Influence On Later Literature
The Twelve Caesars served as a model for the biographies of 2nd and early 3rd century emperors compiled by Marius Maximus. This collection, apparently entitled Caesares, does not survive, but it was a source for a later biographical collection, known as Historia Augusta, which now forms a kind of sequel to Suetonius' work. The Historia Augusta is a collective biography, partly fictionalized, of Roman emperors and usurpers of the second and third centuries.
In the ninth century Einhard modelled himself on Suetonius in writing the Life of Charlemagne, even borrowing phrases from Suetonius' physical description of Augustus in his own description of the character and appearance of Charlemagne.
Robert Graves, though most famous for his historical novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God (later dramatized by the BBC), made a widely read translation of The Twelve Caesars which was first published in Penguin Classics in 1957.
Read more about this topic: The Twelve Caesars
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