The biographies are organized not chronologically but by topics: the emperor’s family background, career before accession, public actions, private life, appearance, personality, and death. The lives of Horace, Lucan, Terence, and Virgil, for example, are known from writers who derived their facts from Suetonius.ĭe vita Caesarum, which treats Julius Caesar and the emperors up to Domitian, is largely responsible for that vivid picture of Roman society and its leaders, morally and politically decadent, that dominated historical thought until modified in modern times by the discovery of nonliterary evidence. Very nearly all that is known about the lives of Rome’s eminent authors stems ultimately from this work, which survives only in the whole of one section and in the preface and five lives from another section. Suetonius’ De viris illustribus is divided into short books on Roman poets, orators, historians, grammarians and rhetoricians, and perhaps philosophers. An encyclopaedia called Prata (“Meadows”), a work like the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, was attributed to him and often quoted in late antiquity. Most of Suetonius’ writings were antiquarian, dealing with such subjects as Greek pastimes, the history of Roman spectacles and shows, oaths and imprecations and their origins, terminology of clothing, well-known courtesans, physical defects, and the growth of the civil service. This is even more true of the De vita Caesarum (Lives of the Caesars), written by Suetonius in the 2nd century. Probably around 121 he was promoted to secretary of the imperial correspondence, but in 122 or somewhat later he was dismissed for the neglect of court formality, after which he presumably devoted himself to literary pursuits.
Upon the accession of Emperor Hadrian (117), he entered the imperial service, holding, probably simultaneously, the posts of controller of the Roman libraries, keeper of the archives, and adviser to the emperor on cultural matters. After Pliny’s death Suetonius found another patron, Septicius Clarus, to whom he later dedicated De vita Caesarum. A friend and protégé of the government official and letter writer Pliny the Younger, he seems to have studied and then abandoned the law as a career. Suetonius’ family was of the knightly class, or equites. The latter book, seasoned with bits of gossip and scandal relating to the lives of Julius Caesar and the first 11 Roman emperors, secured him lasting fame.
SUETONIUS GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR SUMMARY FULL
Suetonius, in full Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, (born 69 CE, probably Rome -died after 122), Roman biographer and antiquarian whose writings include De viris illustribus (“Concerning Illustrious Men”), a collection of short biographies of celebrated Roman literary figures, and De vita Caesarum ( Lives of the Caesars). SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.
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