Julius Caesar

Lives of the Twelve Caesars: vol
1, Julius Caesar, The

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Title: The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Volume 1. [JULIUS
CAESAR]
Author: C. Suetonius Tranquillus

Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6386] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 3,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF
THE CAESARS, SUETONIUS, V1 ***

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THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS
By C. Suetonius Tranquillus;
To which are added,
HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, AND
POETS.
The Translation of Alexander Thomson, M.D.
revised and corrected by T.Forester, Esq., A.M.

PREFACE
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