The Works of Tacitus (C. Cornelii Taciti Opera)

va and the empire of Trajan, a richer and safer material, I have reserved for my old age." For in that place of the Histories, mention is made of this; here he is called "the Divine Nerva." That the Annals and Histories were different works, published at different times, and distinguished by those titles, will be proven by other arguments in §. VI. The knots tied by Woltmann (in Translation of Tacitus Vol. V, p. 281 sq.) have already been untied by Weikert (in Translation of Tacitus Vol. I, p. XX, XXI). Cf. on Annals 12, 40 and 54. Only the first four books of the Histories and twenty-six chapters of the fifth survive, and nine complete books have perished, in which the author had woven the entire history of the Flavian ruling house from 824 to 849 A.U.C., and had sketched the provident mind of Vespasian, the brief and therefore more precious virtues of Titus, and the immense cruelty of Domitian. Indeed, it can hardly be doubted that there were sixteen books of the Annals and fourteen of the Histories. That this has not been called into doubt by anyone is to be gathered not only from manuscripts and old editions (for at the end of Book II of the Histories in the Florentine Lombardic MS, it is inscribed: The eighteenth book of Cornelius Tacitus ends: the nineteenth begins; in the Histories Book III in the Harleian, Bodleian, and Jesuit MSS: The nineteenth book of the Augustan history of the daily acts of Cornelius Tacitus ends: the twentieth happily begins; in the Histories Book IV in the Budapest MS: The twentieth book of Corn. Tacitus ends: the twenty-first begins. But the Annals and Histories in the manuscripts and editions of Puteanus, Rivius, and Rhenanus are inscribed: The sixteen books of the Annals or Histories or Daily Actions from the excess of Augustus that survive, namely the first five and the last six of the Annals and the first five of the Histories) but also from the fact that Tacitus wished to relate in the Annals the final events of Augustus and all the deeds of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, and Nero (see Annals 1, 1), and in Book XVI the final fates of Nero are recounted. This is understood both from the inscription of the Royal MS: The fragments of the thirty books of the illustrious historian C. Cornelius Tacitus, which he published, begin, and from the words of Jerome in his Commentary on Zechariah 3, 14:

"Josephus, who wrote the Jewish history and commemorates that they endured much greater things than we read in the prophets, explains all these things most clearly: Cornelius Tacitus also, who after Augustus up to the death of Domitian wrote the lives of the Caesars in thirty volumes..."