Traces the five-hundred year history and wide-ranging influence of the Roman historian's unflattering book about the ancient Germans that was eventually extolled by the Nazis as a bible.

Undeniably one of Rome's most important historians, Tacitus was also one of its most gifted. Ideal for college students, this newly revised edition of two seminal works on Imperial Rome is now available.

The Agricola is both a portrait of Julius Agricola - the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus' well-loved and respected father-in-law - and the first detailed account of Britain that has come down to us. It offers fascinating descriptions of the geography, climate and peoples of the country, and a succinct account of the early stages of the Roman occupation, nearly fatally undermined by Boudicca's revolt in AD 61 but consolidated by campaigns that took Agricola as far as Anglesey and northern Scotland. The warlike German tribes are the focus of Tacitus' attention in the Germania, which, like the Agricola, often compares the behaviour of 'barbarian' peoples favourably with the decadence and corruption of Imperial Rome.

A reprint of the University of Oklahoma Press edition of 1991 Eminent scholar and translator, Herbert W. Benario, provides a faithful, readable translation of these works, introductory essays, chapter summaries, and notes. A bibliography, maps, and an index are included.

The Agricola and the Germania were written by the Roman historian Tacitus around 98 AD. The Germania describes the lands, laws, and customs of individual Germanic tribes. The Agricola, recounts the life of Tacitus' father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, an eminent Roman general and Governor of Britain. It also covers, briefly, the geography and ethnography of ancient Britain. As in the Germania, Tacitus favorably contrasts the liberty of the native Britons to the corruption and tyranny of the Empire; the book also contains eloquent and forceful polemics against the rapacity and greed of Rome. Tacitus's writings are known for their dense prose that seldom glosses the facts, in contrast to the style of some of his contemporaries. In most of his writings he keeps to a chronological narrative order, only seldom outlining the bigger picture, leaving the readers to construct that picture for themselves. Tacitus's historical style offers penetrating--often pessimistic--insights into the psychology of power politics, blending straightforward descriptions of events, moral lessons, and tightly focused dramatic accounts. This cloth-bound book includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket, and is limited to 100 copies.

The Agricola and Germania - Publius Cornelius Tacitus. A translation into English by A. S. Kline. Tacitus' early work Agricola, written c. AD98, is a biography of his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, covering the noted general's early life and his Governorship of Britain. Essentially a eulogy of a strikingly honest and capable Roman official, the work allows Tacitus to indulge in a quiet critique of Imperial Rome's control of the Empire under Domitian, with digressions regarding the geography and ethnography of Northern Britain. The emphasis is on the life of a virtuous soldier and official navigating through the difficult ocean of power politics, rather than on pure history and the details of provincial rule, but the Agricola is nevertheless a valuable contribution to our understanding of the period. The Germania, written about the same time, is a description of the lands, manners and customs of the German people and the individual Germanic tribes, as they were understood by the Roman Empire. Tacitus is generally favourable towards the legal, moral and religious codes of the people he is describing, but is equally ready to decry what he sees as their vices and failings. The result is a seemingly well-balanced view of a region which caused Rome much trouble and effort to bring under stable control. Like the Agricola, the Germania provides information, mostly derived at second-hand by Tacitus, concerning the largely obscure northern Empire, whose history and geography at that time we would love to know more about; information which has subsequently led to both sensible and not so sensible extrapolation and speculation from the limited amount he has to tell us. This and other texts available from Poetry in Translation (www.poetryintranslation.com).