The Histories (Summarized Edition)

The Histories chronicles the upheavals of 69–70 CE, the Year of the Four Emperors, as Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian vie for the principate. In four surviving books and a fragment of a fifth, Tacitus traces provincial armies' leverage, the Batavian revolt under Civilis, and the early Judaean campaign, framed by a sharp ethnography of the Jews. Rapid annalistic narration alternates with spee...