![]() ![]() ![]() His perspective is valuable, for it furnishes an antidote to the dark cynicism of the later Tacitus, who has few doubts that the Augustan principate sounded the death knell of the Roman republic. In much the same way as the texts of Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus reflect the circumstances of their production, the value of Velleius lies in his place as one of the chief literary artefacts of the immediate post-Augustan era and thus a product of the emerging principate. ![]() One particularly interesting aspect of the brief Historia (contained in two books yet covering the period from the founding of Rome down to 29 CE) is in the manner it bridges and even masks the transition from republic to principate. Tony Woodman's magisterial commentaries on Book 2, in particular, represented a watershed moment, both restoring a measure of dignity to Velleius and signaling the profound importance of this historian to our understanding of the Augustan and Tiberian periods. This disdain, unfortunately reflected in the paucity of English translations of Velleius, has certainly been tempered in light of reevaluations of his work. Judged to be historically superficial, marred by an overbearing urge to please the emperor Tiberius, and a vehicle for imperial propaganda, Velleius' work has been given generally short shrift in or omitted from most discussions of Roman historical writing. ![]()
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