How to Be a Bad Emperor, Suetonius
How to Be a Bad Emperor, Suetonius
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How to Be a Bad Emperor
An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders

Author: Suetonius, Josiah Osgood, Josiah Osgood, Josiah Osgood

Narrator: P.J. Ochlan

Unabridged: 2 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/24/2020


Synopsis

If recent history has taught us anything, it's that sometimes the best guide to leadership is the negative example. But that insight is hardly new. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Suetonius wrote Lives of the Caesars, perhaps the greatest negative leadership book of all time. He was ideally suited to write about terrible political leaders; after all, he was also the author of Famous Prostitutes and Words of Insult, both sadly lost. In How to Be a Bad Emperor, Josiah Osgood provides crisp new translations of Suetonius's briskly paced, darkly comic biographies of the Roman emperors Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Entertaining and shocking, the stories of these ancient anti-role models show how power inflames leaders' worst tendencies, causing almost incalculable damage.

How to Be a Bad Emperor is both a gleeful romp through some of the nastiest bits of Roman history and a perceptive account of leadership gone monstrously awry. We meet Caesar, using his aunt's funeral to brag about his descent from gods and kings—and hiding his bald head with a comb-over and a laurel crown; Tiberius, neglecting public affairs in favor of wine, perverse sex, tortures, and executions; the insomniac sadist Caligula, flaunting his skill at cruel put-downs; and the matricidal Nero, indulging his mania for public performance.

About Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius, was a Roman historian, administrator, and writer belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era. His most important surviving work is The Twelve Caesars, a set of biographies of twelve successive Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Other works by Suetonius concern the daily life of Rome, politics, oratory, and the lives of famous writers, including poets, historians, and grammarians. A few of these books have partially survived, but many have been lost.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Matthew

I loved this book. It is a parallel text, Latin and English, and it was quite a fun little challenge to read some Latin in the original (extracts from Suetonius's "Lives" about Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula and Nero) a mere 28 years after I did GCSE Latin at school (the main secondary exam taken......more

Goodreads review by Armand

Well. At least I now know which mistakes to avoid when I finally ascend to the purple. 8.5/10; 4 stars.......more

Goodreads review by Kitkat

3.5 stars I liked it a lot but not 4 stars. It was interesting and I loved the crazy horrific things the emperors did. I loved that it had half the pages in Latin and translated on the other page. I also loved how it was based off of an advisor during the Roman times. Sad I can’t read more of his stu......more

Goodreads review by Massimo

Why would you want to read a guide to being a truly terrible leader? So that you can spot them and not vote for them! Of course, nobody voted for ancient Roman emperors, but Suetonius' insights are still valid today. The original covers 12 emperors, from Julius Caesar (who was not actually an empero......more

It was amusing and full of gossip about cruel and sexually deviant Romans. The overall lesson being - don’t be an egotistical jerk.......more