A collection of 12 biographies covering Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire in historical order. It was written in 121 CE by Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars is, along with Tacitus’s Histories and the Annals and Cassius Dio’s History of Rome, one of the earliest sources that has a narrative covering political events in the Roman Empire from about the mid-first century BCE to 96 CE, which covers the fall of the Roman Republic through to the end of Rome’s second imperial dynasty, the Flavians.

Historians still debate how reliable The Twelve Caesars is. As someone working for Trajan and Hadrian, he likely had a political motive in making the emperor Domitian look bad.

The book is largely responsible for that vivid picture of Roman society and its leaders, morally and politically decadent, that dominated historical thought until modified in modern times by the discovery of nonliterary evidence. The biographies are organized not chronologically but by topics: the emperor’s family background, career before accession, public actions, private life, appearance, personality, and death. Though free with scandalous gossip, they are largely silent on the growth, administration, and defense of the empire. Suetonius is free from the bias of the senatorial class that distorts much Roman historical writing. His sketches of the habits and appearance of the emperors are invaluable, but, like Plutarch, he used “characteristic anecdote” without exhaustive inquiry into its authenticity. ( )

Excellent introduction to the beginnings of the Roman Emperors. ( )

Suetonius is a greater chore to read than Tacitus, but his gossip is juicier. Pliny the Younger (of Letters fame) was Suetonius' patron, helping to secure him a sequence of senior positions in the empire. He rose to this height on the strength of his scholarship, and that is on display here in the greatest of his works. His format, however, is prone to challenge. It is not a chronological history, as in Plutarch, but a categorized listing of the key elements which stand out about each of the first twelve Caesars of Rome. This may have suited conventions of the time but perhaps not the subject matter.

Robert Graves did a famous translation of this work, and it shows in his novel "I, Claudius" which I read a couple of years ago. I'm glad I read that first, so that I could read through its source material after the fact and make all the connections. Suetonius paints a very dark portrait of Tiberius, and makes it clear that the loss of Germanicus as an alternative heir to Augustus was a terrible blow to Rome. Tiberius was malicious, and Caligula was such a horror show it's only a wonder he wasn't murdered sooner. Claudius feels more maligned than he deserves; that might be Graves rubbing off on me but surely he could have been more appreciated for not being a monster, as they soon got again in Nero (and again foregoing a better choice, Britannicus.) The next six Caesars are covered more briefly as the title was tossed around for a few months until Vespasian caught it, handing it down to his sons.

Not one of these Caesars, not even the kinder ones, envisioned the concept of restraining their power in some codified way. There is only the occasional discussion about restoring the Republic, an idea that never got serious wheels under it. Thus whenever the new Caesar started delivering random off-with-their-heads orders, off went the heads, until the inevitable assasination so that the next Caesar could start it all over again. I'm looking forward to Gibbon's story of how well that turned out for them. ( )

As Nick said, "Of course you didn't like a 2000 year old book. Look at 'Die Hard', it's only 20 years old."

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I first encountered the name of Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus during lectures in an undergraduate course in Medieval History over a half-century ago. A few years later, he became better known to me as a source for Robert Graves' "I, Claudius" a fictional treatment of "The Twelve Caesars" based on the collection of biographies of Julius Caeser and the first eleven emperors of the Roman Empire. So, I have belatedly gotten around to blowing the dust off my Penguin Classics edition of Suetonius' work translated by none other than Robert Graves.

The first thing to note about Suetonius' account of the lives of the Julian and Flavian emperors is that his style is for the most part matter of fact and only occasionally given to judgements of the virtues and vices of his subjects. Some of the supporting characters who dominated the story in I, Claudias, rate only passing references in Suetonius' biographies.

He begins each biography with the ancestry of each subject, both the actual predecessors and in some cases the invented ancestry potentially reaching back to the gods. He follows with a history of their early lives, military careers, rise through the maze of political offices, major and minor, their marriages, divorces, their offspring both natural and adopted.

He then provides an account of how they rose or were drafted into the status of emperor. He chronicles the early years (or in some cases months) of their reign, their conduct of public affairs at the height of their power and the circumstances which led to their downfall frequently by violence.

Most of the story, not surprisingly is given over to Julius Caesar and the first five emperors who followed him and who are best known to students and general readers of ancient history: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. Their stories take up a little under 80% of the text. The biographies of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian occupy the remaining 20+%.

One of the recurring themes in these brief biographies is the tendency of the various emperors to begin their reigns as moderate, public spirited "uniters" and reformers who respected the norms and protocols of Rome's traditions, religion and civic institutions. They are builders of great public works and benefactors to the Roman people and especially the military.

Eventually, the emperors, particularly beginning with Tiberius, indulge their vices which are many and extreme: sexual license and perversion, rapacious greed, gluttony and the arbitrary application of justice, notable not only for the usual practice of helping friends and/or hurting enemies, but also how it was leveraged in the service of the other vices mentioned above. The arbitrariness of Rome's rulers was matched by their extreme cruelty and the condemnation of accused who were guilty of absolutely nothing. And this is how they treated their own citizens and countrymen. Their treatment of their conquered enemies was equally "enlightened". As one barbarian chieftain is supposed to have said, "Rome creates a desert and calls it peace".

If you pick up the "The Twelve Caesars" expecting a sensational tale of orgies, bloodletting, poisonings, family betrayals, and politics played for keeps, you will likely be disappointed. It's all there, but in sober, detached, and measured rhetoric. For the "good stuff" take up "I, Claudius" or pop-in the DVDs of the Masterpiece Theater version of Graves' work. ( )