C. Suetonius Tranquillus was the son of a Roman knight who commanded a
legion, on the side of Otho, at the battle which decided the fate of the
empire in favour of Vitellius. From incidental notices in the following
History, we learn that he was born towards the close of the reign of
Vespasian, who died in the year 79 of the Christian era. He lived till
the time of Hadrian, under whose administration he filled the office of
secretary; until, with several others, he was dismissed for presuming on
familiarities with the empress Sabina, of which we have no further
account than that they were unbecoming his position in the imperial
court. How long he survived this disgrace, which appears to have
befallen him in the year 121, we are not informed; but we find that the
leisure afforded him by his retirement, was employed in the composition
of numerous works, of which the only portions now extant are collected in
the present volume.
Several of the younger Pliny’s letters are addressed to Suetonius, with
whom he lived in the closest friendship. They afford some brief, but
generally pleasant, glimpses of his habits and career; and in a letter,
in which Pliny makes application on behalf of his friend to the emperor
Trajan, for a mark of favour, he speaks of him as “a most excellent,
honourable, and learned man, whom he had the pleasure of entertaining
under his own roof, and with whom the nearer he was brought into
communion, the more he loved him.” [1]
The plan adopted by Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, led him
to be more diffuse on their personal conduct and habits than on public
events. He writes Memoirs rather than History. He neither dwells on the
civil wars which sealed the fall of the Republic, nor on the military
expeditions which extended the frontiers of the empire; nor does he
attempt to develop the causes of the great political changes which marked
the period of which he treats.
When we stop to gaze in a museum or gallery on the antique busts of the
Caesars, we perhaps endeavour to trace in their sculptured physiognomy
the characteristics of those princes, who, for good or evil, were in
their times masters of the destinies of a large portion of the human
race. The pages of Suetonius will amply gratify this natural curiosity.
In them we find a series of individual portraits sketched to the life,
with perfect truth and rigorous impartiality. La Harpe remarks of
Suetonius, “He is scrupulously exact, and strictly methodical. He omits
nothing which concerns the person whose life he is writing; he relates
everything, but paints nothing. His work is, in some sense, a collection
of anecdotes, but it is very curious to read and consult.” [2]
Combining as it does amusement and information, Suetonius’s “Lives of the
Caesars” was held in such estimation, that, so soon after the invention
of printing as the year 1500, no fewer than eighteen editions had been
published, and nearly one hundred have since been added to the number.
Critics of the highest rank have devoted themselves to the task of
correcting and commenting on the text, and the work has been translated
into most European languages. Of the English translations, that of Dr.
Alexander Thomson, published in 1796, has been made the basis of the
present. He informs us in his Preface, that a version of Suetonius was
with him only a secondary object, his principal design being to form a
just estimate of Roman literature, and to elucidate the state of
government, and the manners of the times; for which the work of Suetonius
seemed a fitting vehicle. Dr. Thomson’s remarks appended to each
successive reign, are reprinted nearly verbatim in the present edition.
His translation, however, was very diffuse, and retained most of the
inaccuracies of that of Clarke, on which it was founded; considerable
care therefore has been bestowed in correcting it, with the view of
producing, as far as possible, a literal and faithful version.
To render the works of Suetonius, as far as they are extant, complete,
his Lives of eminent Grammarians, Rhetoricians, and Poets, of which a
translation has not before appeared in English, are added. These Lives
abound with anecdote and curious information connected with learning and
literary men during the period of which the author treats.
T. F.