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From the Publisher:
The personalities of the twelve caesars (Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian) of ancient Rome have profoundly impressed themselves upon the world. They formed the theme of that most readable of biographers, Suetonius. He had a lot to say about their sexual and other aberrations, and one of the purposes of the present book is to try to penetrate the fog of picturesque rumor and estimate how seriously the various stories can be regarded. But this is only one part of a general attempt to discover what sort of men these astonishing caesars were. They bore the perilous responsibility of governing an empire comparable in its gigantic magnitude and diversity to the United States today. It is a matter of perennial concern to investigate how the potentates who wield such vast might, and the men who advise them, cope with their tasks, or fail to cope with them.