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Summary: Tacitus: The Annals of Imperial Rome
Review: 'The Annals of Imperial Rome' recounts the major historical events from the years shortly before the death of Augustus to the death of Nero in A.D. 68.
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Summary: A "must have" classic
Review: If you love history, this has got to be one of the most important books you could have. This, along with Caesars War Commentaries rank at the highest for their historical significance. Talk about eyewitness accounts! It doesn't get any better than this.
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Summary: A "must have" classic
Review: If you love history, this has got to be one of the most important books you could have. This, along with Caesars War Commentaries rank at the highest for their historical significance. Talk about eyewitness accounts! It doesn't get any better than this.
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Summary: corrupting effects of absolutism
Review: Not only is Tacitus one of the sharpest narrative historians who has ever lived, not only are we incredibly fortunate to have this poignant account of his view of history, but we have Michael Grant's accurate and superb translation. I can't imagine anyone not thinking this is a superb edition: the bloke who compared it negatively with Gibbon (ALTHOUGH I OF COURSE RESPECT HIS OPINION) might try comparing it instead to Herodotus, Sallust, Xenophon, Polybius, Livy, Suetonius, Josephus, and Philo as they are a little closer to Tacitus' era. This is a major intellectual work by a marvelous writer of the first century AD who lived through some interesting times and had an opinion. Of course he is "biased" (in other words, HE HAS AN OPINION). Who isn't ? Everyone should know by 2003 that the historian's bias is one of the first things to look at. Tacitus was a conservative who pined for the golden days of a senatorial republic that he never knew. Of course he hated Tiberius and reserved much of his best invective against him: this may be the first non-hagiographic biographical portrait of such fulness that was ever written, or at least that survived, and is incredibly valuable just for that. I don't think I need to defend Tacitus much more from anyone who gave him, or who gave this edition, less than a five star rating, (you don't like M. Grant's translation? Then learn to read Latin, fellows -- if you work hard you'll be able to read Tacitus in one year) but I shall say this: Tacitus is like Homer and Aeschylus in the sense that if you think they are boring, it is because you have the problem, not them.
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Summary: corrupting effects of absolutism
Review: Reading Tacitus' Annals, I frequently remembered Thucydides' account of the Peleponnesian wars. An important theme of the latter work was the corrupting effects of prolonged war on the morals and intellect of the Athenian people, who were ultimately degraded so much that they voted the destruction of the people of a small island just because they had chosen to remain neutral. Tacitus, on the other hand, seems to have dedicated himself in this work to examining the corrupting effects of absolutism on the Roman people after the fall of the Republic. He shows how absolute power brought out the worst traits in the character of rulers like Tiberius and Nero, who grew more tyrannical with every year on the throne, and how members of the illustruous Roman senate and other sections of the Roman political society turned into a horde of spineless sycophants, informers and debauches. There were still a few honourable individuals, but as Tacitus shows in an endless series of judicial and non-judicial murders, most of these paid the price of sticking to the ancient traditions of liberty and honour with their lives. Tacitus also deals at length with the relations of the Romans with the subject peoples. I may be wrong here, but it seems to me that in such passages Tacitus draws a parallel between the fate of these enslaved peoples and that of the enslaved Roman people -the first a slave to the Romans, the second a slave to the tyrant and his bureaucracy, made up of ex-slaves. Many subject peoples rebelled and some like the Cherusci under Arminius (towards whom he does not seem averse at all) could succesfully preserve their liberty against the intrusion of the Romans. On the other hand, those Romans who dared defy the tyrant, and especially those who could wisely remain independent and yet stay alive, were far fewer, Tacitus seems to imply. Insofar as it demonstrates how closely liberty (including liberty of thought) and morals are intertwined, this work is still relevant today as a central work of liberal humanism.
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Summary: Slow, frustrating account
Review: Tacitus Annals is a highly acclaimed history of the Early Empire. While very detailed, I found that it was painful to finish the book. Tacitus goes into tremendous detail about trivial events and not enough on major events. He even apologized for this in book 2. I found the Histories much more enjoyable to read, in fact, I could not put it down.
In regards to the translation, I have to say I am extremely disapointed. Michel Grants use of the terms; brigade, battalion, company commander, color seargeant!!?? This made the book painful not to say confusing to read. Anybody who reads classical literature will know what a legion, cohort, centurion, standard bearer, tribune and praefect mean. I like to feel I am transported into antiquity when I read classics, Grants use of these "modern" british army terms made the work unreadable to me. Also, there is a very complicated geneology tree instead of a list of persons and places which is very confusing. His later work, Army of the Caesars is ten times better. I am sorry I have to rate such an important work with only two stars. Maybe another translation would be more readable.
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Summary: As literature, wonderful... As history, debatable.
