There’s a whole essay in Trilling’s book, THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION, where he goes on about Tacitus. I’ve never read one of the Roman historians before (unless you count Plutarch, which I don’t). But I might give it a try. However, does it seem to anyone else like this is a field and an era that’s a bit over-covered? I mean, Tacitus’ Annals and Histories cover the reigns of the Julio-Claudian emperors and the rise of the Flavian dynasty. But Plutarch also covers many of these personages and so does Suetonius. I guess it’s not weird that there’d be three books that cover the same period of time. I mean in modern America we have approximately ten thousand books about Lincoln. But it is weird that so many of these books would still be ‘in the canon’. You’d think that either Tacitus or Suetonius would’ve fallen out of it by now.