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.

Bound in three-quarter purple cloth blocked in gold with paper front board printed with the profiles of the twelve leaders. Dark purple endleaves with map in gold. Grey slipcase.