The Twelve Caesars

Suetonius, J. C. Rolfe

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780486830230
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

One of antiquity's great historical resources, this chronicle by an ancient Roman scholar portrays the lives and reigns of Julius Caesar and his immediate successors. Suetonius, who served as private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, combines research from the imperial archives with firsthand accounts of the rulers' public and private lives. His dramatic narrative, delivered in a straightforward manner, abounds in tales of sex, violence, and betrayal.
Written in A.D. 121, The Twelve Caesars spans the period from 49 B.C.E. to A.D. 96, one of the most important periods in antiquity. Suetonius's vivid characterizations portray the disastrous effects of absolute power: madness, obsessive fear of assassination, and a predilection for acts of sadism and sexual perversity. One of the few surviving sources of its era, this historical treasure is unsurpassed as a fount of anecdotes, observations, and detailed physical descriptions of Roman history.

THE TWELVE CAESARS

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

THE biographies of Suetonius are interesting both for their contents and as a form of literature. Strictly speaking they are neither history nor biography. Great historical events, such as Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul, are dismissed in a brief chapter, or with a casual allusion, like the defeat of Varus. The acts of the senate and people, and the edicts of the emperors, receive fuller attention, but are wholly subordinate to the personal element. On the other hand no ideal life is presented, to inspire imitation and point a moral, and no attempt is made to trace the development of character as influenced by heredity, education, and environment. The Lives, as Leo has shown,¹ are of the “grammatical” type,² and they furnish material for biographies in the true sense of the word, giving the thoughtful reader abundant opportunity for the reflexions and deductions which the writer has omitted.

Suetonius was rather a student and a searcher of records than an observer or inquirer, and his interests lay in the past rather than in the present. The Lives become shorter as he approaches his own time, when the written sources were fewer and the opportunities for obtaining personal information greater. He had at his disposal a great amount of material in the form of histories and memoirs which are now lost; he had access either directly or indirectly through his colleague Ab studiis, to the imperial archives while he was Hadrian’s secretary; and his intimacy with Pliny must have made him familiar with senatorial records and opinions. Occasionally he made use of hearsay evidence¹ and of personal observation.² That he seems to have made little use of inscriptions³ is doubtless due in large measure to his possession of other material which is not available to-day.

On the rare occasions when he gives us an insight into his method of handling his sources, as in Calig. viii, it seems clear that he examined conflicting statements with care and intelligence, whenever he thought it necessary to do so; but the plan of his work does not often call for such an investigation. Although he aims to be strictly impartial, scrupulously recounting the virtues and vices of the emperors in separate lists,⁴ he seems as a rule to pay little regard to the source from which his information comes, and rarely makes any personal comment.⁵

This apparent impartiality does not give us a fair and unbiassed estimate of the emperors. To be convinced of this we have only to imagine a biography of some prominent man of our own day, made up of praise and blame drawn indiscriminately from the organs of his own party and of the opposition, and presented without comment. Just as such a method would yield a considerable number of absolute falsehoods, so many of the statements of Suetonius must be rejected for one reason or another.

He is often, perhaps generally, regarded as a scandal-monger and a man of prurient mind, but neither of these charges seems justified. The details which give rise to the latter are relatively few in number and are presented with the same judicial coldness which characterises his work in general; while the so-called scandal-mongery is in reality a feature of the development of realism¹ in the writing of the early Empire and of the prevailing interest in the personality and private life of prominent men.

The style of Suetonius is rather that of the scholar and investigator than of the man of letters. It is plain and concise, with no attempt at fine writing or rhetorical embellishment, and has been well characterised as “businesslike.” His brevity is rarely obscure, and when it is, the obscurity is generally the result of our imperfect knowledge. At times his conciseness yields sentences worthy of Tacitus, but these, like his intensely dramatic passages, are due rather to the subject matter than to any departure from his usual style. He has the grammarian’s feeling for language, and his words are always well chosen and effective. While at times the catalogues of crimes and of petty personal details are somewhat monotonous, the Lives as a whole are of absorbing interest, and give us a wealth of anecdotes, witticisms, and curious information of great variety.

THE MANUSCRIPTS

Two critical editions of the Lives of the Caesars have appeared within the past few years, those of M. Ihm, Leipzig, 1907, and of L. Preud’homme, Groningen, 1906, each based on a painstaking and independent study of the manuscripts. These show remarkably few deviations from the work of Roth (1858) and from each other. The text therefore may be regarded as practically settled, at least until the independent value of the fifteenth century codices has been demonstrated. (See p. xxv.)

