I INTRODUCTION: AUGUSTUS AND HISTORY PageBook=>001 THE greatest of the Roman historians began his Annals with the accession to the Principate of Tiberius, stepson and son by adoption of Augustus, consort in his powers. […] Tacitus in his Histories told of a great civil war, the foundation of a new dynasty, and its degeneration into despotism; in his Annals he sought to demonstrate that the Principate of the Julii and Claudii was a tyranny, tracing year by year from Tiberius down to Nero the merciless extinction of the old aristocracy.