API tools faq
paste
Advertisement
jonstond2

Suetonius (Classics)

jonstond2
Jun 12th, 2018
264
0
Never
Add comment
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 56.89 KB | None | 0 0
raw download clone embed print report
  1.  
  2. Introduction
  3. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (born c. 69 CE) was prominent as a senior figure in the imperial administration of the early 2nd century CE and as a scholar who produced a range of works in the areas of biography, antiquarianism, and philology. The majority of these survive only as titles or in fragmentary form. He is best known for his best-preserved work, De vita Caesarum, biographies of the rulers of the Roman world from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and was probably the first Roman to write imperial biographies that were distinct from annalistic histories. The work is of major importance as a historical source for the early Principate, as his inclusivity has preserved much unique material revealing what contemporaries, and near-contemporaries, of the emperors said about them. It has often been criticized for its inclusion of trivial material and (wrongly) for an absence of critical judgment of the emperors. Its vivid depictions spawned imitators in antiquity and have remained a principal source for many modern depictions of the emperors.
  4.  
  5. Bibliographies
  6. Suetonius, despite the wide range of his scholarly works, has not before Benediktson 1992–93 been deemed worthy of a major, comprehensive bibliography, although the various contributions to Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt II 33.5 (Haase 1991, cited under Collections of Articles) provide substantial, but partial, bibliographies, most notably Galand-Hallyn 1991 on the De vita Caesarum alone. Poignault 2009 in effect continues Benediktson up to 2007, but without annotation.
  7.  
  8. Benediktson, Thomas D. 1992–1993. A survey of Suetonius scholarship: 1938–87. Classical World 86:377–447.
  9.  
  10. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  11.  
  12. An analytical, annotated bibliography of 711 items on all of Suetonius’s works categorized into very helpful subdivisions, with handy reference to bibliographies going back to 1897.
  13.  
  14. Find this resource:
  15.  
  16. Galand-Hallyn, Perrine. 1991. Bibliographie suétonienne: (Les vies des XII Césars) 1950–1988. Vers une réhabilitation. In Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 33.5. Edited by Wolfgang Haase, 3576–3622. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
  17.  
  18. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19.  
  20. Alphabetically organized under few categories, but with a useful index locorum.
  21.  
  22. Find this resource:
  23.  
  24. Poignault, Rémy. 2009. Sélection bibliographique (1989–2007). In Le Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 337–360. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de Recherches A. Piganiol.
  25.  
  26. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  27.  
  28. Bibliography broken down into useful categories.
  29.  
  30. Find this resource:
  31.  
  32. Collections of Articles
  33. Apart from Brugnoli 1968, which helpfully brings together several of this Italian scholar’s previously published articles, mainly on De viris illustribus, Suetonius has not until very recently attracted such collections, but Poignault 2009 (cited under Bibliographies) offers wide-ranging reflections on Suetonius, mainly his imperial Lives, by Continental scholars who are not primarily experts on the biographer. The various contributors to Haase 1991 (cited under Suetonius the Scholar) offer bibliographical essays on various aspects of Suetonius’s life and work in the usual style of the Aufstieg series.
  34.  
  35. Brugnoli, Giorgio. 1968. Studi Suetoniani. Lecce, Italy: Milella.
  36.  
  37. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  38.  
  39. Assorted essays, mainly on the text of De viris illustribus and on other lost works of Suetonius.
  40.  
  41. Find this resource:
  42.  
  43. Haase, Wolfgang, ed. 1991. Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 33.5. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
  44.  
  45. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  46.  
  47. Of the essays, of varying quality, the most important contribution is that of R. G. Lewis on the literary antecedents of Suetonius’s imperial Lives, which traces beyond doubt examples of Suetonian practice in the laudationes and vituperationes of Cicero’s forensic and political speeches and excludes the laudatio funebris as the biographer’s model.
  48.  
  49. Find this resource:
  50.  
  51. Poignault, Rémy, ed. 2009. Le Présence de Suétone. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de Recherches A. Piganiol.
  52.  
  53. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  54.  
  55. Papers emanating from a conference held in 2004, the most interesting of which discuss the lasting influence of Suetonius on French literature.
  56.  
  57. Find this resource:
  58.  
  59. Editions of Text and Textual History
  60. Suetonius has been well served by his editors and relatively fortunate in the manuscript tradition upon which they draw, as seen in Tibbets 1983. The edition of Ihm (Suetonius 1907) provides the standard text of the De vita Caesarum, with paragraphing and subdivision for scholars in the non-French-speaking world, and Kaster 1995 has superseded the 1960 Teubner text by Giorgio Brugnoli for De grammaticis et rhetoribus. For the fragments of lost works Roth 1858 and Reifferscheid 1860 offer contrasting and valuable collections. For an edition of the Peri blasphemion and Peri paidion, see Taillardat 1967 under Commentaries on Other Works.
  61.  
  62. Kaster, Robert A. 1992. Studies on the text of Suetonius De grammaticis et rhetoribus. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
  63.  
  64. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  65.  
  66. The foundation for his 1995 edition and commentary (see below) establishes a definite text for the most substantial remains of De viris illustribus.
  67.  
  68. Find this resource:
  69.  
  70. Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus). 1858. C. Suetoni Tranquilli quae supersunt omnia. Edited by Karl L. Roth. Leipzig: Teubner.
  71.  
  72. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  73.  
  74. Although his text of the De vita Caesarum has been superseded by Suetonius 1907 (Ihm), Roth’s conservative collection of the fragments of Suetonius’s other works is the most reliable and usable.
  75.  
  76. Find this resource:
  77.  
  78. Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus). 1860. C. Suetonius Tranquillus praeter Caesarum libros reliquiae. Edited by August Reifferscheid. Leipzig: Teubner
  79.  
  80. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  81.  
  82. Reifferscheid’s methodology casts the net as wide as possible for any potential surviving fragment of Suetonius’s works. While many of his attributions are precarious, his collections illustrate well the possible shape of Suetonius’s wider scholarly productions.
  83.  
  84. Find this resource:
  85.  
  86. Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus). 1907. C. Suetoni Tranquilli De vita Caesarum. Edited by Maximilian Ihm. Leipzig: Teubner.
  87.  
  88. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  89.  
  90. The editio maior, which was followed by the editio minor of 1908 with its abbreviated apparatus criticus, presents the best scholarly text, hardly in need of updating, as well as useful parallel passages and the best account of the history of the text.
  91.  
  92. Find this resource:
  93.  
  94. Tibbets, S. J. 1983. Suetonius. In Texts and transmission: A survey of the Latin classics. Edited by L. D. Reynolds, et al., 399–404. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  95.  
  96. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  97.  
  98. Useful summary in English of the textual history from Isidore to 14th-century Italy.
  99.  
  100. Find this resource:
  101.  
