Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (c. AD 56 - c. 120) was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is considered by modern scholars to be one of the greatest Roman historians. He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and has a reputation for the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, as well as for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics. The surviving portions of his two major works-the Annals and the Histories-examine the reigns of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors (69 AD). These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus, in 14 AD, to 70 AD in the First Jewish-Roman War of 66-73.