In AD 68, Nero's suicide marked the end of the first dynasty of imperial Rome. The following year was one of drama and danger, with four emperors-Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian-emerging in succession. Based on authoritative sources, The Histories vividly recounts the details of the "long but single year" of revolution that brought the Roman empire to the brink of collapse.



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Tacitus was born c.55 AD and probably survived the emperor Trajan who dies in 117. Known in Rome for his impressive oratory, he maintained a political career as a sentor under Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.

Rhiannon Ash is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Merton College, Oxford. After taking an MA in Medieval Latin at the University of Toronto, she returned from Canada to Oxford, where she wrote a doctorate on Tacitus' Histories. Her publications include Ordering Anarchy; Leaders and Armies in Tacitus' Histories (1999) and a comentary, Tacitus Histories Book II (2007), in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series. She has also written articles on Naevius, Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius and Plutarch.

Kenneth Wellesley was, until 1981, Reader of Humanity (Latin) at the University of Edinburgh. He contributed a number of papers to learned journals on various aspects of Roman history and literature. Most of the sites mentioned in the Histories were familiar to him from personal knowledge, and he was co-editor of the standard Teubner text of Tacitus (Leipzig). He died in 1995.