• Editors' Foreword


• Acknowledgments


• Introduction


• 1.: The creation of a Political Historian


• 2.: The Historian and His Sources


• 3.: Ethnic Prejudice in Tacitus


• 4.: Ut Pictura Poesis: The Visual Representation of History


• 5.: Freedom and Censorship


• 6.: A Tiberian Narrative


• 7.: Consorts of the Caesars


• 8.: Courtiers on the Palatine: The Familia of the Caesars


• 9.: Performances at the Court: The Reigns of Claudius and Nero


• 10.: The Importance of Tacitus' Annals


• The Julio-Claudian Family (Genealogy)


• Map of the Roman Empire


• Prominent Persons


• Further Reading


• Works Cited

Ronald Mellor is Professor of Greek and Roman History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Tacitus' Annals is the central historical source for first-century C.E. Rome, but it has also become a central text in the western literary, political, and even philosophical traditions - from the Renaissance to the French and American revolutions, and beyond. This volume attempts to enhance the general reader's understanding of why Tacitus' book is so remarkable that it has had such a profound effect across the centuries.