The Long Year, A.D. 69

by Kenneth Wellesley

Few years in history, certainly in the Roman Empire, have been so eventful as A.D. 69. Exceptional years invite exceptional scrutiny, of everyday life as well as the deeds of the great. The present work seeks to provide a plain narrative of the events of that crowded year. Interwoven by cause and effect, framed in time and space, they embraced the whole Mediterranean world and created the second dynasty of imperial Rome. The web is intricate and colourful. That an attempt to retell the story some nineteen hundred years later is possible at all is largely due to the chance survival of the early books of Tacitus' "Histories," supported by other information in as generous (or as meagre) a bulk as the historian of ancient Rome can now hope to enjoy. But the Long Year provides us with a thousand problems - dark corners into which only a dim light penetrates from feeble candles, and which we think we can explore by inference, conjecture and imagination. "We dispose of no exhaustive official records or revealing memoirs," notes the author in his preface. “All the literary sources are liable to be rhetorical, partisan, moralizing or trivial. From the rest, industry and scholarship can glean a few straws in a field whose once abundant harvest has irrevocably vanished." Wellesley draws skillfully on his famous source but by no means exclusively or uncritically. His own interpretation of the motives and characters of the chief contestants and of the much debated battles of Cremona will appeal to the classical student and scholar; but all can enjoy his elegant, imaginative retelling of an exciting story now more than nineteen hundred years old.

Genres: History

234 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1989

Reviews

[Tim Hird-Devlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A year worthy of an HBO series. Written with the assumption of a reader with incredible knowledge and interest in European geography, and encyclopedic memory of Roman names

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will start this review off by saying right up front that this book is probably not as good as my rating; I felt a 3 seemed too negative but a 4 star seems excessive. I erred to the positive however as I felt the author was making a genuinely solid effort.

Wellesley is basically making a modernized re-write of Tacitus's "Histories" pertaining to the period surrounding A.D. 69 and its significance in the Roman Civil Wars. A fascinating period of intrigue and destruction, Wellesley reconstructs the verses by Tacitus and adds details available from other sources to flesh this chaotic time in Roman history. His added analysis of what was and was not written by Tacitus was quite interesting.

I'm rather fond of Tacitus, so I initially bristled at the idea of someone repackaging his works for the modern reader. This is not a direct translation, and does not try to mimic the grand eloquence of Tacitus's superior writing abilities. It does however condense and filter the works, putting a bit more effort into explaining the significance of events and the historical repercussions.

I found this book to be an honest effort at presenting the works of Tacitus in a clear and concise manner, and the usefulness of this book for war game enthusiasts is significant. Good detail is provided on the conflicts, enough to allow for game recreations.

While I still feel reading Tacitus directly is a better option, Wellesley does well enough here to earn a 3.5 star and a modest recommendation.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an outstandingly detailed description of the "Year of four emperors" which presented a bloody transition from the Julio-Claudian to the Flavian dynasty. Wellesley mines much of his material from Tacitus, but lays out the personalities and their likely motivations in a manner that is clear, direct, and understandable.

[James S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This enthusiastic account of AD 69, " The Year of Four Emperors", is marred by a few imperfections. One of these is that Wellesley refers extensively and in detail to place names, but provides very few and very inadequate maps. An example of this is found on page 39: "In the first half of January, he left Mainz in advance of his troops, and travelling on horseback up the bank of the Rhine arrived at the low plateau near the confluence of the Aare and the Reuss, upon which lay the permanent camp of the Twenty-First Legion at Windisch near Brugg in the Aargau." No map is provided for any of these troop movements.

A second error is that Wellesley provides the name of every person involved in the major events of the year, no matter how minor or tangential their involvement. This flurry of names can be distracting, as one is not sure which names are important.