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Lives of the Twelve Caesars

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Lives of the Twelve Caesars

By: Suetonius
Narrated by: Derek Jacobi
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About this listen

Suetonius wrote his Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled the extraordinary careers of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian and the rest in technicolour terms. They presented some high and low times at the heart of the Roman Empire. The accounts provide us with perspicacious insights into the men as much as their reigns, and it was from Suetoniaus that subsequent writers such as Robert Graves drew so much of their material.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

(P)2005 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd.; ©2005 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd. Ancient Historical Rome Italy

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All stars
Most relevant  
Narrated with great skill by Derek Jacobi who brings ancient history up to date and very much to life. Seutonius is a skilled eloquent writer who makes history enjoyable. If you know nothing of the early roman emperors this will go a long way to enlighten you. I would recommend this book to all readers aged 16+

Twelve ceasars

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I don’t think this is really an audiobook for children, in spite of the annoyingly perky American “kid” who introduces the narration! All the stuff Robert Graves thought too racy for the middle-class British readership of his time- the BBC adaptation would have had to be shown very late at night!
Sadly, some of the text has not survived (unless it turns up in some obscure monastic library, hidden inside a volume of Augustine or Jerome!)

All the surviving scandal

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A sadly wasted opportunity. Unfortunately this audiobook is very abridged. Some unusual and odd choices were also made in Latin pronunciations, which can be off putting or confusing. The translation of the text itself (done by person/s unknown and difficult to discover) is strange and archaic, occasionally making the text difficult to understand (even for a classics scholar!). This includes the bizarre miss-use of technical terms, to give just one example, the term ‘poignard’ is often repeated (a fairly obscure term for a specific medieval type of dagger) instead of using the generic simple translation of ‘dagger’ or a specific correct term like the Latin ‘pugio’.

The fact that, despite all this, I still think it deserves 4 stars it testament to both the original text of Suetonius and the fantastic narrating of the great Sir Derek Jacobi, but could have been so much better, so easily!

Perfect narrator, great text, poor translation

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