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Tacitus

4 stories mention Tacitus on DeadlyCurious.

The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Circus Maximus, Rome

The Six-Day Roman Fire of July 64 CE That Destroyed Ten of the City's Fourteen Districts and Was Almost Certainly Not Started by the Emperor

A fire began in the wooden Circus Maximus shops in Rome on the night of 18-19 July 64 CE. It burned for six days and destroyed three of Rome's fourteen districts completely, with substantial damage to seven more. Emperor Nero was at his villa in Antium when the fire began and returned to Rome to organise relief. The story that he "fiddled" while it burned was a hostile reconstruction recorded by Suetonius decades later.

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The Footnote June 26, 2026 · Rome

The Greek Soldier Who Wrote the Last Great Latin History of the Roman Empire

Ammianus Marcellinus was a Greek-speaking Roman army officer who wrote, in his retirement at Rome in the 380s and early 390s AD, a thirty-one-book Latin history covering the years 96 to 378 AD. The eighteen surviving books are the principal narrative source for 4th-century Roman politics, religion, and military affairs.

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The Footnote June 26, 2026 · Stabiae, Bay of Naples

The Roman Admiral Who Sailed Toward the Erupting Volcano to Rescue People and Died on the Beach

Pliny the Elder commanded the Roman naval fleet at Misenum on 24 August 79 AD when Vesuvius erupted. He ordered the fleet to evacuate civilians from the affected shore. He died on the beach at Stabiae approximately twenty hours later, probably of a heart attack triggered by inhaled volcanic gas. His nephew Pliny the Younger wrote the eyewitness account.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Pompeii

The Earthquake That Hit Pompeii Seventeen Years Before Vesuvius and Should Have Warned Everyone

A major earthquake struck Pompeii on 5 February 62 AD, doing substantial damage across the city and the neighbouring Vesuvian region. Most of it was still under repair when Vesuvius erupted seventeen years later. Modern volcanology now reads the 62 AD earthquake as the unheeded magmatic-warning sign of the 79 AD catastrophe.

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