  102. Translations
  103. Suetonius is well served by his translators into most modern European languages. English translations have been made since the Renaissance. If there can be said to be a standard translation, it is probably the updated version of Rolfe’s Loeb edition (Suetonius 1998), but the most widely used is Suetonius 2007, the updated version of Graves’s Penguin edition. In Suetonius 2000, Edwards offers an alternative to Graves-Rives, often giving a closer impression of the Latin sentence structures.
  104.  
  105. Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus). 1998. Suetonius. 2 vols. Translated by John C. Rolfe; revised by Donna W Hurley and George P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 31. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
  106.  
  107. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  108.  
  109. Much needed debowdlerising and minor revision of Rolfe’s generally accurate translation, with a good introduction by Keith W. Bradley.
  110.  
  111. Find this resource:
  112.  
  113. Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus). 2000. Suetonius: Lives of the Caesars. Translated by Catharine Edwards. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  114.  
  115. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  116.  
  117. Sticks closer to the structure of Suetonius’s Latin than Graves and provides useful, basic notes and glossary.
  118.  
  119. Find this resource:
  120.  
  121. Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus). 2007. Suetonius: The twelve Caesars. Translated by Robert Graves; revised with introduction by James B. Rives. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
  122.  
  123. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  124.  
  125. Despite the appearance of more recent translations after the original edition in 1957, this remains the most readable and accessible translation. Graves’s occasional slips have largely been eradicated through successive revisions by Michael Grant (1970) and James Rives (2007).
  126.  
  127. Find this resource:
  128.  
  129. Concordance
  130. Although computer search programs (e.g., Diogenes) have made many kinds of word searches easy, a concordance that analyzes the use of each term is still necessary for others.
  131.  
  132. Howard, A. A., and C. N Jackson. 1922. Index verborum C. Suetoni Tranquilli stilique eius proprietatum nonnullarum. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
  133.  
  134. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  135.  
  136. Invaluable precomputer, analytical concordance.
  137.  
  138. Find this resource:
  139.  
  140. Commentaries on the Whole of De Vita Caesarum
  141. There are no modern, detailed commentaries on the whole of the De vita Caesarum, a task rendered difficult by the sheer mass of scholarship on the early Imperial period that would need to be assimilated. From the Renaissance through to the early 19th century, small-scale commentaries with a significant linguistic element were produced frequently. Largely tralatician (i.e., repeating the findings of their predecessors), they culminate in Baumgarten-Crusius 1816–1818.
  142.  
  143. Baumgarten-Crusius, Detlev C. W. 1816–1818. C. Suetoni Tranquilli Opera. 3 vols. Leipzig: Fleischer.
  144.  
  145. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  146.  
  147. The finest of the antiquarian commentaries, with useful introduction to scholarly debates since the Renaissance and an analytical concordance to Suetonius’s Latin that has not been wholly superseded.
  148.  
  149. Find this resource:
  150.  
  151. Commentaries on Multiple Lives of De Vita Caesarum
  152. The last two books of De vita Caesarum have generated useful commentaries, Mooney 1930 on both books, Hofstee 1898 and Murison 1992 on Book 7, and Jones and Milns 2002 on Book 8.
  153.  
  154. Hofstee, Cornelius. 1898. C. Suetonii Tranquilli vitae Galbae, Othonis, Vitellii. Groningen, The Netherlands: Wolters.
  155.  
  156. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  157.  
  158. Concise commentary in Latin, with handy conspectus of parallel passages.
  159.  
  160. Find this resource:
  161.  
  162. Jones, Brian W., and Milns, Robert D. 2002. Suetonius: The Flavian emperors. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press.
  163.  
  164. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  165.  
  166. Concise commentary with English lemmata, useful for undergraduate students
  167.  
  168. Find this resource:
  169.  
  170. Mooney, George W. 1930. C. Suetoni Tranquilli de vita Caesarum libri VII–VIII. Dublin, Ireland: Hodges, Figgis.
  171.  
  172. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  173.  
  174. Although the commentary is now dated, the translation is excellent, and Appendix 1 provides a handy summary of the works of several 19th-century theses on the diction and style of Suetonius.
  175.  
  176. Find this resource:
  177.  
  178. Murison, Charles. 1992. Suetonius: Galba, Otho, Vitellius. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press.
  179.  
  180. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  181.  
  182. Commentary focuses on historical rather than historiographical aspects.
  183.  
  184. Find this resource:
  185.  
  186. Commentaries on Individual Lives of De Vita Caesarum
  187. Despite subsequent advances in scholarship, much of use can still be found in old Latin commentaries.
  188.  
  189. Julius Caesar
  190. The major source for the life of Caesar lacks a modern detailed commentary in any language; scholars and students have to rely on Townend 1982’s minimalist additions to Butler and Cary 1927.
  191.  
  192. Townend, Gavin B. 1982. Suetonius: Divus Julius. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press.
  193.  
  194. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  195.  
  196. Minimal revision of Butler and Cary 1927.
  197.  
  198. Find this resource:
  199.  
  200. Butler, H. E., and M. Cary. 1927. C. Suetoni Tranquilli Divus Iulius. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  201.  
  202. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203.  
  204. A succinct commentary, now dated in almost every aspect, but not superseded. Gavin Townend made minimal additions to Butler and Cary in a 1982 Bristol Classical press reprint.
  205.  
  206. Find this resource:
  207.  
  208. Augustus
  209. Although this Life still lacks a modern commentary in English that pays attention to all aspects as Shuckburgh 1896 did, Carter 1982 offers good, concise material on historical issues, and Adams 1939 explains Suetonius’s Latin adequately. Louis 2010 offers a large-scale modern commentary in French
  210.  
  211. Adams, M. 1939. C. Suetonius Tranquillus Divi Augusti Vita. London: Macmillan.
  212.  
  213. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  214.  
  215. Somewhat dated historical commentary, but provides the best assistance for students working with Suetonius’s Latin.
  216.  
  217. Find this resource:
  218.  
  219. Carter, John M. 1982. Suetonius: Divus Augustus. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press.
  220.  
  221. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  222.  
  223. Primarily a narrow focus on historical issues, thus not reflecting well the breadth of Suetonius’s interests in Augustus, but the best available commentary for undergraduates.
  224.  
  225. Find this resource:
  226.  
  227. Louis, Nathalie, Commentaire historique et traduction du Divus Augustus de Suétone. Collection Latomus 324. Brussels, Belgium: Éditions Latomus, 2010.
  228.  
  229. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  230.  
  231. A wide-ranging, detailed scholarly commentary and French, but sometimes ignoring key scholarship in English.
  232.  
  233. Find this resource:
  234.  
  235. Shuckburgh, Evelyn S. 1896. C. Suetoni Tranquilli Divus Augustus. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  236.  
  237. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  238.  
  239. Dated on most historical matters, but offers coverage of all parts of the Life.
  240.  
  241. Find this resource:
  242.  
  243. Tiberius
  244. Scholars are well served by the differing strengths of Vogt 1975, a philological commentary, and Lindsay 1999’s historical focus.
  245.  
  246. Vogt, W. C. 1975. Suetonius Tranquillus: Vita Tiberii (Kommentar). PhD diss., Univ. of Würzburg.
  247.  
