Tacitus wrote the darkest history of the early emperors: how liberty died in Rome and everyone learned to clap. He was a senator looking back from a later reign. Book 1 opens after Augustus, the first emperor, dies. Tiberius takes the throne as if against his will. A spare heir is killed in a hurry that smells of the palace. The funeral is a pageant of old republican honors draped over a monarchy.

On the Rhine, Germanicus — the golden nephew, loved as Tiberius is not — faces mutinous legions demanding pay and discharge. On the Danube, Drusus faces the same fire. The army, not the Senate, is what makes a prince. You do not need the family tree already. This is a free city becoming a court, written by a man who still remembered what the air used to taste like.