Tacitus

Tacitus was a senator and consul under the emperors he described, married to the daughter of Agricola, and the greatest historian Rome produced. The Histories cover the civil wars of 69 and the Flavians; the Annals, written last, go back to Tiberius, Claudius and Nero, in a compressed, bitter Latin that makes every sentence an accusation. Germany uses the tribes beyond the Rhine as a mirror for Roman decay. Only fragments survive of both histories, and a single manuscript of each; Gibbon, who learned from him how to write about decline, called him the first of historians who applied the science of philosophy to the study of facts.