  248. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  249.  
  250. Strong philological emphasis with good discussions of the construction of individual rubrics.
  251.  
  252. Find this resource:
  253.  
  254. Lindsay, Hugh M. 1999. Suetonius: Tiberius. North Stratford, NH: Ayer.
  255.  
  256. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  257.  
  258. Concise commentary concentrating on historical and historiographical issues.
  259.  
  260. Find this resource:
  261.  
  262. Caligula
  263. The result of US and UK doctorates respectively, Hurley 1993 and Wardle 1994 concentrate on historical and historiographical issues relating to the depiction of Caligula.
  264.  
  265. Hurley, Donna W. 1993. An historical and historiographical commentary on Suetonius’ Life of C. Caligula. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
  266.  
  267. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  268.  
  269. Concise commentary with lemmata that explicate Suetonius’s meaning well, but less on historiographical aspects than the title would suggest.
  270.  
  271. Find this resource:
  272.  
  273. Wardle, David. 1994. Suetonius’ Life of Caligula: A commentary. Brussels: Collection Latomus.
  274.  
  275. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  276.  
  277. The most comprehensive of the four commentaries published in the 1990s on the whole Life, with an introduction suggesting how Caligula might be read as a coherent literary creation.
  278.  
  279. Find this resource:
  280.  
  281. Claudius
  282. Smilda’s 19th-century commentary is generally superseded by Hurley 2001, but Scherberich’s partial commentary (Scherberich 1995) offers the most comprehensive treatment of the chapters he covers.
  283.  
  284. Scherberich, Klaus. 1995. Untersuchungen zur vita Claudii des Sueton. Ph.D. diss., Univ. Köln.
  285.  
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287.  
  288. Detailed historical and philological commentary on chapters 1 to 17.
  289.  
  290. Find this resource:
  291.  
  292. Smilda, Henry. 1896. C. Suetoni Tranquilli vita Divi Claudii. Groningen, The Netherlands: J. B. Wolters.
  293.  
  294. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  295.  
  296. Old-fashioned historical commentary in Latin, with useful citation of parallel passages.
  297.  
  298. Find this resource:
  299.  
  300. Hurley, Donna W. 2001. Suetonius: Divus Claudius. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  301.  
  302. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303.  
  304. Concise historical commentary and text for student readers, with assistance for translation.
  305.  
  306. Find this resource:
  307.  
  308. Nero
  309. Bradley 1978’s extensive treatment of historical and historiographical issues derives from the author’s Oxford thesis.
  310.  
  311. Bradley, Keith R. 1978. Suetonius’ Life of Nero: An historical commentary. Brussels: Collection Latomus.
  312.  
  313. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  314.  
  315. Detailed discussion of historical aspects of Suetonius’s presentation of Nero.
  316.  
  317. Find this resource:
  318.  
  319. Vespasian
  320. Within the constraints of the Bristol Classical Press series, Jones 2000 offers a good historical commentary in English, but Graf 1937’s older German commentary still provides important discussions on key historiographical questions.
  321.  
  322. Graf, H. R. 1937. Kaiser Vespasian: Untersuchungen zu Suetons Vita Divi Vespasiani. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
  323.  
  324. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  325.  
  326. Extensive but selective commentary on historical and historiographical aspects of Suetonius’s Vespasian.
  327.  
  328. Find this resource:
  329.  
  330. Jones, Brian W. 2000. Suetonius: Vespasian. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press.
  331.  
  332. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  333.  
  334. A concise commentary concentrating on historical and prosopographical matters.
  335.  
  336. Find this resource:
  337.  
  338. Titus
  339. Suetonius’s shortest but most panegyric Life is analyzed well by Martinet 1981.
  340.  
  341. Martinet, Hans. 1981. C. Suetonius Tranquillus: Divus Titus. Königstein, Germany: Anton Hain.
  342.  
  343. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  344.  
  345. Strong philological content to the commentary, with useful assistance to a German translation, as well as historical issues.
  346.  
  347. Find this resource:
  348.  
  349. Domitian
  350. Suetonius’s portrait of the tyrannical Domitian is analyzed well by an expert on the Flavian period (Jones 1996).
  351.  
  352. Jones, Brian W. 1996. Suetonius: Domitian. Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press.
  353.  
  354. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355.  
  356. A concise commentary concentrating on historical and prosopographical matters.
  357.  
  358. Find this resource:
  359.  
  360. Commentaries on Other Works
  361. Despite their value as sources for the intellectual history of Rome, Suetonius’s works other than De vita Caesarum have not received, until recently, good scholarly commentaries. Kaster 1995 and Taillardat 1967 provide exemplary, full commentaries based on extensive study of the manuscripts; Rostagni 1944 is a smaller-scale but still useful treatment.
  362.  
  363. Kaster, Robert A. C. 1995. Suetonius Tranquillus: De grammaticis et rhetoribus. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
  364.  
  365. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  366.  
  367. Invaluable source for the study of Roman education and cultural history, elucidated by excellent commentary.
  368.  
  369. Find this resource:
  370.  
  371. Rostagni, Augusto. 1944. Suetonio De poetis e biographi minori. Turin: Loescher.
  372.  
  373. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  374.  
  375. Useful text and commentary of the parts of De viris illustribus not covered by Kaster. Reprinted, New York: Arno, 1979.
  376.  
  377. Find this resource:
  378.  
  379. Taillardat, Jean. 1967. Peri blasphemion; Peri paidion: Des termes injurieux; Des jeux grecs (Extraits byzantins). Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
  380.  
  381. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  382.  
  383. Invaluable critical edition, introduction and philological commentary to the fragments of two works of Suetonius discovered by Emmanuel Miller in 1868.
  384.  
  385. Find this resource:
  386.  
  387. Suetonius the Man
  388. From his extant writings the reader gets no idea that Suetonius was a high-ranking imperial civil servant who worked in close proximity to the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. He reveals little about his family and self in De vita Caesarum and makes very few first-person judgments on his subjects, but from Pliny’s Letters we can gain some idea of his personality in the formative stages of his literary career and of his relationship with an influential patron.
  389.  
  390. Career
  391. The discovery of a damaged inscription at Hippo Regius (Comptes Rendus de L’Ac. Des Inscr. 1952, pp. 76–85, A.E. 1953, no. 73), which revealed that Suetonius had been a studiis and a bibliothecis under Trajan, as well as holder of a municipal and more senior priesthood, supplemented the details known from Pliny, the Historia Augusta, and Johnannes Lydus. Various hypotheses have been generated about the geographical origin of Suetonius, but the most plausible remains African, in Wardle 2002. The dates of his various offices and scholarly productions are best set out by Townend 1961, and his dismissal as ab epistulis belongs in 122 CE (see Syme 1981 and Wardle 2002) rather than 128, as suggested in Lindsay 1994. Radically different interpretations of Suetonius’s personality and career are created from the same Plinian material: a shy, retiring scholar in Macé 1900, or a determined, career-oriented man in Lounsbury 1987.
