The ancient Roman Empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. Suetonius’ renowned biography of the twelve Caesars, invite us into the lives of the first Roman Emperor, Caesars more vividly or intimately than those by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the centre of Rome and power, in the early 2^nd century AD. Suetonius succeeded in painting Rome’s ultimate portraits of power. The shortfalls, foreign policy crises and sex scandals of the emperors are laid bare; we are shown their tastes, their foibles, their eccentricities, we sit at their tables and enter their bedrooms. 

That Rome lives more vividly in people’s imagination than any other ancient empire owes an inordinate amount to Suetonius. 

Julius Caesar during his rise to power was hustled for a succession of public offices, and since he needed to secure immunity from prosecution. Augustus, a careful curator of his image, wore platform shoes to look taller, while the short-lived emperor Otho covered is bald patch with a hairpiece. Domitian, who terrorised Rome’s Senate as he sank into paranoia, used to sit in solitude stabbing flies to death with a sharpened pen.

Suetonius explains the gossip about the personal foibles, public acts, private perversions of the 12 men who had come to epitomise imperial power over the course of 150 years.

Podcaster and historian Tom Holland, bring us even close in a new, spellbinding translation, giving a deeper understanding of the personal lives of Rome’s first emperors.

Letters in Augustus’s own handwriting from the archives, public inscriptions from the provinces, his father’s reminiscences of military service under Otho, and highlighting several anecdotes and jokes in public circulation.

Pen-portraits organised by theme – covering each ruler’s admirable qualities before turning to their flaws, listing their public building works and legislative ventures, their sexual preferences, favourite gladiators or chariot teams and the omens that presaged their rise or fall from power.

Nero who had funded new, fire-resistant building designs with the arsonist who sang as the city burned, the Vitellius praised as an honest provincial administrator with the dissolute flatterer reviled in Rome, racing chariots with Caligula, serving flamingos’ tongues at his banquets.

Augustus teaching his grandchildren how to swim; the frugal Tiberius serving half a wild boar at a feast; Vespasian bursting out laughing as people try to trace his ancestry back to Hercules revealing how the imperial image of autocracy took root in the Roman state.

Caesar’s hunts, fights and Nero races of camel-drawn chariots they staged, Caligula transgressing norms by fighting in gladiatorial contests, Domitian had a spectator thrown to the dogs for a passing comment.

The Caesars are constantly running up debts, extorting legacies and sequestering their enemies’ estates to pay for the shows, largesse and the legions. Vespasian, less aristocratic and less ruthless is the only emperor undignified as to profit from trade, while clamping down on corruption and raising taxes – including on urine.

Monstrous action the Caesars carried out against suspected plotters, and decisions to enforce discipline among the legionaries by decimation, or to punish a lapsed Vestal virgin in the traditional manner by burying her alive and few  highlights by Suetonius.

Otho redeems himself by a decisive suicide. Nero’s degeneracy is made clear by his fear and hesitancy in slitting his own throat. Vitellius, striding over a blood-soaked battlefield, and revolted his campanions by telling them a dead enemy “smells sweet”.  At the end, a crule, capricious Caesar was better than a civil war.

The Lives of the Caesars, is a must read, astonishing with stunning detail, immersive memory of a time and culture at once familiar and utterly alien to our own.

The Lives of Caesars by Suetonius translated by Tom Holland, Penguin Classics £25, 448 pages.