as being too servile to the Emperors. The reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero were a fascinating and bloody time, full of violence, treasonous plots, murders, suicides, and uprisings. Included are vivid descriptions of the great fire of Rome, the persecution of the Christians, and the suppression of the revolt in Britain led by Boudicca. Presented in this volume is the classic translation of Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781420962697
Publisher:	Neeland Media
Publication date:	06/17/2019
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Tacitus, born in about AD 56 in southern Gaul (modern Provence) under the emperor Nero, was probably the son of an equestrian. He enjoyed success as a both a politician and writer, publishing the Agricola (a biography of his father-in-law) and the Germania (an ethnographical study of the peoples of Germany) in 98. Today he is best known as a historian, the author of The Histories and the Annals. The culmination of Tacitus' public career was when he won the prestigious post of proconsul of Asia (112/13). He died at some point after 115 and probably lived into the reign of Hadrian, but there is no evidence for his later life or the date of his death.

Cynthia Damon received her PhD from Stanford University and taught at Harvard University and at Amherst College before moving to the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of The Mask of the Parasite, a commentary on Tacitus' Histories 1, and, with Will Batstone, Caesar's Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

Woodman has produced the most sophisticated English translation of Tacitus' Annals to date, one that will likely remain the standard for years to come. . . . Woodman successfully incorporates into his translation the sense and sound of the author's literary style. His deft rendering into English of Tacitus' word order and sentence structure, mimicking the ancient writer's preference for the unusual word and his propensity to employ metaphorical expressions, alliteration, and an unbalanced syntactic structure, imparts to his translation the artistic texture of this work of history. Woodman's Introduction provides an informative background to Tacitus and an explanation of how the translator has attempted to capture the artistry of the ancient historian. Annotations to the text increase understanding of events and and their participants without burdening the reader or interrupting the flow of the story. In addition to maps and a list of further readings, the work contains useful appendixes, such as a list of political and military terms and a stemma of the Julio-Claudian Emperors. Summing up: Highly recommended. Readers of all levels. —R. I. Curtis, CHOICE

An elegant addition to Tacitean scholarship. . . . The appendices are comprehensive and extremely useful for students, covering political and military terms that are cross-referenced to the text, the deployment of the army which can be confusing in the Annals, Rome, geographical and tribal names, and maps as well as a good index of names. . . . This translation has many eminently practical features, including clear layout, the use of footnotes, and numbering of the text. . . . The Introduction is very accessible and, coupled with the text, will be very useful for students. —Alisdair Gibson, Journal of Classics Teaching

This work is more than a superb translation. It is also in effect a succinct commentary on the whole of the Annals. The section in the Introduction on problems of translation is particularly valuable. —J.N. Adams, All Souls College, Oxford

From the Publisher

Tacitus’s Latin is famously pithy, efficient, and sharp; his English translators have—for centuries—struggled to replicate that economy of style. Damon (classics, Univ. Pennsylvania; coauthor, Caesar’s Civil War) is one of the first women to translate Tacitus for a major publisher and I expect she might bring a slightly different perspective to Tacitus’s often venomous descriptions of its larger-than-life imperial women: Livia, Messalina, Poppea. What’s to look forward to in a 2,000-year-old book, the title of which many people mispronounce without the second “n”? The decades-long moral degradation of Tiberius (once an honorable imperial step-son but in the end a rotten, ruined emperor) for one thing. If that isn’t enough, add to it the death of Agrippina (poor Claudius’s fourth wife), whose boat was specially constructed at her son, the Emperor Nero’s, instructions to collapse at sea, and who, when she failed to die, demanded that her assassins stab her womb, from where her ne’er-do-well son sprung.

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