The Histories

Tacitus opens his history with a warning. The story he's about to tell, he says, is "rich with disasters." It's a period marked by brutal battles, treachery, and violence that continued even in peacetime. Four emperors would die violently. Three civil wars would tear the Roman world apart.

But Tacitus isn't just listing events. He's describing a world turned upside down. Slaves were bribed to turn against their masters. Freedmen turned against their patrons. And those who had no enemies were ruined by their friends. The social order that Romans had taken for granted—the hierarchy of master over slave, patron over client, friend over friend—had collapsed. In its place was chaos.

This is the world of 69 CE, what historians would later call the "Year of the Four Emperors." Tacitus wrote about it decades later, during the reign of Trajan, when he was a retired senator looking back on the violence that had shaped his youth. He wasn't just recording history. He was issuing a warning.

The book covers the civil wars that erupted after Nero's death. Nero, the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, had been overthrown by a provincial governor named Galba. That act of rebellion revealed something that Tacitus calls a "well-hidden secret of the principate": emperors could be made outside Rome. Once that secret was out, anyone with enough military support could claim the throne.

Galba proved the point. He became emperor by marching on Rome from Spain. But his reign lasted only seven months. His stinginess and the corruption of his advisors made him deeply unpopular. When he chose an heir named Piso instead of the ambitious Otho, Otho bribed the Praetorian Guard and had Galba murdered in the Forum. Otho became the second emperor of the year. He lasted three months.

Then came Vitellius, whose Rhine legions had rebelled and marched on Italy. Vitellius defeated Otho, but his victory proved his undoing. His army, once fierce and disciplined, became lazy and debauched. While Vitellius indulged in banquets, the eastern legions declared for Vespasian, a general fighting in Judea. Vespasian's forces defeated Vitellius, and the fourth emperor of the year took power.

But Tacitus isn't interested in just telling us who became emperor and who died. He wants us to understand what the civil wars did to Rome. The fighting wasn't confined to battlefields. It spread through every province, every city, every household. Soldiers murdered civilians. Citizens denounced their neighbors to settle old scores. The temples on the Capitoline Hill, symbols of Rome's eternal greatness, were burned to the ground.

Tacitus calls this period "a universal pandemonium of hatred and terror." He describes how normal people became monsters. A soldier kills his brother in battle and demands a reward for it. In earlier civil wars, Tacitus notes, such an act would have driven a man to suicide. Now people sought to profit from it.

Yet Tacitus also insists that the period was not "barren of merit." He includes stories of heroism and self-sacrifice. A woman hides her son from soldiers and refuses to reveal his location even under torture. A bodyguard gives his life to buy time for his master to escape. These acts of virtue, Tacitus argues, prove that Roman character still existed, even in the darkest times.

Tacitus's purpose is moral. He wants his contemporaries to see what happens when power is concentrated in weak hands, when soldiers forget their discipline, when citizens abandon their duty to the state. He's writing in the reign of Trajan, a period of relative stability. But he knows that stability is fragile. The same forces that destroyed Galba, Otho, and Vitellius could destroy Trajan's Rome if people forgot the lessons of 69 CE.

The book is also an exploration of what it means to be Roman. Under the Republic, Romans had valued political liberty and participation. Under the empire, they had become "passionately devoted to servility." They cheered whoever held power, cared little about who ruled them, and focused on wealth instead of virtue. Tacitus finds this transformation deeply troubling.

But he doesn't offer easy answers. He shows that the empire is necessary—Rome is too large to be governed by a senate. Yet the empire corrupts both rulers and subjects. The problem, Tacitus suggests, is structural. It's not just that bad emperors are bad. It's that the system itself encourages bad behavior.

So what can be done? Tacitus points to adoption. If emperors choose the best man as their heir, rather than passing power to a son or a favorite, they might break the cycle of corruption. Galba tried this with Piso, but he chose poorly and failed to secure his regime. Nerva, the emperor who preceded Trajan, also adopted his successor. That adoption, Tacitus implies, might have saved Rome.

The question Tacitus leaves us with is this: Can any system, no matter how well designed, survive the greed and ambition of human nature? Or is the chaos of 69 CE not an exception, but the rule—a pattern that will repeat itself as long as men seek power?