The Oxford Critical Guide to Tacitus

by Bartera, Salvador; Shannon-Henderson, Kelly E.

• ISBN13: 9780192894038
• ISBN10: 019289403X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780192646354
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-10-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Oxford Critical Guide to Tacitus presents eighteen chapters surveying individual works and books by Tacitus. The chapters treat a range of interpretive issues, including Tacitus' language and style; historical issues; literary devices; and narrative patterns. Differing from other introductions to Tacitus that adopt a thematic approach to his oeuvre as a whole, this volume approaches each as a unit, from start to finish, addressing important interpretive issues relevant to specific texts, giving readers a deeper appreciation of their nuances and features. Presupposing no prior knowledge of the works or knowledge of Latin, these features make the volume an essential resource for those studying Tacitus in translation and the original language, for those in classical studies and in other disciplines, and for teachers and students, both those at the undergraduate level and those at the graduate level.

Author Biography

Salvador Bartera, University of Tennessee,Kelly E. Shannon-Henderson, University of Cincinnati

Salvador Bartera is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He holds a PhD from the University of Virginia. His main research interests focus on Roman historiography, particularly Tacitus. He is also interested in classical reception in the Renaissance. His main publications include articles on the Annals, the concept of fides in the Histories, the history of the commentary tradition of Tacitus, his first Italian translations and Tacitist commentators, and the neo-Latin Jesuit poet Stefonio. He is currently completing a commentary on Annals 16 and preparing an edition of Stefonio's Flavia Tragoedia.

Kelly E. Shannon-Henderson is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a bachelor's degree in Classics from the University of Virginia, and an MSt and DPhil in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature from the University of Oxford. She is the author of Religion and Memory in Tacitus' Annals (OUP, 2019), a commentary on Phlegon of Tralles' On Marvels (Brill, 2022), and various articles on aspects of Greek and Roman historiography, religion, and paradoxography.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Salvador Bartera and Kelly Shannon- Henderson1. Agricola, Sergio Audano2. Germania, Katherine Clarke3. Dialogus De oratoribus, Christopher S. van den Berg4. Histories 1, Cynthia Damon5. Histories 2, Lydia Spielberg6. Histories 3, S. P. Oakley7. Histories 4, Timothy A. Joseph8. Histories 5, René Bloch9. Annals 1, Victoria Emma Pagán10. Annals 2, Aske Damtoft Poulsen11. Annals 3, Olivier Devillers12. Annals 4, Bram ten Berge13. Annals 5 and 6: The End of the Beginning, Kelly E. Shannon-Henderson14. Annals 11 and 12, Caitlin Gillespie15. Annals 13: Mentors, Murder, Mother, and Mayhem, Alain M. Gowing16. Annals 14, Christopher Whitton17. Annals 15, Rhiannon Ash18. Annals 16, Salvador Bartera