HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2026-10-19T17:48:37.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/author/robertattar/feed/atom Rob Attar <![CDATA[Monsters of Rome: do emperors such as Nero and Caligula deserve their reputations?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/monsters-rome-emperors-reputation-tom-holland/ 2026-10-19T17:48:37.000Z 2026-10-19T17:30:02.000Z Rob Attar: Could you please begin by introducing Suetonius and his best-known work, The Lives of the Caesars?
Tom Holland: Suetonius is probably the most famous of all the ancient biographers. He was secretary to the emperor Hadrian, so was right at the heart of imperial power. He’d also worked as an archivist and librarian in the imperial palace, and therefore had access to all kinds of historical documents.
He drew on these to write [in around AD 121] the biographies of the rulers who had come to be known as the 12 Caesars: the 11 emperors from Augustus to Domitian and, before them all, Julius Caesar – the adoptive father of Augustus. The Lives has had a massive influence on how people understand the Roman empire.
Of all ancient classical texts, this is probably also the most influential on modern culture. It inspired Robert Graves, who would later translate the Lives for Penguin Classics, to write I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935), which were then adapted into the celebrated 1976 BBC drama series [starring Derek Jacobi].
And that series inspired all kinds of US dramas, ranging from Dynasty in the 1980s, to The Sopranos in the 1990s and 2000s, and Game of Thrones in the 2010s. You could say that Suetonius is the godfather of the murderous dynastic drama.
As a historian yourself, do you consider that Suetonius was doing something similar to what you do today?
It’s important to say that Suetonius wasn’t actually a historian – he was a biographer. He was not aiming to do what Tacitus, his great contemporary, was doing – creating a record of the whole sweep of Roman history.
But of course, because the emperors are so important to our understanding of how the Roman world operated, his work does offer a sense of the Roman empire in the first century BC and the first century AD. That was a period of convulsive change: the Republic collapsed, Augustus established an autocracy, and then there was a process of evolution over the first century AD.
After Augustus died in AD 14, Rome was ruled by his family – the emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero – after which that family went extinct. There was then a murderous bout of civil war in AD 69, notorious as the ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ – Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian – whose lives were among the 12 related by Suetonius. Vespasian, who established his own dynasty, was succeeded by his eldest son, Titus, who was then followed by his younger brother, Domitian. The lives of those three emperors are covered by Suetonius as well.
What approach did Suetonius take to writing these biographies?
His range seems to have been very extensive. From surviving fragments of his other works, we get a sense that he was interested in what today we might call social anthropology: customs, habits, the things that people do. Aside from his biographies of the Caesars, he wrote a collection of the lives of the great courtesans – and sex is also an obvious theme that runs throughout The Lives of the Caesars.
But he also wrote about children’s games, and about the insults that people give one another. He wrote about clothing, and about all kinds of aspects of social life – and these in turn informed his portraits of the emperors. He wrote about what they did as children, their appearance, their sexual habits. For Suetonius, this provided windows onto their characters and the way that their reigns were shaped. It enabled him to situate the emperors more clearly in the social, political and cultural context of the world that they ruled.
Why and how did you go about translating The Lives of the Caesars?
I was asked to do it because it was felt that the translation done by Robert Graves many decades ago was a bit old fashioned. There are certain problems, I think, with his work.
One strange choice he made was that, instead of using Roman military terms such as centurion or tribune, he gave characters titles such as ‘sergeant major’ or ‘colonel’ or whatever. That’s perhaps unsurprising, because Graves fought in the First World War, but it gives his text a slightly postwar, 1930s flavour. I’m sure that in maybe 60 or 70 years, my translation will seem very 2020s, but I hope that I’ve been truer to the Latin text than Graves was.
One other stylistic quirk of Suetonius’s I noticed was that, when writing about an individual emperor, he almost never mentioned them by name – it’s always “he” did this, “he” did that. Suetonius might introduce, say, Augustus by name at the beginning of that Life, but, from that point on, it is assumed that any third person verb will be referring to Augustus.
And the effect is very powerful. By not drawing attention to the emperor’s name, it becomes kind of omnipresent: this emperor is so significant that you don’t even need to name him – everything is revolving around him. I hope that, even in English, the reader will find this stylistic effect striking.
Did you have to make any difficult decisions when translating the text?
Purely in terms of how to render Latin – and, indeed, Greek, because there’s quite a lot of Greek in the Lives, too – the huge problem is always puns. Meaningfully translating Suetonius’s linguistic puns is always a challenge. One of them revolves around oral sex, and that touches on another, slightly more moral problem: there are passages within Suetonius that are shocking. And these passages have always been shocking.
