Early in a.d. 29 died Iulia Augusta, the mother of Tiberius, at the age of eighty-six. That she had been a protectress of the house of Germanicus appears from the fact that, almost immediately after her death, letters were despatched to the senate denouncing Agrippina and Nero. The latter was decreed to be a public enemy, and both were hurried into imprisonment in separate islands.

In a.d. 30, the second son, Drusus, who had been used by Seianus as a tool against his brother, was condemned by a similar decree, and imprisoned at Rome in a dungeon of the Palatium: also Asinius Gallus, while on a visit to Tiberius at Capreae, was arrested and sent back to Rome and there kept in custody.

At the beginning of a.d. 31, Seianus appeared to have reached the height of power. He was colleague with Tiberius in the consulship, and to some extent in the ‘proconsulare imperium,’ had also the dignity of pontiff, and was betrothed either to the widow or the daughter of Drusus. Also in this year Tiberius had so far overcome his hesitation as to order the execution or compel the suicide of Nero. Yet Drusus and Agrippina were living on; Gaius was still in favour and generally regarded as the heir; and these circumstances, added to sundry indications of coldness or suspicion on the part of Tiberius, appear to have precipitated Seianus into a plot to secure his end by assassination.

The Introduction and notes here given are mainly abridged from the corresponding portion of the larger edition published last year; to which, in the Chapter on Syntax and Style, references throughout are made, to assist any teachers or students who may desire to supplement the present from the former work.

In a few instances, in this edition, a different text is given, chiefly in accordance with changes in the fourth edition of Halm (1883). Opportunity has also been taken of amending some of the explanations in the notes.

The references here given are almost wholly restricted to the books of Tacitus contained in this volume, and to such other ancient authors or modern works as are well known to schoolboys.

I have also generally in this edition omitted to specify the editors or other writers to whom I am indebted, in the hope that it will be generally understood that the acknowledgments of obligation, freely made throughout the larger volume, are indirectly applicable here.

Our knowledge of the chief facts and dates in the life of Tacitus rests mainly on allusions in his own writings and those of his friend the younger Pliny, who addresses several letters to him and often speaks of him in others.

His praenomen is not mentioned in this correspondence, and is differently given by later authorities as Gaius or Publius. His family connexions are unknown; but he would appear to have been the first of his name to attain senatorial rank, though of sufficient position to have begun his ‘cursus honorum’ at the earliest, or almost the earliest, legal age; as he can hardly have been born earlier than a.d. 52–54, and must have been quaestor not later than a.d. 79, by which time he had also received in marriage the daughter of Agricola, who was already a consular, and one of the first men in the State.

His boyhood falls thus under the time of Nero; his assumption of the ‘toga virilis’ would coincide, or nearly so, with the terrible year of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius; his early manhood was spent under Vespasian and Titus; the prime of his life under Domitian; the memory of whose tyranny is seen in all his historical writings, which were composed at various dates in the great time of Trajan.