The Roman historian Suetonius’ The Lives of the Caesars, written during the early imperial period of the Roman Empire, is a seminal biography covering the biographies of the early emperors of Rome, during two spectacular centuries of Roman history. Delving deep into the personal lives of the caesars and sparing no detail, no matter how prurient, pungent, explicit or salacious, it vividly captures Rome at the peak of her power, and those colourful individuals at the heart of everything. It is an unsettling yet fascinating portrait of the alien and the intimate, that sees some of history’s most famous characters revealed as almost modern men, plotting a delicate line between private and public, respectability and suspicion. From the showmanship of Augustus, the first Caesar, and his convoluted family melodramas, to Tiberius, a monster in the historical record famed for his sexual misdeeds, to Caligula, who delighted in voyeuristic moral degeneracy, and the looming shadow of Nero; all will be revealed… Join Tom and Dominic as they launch into Suetonius and the lives of Rome’s most infamous emperors, illuminating a world of sex and violence that both venerates, deifies and condemns absolute power. When the curtain is lifted, what deprivation lurks behind the majesty of Rome? And who was the real Suetonius, the man laying it all bare? Pre-order Tom Holland's new translation of 'The Lives of the Caesars' here. _______ **Are you getting the wrong episode on Apple Podcasts? Remove download, and then re-download the episode, which will resolve the problem.** _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producers: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Now all Nero's attendants urged him to place himself beyond the reach of the indignities that were closing in on him. And so he ordered them, as he watched, to dig a hole the size of his body, and to collect such fragments of marble as could be found, and to bring water and firewood ready for the disposal of what would very soon be his corpse.
And as these things were being done, so he wept, and cried repeatedly, that I should die a mere artisan. When, during the delay caused by these preparations, a letter was brought to his freedman by courier, he snatched it and learned by reading it that the Senate had proclaimed him a public enemy and ordered a search made for him so that he might be punished according to the ancestral fashion.
And when, after asking what this punishment might be, he learned that a man sentenced to it would be stripped naked, have his neck put in a fork, and then be beaten to death with rods, so terror-stricken was he that he grabbed two daggers he had brought with him and tested the blades of both, after which, on the grounds that the fatal hour had not yet arrived, he put them away again.
But then came the horseman, who had been commissioned to bring him back alive, closing in upon him. When he heard their approach, he said in a shaking voice, quoting Homer, The thundering of swift-footed horses echoes in my ears. Whereupon, with the assistance of his secretary, Epaphroditus, he slit his throat.
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