The Lives of the Caesars

The Lives of the Caesars

About the Book

A masterful new translation of Suetonius' renowned biography of the twelve Caesars, bringing to life a portrait of the first Roman emperors in stunning detail

A Penguin Classic


The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biographies invite us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than those by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the center of Rome and power, in the early 2nd century AD.

By placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius succeeded in painting Rome’s ultimate portraits of power. The shortfalls, foreign policy crises and sex scandals of the emperors are laid bare; we are shown their tastes, their foibles, their eccentricities; we sit at their tables and enter their bedrooms. The result is perhaps the most influential series of biographies ever written.

That Rome lives more vividly in people's imagination than any other ancient empire owes an inordinate amount to Suetonius. Now award-winning author and translator Tom Holland brings us even closer in a new, spellbinding translation. Giving a deeper understanding of the personal lives of Rome’s first emperors, and of how they swayed the fates of millions, The Lives of the Caesars is an astonishing, immersive experience of a time and culture at once familiar and utterly alien to our own.
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A Penguin Classics Hardcover Series

The Lives of the Caesars
Metamorphoses
The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
The Prophet
The Prince
Letters to a Young Poet
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Beautiful and Damned
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About the Author

Suetonius
Not much is known about the life of Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. He was probably born in AD 69—the famous ‘year of the four Emperors’—when his father, a Roman knight, served as a colonel in a regular legion and took part in the Battle of Betriacum. From the letters of Suetonius’ close friend Pliny the Younger we learn that he practiced briefly at the bar, avoided political life, and became chief secretary to the Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-38). He was one of several Palace officials, including the Guards Commander, whom Hadrian, when he returned from Britain, dismissed for behaving impolitely to the Empress Sabina. Suetonius seems to have lived to a good age and probably died around the year AD 140. The titles of his books are recorded as follows: The Twelve Caesars, Royal Biographies, Lives of Famous Whores, Roman Masters and Customs, The Roman Year, Roman Festivals, Roman Dress, Greek Games, On Public Offices, Cicero’s Republic, The Physical Defects of Mankind, Methods of Reckoning Time, An Essay on Nature, Greek Terms of Abuse, Grammatical Problems and Critical Signs Used in Books. But apart from fragments of his Illustrious Writers, which include short biographies of Virgil, Horace and Lucan, the only extant book is The Twelve Caesars, one of the most fascinating and colorful of all Latin histories. More by Suetonius
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About the Author

Tom Holland

Tom Holland is the author of Rubicon, Persian Fire, The Forge of Christendom, and In the Shadow of the Sword and is the translator of The Histories by Herodotus. He wrote and presented Islam: The Untold Story, a documentary commissioned for Channel 4 in Britain based on In the Shadow of the Sword. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters.

More by Tom Holland
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