Tacitus

c. 56–120 CE

Cornelius Tacitus, senator, consul in 97 and governor of Asia, was the greatest historian of the Roman empire. The Agricola commemorates his father-in-law, the conqueror of Britain; the Germania describes the peoples beyond the Rhine; the Dialogue on Oratory asks why eloquence declined. The Histories and the Annals, of which about half survives, told the story of the emperors from the death of Augustus to that of Domitian, in the most compressed and searching prose in Latin.