The Annals of Imperial Rome
Tacitus wrote with corrosive irony about the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, documenting how despotism corrupts, how power inverts virtue, how sycophancy destroys truth. His observation that "the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws" reads as freshly as if written yesterday.
The year-by-year annalistic structure keeps resetting, burying the compelling material under routine trials and provincial troop notices. Readers catch Tacitus breaking his own promise of impartiality, and the sceptical verdict is harsh: “as a historian, Tacitus is laughable,” “not the best historical writing, nor is it the most interesting.” The manuscript gaps frustrate on their own terms: Caligula's entire reign is gone and the text cuts off before Nero dies, so there is no ending. The last third becomes “a catalog of executions and suicides,” with “an amazing amount of wrist slitting.” And translations argue over each other, one reader objecting that “‘Ballet' did not begin in Ancient Rome, it was actually pantomime dancing.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
