"The Lives of the Caesars" quite often resembles a modern sensationalized tabloid, stuffed with insinuations, scandal, and royal shenanigans, but it is really much more. Written by a palace insider and published at the height of the Roman Empire, it gives a unique, intense, and individual portrait of each emperor. Despite its antiquity, "The Lives of the Caesars" is neither remote nor obscure; it remains the most readable and most significant biography of the ruling families of the early Roman Empire ever written. Suetonius' animated and assured account of the emperors of Rome brings the mundane, tragic, humorous, and scandalous activities of Rome's elite - the emperors, their families, friends, enemies, successes, failures, loves, and ambitions - to vivid life.