Cornelius Tacitus

Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (c. AD 56 - c. 120) was the greatest historian of the Roman Empire, author of the Annals and the Histories, as well as the Agricola, the Germania, and the Dialogus de oratoribus. A senator who rose to the consulship (suffect consul in 97) and later governed the province of Asia, he was a close friend of Pliny the Younger, who addressed eleven surviving letters to him. Those letters are among the most famous in the corpus, including Pliny's two firsthand accounts of the eruption of Vesuvius and the death of the elder Pliny, written at Tacitus's request to aid his historical work. Celebrated for his terse, penetrating prose and his unsparing analysis of imperial tyranny and the corruption of power, Tacitus remains one of the most influential and widely read of all ancient authors.