Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. c.56 – c.120), the greatest of the Roman historians, chronicles the early Roman Empire, from the death of the first emperor Augustus (in A.D. 14) up to the years of the First Jewish-Roman War (A.D. 63 – 73). The Annals is his final work. It portrays the pathological souls of tyrants, the psychology of power politics, and the preciousness and precariousness of liberty.