Suetonius Tranquillus
Gaius. A Roman historian and scholar, who was born
about the beginning of the reign of Vespasian, and practised as an advocate at Rome in the
reign of Trajan. He lived on intimate terms with the younger Pliny , several of whose letters
are addressed to him. At the request of Pliny , Trajan granted to Suetonius the
ius trium liberorum; for, though he was married, he had not three children, which
number was necessary to relieve him from various legal disabilities. Suetonius was afterwards
appointed private secretary (
magister epistolarum) to Hadrian, but was
deprived of this office by the emperor, along with Septicius Clarus, the praefect of the
Praetorians, on the ground of his offensive familiarity with Sabina, the emperor's wife. His
chief work is his lives of the first twelve emperors of Rome (
Vitae Duodecim
Caesarum) from Iulius to Domitian. Suetonius does not follow the chronological order
in his
Lives, but groups together his facts according to their nature. His
language is very brief and precise, sometimes obscure, without any affectation of ornament;
and his works abound in scandalous anecdotes. The existing treatise
De Illustribus
Grammaticis et de Claris Rhetoribus is perhaps only part of a larger work, the
Pratum, which seems to have been a sort of encyclopaedia, as many fragments
show, dealing with a great number of subjects. (See Schanz,
Röm. Litt.
iii. 42-54.) The only other productions of Suetonius still extant are a few lives of Roman
authors.
The standard text of Suetonius is that of Roth
(Leipzig, 1886), and of the
fragments that of Reifferscheid
(2d ed. Leipzig, 1890). A good annotated
edition (Latin notes) is that of Baumgarten-Crusius and Hase in the Lemaire collection, 2
vols.
(Paris, 1828). The first two books (Iulius and Augustus) are edited with an
introduction and English notes by H. T. Peck
(2d ed. New York, 1893). The
Lives and the remains of the
Viri Illustres are translated by
Thomson and Forester
(London, 1881). See Regent,
De Suetonii Vita et
Scriptis (Breslau, 1856); Thimm,
De Usu atque Elocutione C.
Suetonii Tranquil. (Königsberg, 1867); and Bagge,
De
Elocutione Suetonii (Upsala, 1875).
