18
Book I. Chapters 1–3
further promoted by Domitian;[1] but professing, as I do, unbiassed honesty, I must speak of no man either with hatred or affection. I have reserved for my old age, if life is spared to me, the reigns of the sainted Nerva and of the Emperor Trajan, which afford a richer and withal a safer theme:[2] for it is the rare fortune of these days that a man may think what he likes and say what he thinks.
2The story I now commence is rich in vicissitudes, grim with warfare, torn by civil strife, a tale of horror even during times of peace. It tells of four emperors slain by the sword, three several civil wars, an even larger number of foreign wars and some that were both at once: successes in the East, disaster in the West, disturbance in Illyricum, disaffection in the provinces of Gaul, the conquest of Britain and its immediate loss, the rising of the Sarmatian and Suebic tribes. It tells how Dacia had the privilege of exchanging blows with Rome, and how a pretender claiming to be Nero almost deluded the Parthians into declaring war. Now too Italy was smitten with new disasters, or disasters it had not witnessed for a long period of years. Towns along the rich coast of Campania were- ↑ To Vespasian Tacitus probably owed his quaestorship and a seat in the senate; to Titus his tribunate of the people; to Domitian the praetorship and a 'fellowship' of one of the great priestly colleges, whose special function was the supervision of foreign cults. This last accounts for Tacitus' interest in strange religions.
- ↑ This project, also foreshadowed in Agricola iii, was never completed.
