The Twelve Caesars

Suetonius wrote his short biographies of Julius Caesar and the following eleven Roman Emperors sometime in the second century AD, probably during the reign of Hadrian.

Although it is biased in order to keep in the good books of the Emperor, it is a great source for the history of the early empire. More importantly though, it is a damned good read, full of gossip and scandal, murder and treachery, and it has delighted and horrified readers for nearly two thousand years.

Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is also a good contemporary biographical source, but can’t compete… show more.

It’s important to state up-front that Seutonius is garbage. You need to consider him to be like the National Enquirer or TMZ of his era. He was all about the clickbait; in that regard, centuries ahead of his time. That said, the salacious stories in here are pure fun and inspired Robert Graves in his creation of I Claudius.

The Twelve Caesars is the first book I read about ancient Rome, back in college. It’s old. Written by Suetonius, an ancient historian (AD 69 – AD 122, approximately). A wonderful storyteller, with a penchant for embellishment, in this book you’ll find Suetonius’s titillating tales about twelve Caesars including Caligula (notoriously insane), Nero (quite the sociopath), Julius, and others. This book is far from dry, a bestseller since the first century, AD.

For anyone looking for an introduction into the lives of the early emperors, Suetonius provides plenty of gossip and scandal. The Penguin translation is a rollicking good read. From Julius Caesar through to Domitian, the lives and deeds of the first dozen Emperors are subjected to scrutiny. Some of the tales may be hearsay, some may be exaggerated, some may even be invented, but Suetonius knows how to portray characters in an entertaining way.