Publius or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus
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Roman orator, lawyer, and senator remembered as a great historian
From the Columbia Encyclopedia:
Roman historian. Little is known for certain of his life. He was a friend of Pliny the Younger and married the daughter of Cnaeus Julius Agricola. In A.D. 97 he was appointed substitute consul under Nerva, and later he was proconsul of Asia. The first of his works was the Dialogus [dialogue], a discussion of oratory in the style of Cicero, demonstrating to some degree why Tacitus was celebrated as an eloquent speaker; this work was long disputed, but his authorship is now generally accepted. Tacitus then wrote a biography of Agricola, expressing his admiration for his father-in-law as a good and able man. His small treatise De origine et situ Germanorum [concerning the origin and location of the Germans], commonly called the Germania or Germany, supplies (along with the earlier account of Julius Caesar) the principal written material on the Germanic tribes. Archaeology bears out the accuracy of Tacitus, but the work is not objective; it is a picture of the simple Germans glorified by comparison with the corruption and luxurious immorality of the Romans. This moral purpose and severe criticism of contemporary Rome, fallen from the virtuous vigor of the old republic, also underlies his two long works, commonly called in English the Histories (of which four books and part of a fifth survive) and the Annals (of which twelve books—Books I-VI, XI-XVI—survive). The extant books of the Histories cover only the reign of Galba (A.D. 68–69) and the beginning (to A.D. 70) of the reign of Vespasian but give a thorough view of Roman life—persons, places, and events. The surviving books of the Annals tell of the reign of Tiberius, of the last years of Claudius, and of the first years of Nero. The account contains incisive character sketches, ironic passages, and eloquent moral conclusions. The declamatory writing of the Dialogus is replaced in the historical works by a polished and highly individual style, a wide range of vocabulary, and an intricate and startling syntax.
From Wikipedia:
Approach to history
Tacitus' historical style, which would strongly influence Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall, combines various approaches to history into a method of his own (owing some debt to Sallust); seamlessly blending straightforward descriptions of events, pointed moral lessons, and tightly-focused dramatic account, his histories contain deep and pessimistic insight into the workings of the human mind and the nature of power.
Tacitus was primarily concerned with the balance of power between the Roman senate and the Roman Emperors. His writings are filled with tales of corruption and tyranny in the governing class of Rome as they failed to adjust to the new imperial régime; they squandered their cherished cultural traditions of free speech and self-respect as they fell over themselves to please the often bemused (and rarely benign) emperor. One well-known passage from his writings mentions the death of Christ (Annals, xv 44).
The factual accuracy of his work is occasionally questioned: his Annals are based in part on secondary sources of unknown reliability, and his own experience of Domitian's tyrannical reign gave an unfairly bitter and ironic cast to his portrayal of the Julio-Claudian emperors. His History, written from primary documents and his intimate knowledge of the Flavian period, is thought to be more accurate, though Tacitus' hatred of Domitian has colored its tone and interpretations.
Tacitus' political career was largely spent under the emperor Domitian; his experience of the tyranny, corruption, and decadence prevalent in the era (81–96) may explain his bitter and ironic political analysis. He warned against the dangers of unaccountable power; of the love of power untempered by principle; and against the popular apathy and corruption, engendered by the wealth of empire, which allowed such evils to flourish.
His work gained popularity during the Early Modern era, when it was a favorite of Niccolò Machiavelli, among others. His criticisms of tyranny and love of republicanism earned him the love of the French Revolutionaries and the hatred of Napoleon, who tried (unsuccessfully) to discredit his work as a forgery.
Reading
From Wikipedia:
The Annals (ab excessu Divi Augusti) was Tacitus' final work, covering the period from the death of Augustus Caesar in the year 14. He wrote at least 16 books, but books 7-10 and parts of books 5, 6, 11 and 16 are missing. Book 6 ends with the death of Tiberius and books 7-12 presumably covered the reigns of Caligula and Claudius. The remaining books cover the reign of Nero, perhaps until his death in June 68 or until the end of that year, to connect with the Histories. The second half of book 16 is missing. We do not know whether Tacitus completed the work or whether he finished the history of Augustus's reign by which he had planned to complete his work as an historian.
The Histories
Of the Histories only the first four books and 26 chapters of the fifth book have survived, covering the year 69 and the first part of 70. The work is believed to have continued up to the death of Domitian on September 18, 96.
In the Germania (written c. 98), Tacitus surveys the lands, customs, and governments of the Germanic peoples. His treatment of the tribes outside the empire is of mixed value to historians: he uses what he reports of the German character as a kind of 'noble savage' as a comparison to contemporary Romans and their (in his eyes) 'degeneracy'. Thanks to this portrayal, the work was popular in Germany -- especially among German nationalists and German Romantics -- from the sixteenth century on.
Despite this bias, he does supply us with many names for tribes with which Rome had come into contact. Tacitus' information was not, in general, based on first-hand knowledge, and more recent research has shown that many of his assumptions were incorrect. In fact, contemporary historians debate whether all these tribes were really Germanic in the sense that they spoke a Germanic language - some of them, like the Batavii, may have been Celts. He is also to blame for the misnaming of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, which did not quite take place in the saltus Teutoburgiensis, as he claimed in the Germania.
In "Germania" Tacitus mentions a god of the Germanic tribes, named Tuisto and parent of the first human being Mannus, who in turn is the father of all Germanic tribes.
Agricola (De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae)
The Agricola (written c. 98) recounts the life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, an eminent Roman general and Tacitus' father-in-law; it also covers, briefly, the geography and ethnography of ancient Britain. As in the Germania, Tacitus favorably contrasted the liberty of the native Britons to the corruption and tyranny of the Empire; the book also contains eloquent and vicious polemics against the rapacity and greed of Rome.
Writing available on the net
online e-texts of Tacitus' works (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?amode=start&author=Tacitus%2c%20Cornelius)
Commentaries
Quotations
One of his polemics against the evils of empire, from his Agricola (biography of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, ch. 30) was often quoted during the United States invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (see for example [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,930843,00.html)) by those who found its warnings as applicable to the modern era as to the ancient. It reads, in part:
Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terrae, iam mare scrutantur: si locuples hostis est, avari, si pauper, ambitiosi, quos non Oriens, non Occidens satiaverit. . . . Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
(Punctuation follows the Loeb Classical Library edition; ellipsis is added.) In translation, it reads:
Brigands of the world, after the earth has failed their all-devastating hands, they probe even the sea; if their enemy be wealthy, they are greedy; if he be poor, they are ambitious; neither the East nor the West has glutted them. . . . They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.