The emperor Domitian (AD 81-96) is often seen as a second Nero, and like him, as a persecutor of Christians. Agricola, Father in law to the historian Tacitus, died during his reign and what Tacitus has to say in his Agricola is uniformly hostile. So too are references to Domitian in the works of Pliny the Younger, himself a friend of Tacitus and patron of Suetonius. Suetonius' Domitian is far from a 'white-wash' of the emperor but is the most balanced of our surviving sources.

This edition offers a newly revised text with a general introduction and detailed commentary, which do not ignore the literary and linguistic questions but concentrate on the political and social history behind the life. Comparison is continually being drawn between the Life and other accounts of the reign, especially that of Dio Cassius.