The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

In the adult age, I met my old schoolmate and he asked what I was reading. I said Suetonius. He laughed, because in his mind it was a child book, something you were supposed to read around the age of 12, as a part of compulsory Soviet canon1.And yes, I read the The Lives of the Twelve Caesars as a kid. But, as a kid, I did not understand very much of it. Specifically, I did not understand why the biographies of all these Caesars (and their families) sound like a freak show. Monstrosities, monstrosities, and monstrosities upon monstrosities.That is, for example, the description of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, the father of Nero:“A man hateful in every walk of life; for when he had gone to the East on the staff of the young Gaius Caesar,⁠ he slew one of his own freedmen for refusing to drink as much as he ordered, and when he was in consequence dismissed from the number of Gaius' friends, he lived not a whit less lawlessly. On the contrary, in a village on the Appian Way, suddenly…