Suetonius: Life of Julius Caesar: Translated with Introduction and Historical Commentary

Suetonius’ Life of Julius Caesar (Vita Divi Iuli in the original Latin) deals with one of the best known of all Romans. His highly colourful account of Caesar’s life begins a series of twelve Lives of Rome’s first emperors (Caesars) and describes how Caesar was the gods’ means of ending the Roman Republic and of introducing a new form of government. Suetonius presents a picture of a man who was driven in pursuit of power and honour, even initiating a bloody civil war to protect his own interests. Although Caesar was famously assassinated on the Ides of March 44 BC, his ultimate status was that of a god, Divus Iulius, as which he is celebrated by Suetonius. Wardle’s volume provides a new translation of the Life with a full introduction and commentary on the events it describes. The volume discusses both the historical and the historiographical aspects of the Life, what we believe happened and what Suetonius says happened; it relates Suetonius’ distinctive approach to life-writing to other examples from Greek and Roman authors and shows how the Life is a carefully constructed literary artefact rather than the styleless conglomeration of facts it has often been considered to be. Suetonius’ account makes use of material written by Caesar’s contemporaries as he rose to pre-eminence and reflects how subsequent generations, living and writing under the system that Suetonius for one believed he initiated, themselves imagined Caesar.

D. Wardle, King George V Professor, School of Languages and Literatures, University of Cape Town

D. Wardle is Professor of Classics at the University of Cape Town, where he holds the King George V Chair. He has written extensively in the history and historiography of the early Roman principate, particularly on Valerius Maximus and Suetonius, but also has an interest in Roman divination.