Suetonius' writing on everyone from Caesar-Domitian and their careers, family origin and personal habits is a very entertaining read; but I would say it should not be taken at 100% accuracy. Much like Herodotus, a lot of the more depraved things sound cliched and slanderous.
If Tiberius was such a staunch legalist, why did he causally ignore laws whenever he felt like it? Did Caligula really sleep with his sisters or was he protective of them since everyone else in his family was murdered. Is Otho really such a romantic hero when Tacitus claims he was responsible for Galbas death?
One must really read between the lines and list common Roman cliches and tropes when reading through this.
All and all, it's a very good read.
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Just got the book delivered. Was really disappointed as the book looks very damaged from the top side, and pretty dirty. However the pages themselves are a nice clear white.
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Just got the book delivered. Was really disappointed as the book looks very damaged from the top side, and pretty dirty. However the pages themselves are a nice clear white.
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Arrived just how I expected it to. The book’s in wonderful condition, and everything looks like how it should. I have yet to read it, but based on product appearance alone, I definitely recommend!!
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Andrew Reece
'The Twelve Caesars' Is Suetonius' Finest Work, & The Perfect Introduction To Roman History.
Reviewed in the United States on 7 March 2022Verified Purchase
Andrew Reece
Reviewed in the United States on 7 March 2022
Suetonius possesses a somewhat dubious reputation amongst the historian crowd as being considered the 'sensationalist writer' of antiquity. (It's like being a known writer of the 'National Enquirer' in Ancient Rome.) This causes his work to be regarded with a fair amount of skepticism & because of it the books he wrote that survived aren't taken as seriously as those of his contemporaries' such as Tacitus.
This book probably should be taken more seriously than it is, but there's so much humor injected into 'Caesars' that it's hard not to become addicted to the way Suetonius writes. Many of the Roman emperors appearing in 'Caesars' seem a lot more human when you read the often-comical events chronicled by the author. Many of these bios contain deeds, or exploits, that Roman emperors probably didn't think twice about after they occurred, because they were just funny little anecdotes or encounters. Part of their daily routine. Did you know that some guy saw Gaius Caligula standing next to a statue of a Roman god & told the emperor he was just a big humbug ? Caligula didn't have him executed, he just laughed it off. The Divine Augustus heard about a senator who was contemplating suicide. A man with a family, a wife & children. Do you know what Augustus did ? He personally visited the man & talked him out of it. Isn't that just wonderful ? I think so. It's achievements such as what I just described that makes men & women in power truly great. For all of the atrocities that occurred throughout history, it's the wonderful actions of kindness that bring me the most joy when I read about them. Noblemen, commoners, it doesn't matter who did it. It's just fantastic that writers such as Suetonius, actually took the time to record them.
I think anyone can relate with the feeling of grim satisfaction everyone sometimes feels upon reading about a man who has caused others to suffer is punished by a just magistrate, or person in authority. But I find myself reading about men in history, powerful men with ruthless reputations, & reading about their merciful actions, or indulgences permitted to those people serving them who they possessed affection for. Did you know that Julius Caesar when he marched with his troops would sometimes let his officers sleep in his tent while he slept outside ? Suetonius knew about it. He wrote about it so nobody would forget. Tiberius was so enthusiastic about mythology that he would have men well-versed in it engage in discussions with him throughout his day at his villa on the island of Capri. Augustus' successor had a 'unique' style of rule that didn't exactly make him a Roman fan favorite, but you can see through Augustus' correspondence with him just how much affection the two men had for one another.
Suetonius' style is absolutely brimming with his emotion, his wit, his linguistic drolleries. He's freaking hilarious to read, & from what Rives has written in his introduction, Suetonius' work is remarkably accurate to boot. What does that mean? It means that the information contained in 'The Twelve Caesars' doesn't seem like a bunch of rigamarole & fabricated exaggerations that didn't really happen, Suetonius probably performed the same amount of research on this work that any other historian living in that age did for theirs. He was from an equestrian family with a credible reputation, & he was well-regarded by his contemporaries such as Pliny the Younger & Cornelius Tacitus.
'The Twelve Caesars' is composed in a style that I had never encountered prior to reading it, & I am now hopelessly addicted to it in every way. Suetonius really doesn't follow any biographical template or guidelines throughout the course of this book. There's a format, kind of, that he uses but it's very unorthodox in its presentation, which makes it all the more endearing to me. 'The Twelve Caesars' is an informal set of twelve short biographies, of varying length & subject matter, on the first twelve emperors of the Roman Empire. It's like Suetonius decided that he wanted to create this magnum opus about the twelve Caesars but he didn't really feel like following the rules that everyone else adhered to when they wrote biographies; he wanted to do it his way. And he did. Sadly, 'The Twelve Caesars' wasn't the only part of Suetonius' life in which he did not follow the rules. He served as 'ab epistulis' (this is the Roman equivalent to an imperial secretary in charge of the emperor's personal correspondences) to the emperor Hadrian until he was alleged to be having an affair with Hadrian's wife, Vibia Sabina. He was dismissed from service for the transgression.