  392.  
  393. Lindsay, Hugh M. 1994. Suetonius as ab epistulis to Hadrian and the early history of the imperial correspondence. Historia 43:454–468.
  394.  
  395. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  396.  
  397. Argues that Suetonius’s dismissal as ab epistulis came after Hadrian’s visit to Africa in 128 CE.
  398.  
  399. Find this resource:
  400.  
  401. Lounsbury, Richard C. 1987. The arts of Suetonius: An introduction. Frankfurt: Lang.
  402.  
  403. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  404.  
  405. Powerful counter to the Macé view of Suetonius, presenting him as a dynamic, successful careerist in imperial service, not any sort of failed personage (pp. 1–26).
  406.  
  407. Find this resource:
  408.  
  409. Macé, Alcide. 1900. Essai sur Suétone. Paris: Thorin et fils.
  410.  
  411. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  412.  
  413. The foundational picture of Suetonius as retiring scholar, implicated in the fall of Septicius Clarus and spending the rest of his life in study (pp. 48–86, 199–239).
  414.  
  415. Find this resource:
  416.  
  417. Syme, Ronald. 1981. The travels of Suetonius Tranquillus. Hermes 109:105–117.
  418.  
  419. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  420.  
  421. Argues that Suetonius’s dismissal is rightly located by the Historia Augusta during Hadrian’s trip to Britain in 121–122 CE.
  422.  
  423. Find this resource:
  424.  
  425. Townend, Gavin B. 1961. The Hippo inscription and the career of Suetonius. Historia 10:99–109.
  426.  
  427. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  428.  
  429. The most plausible reconstruction of the career of Suetonius in the imperial civil service, discussing the early stages of the career and fixing his tenure as ab epistulis between 118 and 122.
  430.  
  431. Find this resource:
  432.  
  433. Wardle, David. 2002. Suetonius as ab epistulis: An African connection. Historia 51:462–480.
  434.  
  435. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  436.  
  437. An attempt to demonstrate from the structure of AE 1953, 76 and broader patterns of epigraphic representation of nonmilitary careers in the imperial civil service that Suetonius probably came from Hippo Regius and that his tenure as ab epistulis ended in 122 CE.
  438.  
  439. Find this resource:
  440.  
  441. Suetonius the Scholar
  442. Descriptions of Suetonius as grammatikos (Suda) and philologos (Johannes Lydus) rightly suggest the academic, philologically based nature of his work, evident also in titles such as Peri blasphemion. His lexicographical and antiquarian works have a natural connection with his interest in literary biography and, perhaps Suetonius’s unique contribution, the development of imperial biographies (Wallace-Hadrill 1983). However, he does not deserve the reputation of an assiduous archival researcher that he has had since Macé’s work described in De Coninck 1983 and De Coninck 1991.
  443.  
  444. De Coninck, Luc. 1983. Suetonius en de Archivalia. Brussels and Turnhout, Belgium: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België.
  445.  
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447.  
  448. Downplays the possibility that Suetonius had special access to imperial commentarii, used the same imperial correspondence as other writers, and did not consult systematically the acta senatus and acta urbis.
  449.  
  450. Find this resource:
  451.  
  452. De Coninck, Luc. 1991. Les sources documentaries de Suétone, Les XII Césars: 1900–1990. In Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 33.5. Edited by Wolfgang Haase, 3675–3700. New York: de Gruyter.
  453.  
  454. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455.  
  456. A more accessible presentatation of the conclusions reached in De Coninck 1983, with some additional bibliography.
  457.  
  458. Find this resource:
  459.  
  460. Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew F. 1983. Suetonius: The scholar and his Caesars. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
  461.  
  462. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  463.  
  464. The clearest statement (pp. 26–71) of the thesis that Suetonius’s particular interest in late Republican and Augustan literary culture led to his De vita Caesarum and that his biographies bear the mark of his scholarly approach, based on commentary on a word or idea. Suetonius is a writer of “not history,” but uses the analytical techniques and plain language of the scholar.
  465.  
  466. Find this resource:
  467.  
  468. Suetonius the Biographer
  469. Perhaps owing to the parts of his work that have survived, Suetonius is best known as a biographer, both of the Caesars and of leading figures in Latin literature and Roman education. Much even of his biographical oeuvre is lost. Suetonius’s greatest contribution is his creation of the genre of imperial biography, Lives on a far larger scale and greater structural sophistication than those within De viris illustribus, crucially not limited by a chronological framework.
  470.  
  471. Place in the History of Biography
  472. The relatively humble genre of biography, with its origins in Alexandria (Leo 1901), was taken up by the Romans only in the mid-1st century BCE and exhibits a fluidity of both concept and execution (Geiger 1985). Although putative biographies of Julius Caesar have been suggested, Suetonius is the earliest known writer of imperial biographies in Latin (Bowersock 1998), writing on a scale and with a complexity not seen in earlier Latin biographies of any kind. Suetonius drew on Roman traditional commemorations (see Stuart 1928) and evaluative methods demonstrated by Cicero (shown in Lewis 1991), and created powerful characterizations, not just collections of material (seen in Steidle 1951).
  473.  
  474. Bowersock, Glen W. 1998. Vita Caesarum: Remembering and forgetting the past. In La biographie antique. Edited by W. W. Ehlers, 193–210. Vandoeuvres and Geneva, Switzerland: Fondation Hardt.
  475.  
  476. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  477.  
  478. Argues that Plutarch invented imperial biography during Domitian’s reign and that Suetonius’s very different form was created under Trajan, mirroring the ideology of the reign in beginning with Caesar.
  479.  
  480. Find this resource:
  481.  
  482. Geiger, Joseph. 1985. Cornelius Nepos and ancient political biography. Stuttgart: Steiner.
  483.  
  484. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  485.  
  486. Useful arguments on the issue of scale in literary and political biographies, suggesting that Suetonius drew a clear distinction between the two and that Nepos was the first Roman writer to essay political biography (pp. 27–33).
  487.  
  488. Find this resource:
  489.  
  490. Leo, Friedrich. 1901. Die griechisch-römische Biographie nach ihrer literarischen Form. Leipzig: Teubner.
  491.  
  492. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  493.  
  494. Argues that Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum lacked a high literary function, but comprised compilations of data forced into an inappropriate framework that Leo attributed to the biographies of literary figures produced by Alexandrian grammarians.
  495.  
  496. Find this resource:
  497.  
  498. Lewis, R. Geoffrey. 1991. Suetonius’ Caesares and their literary antecedents. In Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 33.5. Edited by Wolfgang Haase, 3623–3674. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
  499.  
  500. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  501.  
  502. Rather than from any model of Greek or Roman biography, Suetonius took his distinctive method of evaluating by rubric from Roman oratory, making few adaptations from what Cicero produced in his second Actio in Verrem.
  503.  
  504. Find this resource:
  505.  
