The Lives of the Caesars

A gossipy, often racy biography of 12 rulers of the Roman Empire, from Julius Caesar to the emperor Domitian, written by the historian Suetonius in AD 121. Holland’s beautifully fluent translation is compulsively readable throughout – Jake Kerridge * Daily Telegraph *Tom Holland is a master populariser of the ancients … his new translation of Suetonius [is] a peerlessly enjoyable introduction to the earlier imperial Romans. [It] remind[s] us that the monsters who, astoundingly, achieve power in 21st-century democracies had forebears in the ancient world who matched them folly for folly, whim for whim, vanity for vanity. – Max Hastings * Sunday Times *Powerful … Suetonius’s biographies of the rulers of Rome, from Julius Caesar to the emperor Domitian, are rich in character and telling detail – as emerges with clarity from Tom Holland’s excellent new translation from the Latin. Holland conveys … the distinctive Roman character of the biographies [and] confronts us with a text from a culture quite different from our own – Roy Gibson * Times Literary Supplement *Tom Holland [is] the princeps (‘first citizen’) of popular Roman history … this vibrant new translation of Suetonius … combine[s] concision with accuracy [and is] closer to the original without slavishly being so. Readers coming to The Lives of the Caesars for the first time will find many dramatic and memorable scenes to detain them. – Mark Bostridge * Spectator *A scurrilous, wonderfully detailed potted history of 12 Roman rulers [that] gives[s] a coherent, sweeping account of how autocracy took root in the Roman state [and] shows the sheer theatricality it took to sustain an imperial image. There is plenty of contemporary resonance in this new translation by Tom Holland – Delphine Strauss * Financial Times *

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably born in AD 69 - the so-called ‘year of the four Emperors.\” He was described by Suetonius’ patron Pliny the Younger as a reserved and scholarly man, whose great passion in life was literature. His abilities won him a high position in the imperial secretariat. He served the emperor Hadrian as the emperor’s personal amenuensis, before being dismissed in obscure circumstances following a scandal that involved Hadrian’s wife. Suetonius seems to have lived to a good age and probably died around the year 140.

Tom Holland is an award-winning historian, biographer and broadcaster. He is the author of Rubicon, Persian Fire, Millennium, In the Shadow of the Sword, and Dynasty. His most recent book, Pax, covers the heyday of the Roman Empire, from the death of Nero to Hadrian. His translation of The Histories by Herodotus was published by Penguin Classics in 2013. He presents the world’s most popular history podcast, The Rest Is History.