Talk:Histories (Tacitus)

Just wondering about the point about Tacitus definitely supporting adoptive emperor system. I'm not disagreeing with it: This is probably correct. But I think that the wording in the article is so emphatic and the subject matter of the sentence important enough (the political opinions of one of our primary sources on the Roman Empire) that surely it merits some quote to back it up. Simply for the sake of the article. Just a suggestion. Rigourous (talk) 12:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Dubious
The article currently says that "At the beginning of the year AD 69, six months after the death of Nero, Tacitus started working on his Histories", which is cited to "Tacitus and the Writing of History by Ronald H. Martin 1981 ISBN 0520044274 pages 104-105". I've got to assume that the editor who inserted it misunderstood the cited work, because in AD 69 Tacitus was 13. The events covered begin at the beginning of AD 69. The previous paragraph says the Histories were written in 100-110, which is rather more plausible. Can someone with access to the cited book check the accuracy of the cite? --Nicknack009 (talk) 09:47, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't have access to the book at this point, but I agree wholeheartedly that the editor's contribution somehow is in error, since the idea that a 13 year old from 2000 years ago, would start writing a history of political/military leaders in the year of an event and keep that history for 30 or 40 years until publishing it. I agree with you that something got misconstrued in the process of transliteration... Stevenmitchell (talk) 05:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The quote is "The Histories had begun at the beginning of the year AD 69, six months after Nero's death, and when complete had taken the tale to the death of Domitian in 96." I think the editor has just misinterpreted this as being the dates of writing, easy mistake to make. I'll remove it now.3fingeredPete (talk) 15:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Ideology
I'm unclear about the utility of this section. Yes, Tacitus expressed an ideology in his histories -- he was a Roman Senator, & as conservative & elitist as any in his social group. But wouldn't this be better set forth in the biographical article on the man? The textual history of this work, on the other hand, should be included, as well as the influence of this work, best as we know it. -- llywrch (talk) 18:23, 27 June 2019 (UTC)