  506. Steidle, Wolf. 1951. Sueton und die antike Biographie. Munich: C. H. Beck.
  507.  
  508. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  509.  
  510. Argues that in subject matter and treatment De vita Caesarum is not influenced by Alexandrian literary biography but is Roman, and that Suetonius is a skillful writer, manipulating his source material to create powerful characterizations.
  511.  
  512. Find this resource:
  513.  
  514. Stuart, Duane R. 1928. Epochs of Greek and Roman biography. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  515.  
  516. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  517.  
  518. Stuart argues that the form of Suetonius’s De vita Caesarum was mostly indigenous, revealing traditional patterns of commemoration seen in funerary inscriptions and laudationes funebres.
  519.  
  520. Find this resource:
  521.  
  522. Date of De vita Caesarum
  523. Johannes Lydus’s notice that Suetonius dedicated his imperial Lives to Septicius Clarus, who was prefect of the Praetorian Guard (119–122 CE), is the only evidence external to De vita Caesarum for the date of its composition. Scholars disagree on whether the dedication attached to all the Lives or to some, and in what order the Lives were written, and when Suetonius’s dismissal from his position of ab epistulis came in the writing of the Lives. A chronological order of writing remains most plausible, as discussed in Bradley 1973, contra Bowersock 1969. It is most likely that the dedication belongs to the Divus Iulius and the Augustus alone (Townend 1959), after which came his dismissal, which did affect the quality of the subsequent Lives. A weaker case can be made for dismissal just before the Titus, as discussed in Abramenko 1994, or for all of the De vita Caesarum preceding his dismissal, as argued by Power 2010.
  524.  
  525. Abramenko, Andrik. 1994. Zeitkritik bei Sueton: Zur Datierung der Vitae Caesarum. Hermes 122:80–94.
  526.  
  527. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  528.  
  529. Argues that Titus and Domitian were produced immediately after Suetonius’s dismissal.
  530.  
  531. Find this resource:
  532.  
  533. Bowersock, Glen W. 1969. Suetonius and Trajan. In Hommages à Marcel Renard. Vol. 1. Edited by Jacqueline Bibauw, 119–125. Brussels: Collection Latomus.
  534.  
  535. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  536.  
  537. A heterodox argument that Galba-Domitian preceded the Julio-Claudian Lives.
  538.  
  539. Find this resource:
  540.  
  541. Bradley, Keith. R. 1973. The composition of Suetonius’ Caesares again. Journal of Indo-European Studies 1:257–263.
  542.  
  543. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  544.  
  545. A convincing refutation of Bowersock’s hypothesis, restoring the view that the first Life written was Divus Iulius and Domitian the last.
  546.  
  547. Find this resource:
  548.  
  549. Power, Tristan J. 2010. Pliny, Letters 5.10 and the literary career of Suetonius. Journal of Roman Studies 100:1–23.
  550.  
  551. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  552.  
  553. Argues for the early publication of De viris Illustribus and the possibility that all of De vita Caesarum was published by 122.
  554.  
  555. Find this resource:
  556.  
  557. Townend, Gavin B. 1959. The date of composition of Suetonius’ Caesares. Classical Quarterly 9:285–293.
  558.  
  559. DOI: 10.1017/S0009838800041574Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  560.  
  561. Argues that Divus Iulius and Augustus were written before 122 and that Suetonius’s archival research for Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius had been largely completed before his dismissal. The smaller scale and lower quality of the later Lives is explained by Suetonius’s loss of access to privileged sources through his position in the imperial service.
  562.  
  563. Find this resource:
  564.  
  565. Suetonius’s View of Hadrian
  566. Suetonius’s dismissal from the imperial service has led to the natural desire to find a literary revenge in the De vita Caesarum, as discussed in Carney 1968. Unfortunately, the game of finding allusions to Hadrian is problematic; they are as likely to be favorable as critical, and it is impossible to determine what is significant (see Wardle 1998), and not part of the broadly accepted system of evaluation (Bradley 1976).
  567.  
  568. Bradley, Keith R. 1976. Imperial virtues in Suetonius’ Caesares. Journal of Indo-European Studies 4:245–253.
  569.  
  570. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571.  
  572. Suetonius’s apparent avoidance of terms that featured large on Hadrian’s coinage does not signal his antipathy toward Hadrian; proper analysis greatly reduces the number of passages in the Lives that could be deliberately allusive. Where Suetonius uses imperial virtues, it reflects historical fact and approval.
  573.  
  574. Find this resource:
  575.  
  576. Carney, Thomas F. 1968. How Suetonius’ Lives reflect on Hadrian. Proceedings of the African Classical Association 11:7–24.
  577.  
  578. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  579.  
  580. An attempt to use content analysis to identify Suetonian attitudes, especially toward Hadrian. Carney uncovers an authoritarian personality with a penis fixation and with a pervasive mission to criticize Hadrian for, among other failings, inconsistency, excessive Hellenism, and homosexuality.
  581.  
  582. Find this resource:
  583.  
  584. Wardle, David. 1998. Suetonius and his own day. In Studies in Latin literature and Roman history. Vol. 9. Edited by Carl Deroux, 425–447. Brussels: Collection Latomus.
  585.  
  586. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  587.  
  588. Suetonius’s explicit references to his own day are uncontroversial; the theory of concealed references to Hadrian, whether positive or critical, rests on no sound foundation.
  589.  
  590. Find this resource:
  591.  
  592. Authorial Voice, Personal Judgments, and Presenting Verdicts on the Emperors
  593. Suetonius observes a very low personal profile in the extant Lives, rarely employing the first person but at key moments identifying his own contribution as a researcher, as Fry 2003 notes. This reticence, combined with his nonliterary style, has suggested that he abstains from the kind of characterization found in Tacitus and presents “facts” without bias. The predominant and correct view, however, is that Suetonius adopted the common, moral, and value framework of the Roman elite by which to analyze his emperors (see Alföldy 1980–1981, Baldwin 1983, Gascou 1984, and Bradley 1991), and by the clear disposition of material within that framework he presents to his reader a clear verdict on each emperor, without needing to foreground any personal views or to pursue a particular political policy (contra Cizek 1977).
  594.  
  595. Alföldy, Geza. 1980–1981. Römisches Staats- und Gesellschaftsdenken bei Sueton. Ancient Society 11–12:349–385.
  596.  
  597. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  598.  
  599. For Suetonius there was no viable alternative to imperial government and to the hierarchical social organization of Roman society; his handling of the traditional value system and scattered comments relating to political systems reveal his identification with imperial government.
  600.  
  601. Find this resource:
  602.  
  603. Baldwin, Barry. 1983. Suetonius. Amsterdam: Hakkert.
  604.  
  605. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  606.  
  607. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss motifs, patterns, themes and opinions revealed by Suetonius across the imperial Lives.
  608.  
  609. Find this resource:
  610.  
  611. Bradley, Keith R. 1991. The imperial ideal in Suetonius’ Caesares. In Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 33.5. Edited by Wolfgang Haase, 3701–3732. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
  612.  
