Agricola and Germany

Cornelius Tacitus, Rome's greatest historian and the last great writer of classical Latin prose, produced his first two books in AD 98, after the assination of the Emperor Domitian ended fifteen years of enforced silence. Much of Agricola, which is the biography of Tacitus' late father-in-law Julius Agricola, is devoted to Britain and its people, since Agricola's claim to fame was that as governor for seven years he had completed the conquest of Britain, begun four decades earlier. Germany provides an account of Rome's most dangerous enemies, the Germans, and is the only surviving example of an ethnographic study from the ancient world. Each book in its way has had immense influence on our perception of Rome and the northern barbarians. This edition reflects recent research in Roman-British and Roman-German history and includes newly discovered evidence on Tacitus' early career.

Anthony Birley was Professor of Ancient History at Manchester University 1974-1990. His most recent book is Hadrian, the Restless Emperor" (1997).