And Pliny, who persuaded the Emperor Trajan to grant Suetonius
the immunities usually granted only to a father of three children,
though he had none, wrote that the more he knew of Suetonius, the
greater his affection for him grew; I have had the same experience.

This version of The Twelve Caesars is not intended as a school crib;
the genius of Latin and the genius of English being so dissimilar that
a literal rendering would be almost unreadable. For English readers
Suetonius's sentences, and sometimes even groups of sentences, must
often be turned inside-out. Wherever his references are incomprehen-
sible to anyone not closely familiar with the Roman scene, I have also
brought up into the text a few words of explanation that would
normally have appeared in a footnote. Dates have been everywhere
changed from the pagan to the Christian era; modern names of cities
used whenever they are more familiar to the common reader than the
classical ones; and sums in sesterces reduced to gold pieces, at 100 to a
gold piece (of twenty denarii), which resembled a British sovereign.
The problem of finding suitable English equivalents for Latin tech-
nical words is exemplified in Imperator. This, at first, meant simply
'army commander'; next it became a tide of honour which a general
might earn by an important victory; then it was placed as a title of
honour after, or (more flatteringly) before, the name of one of the
ruling Caesars, whether or not he had won any victories; finally, it
was used in an absolute sense to mean 'Emperor'.

I might have prefaced the translation with an essay on the Roman
Republican Constitution and the merciless struggle between the
popular and aristocratic parties in which Julius Caesar became
involved, and which ended only with the triumph of Augustus; but
most readers will perhaps prefer to plunge straight into the story and
pick up the threads as they go along.

My gratitude to Alastair Reid and Kenneth Gay for helping me
with this enjoyable task.

R. G.

Deyá, Majorca, Spain

1957

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