The Twelve Caesars

Suetonius

Penguin, Dec 31, 2002 - Fiction - 363 pages

As private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, Suetonius gained access to the imperial archives and used them (along with carefully gathered eye-witness accounts) to produce one of the most colourful biographical works in history. 'The Twelve Caesars' chronicles the public careers and private lives of the men who wielded absolute power over Rome, from the foundation of the empire under Julius Caesar and Augustus, to the decline into depravity and civil war under Nero, and the recovery and stability that came with his successors. A masterpiece of anecdote, wry observation and detailed physical description, 'The Twelve Caesars' presents us with a gallery of vividly drawn - and all too human - individuals.

Contents

• JULIUS CAESAR: 1
• AUGUSTUS: 45
• TIBERIUS: 108
• GAIUS CALIGULA: 150
• CLAUDIUS: 183
• NERO: 213
• GALBA: 249
• OTHO: 262
• VITELLIUS: 270
• VESPASIAN: 281
• TITUS: 296
• DOMITIAN: 303
• Key to Terms: 321
• Key to Place Names: 327
• Maps: 331
• Notes: 343
• Index of Personal Names and Peoples: 351

About the author

Robert Graves (also known as Robert Ranke Graves) was born in 1895 in London and served in World War I. Goodbye to All That: an Autobiography (1929), was published at age thirty three, and gave a gritty portrait of his experiences in the trenches. Graves edited out much of the stark reality of the book when he revised it in 1957. Although his most popular works, I, Claudius (1934) and its sequel, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina (1935), were produced for television by the BBC in 1976 and seen in America on Masterpiece Theater, he was also famous as a poet, producing more than 50 volumes of poetry. Graves was awarded the 1934 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Also a distinguished academic, Graves was a professor of English in Cairo, Egypt, in 1926, a poetry professor at Oxford in the 1960s, and a visiting lecturer at universities in England and the U.S. He wrote translations of Greek and Latin works, literary criticism, and nonfiction works on many other topics, including mythology and poetry. He lived most of his life in Majorca, Spain, and died after a protracted illness in 1985.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Twelve Caesars; Classics Series; Penguin classics
• Author: Suetonius
• Translated by: Robert Graves
• Contributor: Michael Grant
• Edition: illustrated, revised
• Publisher: Penguin, 2002
• ISBN: 0140449213, 9780140449211
• Length: 363 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Literary