The Twelve Caesars

Translated by Robert Graves and Revised with an Introduction by Michael Grant.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Historians value Suetonius as an innovator in biographical and historical writing -- he abandoned straight chronology for a more thematic approach to his subjects, in this case the emperors of Rome from Julius Caesar to Domitian (from 50 B.C. to A.D. 100), and he practiced a rare objectivity in his portraiture. That said, Livy (History of Rome) and Tacitus (Germania, Agricola, The Annals) are usually viewed as greater writers, both as historians and stylists. Where Suetonius stands alone, at least for the modern reader, is in the quality of his weird and fascinating gossip.