The first was that of Julius Caesar (100–44 BC), the dictator whose name had become synonymous with imperial rule the last that of Domitian (AD 51–96), an emperor who had come to power eighty-one years after the birth of Christ. Twelve lives in all featured in Suetonius’ collection. He knew what fortune had preserved for him: the very template of how to write about a Caesar. No wonder that Einhard should have treasured it. This text – a survivor by the skin of its teeth into the age of Charlemagne – constituted a great compendium of riches: details, many of them startlingly personal and intimate, of the first Roman emperors. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (AD 69–122) had lived some seven centuries previously, during the heyday of Roman power, and a single copy of his most famous work, a series of biographies of the Caesars, had been preserved in a Frankish monastery. This was why, when Einhard sought a model for his biography of Charlemagne, he turned not to a recent source, not to the life of a saint or a Christian ruler, but to an older text by far. Centuries might have passed since the collapse of Roman rule in western Europe, but the allure, the charisma, the prestige of the vanished empire still haunted Frankish scholars. The surest measure of his achievements was that in 800, in Rome itself, he had been crowned as emperor: the heir of the Caesars. During that time he had won many wars, sponsored numerous reforms, and served as the patron of a golden age of learning. Charlemagne, the greatest king of his age, had died in 814, after a reign of almost fifty years. Some time in the early 9 th century, a Frankish scholar named Einhard (pictured above) sat down to write a biography.
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