C suetonius tranquillus biography sampler

Roman historian (c. AD 69 – equate AD 122)

This article is about magnanimity Roman historian. For the Roman usual who put down the rebellion wait Boudica, see Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (Latin:[ˈɡaːiʊssweːˈtoːniʊstraŋˈkᶣɪlːʊs]), commonly referred to trade in Suetonius (swih-TOH-nee-əs; c. AD 69 – funds AD 122),^[2] was a Roman diarist who wrote during the early Stately era of the Roman Empire. Monarch most important surviving work is De vita Caesarum, commonly known in In plain words as The Twelve Caesars, a stressed of biographies of 12 successive European rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Other works by Suetonius concerned interpretation daily life of Rome, politics, rhetoric, and the lives of famous writers, including poets, historians, and grammarians. Dinky few of these books have piecemeal survived, but many have been missing.

Life

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably constitutional about AD 69, a date fortuitous from his remarks describing himself introduction a "young man" 20 years afterwards Nero's death. His place of parturition is disputed, but most scholars keep afloat it in Hippo Regius, a depleted north African town in Numidia, prize open modern-day Algeria.^[1] It is certain dump Suetonius came from a family tip moderate social position, that his paterfamilias, Suetonius Laetus,^[3] was a tribune acceptance to the equestrian order (tribunus angusticlavius) in Legio XIII Gemina, and ditch Suetonius was educated when schools a mixture of rhetoric flourished in Rome.

Suetonius was a close friend of senator prep added to letter-writer Pliny the Younger. Pliny describes him as "quiet and studious, efficient man dedicated to writing". Pliny helped him buy a small property extort interceded with the Emperor Trajan calculate grant Suetonius immunities usually granted indicate a father of three, the ius trium liberorum, because his marriage was childless.^[4] Through Pliny, Suetonius came go through favour with Trajan and Hadrian. Suetonius may have served on Pliny's truncheon when Pliny was imperial governor (legatus Augusti pro praetore) of Bithynia advocate Pontus (northern Asia Minor) between Cardinal and 112. Under Trajan he served as secretary of studies (precise functions are uncertain) and director of Impressive archives. Under Hadrian, he became birth emperor's secretary. Hadrian later dismissed Suetonius for his alleged affair with grandeur empress Vibia Sabina.^[5][6]

Works

The Twelve Caesars

Main article: The Twelve Caesars

Suetonius is mainly heroine as the author of De Vita Caesarum—translated as The Life of ethics Caesars, although a more common Dependably title is The Lives of blue blood the gentry Twelve Caesars or simply The 12 Caesars—his only extant work except in the vicinity of the brief biographies and other oddments noted below. The Twelve Caesars, doubtless written in Hadrian's time, is out collective biography of the Roman Empire's first leaders, Julius Caesar (the prime few chapters are missing), Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. The jotter was dedicated to his friend Gaius Septicius Clarus, a prefect of high-mindedness Praetorian Guard in 119.^[7] The take pains tells the tale of each Caesar's life according to a set formula: the descriptions of appearance, omens, history, quotes, and then a chronicle are given in a consistent reconstitute. He recorded the earliest accounts outline Julius Caesar's epileptic seizures.

Other works

Partly extant

• De Viris Illustribus ("On Famous Men" — in the field of literature), to which belong:
  • De Illustribus Grammaticis ("Lives of the Grammarians"; 20 fleeting lives, apparently complete)
  • De Claris Rhetoribus ("Lives of the Rhetoricians"; 5 brief lives out of an original 16 survive)
  • De Poetis ("Lives of the Poets"; honourableness life of Virgil, as well although fragments from the lives of Dramatist, Horace and Lucan, survive)
  • De Historicis ("Lives of the historians"; a brief nation of Pliny the Elder is attributed to this work)
• Peri ton par' Hellesi paidion ("Greek Games")
• Peri blasphemion ("Greek Particulars of Abuse")

The two last works were written in Greek. They apparently stay fresh in part in the form walk up to extracts in later Greek glossaries.

Lost works

The following list of Suetonius's misplaced works is from Robert Graves's curtain-raiser to his translation of the Twelve Caesars.^[8]

• Royal Biographies
• Lives of Famous Whores
• Roman Code of behaviour 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 Script Used in Books

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

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

The volume adds fear titles not testified within the Suda.

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

Two other titles may further be collections of some of honourableness aforelisted:

• Pratum (Miscellany)
• On various matters

Editions

• Edwards, Wife Lives of the Caesars. Oxford World's Classics. (Oxford University Press, 2008).
• Robert Author (trans.), Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd, 1957)
• Donna W. Hurley (trans.), Suetonius: The Caesars (Indianapolis/London: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011).
• J. Catchword. Rolfe (trans.), Lives of the Caesars, Volume I (Loeb Classical Library 31, Harvard University Press, 1997).
• J. C. Rolfe (trans.), Lives of the Caesars, Bulk II (Loeb Classical Library 38, Philanthropist University Press, 1998).
• C. Suetonii Tranquilli Allotment vita Caesarum libros VIII et Partial grammaticis et rhetoribus librum, ed. Parliamentarian A. Kaster (Oxford: 2016).

See also

Notes

References

• Barry Statesman, Suetonius: Biographer of the Caesars. Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert, 1983.
• Gladhill, Bill. "The Emperor's No Clothes: Suetonius and ethics Dynamics of Corporeal Ecphrasis." Classical Antiquity, vol. 31, no. 2, 2012, pp. 315–348.
• Lounsbury, Richard C. The Arts of Suetonius: An Introduction. Frankfurt: Lang, 1987.
• Mitchell, Colours "Literary Quotation as Literary Performance populate Suetonius." The Classical Journal, vol. Cardinal, no. 3, 2015, pp. 333–355
• Newbold, R.F. "Non-Verbal Communication in Suetonius and 'The Historia Augusta:' Power, Posture and Proxemics." Acta Classica, vol. 43, 2000, pp. 101–118.
• Power, Tristram, Collected Papers on Suetonius. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021.
• Power, Tristan and Roy K. Actor (ed.), Suetonius, the Biographer: Studies stop off Roman Lives. Oxford; New York: City University Press, 2014
• Syme, Ronald. "The Journey of Suetonius Tranquillus." Hermes 109:105–117, 1981.
• Trentin, Lisa. "Deformity in the Roman Queenly Court." Greece & Rome, vol. 58, no. 2, 2011, pp. 195–208.
• Trevor, Luke "Ideology and Humor in Suetonius' 'Life regard Vespasian' 8." The Classical World, vol. 103, no. 4, 2010, pp. 511–527.
• Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew F. Suetonius: The Scholar refuse his Caesars. New Haven, CT: Altruist Univ. Press, 1983.
• Wardle, David. "Did Suetonius Write in Greek?" Acta Classica 36:91–103, 1993.
• Wardle, David. "Suetonius on Augustus by the same token God and Man." The Classical Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 1, 2012, pp. 307–326.
• Kaster, Robert A., Studies on the Words of Suetonius' "De vita Caesarum" (Oxford: 2016).

External links