Rives received his PhD in Classics from Stanford University (1990) and taught at Columbia University and at York University in Toronto before moving to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is Kenan Eminent Professor of Classics. His other works includethe Germania and the Historiae.

In 77 he married the daughter of Agricola, conqueror of Britain, of whom he later wrote a biography. Tacitus studied rhetoric in Rome and rose to eminence as a pleader at the Roman Bar. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. The warlike German tribes are the focus of Tacitus' attention in the Germania, which, like the Agricola, often compares the behaviour of 'barbarian' peoples favourably with the decadence and corruption of Imperial Rome.įor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. It offers fascinating descriptions of the geography, climate and peoples of the country, and a succinct account of the early stages of the Roman occupation, nearly fatally undermined by Boudicca's revolt in AD 61 but consolidated by campaigns that took Agricola as far as Anglesey and northern Scotland.

The Agricola is both a portrait of Julius Agricolathe most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus' well-loved and respected father-in-lawand the first detailed account of Britain that has come down to us.

The agricola and the germania