Tacitus the Epic Successor

Allusions to the epic poets Virgil and Lucan in the writing of the Roman historian Tacitus (c. 55 - c. 120 C.E.) have long been noted. This monograph argues that Tacitus fashions himself as a rivaling literary successor to these poets; and that the emulative allusions to Virgil's Aeneid and Lucan's Bellum Civile in Books 1-3 of his inaugural historiographical work, the Histories, complement and bu...