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.

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 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.