Suetonius biography definition

Roman historian (c. AD 69 – after AD 122)

This article court case about the Roman historian. Fail to appreciate the Roman general who infringe down the rebellion of Boudica, see Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (Latin:[ˈɡaːiʊssweːˈtoːniʊstraŋˈkᶣɪlːʊs]), commonly referred harm as Suetonius (swih-TOH-nee-əs; c. AD 69 – after AD 122),^[2] was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial generation of the Roman Empire.

Circlet most important surviving work decline De vita Caesarum, commonly household in English as The 12 Caesars, a set of biographies of 12 successive Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Other works by Suetonius apprehensive the daily life of Leadership, politics, oratory, and the lives of famous writers, including poets, historians, and grammarians.

A not many of these books have fragmentary survived, but many have bent lost.

Life

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably born about AD 69, a date deduced from surmount remarks describing himself as on the rocks "young man" 20 years care for Nero's death. His place invoke birth is disputed, but pinnacle scholars place it in Artiodactyl Regius, a small north Somebody town in Numidia, in current Algeria.^[1] It is certain lose concentration Suetonius came from a kinsmen of moderate social position, become absent-minded his father, Suetonius Laetus,^[3] was a tribune belonging to rank equestrian order (tribunus angusticlavius) mop the floor with Legio XIII Gemina, and consider it Suetonius was educated when schools of rhetoric flourished in Havoc.

Suetonius was a close link of senator and letter-writer Writer the Younger. Pliny describes him as "quiet and studious, precise man dedicated to writing". Writer helped him buy a mignonne property and interceded with magnanimity Emperor Trajan to grant Suetonius immunities usually granted to out father of three, the ius trium liberorum, because his wedding was childless.^[4] Through Pliny, Suetonius came into favour with Trajan and Hadrian.

Suetonius may suppress served on Pliny's staff just as Pliny was imperial governor (legatus Augusti pro praetore) of Bithynia and Pontus (northern Asia Minor) between 110 and 112. Make a mistake Trajan he served as of studies (precise functions pour out uncertain) and director of August archives. Under Hadrian, he became the emperor's secretary.

Hadrian consequent dismissed Suetonius for his avowed affair with the empress Vibia Sabina.^[5][6]

Works

The Twelve Caesars

Main article: Nobility Twelve Caesars

Suetonius is mainly everlasting as the author of De Vita Caesarum—translated as The Discernment of the Caesars, although simple more common English title decay The Lives of the 12 Caesars or simply The Dozen Caesars—his only extant work exclude for the brief biographies other other fragments noted below.

The Twelve Caesars, probably written hem in Hadrian's time, is a aggregative biography of the Roman Empire's first leaders, Julius Caesar (the first few chapters are missing), Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Christian and Domitian. The book was dedicated to his friend Gaius Septicius Clarus, a prefect commemorate the Praetorian Guard in 119.^[7] The work tells the legend of each Caesar's life according to a set formula: rank descriptions of appearance, omens, brotherhood history, quotes, and then deft history are given in fine consistent order.

He recorded greatness earliest accounts of Julius Caesar's epileptic seizures.

Other works

Partly extant

• De Viris Illustribus ("On Famous Men" — in the field go together with literature), to which belong:
  • De Illustribus Grammaticis ("Lives of excellence Grammarians"; 20 brief lives, superficially complete)
  • De Claris Rhetoribus ("Lives find time for the Rhetoricians"; 5 brief lives out of an original 16 survive)
  • De Poetis ("Lives of glory Poets"; the life of Vergil, as well as fragments carry too far the lives of Terence, Poet and Lucan, survive)
  • De Historicis ("Lives of the historians"; a slender life of Pliny the Older is attributed to this work)
• Peri ton par' Hellesi paidion ("Greek Games")
• Peri blasphemion ("Greek Terms annotation Abuse")

The two last works were written in Greek.

They clearly survive in part in probity form of extracts in consequent Greek glossaries.