  613. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  614.  
  615. Concise presentation of the view that Suetonius shares his categories of assessment with the likes of Pliny the Younger but employs them in relation to performance, not personality, in the public and private spheres.
  616.  
  617. Find this resource:
  618.  
  619. Cizek, Eugen. 1977. Structures et idéologie dans Les Vies des douze Césars de Suétone. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
  620.  
  621. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  622.  
  623. An implausible argument that the Lives were a political manifesto to be adopted by Hadrian, rejecting his Greco-Oriental despotism, reworked in the early years of Hadrian’s reign but not resulting in his dismissal until he sought to involve Sabina.
  624.  
  625. Find this resource:
  626.  
  627. Dubuisson, Michel. 2003. Suétone et la fausee impartialité de l’érudit. In Grecs et Romains aux prises avec l’histoire. Edited by Guy Lachenaud and Dominique Longrée, 249–261. Rennes, France: Presses universitaires de Rennes.
  628.  
  629. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  630.  
  631. Starting from an observation by Roger Vailland, Dubuisson illustrates the subtlety displayed by Suetonius in the organisation of material within his rubrics.
  632.  
  633. Find this resource:
  634.  
  635. Fry, Gérard. 2003. Suétone dans son texte: Du bon usage des premières personnes verbales. In Grecs et Romains aux prises avec l’histoire. Edited by Guy Lachenaud and Dominique Longrée, 327–341. Rennes, France: Presses universitaires de Rennes.
  636.  
  637. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  638.  
  639. Suetonius uses only the first person singular, to guide the narrative, explain, justify and indicate the version he has chosen. Although these uses differ little from those observed in other writers, Suetonius does effectively underline his own discoveries or contributions.
  640.  
  641. Find this resource:
  642.  
  643. Gascou, Jacques. 1984. Suétone historien. Rome: Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome.
  644.  
  645. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  646.  
  647. A massive study, the main concern of which is to consider Suetonius’s value to the historian, the benefits and limitations of the genre of biography for this purpose, the techniques that Suetonius uses, and the role of the De vita Caesarum as a model for emperors.
  648.  
  649. Find this resource:
  650.  
  651. Depictions of Individual Emperors
  652. In his attempt to produce convincing, consistent characterizations of his emperors, Suetonius had to grapple with inconsistent behavior by his subjects or discrepant versions of their actions in his sources. Although he seems to toy with the notion of character change or development, a notion not inconceivable (cf. Tacitus Ann. 6.48.1), in reality he operates with unchanging characters, as shown in Lindsay 1998, Müller 1998–1999, and Galtier 2009. The Augustus offers the opportunity for the most detailed and substantial discussion of how a Life is carefully constructed to create one overall characterization (Hanslik 1954), while Suetonius’s Julius Caesar and Augustus embody different conceptions of the Principate (Lambrecht 1984).
  653.  
  654. Galtier, Fabrice. 2009. La conception du caractère chez Suétone à travers les cas de Titus et Domitien. In Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 85–95. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de recherches A. Piganiol.
  655.  
  656. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  657.  
  658. Suetonius presents the two brothers systematically as opposites, adding to his essentialist vision of character elements of the development of personality.
  659.  
  660. Find this resource:
  661.  
  662. Hanslik, Rudolph. 1954. Die Augustusvita Suetons. Wiener Studien 67:99–144.
  663.  
  664. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  665.  
  666. Subtle reading of Suetonius’s construction of the Life, giving the biographer credit for consistent characterization.
  667.  
  668. Find this resource:
  669.  
  670. Lambrecht, Ulrich. 1984. Herrscherbild und Principatsidee in Suetons Kaiserbiographien. Bonn, Germany: Habelt.
  671.  
  672. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  673.  
  674. A careful study of the Lives of Caesar and Augustus, arguing that Suetonius conceived of the Principate as a hereditary monarchy secured by the support of both gods and men; Caesar’s execution of the role was inferior to that of Augustus.
  675.  
  676. Find this resource:
  677.  
  678. Lindsay, H. M. 1998. Characterisation in the Suetonian life of Tiberius. In Ancient history in a modern university. Edited by Tom W. Hillard, et al., 299–308. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdemans.
  679.  
  680. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  681.  
  682. Examines Suetonius’s treatment of Tiberius’s vices against the stereotype of a tyrant and the notion that character change did not occur: Suetonius could not escape the preexisting tradition and is guilty of some inconsistency in characterization.
  683.  
  684. Find this resource:
  685.  
  686. Müller, Friedhelm L. 1998–1999. Charakter-Entwicklung bei Sueton? Zur Beurteilung Suetons und zu einer Ungenauigkeit im Anfang der Domitian-Vita (2.1). Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debrecenensis 34–35:347–366.
  687.  
  688. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  689.  
  690. The notion of character development in Domitian is illusory.
  691.  
  692. Find this resource:
  693.  
  694. Aspects of the De Vita Caesarum
  695. The imperial Lives cover a vast range of topics crucial to imperial history and historiography. Suetonius often offers a unique perspective or displays a particular expertise. His service as an imperial secretary and his career as a scholar may have influenced his language and style, notably his use of Greek. The De vita Caesarum provides valuable treatments of legislation under the early Empire and of the role of religion.
  696.  
  697. Language and Style
  698. In Wallace-Hadrill’s phrase, Suetonius wrote “not history”: this is seen not only in methodology but also in his choice of language and syntax (see Sage 1979a and Sage 1979b) and of narrative structures (Longrée 2003), but his technical language is not unintelligible to his readership and his word order emphasizes the key words for understanding (Fry 2009).
  699.  
  700. Fry, Carole. 2009. De Tranquilli elocutione; Suétone en utilisateur de sa langue. In Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 15–29. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de recherches A. Piganiol.
  701.  
  702. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  703.  
  704. A study of several aspects of Suetonian lexis, clausulae, and word order.
  705.  
  706. Find this resource:
  707.  
  708. Longrée, Dominique. 2003. Tacite et Suétone: Linguistique comparative et genres littéraires. In Grecs et romains aux prises avec l’histoire. Edited by Guy Lachenaud and Dominique Longrée, 315–326. Rennes, France: Presses universitaires de Rennes.
  709.  
  710. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  711.  
  712. Suetonius’s differences from Tacitus in respect of tense usage and narrative structures reflect different methods of investigation and analysis.
  713.  
  714. Find this resource:
  715.  
  716. Sage, P. 1979a. Quelques aspects de l’expression narrative dans les XII Césars de Suétone. Revue Belge de Philologie 57:18–50.
  717.  
  718. DOI: 10.3406/rbph.1979.3223Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  719.  
  720. Analyzes the difference between Suetonius’s prose style and that of historical narrative: absence of the historical infinitive, very rare use of the historic present, repetitive positioning of verbs at the end, preference for participles and ablative absolutes over temporal clauses.
  721.  
  722. Find this resource:
  723.  
