Histories. Tacitus. 2009.

In AD 68 Nero’s suicide marked the end of the first dynasty of imperial Rome. The following year was one of dramatic and danger. In the surviving books of his Histories the barrister-historian Tacitus, writing some thirty years after the events he describes, gives a detailed account of the ‘long but single year’ when four emperors emerged in succession: Galba, the martinet; Otho, conspirator and dandy; Vitellius, the unambiguous hedonist; and the ultimate victor, Vespasian who established the Flavian dynasty. With great vividness and emotional power, Tacitus’ gripping narrative lasts bare corruption, injustice and folly and sheds lasting light on the nature of power.