THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS
By C. Suetonius Tranquillus;
To which are added,
HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, AND POETS.
The Translation of Alexander Thomson, M.D.
Revised and corrected by T.Forester, Esq., A.M.
PREFACE
C. Suetonius Tranquillus was the son of a Roman knight who commanded alegion, on the side of Otho, at the battle which decided the fate of theempire in favour of Vitellius. From incidental notices in the followingHistory, we learn that he was born towards the close of the reign ofVespasian, who died in the year 79 of the Christian era. He lived till thetime of Hadrian, under whose administration he filled the office ofsecretary; until, with several others, he was dismissed for presuming onfamiliarities with the empress Sabina, of which we have no further accountthan that they were unbecoming his position in the imperial court. Howlong he survived this disgrace, which appears to have befallen him in theyear 121, we are not informed; but we find that the leisure afforded himby his retirement, was employed in the composition of numerous works, ofwhich the only portions now extant are collected in the present volume.
Several of the younger Pliny’s letters are addressed to Suetonius, withwhom he lived in the closest friendship. They afford some brief, butgenerally pleasant, glimpses of his habits and career; and in a letter, inwhich Pliny makes application on behalf of his friend to the emperorTrajan, for a mark of favour, he speaks of him as “a most excellent,honourable, and learned man, whom he had the pleasure of entertainingunder his own roof, and with whom the nearer he was brought intocommunion, the more he loved him.” 1
The plan adopted by Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, led himto be more diffuse on their personal conduct and habits than on publicevents. He writes Memoirs rather than History. He neither dwells on thecivil wars which sealed the fall of the Republic, nor on the militaryexpeditions which extended the frontiers of the empire; nor does heattempt to develop the causes of the great political changes which markedthe period of which he treats.
When we stop to gaze in a museum or gallery on the antique busts of theCaesars, we perhaps endeavour to trace in their sculptured physiognomy thecharacteristics of those princes, who, for good or evil, were in theirtimes masters of the destinies of a large portion of the human race. Thepages of Suetonius will amply gratify this natural curiosity. In them wefind a series of individual portraits sketched to the life, with perfecttruth and rigorous impartiality. La Harpe remarks of Suetonius, “He isscrupulously exact, and strictly methodical. He omits nothing whichconcerns the person whose life he is writing; he relates everything, butpaints nothing. His work is, in some sense, a collection of anecdotes, butit is very curious to read and consult.” 2
Combining as it does amusement and information, Suetonius’s “Lives of theCaesars” was held in such estimation, that, so soon after the invention ofprinting as the year 1500, no fewer than eighteen editions had beenpublished, and nearly one hundred have since been added to the number.Critics of the highest rank have devoted themselves to the task ofcorrecting and commenting on the text, and the work has been translatedinto most European languages. Of the English translations, that of Dr.Alexander Thomson, published in 1796, has been made the basis of thepresent. He informs us in his Preface, that a version of S