CAIUS JULIUS CASAR. D. OCTAVIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS. TIBERIUS NERO CAESAR. CAIUS CAESAR CALIGULA. TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS CAESAR. 465 NERO CLAUDIUS CAESAR. SERGIUS SULPICIUS GALBA. A. SALVIUS OTHO. AULUS VITELLIUS. T. FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS AUGUSTUS. TITUS FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS AUGUSTUS. TITUS FLAVIUS DOMITIANUS. LIVES OF EMINENT GRAMMARIANS LIVES OF EMINENT RHETORICIANS. LIVES OF THE POETS. THE LIFE OF TERENCE. THE LIFE OF JUVENAL. THE LIFE OF PERSIUS. THE LIFE OF HORACE. THE LIFE OF PLINY.

This book shares little-known facts from and excerpts of primary source documents to correct popular misconceptions about Ancient Rome and to show how those misconceptions became widespread. Roman personalities and history have always had a larger-than-life profile in American popular culture, but most people think of this ancient civilization as merely decadent, cruel, and elitist. Most of our stereotypical conceptions of the empire and its people, however, are wrong. This book corrects popular misconceptions about the ancient Roman world, thus making ancient history relevant and accessible to modern readers and allowing modern critics of American politics and society to draw accurate comparisons. Each chapter discusses how a particular misconception developed, spread, and evolved into what we now believe to be the historical truth. Topics discussed include crucifixion, the destruction of Carthage, Julius Caesar's last words, and Roman hygiene. Excerpts from primary source documents provide evidence of both the rise of the historical fictions and the truths behind the myths.

The Lives of the Twelve Caesars by 2nd Century Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus is the key primary source of biographical information for the first twelve rules of ancient Rome - emperors Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.

This vivid history of Rome and its rulers “combines thoughtful reflection and analysis with gossipy irreverence in a bewitching cocktail” (Daily Express, UK). One was a military genius, one murdered his mother and fiddled while Rome burned, another earned the nickname “sphincter artist”. Six of them were assassinated, two committed suicide—and five were considered gods. They are known as the “twelve Caesars” —Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Under their rule, from 49 BC to AD 96, Rome was transformed from a republic to an empire, whose model of regal autocracy would survive in the West for more than a thousand years. In The Twelve Caesars, Matthew Dennison offers a revealing and colorful biography of each emperor, triumphantly evoking the luxury, license, brutality, and sophistication of imperial Rome at its zenith. But beyond recreating the lives, loves, and vices of these despots, psychopaths and perverts, he paints a portrait of an era of political and social revolution, of the bloody overthrow of a five-hundred-year-old political system and its replacement by a dictatorship which, against all the odds, succeeded more convincingly than oligarchic democracy in governing a vast empire.

The Twelve Caesars is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. The book provides valuable information on the heritage, personal habits, physical appearance, lives, and political careers of the first Roman emperors as it mentions details which other sources do not. As with many of his contemporaries, Suetonius took omens seriously and carefully includes reports of omens portending Imperial births, accessions, and deaths. The Twelve Caesars was considered very significant in antiquity and remains a primary source on Roman history. The book discusses the significant and critical period of the Principate from the end of the Republic to the reign of Domitian.

"The Twelve Caesars, probably written in Hadrian's time, is a collective biography of the Roman Empire's first leaders who were: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. The work tells the tale of each Caesar's life according to a set formula: the descriptions of appearance, omens, family history, quotes, and then a history are given in a consistent order for each Caesar."--Amazon.com