There’s a tradition that, in the 15th century, Gilles de Rais – a Frenchman fighting the English during the Hundred Years’ War – was seduced into becoming a child killer by reading Suetonius. The Marquis de Sade reputedly owned a copy of the Lives. Then, in the Victorian period, school copies featured large chunks that were just replaced with asterisks.
Even though today, in the 21st century, we might pride ourselves on being more permissive and less easily shocked, the fact remains that there are repellent passages. The question of what to do with them was a moral consideration, but in the end I decided that I wanted to give as accurate and complete a rendering of Suetonius’s language as I could.
On that point, the Lives features some truly remarkable stories about some of the emperors’ debauched behaviour. How seriously can we take these?
I would like to focus on two of those emperors, because in some ways their reputations for debauchery reflect very different Roman cultural traditions. The first of these was Tiberius. Near the end of his life, when he was about 70, he retired to the island of Capri.
Suetonius gives us completely shocking details of what Tiberius is supposed to have got up to there: child sex, brothels, all kinds of things. Tiberius was then succeeded by Caligula – perhaps the most notorious of all of the Caesars. Rather than retiring to a private island, Caligula staged his sexual depravities on the most public of stages, according to Suetonius.
The temptation is to take these accounts absolutely at face value: to assume that Tiberius was a hideous pervert, and that Caligula was such a sexual terrorist that he was in fact insane. But I think there are different layers in how you can respond to these stories. One of these is to recognise that the Roman understanding of what was shocking and scandalous about sexual behaviour is not the same as ours.
Let’s think about Tiberius. He was the emperor – and an emperor should not retire. The only conceivable reason, in a Roman’s opinion, for doing that was because the person doing it was an absolute pervert.
So you can see why Tiberius’s retirement was framed by people hostile to him as reflecting his desire to do disgusting things that he couldn’t do while he was in Rome leading a public life. The fact that Tiberius was a very old man, and that statesmen who had attained a certain age were entitled to a dignified retirement, was ignored – because Tiberius was emperor, and shouldn’t have done it.
As for Caligula, he was taking to the public stage and rubbing the noses of his enemies in the Senate in the fact of their impotence. Both Augustus and Tiberius had shown the Senate respect, but Caligula had a different strategy. He wanted to demonstrate that he was the master, and that the senators were a bunch of lickspittles, nobodies. I think that the sexual abuse to which he submitted senators – and, notably, their wives – was a way of making that point.
That was very brutal and shocking, and why Caligula became such a notorious figure, but there was perhaps an element of strategic thinking that Suetonius didn’t acknowledge. Caligula clearly wasn’t a liberal – he wasn’t Justin Trudeau – but there was probably method behind the seeming madness.
This is part of the fascination of studying the lives of these emperors. There’s the shock appeal of the stories, and there’s the fascination of working out exactly how and why Roman attitudes to sexuality were different from ours. And then there’s the possible political context that was unspoken and unacknowledged by Suetonius, but which might nevertheless explain what is going on.
Was something similar happening with Nero, who was another really notorious figure of this time? Did he get an unfairly bad press from Suetonius?
No, because Nero brought it on himself. And, as with Caligula, I think it was a deliberate political strategy. There were really two traditions in Roman politics that the emperors inherited from the age of the Republic. There was the traditionalist approach, showing respect for the traditions of the state and traditional elites.
And then there were populares – leaders who looked over the heads of the traditional elites to appeal to the masses of the people. Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius were all essentially traditionalist in their approach, whereas Caligula and Nero were both populares. They scorned the Senate and wanted to make themselves the darlings of the people.
Because they were emperors, they had opportunities to do that in ways that, in the Republic, not even the most flamboyant nobleman would have had. And I think that’s what Nero was doing. He was clearly the most tremendous showman in a way that was calculated to be shocking to his senators. Emperors were not meant to tread the boards on stage. They were not meant to play musical instruments. They were not meant to compete in the Olympics.
But Nero did all that – and he did it sufficiently well that people quite admired it. It’s as though a US president were to star in an Oscar-winning film, headline Glastonbury, or win a race in Formula 1.
And even with the most shocking crime of his reign, the murder of his own mother, Nero very pointedly didn’t try to disguise it. Instead, he drew attention to it – and I think that’s because murdering your mother was the kind of thing that a hero would do in a Greek tragedy. Nero was casting himself as literally being ‘Augustus’, someone midway between heaven and earth. He was essentially presenting himself to the Roman people, and the world beyond, as a figure from myth – as a throwback to the ancient days of someone like the notorious matricide Orestes.