It is generally agreed that all our existing manuscripts are derived from one at Fulda, written in rustic capitals (Ihm) or uncials (Preud’homme). This seems to have been the only one in existence at the time, and it is known to us from a letter of Servatus Lupus, abbot of Ferrières, of the year 884. This codex and a copy of it in minuscules, which was sent to Servatus Lupus at his request, are now lost; but the latter was extensively copied, and the number of manuscripts at present existing is very large. The Fulda codex (Ω, Ihm; P, Preud’homme¹) lacked the beginning of the Life of Julius Caesar and had other lesser lacunae and numerous errors, but seems to have been free from interpolation. The copies how ever were extensively emended, so that by the twelfth century the text was in bad condition.

The manuscripts used by Ihm, with the sigla which he employs, are the following; the sigla of Preud’homme are given in parentheses:

M (A). The codex Memmianus of the ninth century. Our oldest and best manuscript, either a copy of the one sent to Servatus Lupus or closely related to it, apparently free from interpolations, though not without errors and lacunae. None of our other manuscripts is derived from it. It contains corrections made by another hand, not later than the twelfth century (M²).

This codex came originally from the monastery of St. Martin of Tours, was later in the possession of Henri de Mesmes, and is now in the National Library in Paris. It is commonly called Memmianus, from de Mesmes, but was formerly called Turonensis; its present designation is Codex Parisinus, 6115, formerly 5984.

G (C). The codex Gudianus of the eleventh century, now at Wolffenbuttel (Gudianus, 268). Closely related to M and derived from a similar original, but inferior to it. It has numerous corrections, made in part by the scribe (M²) and in part in the fifteenth century (M³).

V (B). The codex Vaticanus, 1904, of the eleventh century, a little younger than G but more trustworthy. It frequently agrees with M, and is of almost equal value; but it comes to an end at Calig. iii, detecta sua re. It was used by Lipsius in 1574. It contains glosses of the same general character as M².

Preud’homme regards his D (Parisinus, 5804), of the fourteenth century, as in the same class with the above; Ihm, who assigns it to the fifteenth century, rates it much less highly.

The other important manuscripts fall into two classes, each represented by a large number of examples. The first class is represented by the following:

L (a). The codex Laurentianus, 68. 7, of the twelfth century, in the Medicean Library at Florence, the Mediceus Tertius of Oudendorp. It also contains Caesar, De Bello Gallico, and has corrections by an earlier (L²) and a later hand (L³).

P (b). The codex Parisinus, 5801, of the twelfth century, with corrections from a manuscript of the second class (P²), according to Ihm.

O (c). The codex Laurentianus, 66. 39, of the twelfth century, in the Medicean Library at Florence. Has corrections similar to those in P (O²).

S (f). The codex Montepessulanus, 117, of the twelfth century, at Montpelier. Corrected in the same manner as P and O.

T. The codex Berolinensis, Lat. 337, of the fourteenth century, formerly Hulsianus or Hagianus. Frequently agrees with V and L. Corrected by a hand of about the same date as the original scribe.

From the agreement of L, P, O, S, and T, the readings of their archetype are recovered, a lost manuscript from the same original as V, but inferior to V, designated by X (X′). The agreement of X and V gives the readings of X′, a lost codex of the class of M and V.

The second class contains more errors and interpolations than the first. It is represented by a very large number of manuscripts, of which Ihm uses the following:

II (β). The codex Parisinus, 6116, of the twelfth century, corrected from a manuscript of the variety represented by R.

Q (γ). The codex Parisinus, 5802, of the twelfth century, corrected in the fifteenth.

R (α). The codex Regius of the twelfth century, in the British Museum (15. C. iii), and rated high by Bentley. It comes to an end with Dom, xiv, non alias magis, but seems to have been complete in the sixteenth century.

The agreement of these codices gives the readings of their archetype (

), a lost codex of about the same date as X, but inferior to it; and since P, O, S, and T were corrected from a manuscript of this class, their agreement with

gives the readings of another lost manuscript

.

Besides the manuscripts of the whole work we have two collections of selections, which have some critical value. The earliest of these was made by Heiric of Auxerre between 871 and 876 and based on Lupus’s copy of the codex Fuldensis. It is of considerable value, but has suffered from emendation; H (Y). A fuller epitome of the thirteenth century, of comparatively little value, is preserved in codex Parisinus, 17903, formerly Notre-Dame, 188; N.

Ihm and Preud’homme are in substantial agreement in their classification of the manuscripts. The latter divides them into two classes, X and Z, the first including M, V, X, G, δ, and H (or in his nomenclature, A, B, X′, C, D, and Y); the second, R, Π, Q, and Suessionensis, 119 (in his nomenclature, a, β, γ,

).

