Audiobook · read by volunteers
Works of Tacitus, Vol. I
Thomas Gordon (1691–1750) · Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Read by Jim Mowatt, Fr. Richard Zeile of Detroit, Graham Redman, Jc Guan, ontheroad, Justin Brett, Anna Simon, Maire Rhode, Lizzie Driver, Laura Koskinen · 29 chapters · 15 h 08
About the book
Rome under the early emperors was a world of fear, flattery and ambition, and no writer caught its mood more sharply than Tacitus. This first volume of his works brings together the introductory material and part of the historical record in an English version by Thomas Gordon, published in the first half of the eighteenth century, a political writer who used his translation to think about liberty and power in his own country. Gordon opens with a dedication and a series of discourses on earlier translations and on Tacitus himself, then turns to the great historian's narrative of a state in which one ruler's mood could decide the fate of a family. Expect cool, compressed prose, shrewd portraits and a persistent suspicion of anyone who holds unchecked authority. A team of volunteer readers shares the long journey through twenty-nine sections.
Introduction
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, who lived from about 56 to about 117, is regarded as one of the finest historians of ancient Rome. He served as a senator and consul, and he wrote about the years of the first emperors with a mixture of moral seriousness and bitter irony. Only parts of his major histories survive, but enough remains to show his view of politics: he recognised the need for firm government and yet distrusted what absolute power does to rulers and to the people around them.
Thomas Gordon, who lived from 1691 to 1750, was a Scottish-born writer in London. His English edition of Tacitus, issued in the early eighteenth century, was widely read. It is more than a plain translation, because Gordon added long political discourses of his own, and he plainly saw in the Roman story a mirror for the politics of his time. Hearing his version today lets us meet two writers at once, the ancient historian and the eighteenth-century commentator.
This LibriVox recording of the first volume lasts a little over fifteen hours and is divided into 29 sections, among them the dedication to Sir Robert Walpole and several of Gordon's discourses. It was read by a team of volunteers. It will suit listeners who like history with a sharp edge, or who want to see how an earlier age read the classics.
Gordon's long discourses are as much a part of the experience as the Roman text itself. They show how eighteenth-century readers used the ancient world to argue about kings, ministers and the rights of subjects, and they give the volume a distinctly English flavour, shrewd and combative.
Public domain
Thomas Gordon died in 1750: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text