The Twelve Caesars

Back in 2005 I learned of The Twelve Caesars on Radio 4. It was part of "A Good Read" or some similar program. Anyway, I was intrigued by the sound of this book that has so influenced writers ever since it was published nearly two thousand years ago. I was not disappointed by the book and managed to read it in a course of an afternoon! Suetonius's history of the early Roman empire covers Julius Caesar and the eleven emperors who followed: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. Each chapter is a combination of political critique, straight history and best of all a scandal sheet. The combination paints a perfect picture of both how modern Rome was and how little we've changed over the millennia. Each chapter is only about 40 pages and the version I read didn't bloat the text with a bunch of unnecessary annotations. It was nice to read Seutonius's history (translated, of course) without interruption from overly helpful editors. It's such a rare thing now to be able to read a classic without the editor or translator breaking in with notes on things that don't need annotation (like definition of words or a quick who's who for some mentioned historical figure).

Short biographies of the first twelve Roman Emperors, starting with Julius Caesar and finishing with Domitian.

Suetonius starts each summary with the family origins and the upbringing after which, not always in chronological order, important historical events, descend to become Emperor and personal virtues / flaws of the emperors are discussed.

One should not expect that all what Suetonius wrote is the truth or close to it, as he ,as a member of Senator class, for sure had prejudgments of some Emperors, who didn't treat the Senat properly.

But what it is is an interesting piece of historical literature, capturing to some extent the feelings of one part of society, and this shortly written after the time frame it is covering. For that alone it is worth reading.

Revisiting this for my honours thesis and finding it a surprisingly enjoyable read! Much more so than when I first dealt with it, but it wasn't so relevant to my interests then, whereas it certainly is now.