The Twelve Caesars summary

Caesar’s power is growing, and the conservatives and aristocrats are beginning to worry about him. 

It’s easy to see why. Here’s an ambitious young man from a family of political radicals, with military experience to boot. Worse, he has the ear of the lower classes. Then there’s his love of organizing gladiatorial spectacles – a ruse, many think, to assemble a private army in the Republic’s capital. 

Caesar is very sure of his importance to Rome: If anything happens to me, he says, a new civil war will break out. His prophecy is fulfilled when a group of senators stab him twenty-three times in 44 BCE. 

Rome is plunged into crisis. Caesar’s plebeian supporters look to avenge their champion – slain, in their eyes, by cowardly aristocrats. The assassins see themselves as heroes. They have prevented the dictator Caesar from destroying the Republic and making himself king. 

Julius Caesar is deified after his assassination, and Augustus styles himself as Imperator Caesar Divi Filius – Commander Caesar, Son of the Divine.

The gods seem to smile on Augustus. The gold he brings back from Cleopatra’s treasury in Egypt helps cement his peace settlement. With the civil wars over, commerce flourishes. Rome grows more prosperous, and the empire begins to expand once again. This is the beginning of the Pax Romana – the 200-year-long Roman Peace. 

In 37 CE, Gaius Caesar succeeds Tiberius as emperor. 

The Romans don’t know much about Gaius, or, as he is better known, Caligula – his nickname means “Little Boot” in Latin. But they did know – and love – his father, Germanicus.

Suetonius divides Caligula’s reign into two periods – the time in which he rules as an emperor, and the time in which he rules as a “monster.” Ultimately, it is in this second guise that he makes his mark on history. 

In his own mind, Caligula is a god. The Romans, he thinks, should acknowledge this, so he builds a shrine to his own divinity. At its center stands a life-sized golden image of the emperor. Around it, he places statues of the other gods, their heads removed and replaced with likenesses of his own. Priests, meanwhile, sacrifice flamingos, peacocks, pheasants, and hens in his honor. 

Caligula is slain! Word of his assassination soon reaches the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill. 

When Caligula’s 51-year-old uncle, Claudius, hears the news, he guesses that he is next. That makes sense – palace coups often end in the death of both the emperor and his closest male relatives. 

When Claudius marries Agrippina, he adopts her son, Nero. 

That places Nero next in the line of succession – one reason many suspect Agrippina of having poisoned Claudius’s food. 

Things take a turn for the worse after the Great Fire of Rome in 65 CE. 

Senators move against their vain emperor, but their plot is foiled. Nero’s position is now stronger than ever. With the city in ruins, he also has a blank canvas on which to realize his artistic ambitions. There is just one hitch – he’s already bled the imperial treasury dry. 

At the beginning of his reign, Augustus’s wife, Livia, plants a bay tree. 

It thrives and becomes a symbol of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Augustus’s heirs wear laurels fashioned from its leaves and take cuttings from it to start their own trees. These, too, are symbolic. If one of the saplings dies, its planter’s death is believed to be close at hand. 

Otho’s suicide doesn’t prevent the civil war he had feared. 

Vitellius cuts a familiar figure. His thirst for luxury is unquenchable. The treasury soon runs dry, and so he begins levying heavy taxes on the common people and plunders the rich. Critics of such misrule don’t last long. The fortunate are exiled, the unlucky tortured and killed. 

Suetonius tells us that Vespasian is at first rather “bewildered” in his new role. What kind of emperor is he going to be? 

After Nero’s extravagances and a year of civil war, Rome is a disordered and chaotic place. Vespasian finds an answer to his question: he will restore imperial discipline.

On June 24, 79 CE, Vespasian’s elder son, the 39-year-old Titus, succeeds him.

Titus had been a talented youth. He wielded a sword with skill, played the harp, and spoke fluent, eloquent Greek. He was also fiercely loyal. 

Shortly before collapsing and dying, Titus utters his last words. It is unfair, he says, that he is dying so soon, since he has done nothing he regretted. He then pauses to think about his statement. Then he remembers; there is one thing he definitely regrets.

The error in this otherwise blameless life is to have allowed his brother and heir, Domitian, to continue plotting against him. He has been too weak to execute, or even exile, him. Rome will now pay the price for his inaction.