This policy undoubtedly caused collateral damage, and explains why Nero’s reputation was so bad in the wake of his death. And Suetonius was clearly drawing on those traditions. After all, Suetonius was working for an imperial system founded on the ruins of Nero’s reputation and career, so there was nothing for him in trying to redeem Nero’s reputation. Again, I think – as with Caligula and Tiberius – Suetonius’s portrait of Nero gives the historian enough clues to enable them to work out what Nero was doing, what he was up to. But you’ve got to read between the lines.
In your introduction, you suggest that these rulers are both familiar and strange to us at the same time. Could you elaborate on that point?
I think they’re familiar to us because Suetonius’s biographies give us details about these individual emperors to a degree that we simply do not have for comparable imperial figures from Near Eastern and Mediterranean ancient history. Think of the pharaohs, or the kings of Assyria or Babylon or Persia: these were autocrats ruling empires and civilisations that were just as sophisticated as the Roman empire. Compared with the portraits we have of Augustus or Nero, however, they seem anonymous.
The whole point of royal iconography in Egypt or Persia was to anonymise the pharaoh or the great king. Thanks to Suetonius, though, we know how the emperors had sex, how they went to the toilet, what they looked like, the hairstyles they wore, their bodily blemishes, and so on. We know the most intimate details about them – and that makes them seem vivid and alive and familiar to us in a way that is fairly unique in ancient history. It explains, I think, why imperial Rome tends to fascinate the general public in a way that other civilisations don’t.
At the same time, I hope you will get a sense from what I’ve been saying that ancient Rome was a very alien civilisation. The codes of behaviour that governed not just the emperors but also Romans generally were very remote from ours.
And it’s that strange blend of the familiar and the weird that I think explains why Rome is so fascinating. There’s a kind of science-fiction quality to it. If you think of science fiction as being a mixture of what is familiar to us with worlds that are utterly alien, then that is what ancient Rome gives us.
Of all of the weird and wonderful stories within this book, are there any that particularly stood out for you?
One of the things that becomes very evident when you read the biographies in their entirety is that, even as Suetonius was clearly getting stuck into archives, he was also situating the stories in a dimension in which the supernatural was very vivid.
One of the most dramatic and celebrated moments in Suetonius’s Lives is Julius Caesar’s famous crossing of the Rubicon [the river that marked the boundary of the area controlled directly by Rome]. Caesar sent his legions ahead of him, then travelled in secret through the night from Ravenna up to the frontier. He stood on the bank. He hesitated. And then, Suetonius tells us, a great ghostly figure snatched a trumpet and blew it. This served as the signal to Caesar that he should cross the river.
The dice were thrown. The Rubicon was crossed. History changed – and the fact that there is this weird supernatural element, and it’s introduced exactly as though Suetonius is describing something completely everyday, is often written out of the story. For instance, I did not include that in my earlier account of the crossing of the Rubicon, but looking back at it now, perhaps I should have done.
Throughout all of these stories, there is a sense that what was happening was being governed by fate – that the gods were always watching down, and that it was possible for mortals who could read these signs correctly to intuit what was going to happen. This is a really important part of the universe that Suetonius has bequeathed us.
If, through some miracle of technology, you could interview one of the 12 Caesars on your podcast The Rest Is History, who would you choose?
Julius Caesar – simply because his combination of an extraordinary life and piercing, ruthless intelligence would make him incomparably the most interesting guest to interview. I think, though, for my own selfish purposes – for wanting to understand how the Roman world ticked and how the course of Roman history was changed – I would choose Augustus. He was probably the most remarkable political operator, not just in Rome but in the whole of western history – maybe even world history.
- Read more | Who are the most underrated Roman emperors?
Tom Holland is a historian, author and broadcaster who co-hosts The Rest Is History podcast with Dominic Sandbrook. His translation of The Lives of the Caesars was published by Penguin Classics in 2025.
This article was first published in the March 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Everyday life in a slave trading town]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/everyday-life-in-a-slave-trading-town/ 2026-10-19T08:05:04.000Z 2026-10-19T08:04:52.000Z In 1665 the Portuguese Inquisition arrested Crispina Peres, a powerful slave trader in the west African port of Cacheu. The records of her case provide a remarkable window into everyday life in 17th-century west Africa, and form the basis of Toby Green's latest book, The Heretic of Cacheu.
In this episode he is joined by Rob Attar to explore the story of Crispina and the lost world she inhabited.
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[North Korea's religious dictators]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/north-korea-religious-dictators-podcast/ 2026-10-05T16:09:20.000Z 2026-10-05T16:09:20.000Z More than three decades after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the USSR, the North Korean regime remains steadfastly in place, defiantly ploughing its own path some eight decades after its founding. What might explain this remarkable longevity?
