![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealI picked up "Lives of the Caesars" by Suetonius at a quirky independent bookstore, and the edition alleged a 2020 copyright date but I'm wondering how old the translation is. Because my current theory for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is that none of them could end a sentence.
The bier on the rostra was carried down into the Forum by magistrates and ex-magistrates; and while some were urging that it be burned in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, and others in the Hall of Pompey, on a sudden two beings with swords by their sides and brandishing a pair of darts set fire to it with blazing torches, and at once the throng of bystanders heaped upon it dry branches, the judgment seats with the benches, and whatever else could serve as an offering.
It's not just the Ides of March: Suetonius has lots of omens for every emperor's rise and fall. (Which makes you wonder if there were just as many omens for the unsuccessful candidates.) And he has lots of charming personal details like "he used to start the day by asking his soldiers servants if they'd had breakfast, then belched to show that he definitely had."
What I would recommend in addition, or maybe instead, is "A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" by Emma Southon. It's written in an extremely "breezy," down-to-earth style, but has lots of random tangents (gladiator graffiti!) And helps give a sense of the timeline a little better--Romans tended to refer to years as "the year in which X and Y were the consuls," but for those of us reading two millennia after the fact it's nice to be able to say "Titus went to war and destroyed Jerusalem in the year CE/AD 70, which was before he became emperor in 79."
The bier on the rostra was carried down into the Forum by magistrates and ex-magistrates; and while some were urging that it be burned in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, and others in the Hall of Pompey, on a sudden two beings with swords by their sides and brandishing a pair of darts set fire to it with blazing torches, and at once the throng of bystanders heaped upon it dry branches, the judgment seats with the benches, and whatever else could serve as an offering.
What I would recommend in addition, or maybe instead, is "A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" by Emma Southon. It's written in an extremely "breezy," down-to-earth style, but has lots of random tangents (gladiator graffiti!) And helps give a sense of the timeline a little better--Romans tended to refer to years as "the year in which X and Y were the consuls," but for those of us reading two millennia after the fact it's nice to be able to say "Titus went to war and destroyed Jerusalem in the year CE/AD 70, which was before he became emperor in 79."
