Since there are so many of these darn things the review shall be divided into three sections. First, a brief description of the Loeb series of books and their advantages/disadvantages. Second shall be my thoughts on the author himself, his accuracy, as well as his style and the style of his translator. This is of course only my opinion and should be treated as such. The final part shall review what this particular book actually covers.
The Loeb series date back to the turn of the last century. They are designed for people with at least some knowledge of Greek or Latin. They are a sort of compromise between a straight English translation and an annotated copy of the original text. On the left page is printed the text in Greek or Latin depending on the language of the writer and on the right side is the text in English. For somebody who knows even a little Greek or Latin these texts are invaluable. You can try to read the text in the original language knowing that you can correct yourself by looking on the next page or you can read the text in translation and check the translation with the original for more detail. While some of the translations are excellent mostly they are merely serviceable since they are designed more as an aid to translation rather than a translation in themselves. Most of them follow the Greek or Latin very closely. These books are also very small, maybe just over a quarter the size of your average hardcover book. This means that you'll need to buy more than just one book to read a complete work. They are also somewhat pricey considering their size. The Loeb Collection is very large but most of the more famous works can be found in better (and cheaper) translations elsewhere. If you want to read a rarer book or read one in the original language then you can't do better than the Loeb Editions.
There are five volumes of Tacitus in the Loeb Classical Library. This includes all his surviving works. Tacitus is one of the most famous writers of the Roman Empire. He wrote most of his works in the early second century but they all deal with the events of the previous century. He is generally considered to be the Empire's best and most accurate historian. His earlier works include the Germania which is an account of the Germanians, the Agricola which is an account of his father-in-law and his governorship of Britain, and his Dialogues which is basically just a rhetorical exercise. His most famous works are his Histories and his Annals. Strangely, the order of these two is reversed, a fact which is carried through in the Loeb editions. He began with the Histories which cover from the death of Nero through Domitian intending to continue on through Nerva and Trajan. Instead he went backwards and started his Annals with Tiberius continuing on until he filled in all of the Julio-Claudians after Augustus. His writing style is impossible to reproduce in English. In what surely must have been an intentional feature he refuses to include the parallelisms much beloved by all other Latin authors. This is where a writer compares two things using the same structure. Instead he will make the comparisons but change the way the second thing is presented grammatically. It's difficult to express in English how strange that seems. The other feature of his style is the frequent use of epigrams at the end of his sentences. These are pithy and often sarcastic comments that wittily sum up the essence of what he means. The most famous of these is probably "They make a desert and call it peace," from the Agricola. There are many good translations of Tacitus. This one isn't too bad but the Oxford World Classics translations of the
Agricola and Germania
,
The Annals
and
The Histories
are probably the best. Be warned though, the translation achieves its quality by being rather loose at times. The most accurate translation is the Loeb one, but it really depends what you're looking for in the book. Other useful sources for this period include Suetonius (
Volume I
,
Volume II
) and
Cassius Dio
.
These books cover Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius and detail (amongst other things) Rome's first imperial assassination and the conquest of Britain.
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