Annals

Tacitus was a Roman senator who held the consulship in AD 97 and later governed the province of Asia. He wrote the Annals near the end of his life, year by year from the death of Augustus in AD 14. Only part survives: books 1–6, with a gap that swallows most of the years 29–31, and books 11–16, which break off in AD 66.

The passage that matters most here is 15.44. After the fire of Rome in AD 64, Tacitus says, Nero fixed the blame on a group “called Christians by the populace”, and he explains the name: Christus had been put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilatus while Tiberius was emperor. Tacitus was a child in 64 and wrote about fifty years later. He does not say where his information came from. He writes as an enemy of the Christians, whose belief he calls a “most mischievous superstition”, so the notice does not come from a sympathiser. He gives Pilate the title procurator; an inscription found at Caesarea calls him prefect.