Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56-10?) was a Roman historian, the author of, among other works, two long histories covering the imperial history from AD 14 to 96. These works are today known as the Histories and the Annals. Tacitus drew on previous historical works, on public records, and on his own experience. His accounts show a nostalgia for the earlier days of the free republic and an aversion to autocracy.

While the authenticity of some of Tacitus' earlier works is in question, the Annals are generally regarded as both authentic and historically accurate. In spite of the fact that our knowledge of Annals 11-16 relies on one extant manuscript, the authenticity of Book 15 is not in question.

Bulgakov's notes contains copies of this passage in French and Latin. (Ianovskaia, Tvorcheskii put', 251). Tacitus mentions Christ in the context of persecution of the Christians under Nero:

Part of this passage (Bk 15) in the Annals (109) reads

  Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

(translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb)

The full text is available at the Internet Classics Archive.