The City of God, Volume I vs The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
137words between them — 1 min of it
The City of God, Volume I is longer — 229,985 words against 229,848 for The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete, a difference of 137 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The City of God, Volume I is the harder read, at grade 13.6 against 13.3.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The City of God, Volume I | The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Augustine, of Hippo, Saint | Suetonius |
| Words | 229,985 | 229,848 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 15h 20m | 15h 19m |
| Unique words | 11,979 | 16,029 |
| Sentences | 7,114 | 8,133 |
| Average sentence length | 32.3 words | 28.3 words |
| Reading grade | 13.6 | 13.3 |
| Reading ease | 54.8 | 50.2 |
| Long words | 10.1% | 13.1% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |229,985 − 229,848| = 137 words 137 ÷ 250 wpm = 1 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The City of God, Volume I or The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete?
The City of God, Volume I is longer — 229,985 words against 229,848 for The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete, a difference of 137 words or about 1 min of extra reading. The City of God, Volume I is the harder read, at grade 13.6 against 13.3.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 45304 and no. 6400 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