Review: Tacitus' annals are masterfully translated in M. Grant's edition. He accurately conveys the vivid images, descriptions and style that make the Latin prose such a masterpiece of literature and scholarship. Indeed, as literature, the Annals are to be recommended most highly. However, as history, Tacitus is anything but an impartial judge writing "nothing but the facts". A republican at heart, he detests the principate, especially during the era of the earliest Caesars who laid a strong foundation for later reigns. Loathing Domitian most of all, he hates Tiberius, in his eyes an earlier incarnation of the man: he paints him as a bloody and hypocritical tyrant, ignoring his achievement of retaining Augustan order. In the case of Claudius, Tacitus paints the picture of an inept fool who forever condemned the Roman world to tyranny by his election as emperor; having not lived through his reign and resenting his centralization of power at the expense of the senate, ! ! Tacitus has created an image of Claudius because of which the emperor has long suffered a very negative opinion in the eyes of posterity despite his great personal achievements. In the case of Nero, a republican could only be expected to exaggerate the tragedies of a reign known to posterity only as an era of depravity. Nevertheless, Tacitus professes to be impartial and to be presenting only truths; his annals have shaped the way posterity views the very image of any Roman emperor. This is to a degree unfortunate: they were not all only the depraved maniacs who knew no bound to the corruption of power, they were also the builders of the foundations of western civilization.
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Summary: Tacitus' Annals of Imerial Rome
Review: Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome is one of the two books that author Robert Graves used as a primary source for I, Claudius. Whereas Suetonius was clearly excited and titilated by venal, cruel, violent, or sexual actions, Tacitus is severe and austere, and--dare I say it--taciturn, a word which derives from his personal style of writing.Tacitus was a Roman aristocrat who wrote the Annals about 30-75 years after the events in them took place. It was a period of peace and prosperity that Tacitus himself flourished in and that he wished to contrast with the awful yet colorful early principate. Since he was aristocratic and believed in the Roman equivalent of "the good old days" and family values, Tacitus believed that most of the current events in Roman history proved that everything was in a state of decaying. He accurately documented murders and policy with the acumen of a scientist describing a disease. The basic political philosophy that Tacitus has is the dichotomy between freedom and saftety or civilization. Essentially, Tacitus believed that barbarians like the Germans (see his Germania and Agricola) have total freedom, but live in dung, kill each other, and no property whereas civilized Romans have law, commerce, trade, sewers, property, and safety but are slaves to the state's authority. Combined with Michael Grant's expert translation, Tacitus prose keeps this era alive to this day. Grant is probably the best living scholar on the Greco-Roman world. The major tragedy about the Annals isn't one particular death, but that most of it is missing. For example, the reign of Tiberius is the last time that we see Caligula; when the narrative resumes, we are in the middle Claudius' reign--a gap of about 10 years. This is the period not only of Caligula, but of Jesus, whom Tacitus wrote about in other works. This makes Tacitus the only objective Roman historian who discussed Jesus. Just think how different the world might have been if this historian had included an examination of the Middle East. Unless some dog-eared copy is discovered in a monastery somewhere, we will never know. Overall, Tacitus Annals is an exciting and mesmerizing narrative which captures the zeitgeist of the first century A.D.
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Summary: Great literature, questionable politics.
Review: The more I've read and re-read this book, the less Tacitus' politics appeal to me, and I wonder that his antiquarian, narrow idealization of Old Republican Rome as against the realities of his own time must have made him a superlative bore to his colleagues in the Roman Senate, who must have wondered that, if the Old Republic was so much better, then how the Empire could even begin existing? However, there's his grasp of the art of the psychological portrait, an art in which he excelled, and that made him the first historian of mentalities and ideologies ever, something for which he used his oppulent, crisp prose, something that in my view fares far better than, say, Caesar's dry record of his military campaigns. Therefore, one cannot but surrender to his powers of expression and read his book for the nth. time as we allow ourselves to become, again, and again, fascinated by it.
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Summary: A translation of an ancient historian
Review: This is a translation of Roman history written in the 2nd century. If it seems dry, that is because it was originally written in what has been called a "jarring style" of Latin. The Latin of Tacitus differs greatly from say Caesar or Cicero. It is very difficult, full of long subordinate clauses, one word ablative absolutes, etc. The average Roman citizen may have found his work to be a bit over his head. The average college student finds Tacitus over his head and the cause for premature baldness. This translation is a very good however. Michael Grant gives a scholarly translation and includes notes for clarification of some of the more ambiguous passages.I would recommend this book to someone who is perusing a serious academic paper, and to one who does not have time to translate the text. Compare what Tacitus writes of Augustus with the "Res Gustae Divi Augusti". You will find a historian risking his neck to expose the propaganda of the imperial family. Criticizing someone who calls himself a god is risky business. I would not recommend this book to someone who is reading about Roman history for fun. This is a scholarly translation of the original text that is suitable as a source for your own writings. Tacitus was read by Machiavelli, Locke, and other ground-breaking political writers. In reference to the negative feedback on this book, it seems that the authors of some of these reviews might have believed that Tacitus wrote this in English (sigh). Dr. Grant gives us a "bene fecit" translation that stays true to the original. He leaves his own opinions to the footnotes allowing the reader to draw his own conclusions on historical truth. If you translate an ancient text and spice it up to please Americans, you run the risk of not being taken seriously by smart people (a perilous position to be in when everyone is called doctor).
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