The Histories of Tacitus
Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 5:24 pm
The death of the infamous emperor Nero in AD 68 marked the beginning of a terrible year to be an average Roman. The realm was to be marked again and again by uprisings and civil wars as one man after another fought or murdered his way to power, and as the tribes of Germany and France sought their freedom in the resulting confusion and upheavels. And many people from Rome's upper classes took advantage of the chaos to settle old scores and to indulge themselves in revenge and murder... 
That year was marked by the coming of four new emperors - Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and finally Vespasian, who was the founder of the second imperial dynasty, the Flavians (the first was that of the Juilio-Claudians, which began with Caesar & Augustus and ended with Nero).
In that year the man who would be known to us as the Roman historian Tacitus was a fourteen year old boy. He managed to survive the upheavels, and later wrote the story of that year in his The Histories. It begins as a cruel story, with Galba, an unarmed elderly man being brutally murdered at the orders of his once principal supporter, Otho... it devolves into civil war with sons killing their fathers and brothers killing their brothers and Roman city after Roman city being looted by Roman troops, when Vitellius raises the northern legions against Otho...while in Judea a gifted man named Vespasian waits for his opportunity to seize power...
That year was marked by the coming of four new emperors - Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and finally Vespasian, who was the founder of the second imperial dynasty, the Flavians (the first was that of the Juilio-Claudians, which began with Caesar & Augustus and ended with Nero).
In that year the man who would be known to us as the Roman historian Tacitus was a fourteen year old boy. He managed to survive the upheavels, and later wrote the story of that year in his The Histories. It begins as a cruel story, with Galba, an unarmed elderly man being brutally murdered at the orders of his once principal supporter, Otho... it devolves into civil war with sons killing their fathers and brothers killing their brothers and Roman city after Roman city being looted by Roman troops, when Vitellius raises the northern legions against Otho...while in Judea a gifted man named Vespasian waits for his opportunity to seize power...
