The Lives of the Caesars: Suetonius (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) »

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was born around AD 70 and probably died sometime before AD 130 or 140. He may have been born near modern Modena, Italy, while his father was serving as an officer under Vespasian. He spent at least some of his early years in Rome in the emperor's palace and practiced law very briefly, but found that he was more suited to a life of letters.

The Lives of the Caesars quite often resembles a modern sensationalized tabloid, stuffed with insinuations, scandal, and royal shenanigans, but it is really much more. Written by a "palace insider" and published at the height of the Roman Empire, it gives a unique, intense, and individual portrait of each emperor. Despite its antiquity, The Lives of the Caesars is neither remote nor obscure; it remains the most readable and most significant biography of the ruling families of the early Roman Empire ever written. Suetonius' animated and assured account of the emperors of Rome brings the mundane, tragic, humorous, and scandalous activities of Rome's elite - the emperors, their families, friends, enemies, successes, failures, loves, and ambitions - to vivid life.