SUETONIUS

SUETONIUS: LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Ruins of Hippo Regius, overlooked by the Basilica of Saint Augustine
By Oris - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10730879

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c.69 - after 122 A.D.) was probably born in Hippo Regius, modern Addaba in Algeria, a coastal city best-known as the birthplace of St. Augustine. His father, Suetonius Laetus, had fought as a military tribune on the losing side at the First battle of Bedriacum in 69, when the forces of Otho were defeated by those of Vitellius during the civil wars following the overthrow of Nero. Laetus probably returned shortly afterwards to Hippo but during the reign of Domitian (81 - 96) his son was sent to Rome for rhetorical training. He enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Pliny the Younger, on whose staff he may have served when Pliny was governor of the province of Bithynia and Pontus in 110 -112. He was appointed as `secretary of studies' and imperial archivist by the emperor Trajan and then as secretary to Trajan's successor, Hadrian, until his dismissal for `"conducting [himself] toward [the empress], Sabina, in a more informal fashion than the etiquette of the court demanded." Fuller details of Suetonius' life and literary output are provided on the livius.org site.

Suetonius' best-known work is a collection of biographies of `the twelve Caesars', from Julius Caesar (10o - 44 B.C.) to Domitian (51 - 96 A.D.). He is sometimes accused of paying too much attention to gossip but his position as palace archivist gave him access to official records and he appears to have been careful in his comparison of sources: he notes, for example, that most accounts of Julius Caesar's assassination claim that he said nothing during the assault but that a minority of writers believe he addressed the words Καὶ σὺ τέκνον (`You as well child?) to Brutus.

The 1913-14 Loeb edition of the complete Latin text of Lives of the Twelve Caesars and of Suetonius' other, briefer surviving works, together with the accompanying English translation, are available on the LacusCurtius site. The Latin for some of the lives with historical commentary in English and discussions of Suetonius' style are available for free download in two volumes:   Joseph Pike's 1903 edition of Tiberius, Caligula (Gaius), Claudius and Nero and John Westcott and Edwin Rankin's 1918 one of Julius Caesar and Augustus. Pike omits chapters 28 and 29 of Life of Nero because of the graphic depiction of Nero's alleged sexual perversions. Keith Bradley's Suetonius'Life of Nero: an historical commentary (Bruxelles: Latiomus, 1978) is out-of-print but available in some libraries.

For Life of Galba, Life of Otho and Life of Vitellius,  there is a superb open-access on-line resource, Charles Murison's 1976 doctoral dissertation, `Historical commentary on Suetonius' lives of Galba, Otho and Vitellius,' which is the main source for most of my own notes. Murison provides extensive discussion of the events of 68-69 A.D., including information from the fuller narrative in Tacitus' Histories,   Plutarch's biographies of Galba and Otho and the later historian Cassius Dio. There is also Stephen Lee's 1983 M.A. dissertation on Life of Galba alone, which can be downloaded below. While less comprehensive than Murison on the historical side, it does provide come additional information on particular points. Both these commentaries include additional information from the accounts by Tacitus, Plutarch and Dio Cassius.

There is no similar open-access commentary for Life of Vespasian but two important works on his period available from Amazon and other book sellers are Barbara Levick's Vespasian (2nd.ed, 2016) and Gwyn Morgan's 69 AD: The Year of the Four Emperors.(2007).

The extracts below, taken from the Latin Library, are being provided with an interlinear translation, annotations and illustrations. The accompanying recordings have been produced quickly and are meant only for rough guidance. The editions of Life of Nero, Life of Galba, Life of Otho, Life of Vitellius,  Life of Vespasian and Life of Titus are now (April 2025) complete but the last some recordings have chapters 18-23 of Domitian are still to be added.

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