  724. Sage, P. 1979b. L’expression narrative dans les XII Césars de Suétone: Analyse d’une structure de phrase. Latomus 38:499–524.
  725.  
  726. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  727.  
  728. Even where Suetonius shares a characteristic with Tacitus of postpositioning subordinate constructions, the postposed elements by contrast concern one another rather than the main clause.
  729.  
  730. Find this resource:
  731.  
  732. Use of Greek
  733. In stark difference to Roman annalistic history (Townend 1960), in De vita Caesarum and De viris illustribus Suetonius does not restrict the appearance of Greek to single words and employs Greek from a variety of genres. Suetonius’s source for this material is probably not a nonchronological chronique scandaleuse, as discussed in Wardle 1992. His Homeric quotations reveal the appropriateness with which the emperors used Homer’s works and play a role in the characterization of individual emperors (Berthet 1978). Although Suetonius knew and could use Greek well and was interested in language politics in imperial history (Dubuisson 2009), it is unlikely that he composed whole works in the language even when the subject matter was Greek, as discussed in Wardle 1993.
  734.  
  735. Berthet, J. F. 1978. La culture homérique des Césars d’après Suétone. Revue des Études Latines 56:314–334.
  736.  
  737. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  738.  
  739. Study of Homeric quotations and allusions in De vita Caesarum.
  740.  
  741. Find this resource:
  742.  
  743. Dubuisson, Michel. 2009. Suétone et la question des langues. In Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 31–41. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de recherches A. Piganiol.
  744.  
  745. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  746.  
  747. As a fully bilingual ab epistulis, Suetonius sheds light on the language politics of the imperial period, notably through Claudius’s treatment of Greek-speaking litigants.
  748.  
  749. Find this resource:
  750.  
  751. Townend, Gavin B. 1960. The sources of the Greek in Suetonius. Hermes 88:98–120.
  752.  
  753. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  754.  
  755. Suetonius’s usage of Greek is distinctive, indicating the freedom possible within biography. Several possible sources are identified.
  756.  
  757. Find this resource:
  758.  
  759. Wardle, David. 1992. Cluvius Rufus and Suetonius. Hermes 120:466–482.
  760.  
  761. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  762.  
  763. Suetonius’s Greek quotations are not always connected with the most hostile presentation of the emperors and do not obviously derive from a work that provided no secure context for its material.
  764.  
  765. Find this resource:
  766.  
  767. Wardle, David. 1993. Did Suetonius write in Greek? Acta Classica 36:91–103.
  768.  
  769. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  770.  
  771. The surviving fragments of Peri blasphemion permit the conclusion that it was written in Greek, but with a minimal individual contribution by Suetonius. Evidence that he wrote other works in Greek is inconclusive.
  772.  
  773. Find this resource:
  774.  
  775. Knowledge of Roman Law and Procedure
  776. Although Suetonius or his sources can err over specific details of legislation, as seen in Tomulescu 1977, his terminology in respect of senatorial procedure is generally accurate, as shown in Ramondetti 1977. His presentation of the emperor as lawmaker indicates careful study of sources and adaptation to fit the individual emperor (Bauman 1982).
  777.  
  778. Bauman, R. A. 1982. The resumé of legislation in Suetonius. Zavigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 99:81–127.
  779.  
  780. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  781.  
  782. Suetonius’s treatment of the legislative enactments of individual emperors varies between “diffuse” and “concise” collections of material, techniques devised as Roman historiographical writing developed from the 1st century BCE on.
  783.  
  784. Find this resource:
  785.  
  786. Ramondetti, Paola. 1977. La terminologia relative all procedura del senatum habere. Atti della Accademia di Scienze di Torino 111:135–168
  787.  
  788. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  789.  
  790. When compared with the technical terminology revealed by senatus consulta and other official texts, Suetonius appears as an accurate and precise presenter of technical terms relating to senatorial procedure and reveals the relative decline in senatorial power through the 1st century CE.
  791.  
  792. Find this resource:
  793.  
  794. Tomulescu, Constantin St. 1977. Les douze Césars et droit romain. Bullettino dell’Istituto di Diritto Romano 80:129–158.
  795.  
  796. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  797.  
  798. Examines Suetonius’s vocabulary and terminology relating to public and private law, highlighting several errors by Suetonius.
  799.  
  800. Find this resource:
  801.  
  802. Religion
  803. By comparison with Tacitus, Suetonius’s Lives are replete with the paraphernalia of Roman divination (omens, portents, dreams, etc.), which primarily announce the birth, rise, and fall of the emperors, as discussed in Vigourt 2001; Suetonius himself gives credence to traditional Roman divinatory techniques and to dreams (Weber 2000) and strongly supports the maintenance of traditional Roman religious practices (Poulle 2009).
  804.  
  805. Poulle, Bruno. 2009. Aspects du conservatism religieux de Suétone dans les Vies des douze Césars. In Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 121–131. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de recherches A. Piganiol.
  806.  
  807. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  808.  
  809. Suetonius rejects innovation to and negligence of traditional Roman religious cult and divinatory practices, considering Augustus’s “innovations” really to be restorations.
  810.  
  811. Find this resource:
  812.  
  813. Vigourt, Annie. 2001. Les présages impériaux d‘Auguste à Domitien. Paris: de Boccard.
  814.  
  815. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  816.  
  817. In the course of a large general work on divine signs under the early Principate, Vigourt highlights the importance of Suetonius as a source and analyzes the range of uses to which he puts this material.
  818.  
  819. Find this resource:
  820.  
  821. Weber, Gregor. 2000. Kaiser, Träume und Visionen in Prinzipat und Spätantike. Stuttgart: Steiner.
  822.  
  823. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  824.  
  825. Weber illuminates the roles that dreams play in Suetonius’s Lives as part of the emperors’ Selbstdarstellung and as a characterizing device.
  826.  
  827. Find this resource:
  828.  
  829. Reception in Antiquity
  830. Although many areas of Suetonius’s scholarly output had an impact on later writers, it is the influence of his De vita Caesarum that is most easily demonstrated, in the facts that no one attempted to repeat his work (as opposed to abbreviating it) and that he provided a literary model for later imperial and scholarly biographers during the late Roman Empire and Middle Ages.
  831.  
  832. Continuators
  833. Although Marius Maximus has been posited as an imitator and continuator of Suetonius (d’Elia 1975), any reconstruction of his work is highly hazardous, as shown in Paschoud 2009. The imperial biographies of the Historia Augusta explicitly claim Suetonius as a model, and his influence can be seen both pervasively (Chastagnol 1972) and specifically (Bird 1971).
  834.  
  835. Bird, H. W. 1971. Suetonian influence in the later lives of the Historia Augusta. Hermes 99:129–134.
  836.  
  837. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  838.  
  839. Argues that “Vopiscus” wrote the Quad. Tyr. to imitate Suetonius’ De vita Caesarum Book 7 and the Carus, Carinus and Numerianus to imitate Book 8, and that he imitates Suetonius’s methodological tour de force in Caligula 8.
