An Historian fit for a Queen? Elizabeth I’s translation of the Annales and the Tacitean Turn

The re-emergence of Elizabeth I’s translation of Tacitus has important implications not only for our understanding of the queen’s literary tastes and pursuits, but also for our understanding of Tacitus’s reputation in the final decades of the sixteenth century (LPL MS 683; see Philo 2020b). After all, there could hardly have been a stronger endorsement for the study of a particular historian at court than the queen’s own reading and translation thereof. Elizabeth’s Tacitus encompasses the first book of the Annales, covering a period of history that witnessed extraordinary changes in the traditional political structures of Rome, namely the gradual centralisation of power in the emperor Augustus and Rome’s transition from republic to principate. Taken on its own, the first book might be read as illustrating the stabilizing effects of monarchical government for a troubled state, a theme which, as is explored below, also underpinned the queen’s translation of Cicero’s Pro Marcello. By examining Elizabeth’s choices as a translator and her implicit support of Tacitus as an historian suitable for study at court, this article underlines the significance of the queen and her translation in the early modern reception of Tacitus.