Suetonius
Roman historian and biographer of the Twelve Caesars
He is mainly remembered as the author of The Twelve Caesars, a collective biography of the Roman Empire's first leaders.[1]
Quick Facts
- Birth name
- Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
- Born
- c. AD 69
- Birthplace
- Hippo Regius, Africa (modern Annaba, Algeria)
- Died
- After c. AD 122 (aged 53)
- Occupation
- Secretary, historian
- Genre
- Biography
- Subject
- History
- biography
- oratory
- Movement
- Silver Age of Latin
Facts from the source article.
Life and work
He came from a family of moderate social position, and his father was a tribune in Legio XIII Gemina.[2] Under Trajan he served as secretary of studies and director of Imperial archives.[3] Under Hadrian, Suetonius became the emperor's secretary.[3] According to the Historia Augusta, Hadrian later dismissed Suetonius for conducting himself too informally around the empress.[4][5]
From his own statement that he was roughly 57 years old after Nero's death, scholars infer Suetonius was born around AD 69.[2] The senator and epistolary author Pliny the Younger counted Suetonius among his close acquaintances.[6]
What the cited sources add
The same source notes that Suetonius dedicated his Lives of the Caesars to Septicius Clarus.[5] A Penguin Books edition states that as private secretary to Hadrian, Suetonius had access to the imperial archives and used them to produce his biographical work.[7] That edition also reports that Suetonius practiced briefly at the bar, avoided political life, and probably died around AD 140.[7] According to the Historia Augusta, the emperor Hadrianus dismissed Suetonius from his post because he and others had treated Sabina with less formality than court rules required.[5]
References
- Wikipedia, "Suetonius" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Reynolds, "Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics", Clarendon Press, 1980, p. 509 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Suetonius" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Suetonius, "Lives of the Caesars", Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 4; Suetonius, "Vita Othonis" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Suetonius" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Hippo Regius, Inscription of Suetonius - Livius", www.livius.org (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Suetonius" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; Hadrianus, "Historia Augusta" (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Hadrianus, "Historia Augusta". facts only, no text reused. penelope.uchicago.edu
- Wikipedia, "Suetonius" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Pliny the Younger, "Letters" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Suetonius, "Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars", Penguin Books, 1957, p. 7. facts only, no text reused. penguin.co.uk
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Suetonius (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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