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Summary: Find a Different Publication of this Book!
Comment: This is a monumentally bad translation and Penguin should be ashamed of themselves for having kept
publishing it for forty odd years. While Grant's style is quite good, his awful, clashing, illogical
translations of familiar Roman terms renders it unreadable. Everyone who has any interest in Roman
History (and let's face it, who else would be reading this book?) knows what a legion is. But how
many people know what a division is, or a brigade? The same goes for company commanders instead of
centurions. This is not only confusing and anachronistic, its simply innaccurate. As far as i'm
aware a modern company numbers about 120 men (please let me know if i'm wrong!) whereas a century
had only 80. Also to call a Roman legion either a division or a brigade is also innaccurate. A
division is made up of several brigades but a full legion is not made up of two or three smaller
legions. Grant is just being difficult. Also the index infuriatingly insists on listing people by
their correct family names instead of the names by which they are commonly called. Hence, you look
up references to Corbulo and find "See Domitius" so you look up Domitius, go to one of the pages
mentioned and there you find "Corbulo", repeatedly called Corbulo on every page by Tacitus. Finally,
the maps. Penguin Classics maps are generaly bad and these are no different. A one page map of all
of Northern Europe with all the various placenames and features squeezed awkwardly in through lack
of space, and with no outstanding line to dilineate the roman frontier, then on another page a whole
page map of africa with a grand total of SEVEN places mentioned on it. This may all seem picky, but
it spoils the whole reading experience. I'm afraid it's symptomatic of Penguin Classics who have
been resting on their laurels for far too long. They've been very good at constantly changing the
covers and folio size of their books but seem to have no real interest in the CONTENT. ( I have
binned my copy and bought a very nice secondhand Dent and Sons edition, with "legions" in it! )

Customer Rating:

Summary: Great literature, questionable politics.
Comment: The more I've read and re-read this book, the less Tacitus' politics appeal to me, and I wonder that
his antiquarian, narrow idealization of Old Republican Rome as against the realities of his own time
must have made him a superlative bore to his colleagues in the Roman Senate, who must have wondered
that, if the Old Republic was so much better, then how the Empire could even begin existing?
However, there's his grasp of the art of the psychological portrait, an art in which he excelled,
and that made him the first historian of mentalities and ideologies ever, something for which he
used his oppulent, crisp prose, something that in my view fares far better than, say, Caesar's dry
record of his military campaigns. Therefore, one cannot but surrender to his powers of expression
and read his book for the nth. time as we allow ourselves to become, again, and again, fascinated by
it.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A "must have" classic
Comment: If you love history, this has got to be one of the most important books you could have. This, along
with Caesars War Commentaries rank at the highest for their historical significance. Talk about
eyewitness accounts! It doesn't get any better than this.

Customer Rating:

Summary: corrupting effects of absolutism
Comment: Reading Tacitus' Annals, I frequently remembered Thucydides' account of the Peleponnesian wars. An
important theme of the latter work was the corrupting effects of prolonged war on the morals and
intellect of the Athenian people, who were ultimately degraded so much that they voted the
destruction of the people of a small island just because they had chosen to remain neutral. Tacitus,
on the other hand, seems to have dedicated himself in this work to examining the corrupting effects
of absolutism on the Roman people after the fall of the Republic. He shows how absolute power
brought out the worst traits in the character of rulers like Tiberius and Nero, who grew more
tyrannical with every year on the throne, and how members of the illustruous Roman senate and other
sections of the Roman political society turned into a horde of spineless sycophants, informers and
debauches. There were still a few honourable individuals, but as Tacitus shows in an endless series
of judicial and non-judicial murders, most of these paid the price of sticking to the ancient
traditions of liberty and honour with their lives. Tacitus also deals at length with the relations
of the Romans with the subject peoples. I may be wrong here, but it seems to me that in such
passages Tacitus draws a parallel between the fate of these enslaved peoples and that of the
enslaved Roman people -the first a slave to the Romans, the second a slave to the tyrant and his
bureaucracy, made up of ex-slaves. Many subject peoples rebelled and some like the Cherusci under
Arminius (towards whom he does not seem averse at all) could succesfully preserve their liberty
against the intrusion of the Romans. On the other hand, those Romans who dared defy the tyrant, and
especially those who could wisely remain independent and yet stay alive, were far fewer, Tacitus
seems to imply. Insofar as it demonstrates how closely liberty (including liberty of thought) and
morals are intertwined, this work is still relevant today as a central work of liberal humanism.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Superb, mordant, brilliant: one of the best books written.
Comment: Not only is Tacitus one of the sharpest narrative historians who has ever lived, not only are we
incredibly fortunate to have this poignant account of his view of history, but we have Michael
Grant's accurate and superb translation. I can't imagine anyone not thinking this is a superb
edition: the bloke who compared it negatively with Gibbon (ALTHOUGH I OF COURSE RESPECT HIS OPINION)
might try comparing it instead to Herodotus, Sallust, Xenophon, Polybius, Livy, Suetonius, Josephus,
and Philo as they are a little closer to Tacitus' era. This is a major intellectual work by a
marvelous writer of the first century AD who lived through some interesting times and had an
opinion. Of course he is "biased" (in other words, HE HAS AN OPINION). Who isn't ? Everyone should
know by 2003 that the historian's bias is one of the first things to look at. Tacitus was a
conservative who pined for the golden days of a senatorial republic that he never knew. Of course he
hated Tiberius and reserved much of his best invective against him: this may be the first
non-hagiographic biographical portrait of such fulness that was ever written, or at least that
survived, and is incredibly valuable just for that. I don't think I need to defend Tacitus much more
from anyone who gave him, or who gave this edition, less than a five star rating, (you don't like M.
Grant's translation? Then learn to read Latin, fellows -- if you work hard you'll be able to read
Tacitus in one year) but I shall say this: Tacitus is like Homer and Aeschylus in the sense that if
you think they are boring, it is because you have the problem, not them.

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