  840.  
  841. Find this resource:
  842.  
  843. Chastagnol, André. 1972. L’Histoire Auguste et les Douze Césars de Suétone. In Bonner-Historia-Augusta Colloquium 1970. Edited by Andreas Alföldi, 109–123. Bonn, Germany: Habelt.
  844.  
  845. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  846.  
  847. Sixty-nine passages, some questionable, where the author claims the form or content is inspired more or less directly by Suetonius.
  848.  
  849. Find this resource:
  850.  
  851. d’Elia, S. 1975. Note su Mario Massimo. Studi Urbinati 49:459–481.
  852.  
  853. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  854.  
  855. Argues that Marius Maximus may not have stuck closely to the Suetonian model of imperial biography in including original documents and preference for gossip.
  856.  
  857. Find this resource:
  858.  
  859. Paschoud, François. 2009. Les enfants de Suétone. In Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 175–183. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de recherches A. Piganiol.
  860.  
  861. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  862.  
  863. Of six references to Suetonius in Historia Augusta two are explicit claims to imitation, seen in the use of analysis per species, stylistic similarities, and more subtle imitations. Marius Maximus’s work and debt to Suetonius are impossible to reconstruct.
  864.  
  865. Find this resource:
  866.  
  867. Imitators
  868. Suetonius was widely read throughout the later Roman Empire and into the Dark Ages as a preeminent pagan scholar; his works were chosen as ideal to imitate in order to bring glory to Christian scholars (Szelest 1976, Viellard 2009), and to emperors, as discussed in Rand 1926, but were less appropriate for saints, as revealed by Luck 1964.
  869.  
  870. Luck, Georg. 1964. Die Form der suetonische Biographie und die frühen Heiligviten. In Mullus: Festschrift Th. Klauser. Edited by A. Stuiber and A. Herrmann, 230–241. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff.
  871.  
  872. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  873.  
  874. Demonstrates that the structure of saints’ lives did not follow the Suetonian pattern, presumably because rubrics appropriate to emperors did not fit saints and the use of original documents was inappropriate or irrelevant.
  875.  
  876. Find this resource:
  877.  
  878. Rand, E. K. 1926. On the history of the De vita Caesarum of Suetonius in the early Middle Ages. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 37:1–48.
  879.  
  880. DOI: 10.2307/310618Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  881.  
  882. Hypothesizes that Einhard acquired his knowledge of Suetonius while in Rome or in France, and not through the library of Fulda and that Charlemagne was himself familiar with Suetonius, even modeling aspects of his behavior specifically on that of Augustus; see especially pp. 40–48.
  883.  
  884. Find this resource:
  885.  
  886. Szelest, Hanna. 1976. Ausonius und Suetonius. Živa Antika 26:433–442.
  887.  
  888. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  889.  
  890. Compares Ausonius’s Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium with Suetonius’s De grammaticism et rhetoribus for similarity of structure, style and content and contrasts the encomiastic nature of the latter and its innovative poetic form.
  891.  
  892. Find this resource:
  893.  
  894. Viellard, Delphine. 2009. Suétone, modèle des biographes dans la preface du De viris illustribus de Jérôme. In Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 163–173. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de recherches A. Piganiol.
  895.  
  896. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  897.  
  898. Jerome’s explicit choice of Suetonius as a model (Ep. 47) on the instruction of Dexter did not result in a close imitation of Suetonius in terms of structure and scale.
  899.  
  900. Find this resource:
  901.  
  902. Reception in More Recent Times
  903. From the first printed copy of Suetonius in 1470 to the early 19th century, more than two hundred editions of his works were published, in addition to translations, attesting to the popularity of the biographer. Even through to the late 20th century, Suetonius’s vivid descriptions of the emperors have found new life in a variety of media.
  904.  
  905. Renaissance
  906. Major scholars of the Renaissance worked on and debated the value of Suetonius as a historical source and the quality of his Latin style as a model (Lounsbury 1987). The best, such as Filippo Beroaldo, also engaged in historical and philological commentary to elucidate Suetonius’s meaning, as seen in Fabrizio-Costa and La Brasca 2009.
  907.  
  908. Fabrizio-Costa, Silvia, and Frank La Brasca. 2009. Suetonii Lectio: Le commentaire de Filippo Beroaldo l’Ancien aux Vies des Douze Césars de Suétone (1493). In Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 203–228. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de recherches A. Piganiol.
  909.  
  910. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  911.  
  912. Concentrates on Beroaldus’s work on Suetonius but discusses other contributions during the Renaissance toward the creation of scholarly commentary on Suetonius.
  913.  
  914. Find this resource:
  915.  
  916. Lounsbury, Richard C. 1987. The arts of Suetonius: An introduction. Frankfurt: Lang.
  917.  
  918. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  919.  
  920. Attitudes to Suetonius’s style, content, and reliability and discussion of his influence from the Renaissance to the 17th century, pp. 27–61.
  921.  
  922. Find this resource:
  923.  
  924. Modern Literature and Media
  925. Suetonius’s influence has spread across a range of modern literary genres and media: political satire (David-de Palacio 2009), drama (Gillis 1974), historical novel (Graves 1935), and film (Janka 2002).
  926.  
  927. David-de Palacio, Marie-France. 2009. Suétone dans la satire politique en France (1870–1914). In Présence de Suétone. Edited by Rémy Poignault, 251–270. Tours, France: Univ. de Tours, Centre de recherches A. Piganiol.
  928.  
  929. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  930.  
  931. Nineteenth-century misconception of Suetonius as a mere scandalmonger led to his satirical use to highlight the failings of prominent French and European figures.
  932.  
  933. Find this resource:
  934.  
  935. Gillis, J. 1974. Caligula, de Suétone à Camus. Études Classiques 42:393–403.
  936.  
  937. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  938.  
  939. A study of how Camus borrows from and transforms Suetonius to create a powerful coherent drama.
  940.  
  941. Find this resource:
  942.  
  943. Graves, Robert. 1935. I Claudius. London: Arthur Barker, 1934.
  944.  
  945. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  946.  
  947. This and its sequel Claudius the god are enduring modern reworkings of Julio-Claudian history (both in the original novels and the 1976 BBC television version I Claudius), showing the author’s familiarity with and adaptation of Suetonius’s Lives.
  948.  
  949. Find this resource:
  950.  
  951. Janka, Markus. 2002. Caligula als Filmstar in Gore Vidals Caligula (1980): Ein seriöser Beitrag zur Sueton-Rezeption? In Pontes. 2, Antike im Film. Edited by Martin Korenjak and Karlheinz Töchterle, 186–200. Innsbruck, Austria: Studien Verlag.
  952.  
  953. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  954.  
  955. Gore Vidal’s filmscript for the 1980 Playboy “pornographic” film Caligula draws heavily on Suetonius’s Tiberius and Caligula for its most scandalous elements, leading to the question of the writer’s intentions.
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Advertisement
Public Pastes
Advertisement
We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy.  OK, I Understand
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!