The only important difference of opinion is as to the independent value of the fifteenth-century manuscripts, which frequently offer good readings not found in the earlier codices. Roth came to the conclusion that these were mere conjectures, without value in determining the readings of the archetype, and the careful and independent investigations of Ihm and Preud’homme led them to the same opinion. The contrary view is held by some scholars,¹ but cannot be regarded as sufficiently established.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE earliest editions are two published in Rome in 1470, one in July by Johannes Campanus, and the other in December by Johannes Aleriensis; these were immediately followed by a Venetian edition of 1471, and all three are regarded as editiones principes. Among other early editions are those of Beroaldus, Bologna, 1493 and 1506, the latter with a valuable commentary; Erasmus, Basle, 1518; R. Stephanus (Robert Etienne), Paris, 1543; and Casaubon, Geneva, 1595 and Paris, 1610.

Down to 1820 more than forty editions were issued, including some second editions, among them those of Gronovius, Leyden, 1698; Burman, Amsterdam, 1736, with the full commentary of a number of his predecessors and selections from those of others; Ernesti, Leipzig, 1748 and 1775; Oudendorp, Leyden, 1751; Baumgarten-Crusius, Leipzig, 1816, with a commentary and very full indices (Clavis Suetoniana). This is still the standard annotated edition. It was issued with some additions by C. B. Hase at Paris in 1828. Bentley planned an edition which was never finished, but his material is preserved in the British Museum.

In later times the editions have been few in number. That of C. L. Roth, Leipzig, 1858, was the standard text until the appearance of those of Ihm and Preud’homme.

The Lives of the Caesars still lacks a commentary in English and a full and satisfactory one in any language. There are annotated editions of separate lives by H. T. Peck, Julius and Augustus, New York, 1893²; E. S. Shuckburgh, Augustus, Cambridge, 1896; and J. B. Pike, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, Boston, 1903; to these may be added H. Smilda, Claudius, Groningen, 1896, and C. Hofstee, Galba, Otho and Vitellius, Groningen, 1898.

The Caesars have been translated into English by Philemon Holland, London, 1606; John Clarke, London, 1732, with the Latin text; and by Alexander Thomson, London, 1796. A revision of Thomson’s translation was made by T. Forester, and published in the Bohn Library (London) without a date.

Of books and monographs dealing with Suetonius the following may be mentioned: A. Macé, Essai sur Suétone, Paris, 1900; Fr. Leo, Die griechisch-römischen Biographie, Leipzig, 1901; L. Preud’homme, Première, deuxième, troisième étude sur l’histoire du texte de Suétone de vita Caesarum, Bulletins de l’Académie royale de Belgique, 1902 and 1904; Ihm, Hermes, 36, 37 and 40; H. R. Thimm, De usu atque elocutione C. Suet. Tranq., Regimonti, 1867; P. Bagge, De elocutione C. Suet. Tranq., Upsala, 1875; I. W. Freund, De Suetonii usu atque genere dicendi, Breslau, 1901; W. Dennison, “The Epigraphic Sources of Suetonius,” Amer. Jour. of Archæology, Second Series, II., pp. 26 ff.; L. Damasso, La Grammatica di C. Suet. Tranq., Turin, 1906; C. L. Smith, Harvard Studies in Class. Phil., xii. pp. 54 ff.; A. A. Howard, idem, vii, 210 ff., x. pp. 23 ff., and xii. pp. 261 ff.; J. C. Rolfe, “Suetonius and his Biographies,” Proc. Amer. Philosophical Soc. Iii, pp. 206 ff.

The reader may be reminded of S. Baring-Gould’s Tragedy of the Caesars, London, 1902; Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis; Gardthausen’s Augustus und seine Zeit, Leipzig, 1891; Shuckburgh’s Augustus, London, 1903; and of other general and special works dealing with the period.

We now have the edition with French translation by H. Ailloud, in the Budé series, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1931-1932. Note also G. Funaioli, in Pauly-Wissowa, Encyclopädie, 2nd Ser. 1931, and W. Steidle, in Zetemata, I, 1951. R. P. Robinson edited “de Gram, et Rhet.,” in 1925, Paris, A. Rostagni “de Poetis” in 1952. The 3rd ed. of F. della Corte’s “Grammatici e retori” (Turin) appeared in 1968; the Teubner ed. of the same works by E. Brugnoli in 1966; editions of single lives: “Divus Iulius” (H. E. Butler and M. Cary, 1927); “D. Augustus” (M. Adams, 1939); (M. A. Levi, 1951); “Vita Tiberi” (J. R. Rietra, 1928); “Divus Vespasianus” (A. W. Braithwaite, 1927); “Vita Domitiani” (J. Janssen, 1919).

SIGLA

Ω = the archetype of our existing codices, restored by the agreement of X′ and

.

M = Codex Memmianus.

G = Codex Gudianus.

X′ = the archetype of V and X.

V = Codex Vaticanus.

X ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• The Life and Work of Suetonius
• The Twelve Caesars
• The Lives of Illustrious Men
• Endnotes
• Index