The main content of the works of Tacitus is socially and politically oriented. These are reflections on the historical role of Rome in relation to the surrounding nations, the collapse of the old republican foundations and the triumph of imperial power, patriotic bravado about the power of the Empire, turning into dramatic descriptions of the decline of the moral foundations of the population of Rome.

Time was estimated by Tacitus from the point of view of his political context; therefore, it is represented by segments consisting of consular periods, military campaigns, and stories about social and political life, and all this is woven together by one common thread – the formation of the Roman World and its romanization. Peace time for him is the time of enjoying the «benefits of peace», public time is the time of hard work in the name of the glory of the Empire. War for him is a drama, but it was the war that promoted the formation of the «Roman World».

In the perception of space, Tacitus is skeptical about the fantasies of his people about the periphery and the cosmos. The sacred center of the world – Rome – was perceived by the historian ambivalent. On the one hand, Rome, as the center of the world, connected the world of the gods with the space of people (vertically) and pushed to itself the whole space of «Pax Romana» (horizontally). But this is his «universal» mission did not correlate with the unworthy manifestations of the space of everyday life.

Time in Tacitus has the following properties: the ability to roll back, dynamism, eventful saturation. He has a tendency towards individualization of time, and his orientation is carried out according to the years of the reign of the consuls.

In the works of Tacitus, the action of the two main driving forces of the historical process is observed. First, these are individual interests and aspirations, in which the individualization of time is expressed. He recognizes the fundamental role of the individual in history (which is completely inconsistent with the polis republican ideology). The second driving force behind his story is the influence of the will («anger») of the gods and the inevitability of fate.

The consciousness of Tacitus as an erudite historian, who had the opportunity to compare the past and the present, which belonged to his time and his civilization, reflected a specific refraction of Roman history, expressed in its complex and contradictory historiosophical concept.

The perception of the past was carried out by Tacitus through the prism of two opposing trends: the attainment of the greatness and glory of Rome and the degradation of public morality. The first tendency was expressed in the idea of «Pax Romana», the essence of which was to spread Roman influence throughout the known world; it is, in other words, a kind of prototype of modern globalization. The idea of «Pax Romana» received its final design under Augustus, and, accordingly, the «Roman World» was conceived by Tacitus already existing in the present tense. The second, the opposite, is a tendency embodied in Tacitus in full acceptance of that formed in the first century. BC. the concept of «moral damage», which implies an assessment of Roman history from the point of view of moral degradation of society. In the past, there were examples of moral virtue, military prowess and just government. In the present, sacred laws and customs were violated all the time, the sanctity of the territory of Rome itself was desecrated, the fall of piety, one of the main components of the republican virtus, occurred.