Resumen de Sul numero dei libri degli Annales e delle Historiae di Tacito: Un riesame della questione
There are two main hypotheses generally taken into account about the number of books in Tacitus’ major works: one assigns sixteen books to the Annals and fourteen to the Histories, the other ‒ which is predominant in recent literature on Tacitus ‒ eighteen to the Annals and twelve to the Histories. In this paper, it is argued that there are reasons to suspect that the latter view is flawed, and that the Histories originally comprised more than twelve volumes. The arguments presented also attempt to demonstrate that, even if Tacitus wrote eighteen books of Annals, it is anything but certain that the Histories consisted of only twelve books. Adequate space is devoted to the discussion and rejection of the hypothesis (put forward by Timothy D. Barnes and endorsed by other scholars) according to which a brief sentence in the Chronicles of Sulpicius Severus (II 29, 5), referring to Nero’s death, could represent a fragment of the final section of the Annals, now lost.
