Word: gaius
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...random polymorphous perversity, it would be hard to top The Twelve Caesars by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (born circa A.D. 69). A classic capital insider, Suetonius served as chief secretary to the Emperor Hadrian and wrote a number of books that certainly sound like best sellers, most of them, unfortunately, now lost. Connoisseurs of the carnal particularly lament the disappearance of his Lives of Famous Whores. But The Twelve Caesars still packs plenty of punch per sesterce: Augustus as an elderly man, relentlessly deflowering virgins, some of them procured for him by his wife; Tiberius training young boys, whom he dubbed...
...Claudius, and so did Shakespeare, for that matter. McCullough, who wrote The Thorn Birds, is not awed, and her narration marches sturdily through a period of fascinating turmoil in the last years of the Republic. Terrifying German barbarians have wiped out most of Rome's legions. The Senate dithers; Gaius Marius, a wealthy military man of low birth, has the energy but not the bloodline to save the situation. The author is interested in everything: how the city's sewers worked, how marriages were arranged, and how the horsehair plumes in a soldier's helmet could be detached for storage...