The Roman Biographers Collection brings together over 60 biographies of historically significant Roman figures, including some of the most powerful men to have ever lived: the Caesars. Suetonius humanizes these men who have been immortalized in stone with biographies that include the earliest accounts of Julius Caesar’s epileptic seizures and other detailed descriptions of the people who sat on the greatest throne the world has ever known. Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars and Lives of Illustrious Men became source texts for later writers across various fields, including the historical writers Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, and Orosius. His influence on historical writing reached into the following centuries and inspired waves of biographical texts.
With On Great Generals and On Historians, Cornelius Nepos compares some of the most influential ancients—Roman and non-Roman—including generals, kings, and historians. His works were both popular and concise, and remain valuable resources today because of their accessibility and Nepos’ use of credible sources.
The Scriptores Historiae Augustae remains a perplexing and controversial piece of ancient literary history for its bizarre blending of fact and fiction, but it also contains snapshots of history recorded nowhere else. The text brings together 30 biographies, covering emperors, their heirs, the pretenders, and various other people who had claims to the throne.
This collection contains the complete texts in their Loeb Classical Library editions. Each text is included in its original Latin, with an English translation for easy side-by-side comparison. Logos’ language tools help you to go deeper into the Latin text and explore the biographers’ elegant language. Use the dictionary lookup tool to examine difficult Greek words and find every appearance of the same word in your library. Students and fans of ancient history, literature, Roman rulers, and Latin will enjoy these works and appreciate their significance.
