An edited and cleaner version of The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius.
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I have taken the liberty of editing the text of Suetonius’s “The Twelve Caesars” for the purpose of rendering it innocuous enough for my thirteen-year-old son to read. He and I have read many of the ancient classics together, and although some content of these classics have concerned me as a parent, Suetonius’s text contained so much graphic content that I could not in good conscience hand the book over to my son for his edification (or not, as the case certainly was). Hence this version, which I hope may help the more cautious parent or teacher of young readers of the classics.
Obviously, my standards of what is ‘clean’ will not suit the sensibilities of all who read this version. And perhaps my use of ‘clean’ should be changed to the better adjective ‘cleaner’; I suspect my mental comparison of the deleted content has made what remains seem more inoffensive than it may be to one who has not seen both. I hope I may be forgiven, if this is the case.
I did not completely eradicate all somewhat suggestive content for two reasons. First, I did not want to sterilize completely the debauchery and evil of what some of the Caesars were. To this end I did retain content that may seem lamentable to some especially vigilant parents or teachers; including at least one incestuous relationship, abortion as a cause of death, some torture that would be deemed fairly mild by Hollywood standards, violence in the Roman Games, and death by various not-too-graphic means. And second, to my certain knowledge a quantity of mildly gruesome passages can act, for the young reader, as motivation to continue through the more dry political maneuverings found in abundance in “The Twelve Caesars”.
I am indebted to The Internet Ancient History Sourcebook at www.fordham.edu for making J. C. Rolfe’s translation of Suetonius available online.
The following changes to the printed text of Suetonius were made by J. C. Perley;
Language or subject matter that was extremely graphic or inappropriate for young adults aged 12 through 16 were replaced with ***Removed for Graphic Content***. The deleted texts were deemed not crucial to the biography of the Caesar under whom it was found.
The following changes to the printed text of Suetonius were made by Prof. Arkenberg;
Text was modernized in several ways.
While many of the annotations are those of J. C. Rolfe, many are Prof Arkenberg's, based on more recent knowledge of Roman life (and several of Rolfe's ones too were changed.)
Roman names were substituted for most of the provinces (Hispania for Spain), for example, to avoid the impression by some people that Caesar might have been visiting Madrid, or that when he went to Britain (as Rolfe has the spelling), he was going London to visit the queen!
Roman proper names were substitued throughout (Pompeius for Pompey, Marcus Antonius for Mark Antony). The familiar ones are fine for Shakespeare, but this isn't Shakespeare.
Latin names and terms in preference to Rolfe's practice of using British terms (thus, "plebeians" or "the people" instead of "the commons", or "the Senate" instead of "the House")
"Legal cases" or "lawsuits" were substitued for what Rolfe called "taking the assizes".
Rolfe's annotations were altered to eliminate the sexual aspect of many remarks.
Navigate to our Downloads Page or Click here to download the "12 Caesars.pdf"