'The Twelve Caesars' commences with a biography of Julius Caesar & concludes in the reign of Domitian, going right up to 96 A.D. with his assassination. The base text of 'Caesars' in this edition runs in at about 310 pages, trade paperback. One of the many things I find amusing about the book is that there's very little rhyme or reason to the length of each Roman emperor's section, all of which are in chronological order (Rives touches on this in the introduction, his insights are quite engaging if the reader just takes a bit of time to study them). There are many theories as to why this occurs but I think it just comes down to Suetonius' judgment or personal preference. None of the emperors chronicled in 'The Twelve Caesars' were still ruling when 'The Twelve Caesars' was released in 121 A.D. plus Suetonius dedicated the book to a very close friend of his. He probably didn't have to worry about pleasing his editor or being politically correct, his family was powerful enough where he probably had no need to adhere to any guidelines save those which were self-imposed. If he liked a particular emperor or if he thought well of him, he probably made their biography indicative of what he felt on the man, such as he did with Augustus. And if he didn't like the emperor, or if the emperor just wasn't a good guy to begin with, that is also made abundantly clear. Galba's biography is eleven pages long, he reigned for about 6 months; Otho's section nine pages, he reigned for around 3 months. But Titus, who was a legitimate Flavian emperor & in power for two full years, is allotted six pages. Octavian, or Augustus, by whatever name you know him by, has the longest biography at 61 pages, which makes sense as his time in power was the longest, from 27 B.C. - 14 A.D. Nero's section is fairly lengthy, however in his biography Suetonius isn't chronicling the military or diplomatic successes of the Neronian era. If you know about what Nero "accomplished" during the time he was in power, I'm sure you have an idea of what kind of information it contains.
While each of the twelve biographies is intended to chronicle the respective emperor's notable accomplishments during the years they were in power, sometimes Suetonius glosses over certain subjects, people or events closely related to the ruler in question & omits others, entirely. Again, Rives' introduction does a great job of bringing these insights to the reader's attention when they go through the text of 'The Twelve Caesars'. And Suetonius does a great job of making the reader laugh his or her ass off via his good-natured sarcasm & amusing witticisms.
If you want to know the details of the First & Second Battles of Cremona, seek them elsewhere, because you won't find them here. Read the work of that Cornelius Tacitus fellow. But if you want to read a hilarious anecdote about Claudius trying to give a speech on Roman History but he can't quite get the words out, because he's laughing uncontrollably after seeing some fat man break a bench full of people after he tried to sit on it, then you're in the right place. Suetonius, on occasion, will abruptly launch his humor at you like a well-aimed manhole cover, following discussion on a serious subject for three pages. It's the little anecdotes like the one I just described with Claudius that make history come alive to me, the not-so-impressive events which suddenly make the Romans more to me than merely words, on a page, in a book.
And Suetonius' imperfect writing style only adds to that level of endearment. His sentences often go on for entire paragraphs without surcease. He meanders, dancing from topic to topic with no agility or dexterity to speak of in his sentence structure. There's nothing glamorous about Suetonius' haphazard, ADHD composition style. If you read Niccolò Machiavelli's 'Istorie Fiorentine', you will notice that his narrative is jarring & uneven. But it's because Niccolò had been exiled from politics & he had a bunch of pent-up feelings which he had nowhere else to go with. So his narrative came out in spurts, choppy & inconsistent. Suetonius' rhetoric is just raw & unformatted. He was writing about a bunch of men who were already dead so there was no danger of offending the emperor in power, because he had already done that by his ill-fated romantic shenanigans trying to woo the empress. So old Suetonius Tranquillus cared little & less about offending people, but that is precisely why it's so much fun to read ! He just wanted to write something fun & dedicate it to his friend Septivius Clavus.
He cites a joke people spread about Caesar making his co-consul's decisions for him, then explains the joke when the punchline is pretty easy to spot without a detailed explanation. But the fact that he takes the time to explain it makes it all the more hilarious. I didn't mind, it shows that Suetonius cared about the work he did being understood when people read it. He includes odd rhymes or actually documents public 'songs' meant as mockeries intended to make fun of the ruler in question, often inserting them into the text with very little explanation. He has a tendency to give so much information that the reader is bombarded with it, details on Octavian's personal grooming habits, or his favorite expressions (quicker than boiled asparagus). Caligula used to tease Caesonia & (playfully) threaten to torture her to discover why he loved her so passionately. He wasn't actually going to DO it, all sources indicate that Caligula & Caesonia were faithful to each other until their deaths. It was probably just a playful joke the two shared that ended up being documented. When Galba came to Rome from the then-backwater province of Hispania (Spain) because he wanted to just waltz in & become the emperor, he went into a theater & was greeted by a mocking song comparing him to some country bumpkin who had just "come down from the farm". If the Romans didn't like you, they let you know about it.
'The Twelve Caesars' is a fairly fast read, at least it was for me, & I am just a layman who looks at the work with a layman's perspective (A layperson is just a regular person without any technical area of expertise in a particular field of study). There are copious supplemental materials in this edition, such as a glossary of relevant Latin/Roman terminology, expanded notes located at the end of the volume, & numerous maps displaying the various areas of the Roman Empire at the time of 'Caesars' complete with the Roman nomenclature of the locations.
When I first started reading 'The Twelve Caesars' or 'De Vita Caesarum' in Latin, I thought it was going to be a fairly onerous task, full of boring historically-significant-but-extremely-dull information about a bunch of dead Roman guys. As you can see, it ended up being quite a bit more than that for me. Suetonius' unique writing style made all of the difference while I read through 'Caesars', that & his inclusion of humorous anecdotes & random occurrences that most people wouldn't even think twice about, let alone commit to paper. I wonder if Suetonius knew that over 2000 years after his death people would be reading his work & still enjoying it. Because if there's one thing about 'The Twelve Caesars' that is abundantly obvious it is that Suetonius wrote it with intention that it was to be enjoyed.
If you are on the fence about Roman History, or curious to see if you'd like the area of subject matter, I most emphatically would recommend 'The Twelve Caesars' to you, in the strongest possible terms. For the price, you can't go wrong with this Penguin Classics edition. It has everything you could possibly need to enrich your experience, no question.
I really hope you enjoyed reading my review, thanks so much for your time !
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