The Twelve Caesars

Written in the early second century, this set of twelve lives runs from Julius Caesar through the emperor Domitian. For each man Suetonius arranges ancestry, public career, appearance, habits, omens, vices, and death, drawing on archives, gossip, and earlier writers. The early books cover the civil wars and the Julio-Claudian household; later ones treat Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and the Flavians. Palaces, camps, and the city of Rome form the setting. The work is a biographical sequence of rulers, not a year-by-year annal and not a philosophical meditation on empire.

12 full-page. Full red-brown cloth binding with a medallion design in blue and gold, with a variant where medallion is just in gold. Variant binding for second impression in a finer-grain cloth with ‘Society’ added after ‘Folio’ on the spine. Map endleaves in dark blue. Blue or dark blue slipcase.