Long before the scandalous pages of Lady Chatterley’s Lover stirred the imagination or the Marquis de Sade wrote his shocking tales, a Roman historian named Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus—known to generations of snickering schoolboys simply as ‘Suetonius’—was crafting a work that would forever change how we see the past.
His Lives of the Twelve Caesars, a vivid and unflinching chronicle of Rome’s earliest emperors, has now been reborn in a brilliant new translation by the excellent historian Tom Holland. A revered figure among enthusiasts of the ancient world, Holland has done justice to Suetonius’ original vision, preserving every salacious detail and colourful anecdote without sparing a single blush! The result is a text as raw, riveting, and unapologetic as Suetonius intended it to be.
We owe Suetonius a huge debt of gratitude, for he did far more than merely record history—he breathed life into it. In general the great figures of antiquity, such as the Egyptian pharaohs, are little more than names etched into stone, distant and impersonal, their deeds reduced to cold inscriptions on crumbling monuments. We know their names, but little else, and often what we do know reads like a CV of events and dates. Even the great Tutankhamun is a mystery to us, we don't really know how he died, what he looked like or even how old he was. We can guess, but that is about it. However, Suetonius transformed the early Roman emperors into flesh-and-blood characters, leaping off the page with all their quirks, passions, and peculiarities. Through his meticulous accounts, we don’t just learn who the Twelve Caesars were—we come to know them.
If Suetonius were alive today (apart from being remarkably old!) he would probably be writing for one of the more lurid newspapers because he loved gossip, rumour and the sordid sex stories associated with these great historical characters. Despite that, most of what he wrote was from very reliable sources, as he held the position of "secretary of the imperial correspondence" for the emperor Hadrian.
He paints them all in vivid detail: their bizarre habits (some downright stomach-churning), their dodgy love affairs, their shocking perversions, their favourite dishes, the way they carried themselves, even the jokes that made them laugh. We’re told how they dressed, what they looked like, what they ate—details so intimate you can almost picture yourself standing in the room with them (not that you would probably want to, of course!).
It’s this extraordinary gift for storytelling that makes Suetonius stand apart. He didn’t just chronicle the Roman Empire; he made it pulse with life, turning a dusty list of rulers into a cast of unforgettable personalities. From Julius Caesar’s charisma and narcissism , Augustus’ calculated restraint, Tiberius’ dark descent into debauchery on the sun-drenched cliffs of Capri, to Caligula’s unhinged excesses, Nero’s theatrical flair—all of it bursts forth in Suetonius’ prose.
He revels in the scandalous and the mundane alike, giving us emperors who are at once larger-than-life but none the less human. Where else could you find a historian who thinks it worth mentioning that Domitian spent hours alone spearing flies with a stylus, or that Claudius’ awkward stammer and drooling endeared him to some and repulsed others? It’s this relentless attention to the personal—the odd, the grotesque, the endearing—that sets Suetonius apart and keeps us enthralled nearly two thousand years later.
Of course, we also have to accept that Suetonius saw (and judged ) life in the year 122, where things were very different from today - and if ever there is an example of understatement, that was it! However, interestingly even the usually pragmatic Romans couldn't accept the behaviour of emperors like Caligula and Nero. I find it fascinating that the murder of Nero's mother was pretty much accepted, but his dreadful singing and lengthy, tedious concerts weren't!
Remarkably, even the prim and pious Victorians couldn’t resist the allure of Suetonius’ tales. In an era when the mere glimpse of a woman’s ankle could send a gentleman into a flustered panic, and moral correctness reigned supreme, Latin scholars were permitted to pore over these scandalous accounts.
One can only imagine the thrill that must have coursed through the veins of a Victorian schoolboy, hunched over his Latin primer, as he stumbled upon the exploits of Tiberius—retired to Capri and indulging in vices that would make even the most libertine blush. For those young readers, Suetonius’ work must have been a secret rebellion, a delicious escape from the starched collars and stifling propriety of their world. It’s no wonder the study of Latin held such appeal—Suetonius offered a window into a realm of unchecked power and unrestrained humanity that was as shocking as it was irresistible.
Tom Holland’s new translation captures all of this and more, delivering Suetonius’ vision with a freshness that makes it feel as though the ink has barely dried. If you haven’t yet picked up a copy, it’s well worth the read. Through Suetonius, the Roman emperors don’t just exist as historical footnotes—they stride into our imaginations, as real and as flawed as anyone we might meet today.
He didn’t merely write history; he made it live, and for that, his legacy endures.
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