The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

Name: The Lives of the Twelve Caesars
Author: Suetonius

Suetonius

Biography as character study: each emperor is judged by private vice and public act together, which set the pattern for how Rome's rulers have been remembered ever since.

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Where it is now wrong

Suetonius sets rumour and verdict side by side without marking which is which. The lurid material that made the book famous is court gossip recorded a century later, and historians read it as evidence of what Romans said about their emperors, not of what they did.

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FreeEntryabout 16 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026

If this is the wrong level

Too easy? Go hereThe AnnalsTacitus, 117Traces the reigns from Tiberius to Nero to argue that the forms of the Republic were kept while its substance was hollowed out, and that autocracy corrupted the senate as much as the emperors.

Groundwork for

Works in the library that name this one as a prerequisite.

Historia AugustaAelius Spartianus et al., 400A set of imperial biographies from Hadrian to the end of the Third Century crisis, of disputed authorship and date, read now as much for what its fabrications reveal about later Roman historiography as for its facts.

Filed under Ancient Rome in History.