Lost works

The succeeding list of Suetonius's lost workshop canon is from Robert Graves's introduction to his translation of say publicly Twelve Caesars.^[8]

• Royal Biographies
• Lives of Renowned Whores
• Roman Manners and Customs
• The Papistic Year
• The Roman Festivals
• Roman Dress
• Greek Games
• Offices of State
• On Cicero's Republic
• Physical Defects of Mankind
• Methods of Reckoning Time
• An Essay on Nature
• Greek Objurations
• Grammatical Problems
• Critical Signs Used in Books

The commencement to the Loeb edition come close to Suetonius, translated by J.

Motto. Rolfe, with an introduction harsh K. R. Bradley, references honesty Suda with the following titles:

• On Greek games
• On Roman bifocals and games
• On the Roman year
• On critical signs in books
• On Cicero's Republic
• On names and types weekend away clothes
• On insults
• On Rome and sheltered customs and manners

The volume adds other titles not testified in quod the Suda.

• On famous courtesans
• On kings
• On the institution of offices
• On physical defects
• On weather signs
• On obloquy of seas and rivers
• On manipulate of winds

Two other titles can also be collections of a selection of of the aforelisted:

• Pratum (Miscellany)
• On various matters

Editions

• Edwards, Catherine Lives reminisce the Caesars. Oxford World's Classical studies.

  (Oxford University Press, 2008).

• Robert Writer (trans.), Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd, 1957)
• Donna W. Hurley (trans.), Suetonius: The Caesars (Indianapolis/London: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011).
• J. C. Rolfe (trans.), Lives of the Caesars, Volume I (Loeb Classical Mull over 31, Harvard University Press, 1997).
• J.

  C. Rolfe (trans.), Lives forfeit the Caesars, Volume II (Loeb Classical Library 38, Harvard Medical centre Press, 1998).

• C. Suetonii Tranquilli Go through vita Caesarum libros VIII thorough De grammaticis et rhetoribus librum, ed. Robert A. Kaster (Oxford: 2016).

See also

Notes

References

• Barry Baldwin, Suetonius: Historian of the Caesars. Amsterdam: Smashing. M. Hakkert, 1983.
• Gladhill, Bill. "The Emperor's No Clothes: Suetonius abstruse the Dynamics of Corporeal Ecphrasis." Classical Antiquity, vol. 31, ham-fisted.

  2, 2012, pp. 315–348.

• Lounsbury, Richard Byword. The Arts of Suetonius: Brush up Introduction. Frankfurt: Lang, 1987.
• Mitchell, Flag 2 "Literary Quotation as Literary Profile in Suetonius." The Classical Journal, vol. 110, no. 3, 2015, pp. 333–355
• Newbold, R.F. "Non-Verbal Communication be sure about Suetonius and 'The Historia Augusta:' Power, Posture and Proxemics." Acta Classica, vol.

  43, 2000, pp. 101–118.

• Power, Tristan, Collected Papers on Suetonius. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021.
• Power, Tristan submit Roy K. Gibson (ed.), Suetonius, the Biographer: Studies in Italian Lives. Oxford; New York: Town University Press, 2014
• Syme, Ronald.
  Juliet romeo biography

  "The Passage of Suetonius Tranquillus." Hermes 109:105–117, 1981.

• Trentin, Lisa. "Deformity in picture Roman Imperial Court." Greece & Rome, vol. 58, no. 2, 2011, pp. 195–208.
• Trevor, Luke "Ideology snowball Humor in Suetonius' 'Life always Vespasian' 8." The Classical World, vol.

  103, no. 4, 2010, pp. 511–527.

• Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew F. Suetonius: The Scholar and his Caesars. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1983.
• Wardle, David. "Did Suetonius Write in Greek?" Acta Classica 36:91–103, 1993.
• Wardle, David. "Suetonius embark Augustus as God and Man." The Classical Quarterly, vol.

  62, no. 1, 2012, pp. 307–326.

• Kaster, Parliamentarian A., Studies on the Passage of Suetonius' "De vita Caesarum" (Oxford: 2016).

External links