In Jonathan Cheng’s new book, Korean Messiah, the Wall Street Journal correspondent argues that it owes much to the enduring cult of personality around its founder, Kim Il-Sung, who took inspiration from his own Christian roots to create a modern religion that endures to this day.
Jonathan’s book is a finalist for the 2026 Cundill History Prize, and in today’s episode he explores these ideas with Rob Attar.
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Was the Great Sphinx built by a lost civilisation?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historys-greatest-conspiracies-episode-6/ 2026-09-01T12:54:19.000Z 2026-09-01T11:10:23.000Z The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the ancient world’s most enigmatic creations. So it’s no surprise that it has long been a magnet for pseudohistory and conspiracy theories. Could it be many thousands of years older than we think? Was it created by a lost civilisation? And do wondrous treasures lie beneath it waiting to be found?
In the final episode of season 3 of History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, Egyptologist Campbell Price joins Rob Attar to separate fact to fiction in the story of the Sphinx.
Want more from History's Greatest Conspiracy Theories? Listen to the rest of season 3.
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Did an alien spacecraft crash-land in Russia?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historys-greatest-conspiracies-episode-5/ 2026-09-01T11:11:23.000Z 2026-09-01T10:58:28.000Z In 1908, in the remote forests of Siberia, there was a giant explosion and bright lights were seen in the sky. Was this an asteroid or a comet crashing to earth? Or could it have been an alien spacecraft – or even a human experiment gone horribly wrong?
In this episode of History's Greatest Conspiracy Theories, environmental historian Andy Bruno joins Rob Attar to explore the debates that still surround the mysterious Tunguska event.
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Did 300 years of history never happen at all?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historys-greatest-conspiracies-episode-4/ 2026-09-01T11:11:23.000Z 2026-09-01T10:48:40.000Z The period after the fall of the western Roman empire is often known as the ‘Dark Ages’, due to an apparent shortage of historical evidence. Why might this be? Well, according to proponents of the Phantom Time Hypothesis, the explanation is simple: these centuries never happened at all.
In this episode of History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, Dr Philipp Nothaft from the University of Oxford joins Rob Attar to discuss the idea that these centuries were invented by powerful people for their own purposes – and that, ever since, we've all been inadvertently colluding in their fictional calendar.
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Was Paul McCartney replaced by an imposter?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historys-greatest-conspiracies-episode-3/ 2026-09-01T11:11:23.000Z 2026-09-01T10:42:52.000Z With 24 number one albums in the UK charts, Paul McCartney is the most successful British artist of all time. But what if the man that we know as Paul McCartney is in fact somebody else altogether? Could it be that the former Beatle was replaced by an imposter in the 1960s who's been living a lie ever since? In this episode of History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, Steven Cockroft – co-host of the Beatles podcast Nothing Is Real – joins Rob Attar to examine one of the most bizarre conspiracy theories to emerge from the world of pop music.
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Do Jesus’s descendants live among us?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historys-greatest-conspiracies-episode-2/ 2026-09-01T11:11:23.000Z 2026-09-01T10:32:33.000Z In the early 2000s, The Da Vinci Code was everywhere. Dan Brown’s novel – and its subsequent film adaptation – popularised the idea that Jesus Christ fathered children whose descendants have lived among us for millennia. The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, but could the theory underpinning it be true?
In this episode of History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, Professor Helen Bond, an expert on early Christianity, joins Rob Attar to investigate the concept of the secret bloodline of Jesus.
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Hedy Lamarr: life of the week]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/hedy-lamarr-life-of-the-week/ 2026-08-18T08:31:03.000Z 2026-08-18T08:30:56.000Z Hedy Lamarr starred in dozens of movies, but her life may have been more dramatic than any of them.
She was the teenage actor who portrayed the first character to have an on-screen orgasm. The Austrian Jew whose husband sold arms to the fascists. The refugee from Nazism who became a Hollywood megastar. And the pioneering inventor whose work anticipated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
In today's episode Professor Ruth Barton, Fellow Emeritus in Film Studies at Trinity College shares Hedy's remarkable story with Rob Attar.
]]> Rob Attar <![CDATA[Was Jack the Ripper Queen Victoria's grandson?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/was-jack-the-ripper-queen-victorias-grandson/ 2026-09-01T11:12:01.000Z 2026-08-13T15:57:24.000Z As recent years attest, royal scandals have a habit of coming to light. But what if the mother of all royal scandals is still waiting to be revealed? Could it be that an heir to the British throne, Prince Albert Victor, lived a double life as a serial killer? In this first episode of season 3 of History's Greatest Conspiracy Theories, crime historian Dr Drew Gray joins Rob Attar to explore the explosive suggestion that a British prince got away with multiple murders in the 19th century.
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