The Annals, Volume One

Rome's imperial machine grinds into motion in this account of the years following Augustus's death, as power settles uneasily onto Tiberius and the Senate learns to flatter a ruler it fears. Written by a historian who lived close enough to the events to remember their consequences, it traces court intrigue, mutinies on the frontier, and the slow corrosion of republican habits under one man's suspicion. The prose is sharp, often bitter, and always alert to the gap between what rulers claim and what they do. Listen for the birth of tyranny's everyday vocabulary.