Cornelius Tacitus - Histories

Roman history has always been one of my areas of interest. "The Histories" written by famous Roman writer Cornelius Tacitus is the latest book I have read about the classic age of Roman Empire (it was a Finnish translation from the original latin source).

This book concentrates in the period of 69-70 ad, the year when four emperors ruled and the empire was driven into civil war. All begins when Emperor Galba (ruler who was risen to power when the emperor Nero was defieted) was getting old and there were discomfort among legions about who should be his successor. Galba had noticed the turmoil and was trying to call his protege to be the next emperor. However this was the final straw for some of the army groups and they shouted Otho to be their ruler and when Otho arrived with his legions to Rome all hell broke lose.

After Otho´s men killed Galba the actual civil war was eventually going to expand since most of the german, gallic and british groups were not going to stand for such a decision. They gave Vitellius their commanderhood and started campaign against Otho´s newly formed regime. And so on until after some misfortuned battles Otho committed suicide. Tacitus describes Vitellius as a lazy person who was more fond of debauchery than actually benefiting the nation. This was also the reason why Vitellius regime was not in unison trough out the empire and soon the southern legions commander Vespasianus decided to take part on the race and challenge Vitellius´s groups.

I shouldn´t go further with the actual events except noticing that in the end Vitellius was defeated and several things followed. The Book ends with a chapter about the Great Jewish Revolt but this has not been preserved. However I want to make some notions about the life and roughness of the ordinary people and military during those times. First of all you have to keep in mind that Romans were at their peak about their Empire´s success then and it is this fact that brings strange light to actual living and prosperity in the empire.

What really buggers me is that the Military troops were so unpredictable about their decisions and the discipline was so hard to maintain. Minor revolts were everyday events and the leaders were all the time in a situation where they were forced to persuade troops to be loyal to their closest leaders and even for the emperor. There seemed to be lots of rumors always circulating about other peoples loyalty and deceit. People were also very superstitious and everything that happened could be interpreted as an omen (ominous or fortunate). These events could in a sudden moment mean that the troops would stand against their commander and even killing of leaders happened.

One of the main motivation behind military troops seemed to be looting instead of securing the empire´s peace. This lead to situations where a legion was relocating and manoeuvering forward the combat zone in their own territory (inside the empire) where they completely destroyed and robbed unfortunate and innocent cities that were on their way. And when they had a battle within a city that was inside the empire some of them were completely burned down, all the inhabitants were killed and raped.

Realising how huge the empire was (even todays standards) it´s also very impressive how they managed to keep up maintenance for such a huge force. The military had at best over a million soldiers (though most of the times the amount of troops was around 400 000). A single legion had about 5000 soldiers and lots of hangaround people (merchants, slaves, etc.) and all of them had to be kept fead and armed.

Rome itself was a city of over a million people and the surrounding areas couldn´t offer enough grain to feed the inhabitants. That´s why they had to ship food from northern Africa! The logistics were really impressive!

Finally I recommend this book very much to read if you have even a little interest about the real life during antique times! It gives a nice overlook about times and describes the turmoil of Roman Empire quite well. It also gives some advice why the Roman Empire was finally divided and demolished a few hundred years later.