Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly referred to as Suetonius, was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is De vita Caesarum, commonly known in English as The Twelve Caesars, a set of biographies of 12 successive Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Other works by Suetonius concerned 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.

Life

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably born about AD 69, a date deduced from his remarks describing himself as a "young man" 20 years after Nero's death. His place of birth is disputed, but most scholars place it in Hippo Regius, at the time a small north African town in Numidia, in modern-day Algeria. It is certain that Suetonius came from a family of moderate social position, that his father, Suetonius Laetus, was a tribune belonging to the equestrian order in Legio XIII Gemina, and that Suetonius was educated when schools of rhetoric flourished in Rome.
Suetonius was a close friend of senator and letter-writer Pliny the Younger. Pliny describes him as "quiet and studious, a man dedicated to writing". Pliny helped him buy a small property and interceded with the Emperor Trajan to grant Suetonius immunities usually granted to a father of three, the ius trium liberorum, because his marriage was childless. Through Pliny, Suetonius came into favour with Trajan and Hadrian. Suetonius may have served on Pliny's staff when Pliny was imperial governor of Bithynia and Pontus between 110 and 112. Under Trajan he served as secretary of studies and director of Imperial archives. Under Hadrian, he became the emperor's secretary. According to the controversial and factually loose Historia Augusta, Hadrian later dismissed Suetonius for an affair with the empress Vibia Sabina.

Works

The Twelve Caesars

Suetonius is mainly remembered as the author of De Vita Caesarum—translated as The Life of the Caesars, although a more common English title is The Lives of the Twelve Caesars or simply The Twelve Caesars—his only extant work except for the brief biographies and other fragments noted below. The Twelve Caesars, probably written in Hadrian's time, is a collective biography of the Roman Empire's first leaders, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. The book was dedicated to his friend Gaius Septicius Clarus, a prefect of the Praetorian Guard in 119. The work tells the tale of each Caesar's life according to a set formula: the descriptions of appearance, omens, family history, quotes, and then a history are given in a consistent order. He recorded the earliest accounts of Julius Caesar's epileptic seizures.

Other works

Partly extant

De Viris Illustribus, to which belong:
*De Illustribus Grammaticis
*De Claris Rhetoribus
*De Poetis
*De Historicis
Peri ton par' Hellesi paidion
Peri blasphemion

The two last works were written in Greek. They apparently survive in part in the form of extracts in later Greek glossaries.

Lost works

The following list of Suetonius's lost works is from Robert Graves's foreword to his translation of the Twelve Caesars.

Royal Biographies
Lives of Famous Whores
Roman Manners and Customs
The Roman Year
The Roman Festivals
Roman Dress
Greek Games
Offices of State
On Cicero's Republic
Physical Defects of Mankind
Methods of Reckoning Time
An Essay on Nature
Greek Objurations
Grammatical Problems
Critical Signs Used in Books

The introduction to the Loeb edition of Suetonius, translated by J. C. Rolfe, with an introduction by K. R. Bradley, references the Suda with the following titles:

On Greek games
On Roman spectacles and games
On the Roman year
On critical signs in books
On Cicero's Republic
On names and types of clothes
On insults
On Rome and its customs and manners

The volume adds other titles not testified within the Suda.

On famous courtesans
On kings
On the institution of offices
On physical defects
On weather signs
On names of seas and rivers
On names of winds

Two other titles may also be collections of some of the aforelisted:

Pratum
''On various matters''
Editions
Robert Graves, Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars
J. C. Rolfe, Lives of the Caesars, Volume I.
J. C. Rolfe, Lives of the Caesars, Volume II.
Edwards, Catherine Lives of the Caesars. Oxford World's Classics..
Donna W. Hurley, Suetonius: The Caesars.
C. Suetonii Tranquilli De vita Caesarum libros VIII et De grammaticis et rhetoribus librum, ed. Robert A. Kaster.