Tacitus’ biography of his father-in-law, one of Rome’s enemies, as part of a set-piece speech delivered before he enters battle with Agricola, challenges Roman rule and what it adds up to. The Romans, he insists, are the robbers of the world, insatiable for domination and profit. And in a much-quoted phrase that still hits home, he sums up the Roman imperial project: ‘they create desolation and call it peace’, ‘solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant’.
