Tacitus, a Roman senator writing in the early second century, left the Annals, his history of the Julio-Claudian emperors. This is Book 2. Book 1 opened after Augustus, the first emperor, died at Nola in Italy; Tiberius took the throne, a spare heir was killed, and Germanicus, the popular nephew, faced mutinous army units on the Rhine while Drusus faced the same on the Danube.

Germanicus carries the war against Arminius, the German chieftain who once destroyed three Roman army units, called legions, in the Teutoburg Forest, and hunts the wreck of the general Varus through the woods. He recovers the lost eagles, the standards of those units. Thusnelda, Arminius’s wife, is taken. Tiberius, jealous of that glory, recalls the young Caesar and sends him east. At Antioch, in what is now Turkey, Germanicus dies. Rumor names poison and Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, a rival. Agrippina the Elder comes home with the ashes. Hope acquires a funeral.