The author of the Lives of the Twelve Caesars tells this in his Life of Otho, and adds that his father had been present when Otho decided to commit suicide after his army had been defeated at Cremona by the legions of his rival Vitellius . The first part is chronological. All content copyright © 1995–2020 Livius.org. Every biography by Suetonius has more or less the same structure. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c.71-c.135): Roman scholar and official, best-known as the author of the Lives of the Twelve Caesars. There were at least seven of them, usually consisting of two reading rooms, one for Latin and one for Greek literature - the two languages of the Roman empire. But with the advent of humanism interest in Suetonius increased exponentially. The book was published in multiple languages including English, consists of 363 pages and is available in Paperback format. Indeed, after Tacitus we find no further serious historians writing in Latin until the solitary figure of Ammianus Marcellinus at the end of the fourth century ad. Then comes a twist: Having given as it were a summary of his life, I shall now take up its various phases one by one, not in chronological order, but by classes, to make the account clearer and more intelligible.note[Suetonius, Life of Augustus 9.1.]. 4. Pliny's letters, which survive, show how he cared about his protégé. Suetonius "The Twelve Caesars" If a friend asked me to tell him if it is worth it to read Suetonius' book "The Twelve Caesars", I would say it is. From this simple piece of information, we can deduce a couple of things. Under normal circumstances, the tribuneship marked the beginning of a career, but for Laetus, it was the end: as an officer of the defeated Otho, the only thing he could do was retire, grateful to the gods that he had survived. Unfortunately, these books are lost. As far as we can see, he treats his subject matter more or less objectively. The main characters of this history, classics story are Nero, Caligula. Suetonius' attention to private lives has earned him a reputation as a slanderer - someone who loves scandals. His successor Tiberius is presented as a weaker man: his reign is essentially an egotistical usurpation - something that becomes obvious after reading about his sexual behavior. Birley.]. Other officers were less fortunate: they were executed. Despite the great interest that The Twelve Caesars has held for readers over the centuries, it is not necessarily an easy work to read: Suetonius assumes a great deal of knowledge on the part of his readers. Jerome also took it as the model for his own treatise On Illustrious Men; in the preface, he says that his friend Dexter had urged him to ‘follow Tranquillus’ and do for Christian men of letters what the earlier scholar had done for pagans. His successor Caligula is a cynical monster, Claudius a bureaucrat, Nero incompetent. Loved each and every part of this book. It must be noted that their reconstruction is a bit speculative, although a part of Book 18 survives: Some of these subjects could also be included in a monograph (Lives of famous prostitutes and a Handbook textual criticism), others can be regarded as independent books (Roman antiquities, Lives of famous authors, Lives of Roman kings, On nature). In Ostia, the port of Rome, Suetonius occupied two priestly functions (flamen sacerdotalis and pontifex Volcanalis). The office of a bybliothecis implied that Suetonius was responsible for the libraries in Rome. It has often been said that Suetonius, a former archivist, used sources from the Roman state archive. Although that manuscript itself no longer survives, it was the source of all later copies, which consequently also lack the opening sections of the work. In 109-111, Pliny was governor of Bitynia-Pontus and Suetonius accompanied his protector. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was born in the province of Africa, in Hippo Regius, modern Annaba in northeast Algeria. After the Carolingian period evidence forThe Twelve Caesars again becomes scarce: from the tenth century nothing survives, from the eleventh only three manuscripts, from the twelfth only two. This suggests that his heart was not in it: he was already 30 years old, which was rather late for this position. The author of the Lives of the Twelve Caesars tells this in his Life of Otho, and adds that his father had been present when Otho decided to commit suicide after his army had been defeated at Cremona by the legions of his rival Vitellius (text). In the first place, that Laetus was probably born in 49 or 50, because a military tribune was usually nineteen or twenty years old. The book has been awarded with , and many others. During the reign of Vespasian's son Domitian (81-96), Suetonius was sent to Rome to be educated as an orator. We know many titles of publications by Suetonius, including an intriguing book on the Physical Defects of Men, a biography of Cicero, the Greek Children's Games, and a dictionary that contained only terms of abuse. He writes Memoirs rather than History. After this dynasty, a new civil war breaks out (book 7: Galba, Otho, Vitellius), whereas book 8 describes Vespasian, Titus, Domitian - a repetition of the earlier story about the strong founder of a weak dynasty. Lives of tragic, comic, and satirical poets. Radice.]. In an exchange of letters with the emperor Trajan, Pliny obtained a legal privilege for his friend, who was now about forty years old, and is called "a fine scholar" and "a man of the highest integrity and distinction".note[Pliny, Letter 10.94.]. We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you. In the early third century AD, at the same time as the Greek writer Dio Cassius was at work on his massive history of Rome, a man named Marius Maximus produced what was in effect a sequel to Suetonius’ work: the lives of twelve more Caesars, from Domitian's immediate successor Nerva (AD 96–8) down to M. Aurelius Antoninus, better known as Elagabalus (AD 218–22). When an embassy approached the emperor to ask for something, the a studiis had to find the texts of replies to similar requests. If he was Laetus' second child, he was born even later - although a date after, say, 73 is unlikely. This last office gave Suetonius more power than Pliny could ever have dreamt of. There are indications that books 11-19 were once published independently as Famous people (De viris illustribus). Assuming that Laetus came from Hippo Regius and returned in the summer of 69, his son Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus cannot have been conceived before the winter of 69/70 and cannot have been born before the autumn of 70. Other biographies contain similar turns in the narrative. They did not involve a lot of work, but were very prestigious. ], This last line may refer to the fact that Pliny had already published three books of letters (in 103) or some poetry. Fortunately, we have an inscription that was discovered in his hometown Hippo Regius in 1952. Apart from part of the section on grammatici and rhetors from On Illustrious Men, only The Twelve Caesars survived into the Middle Ages, and even it did not survive intact: the only manuscript available by the time of Charlemagne had lost its first few pages, which contained the preface and the beginning of the life of Julius Caesar. Suetonius was responsible for the imperial correspondence. All rights reserved. At least two themes can be distinguished in the Lives of the Twelve Caesars. Next comes a thematic description of the emperor's character, his private life (including sexual habits that have always caught much attention), behavior as a citizen, military successes, and some remarks about the emperor's political life. By this time the popularity of The Twelve Caesars had begun to spread beyond the circles of those able to read the Latin original. In view of our warm friendship, it is only fair that you should let me have the same pleasure from you as you enjoy in me.note[Pliny, Letters 5.10.3.

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