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 and 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. 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.
The extracts below, taken from the Latin Library, are being provided with an interlinear translation and some annotations. The accompanying recordings have been produced quickly and are meant only for rough guidance. The editions of Life of Nero, Life of Galba and Life of Otho are now (April 2024) complete as are chapters 1-3 of Life of Vitellius. The remaining Vitellius chapters wil be added shortly.
Daniel Voshart's 2020 digital recosntruction of Nero's face
Rome, showing the original Severan Walls (4th cent.BC?) and the outer Aurelian Walls (3rd. cent AD) After the Praetorian Guard had deserted him. Nero fled in disguise through the Porta Collina (top right) and then probably along the Via Nomentana the road immediately north of the Praetorian Camp, from where he overheard the voices of soldiers predicting his own destruction and the victory of Galba (Vita Neronis, c.48).
Gold aureus with Otho’s portrait, with inscriptions IMP[ERATOR] M. OTHO CAESAR AUG[USTUS] TR[IBUNICIA] POTESTATE and SECURITAS P[OPULI] R[OMANI] http://www.ancient-roman-coin.com/otho-coins-imperial The tighter curls at the front of Otho’s head probably belong to his wig (see Paul Roche, `The Public Imagery of the Emperor Otho’, Historia 57(1): 108-23 https://www.jstor.org/stable/25598420 )