Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded ... [Augustus] so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble. Over the course of the 1st century AD,the Roman Empire achieved never before seen glories....

As private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, the scholar Suetonius had access to the imperial archives and used them (along with eyewitness accounts) to produce one of the most colourful biographical works in history....

\"Because of his baldness and hairiness, he announced it was a capital offence for anyone either to look down on him as he passed or to mention goats in any context.\" The biography of the brutal, crazed and incestuous Roman Emperor Caligula, who tried to appoint his own horse consul....