Annals

by Tacitus, Cynthia Damon (Translator), Cynthia Damon (Introduction)

Overview

A compelling new translation of a vital account of Roman history

With clarity and vivid intensity, Tacitus's Annals recounts the pivotal events in Roman history from the years shortly before the death of Augustus to the death of Nero in 68 AD, including the reign of terror under the corrupt Tiberius, the great fire of Rome during the time of Nero, and the wars, poisonings, scandals, conspiracies, and murders that were part of imperial life. Despite Tacitus's claim that they were written objectively, the Annals is sharply critical of the emperors' excesses and fearful for the future of imperial Rome, while also filled with a longing for its past glories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140455649
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/26/2013
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	1,094,769
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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

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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Library Journal

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 writes a warning to the powerful that history will judge them. He himself is critical, even savagely judgmental, in his second-century history of the four Roman emperors who followed Augustus. (Only parts of it survive.) Narrator David Timson captures the author’s frequent scorn and disgust; he reads many quotations in a mocking voice. His pronunciation is flawless and his pacing a shade quick. He is effortlessly skilled in matching emphasis and the shaping of phrases and sentences to sense. While he brings an actor’s expressiveness to the text, his exuberance and energy sometimes seem excessive for this censorious historian. Nonetheless, Timson’s energy helps engage the listener and hold their attention. His clarity and skill deliver a commendable program. W.M. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile

Tacitus writes a warning to the powerful that history will judge them. He himself is critical, even savagely judgmental, in his second-century history of the four Roman emperors who followed Augustus. (Only parts of it survive.) Narrator David Timson captures the author’s frequent scorn and disgust; he reads many quotations in a mocking voice. His pronunciation is flawless and his pacing a shade quick. He is effortlessly skilled in matching emphasis and the shaping of phrases and sentences to sense. While he brings an actor’s expressiveness to the text, his exuberance and energy sometimes seem excessive for this censorious historian. Nonetheless, Timson’s energy helps engage the listener and hold their attention. His clarity and skill deliver a commendable program. W.M. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile