The Annals

by Tacitus

Overview

Translated by Alfred J. Church. This edition is NOT a "mass market printing" but a high-quality edition printed on white paper. The Annals is without question one of the most important sources of early Roman history, written by a serving Roman senator who had access to the official senate records from AD 14-68. As a result, it provides one of the most complete records of Roman politics, foreign policy, domestic issues from AD 14-68. This record starts with the death of the emperor Augustus, the feats of famous General Germanicus, and the reigns of emperors Claudius and Nero. Topics covered in this fast-paced work include the mutinies in Pannonia and Germany; the activities of Germanicus and Agrippina; the epic battle between Arminius (Hermann) and Varus in the forests of Germany; Tacfarinas and the African wars; the uprising in Britannia under Caractacus and his eventual defeat, capture, and pardon; the revolt in Britain under Boudica; the great fire of Rome and Nero's blaming of the Christians for the city's destruction; the Parthian War, and many more of history's great turning points. In internal matters, the Annals provide details of the nature of Roman society: the huge number of slaves (and slave uprisings), the censor Claudius and his introduction of new letters for the alphabet, the purpose of history, the origin of writing, Gauls as Roman magistrates and senators, Claudius's speech on the extension of Roman citizenship, ineffectual Senate decrees demanding the expulsion of astrologers from Rome, and even a mock naval battle, with real blood, on the Fucine Lake. The Annals originally comprised at least 16 books, but books 7-10 and parts of books 5, 6, 11 and 16 have been lost. This edition contains all the original paragraph numbering and is thus suitable for recreational and academic purposes alike. About the author: Publius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 56‒117 AD) was a Roman senator and is widely regarded as Rome's greatest and most reliable historian.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798211089990
Publisher:	Blurb
Publication date:	07/03/2024
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(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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Library Journal

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