Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars - Julius and Augustus

Suetonius was born about 70 AD into a wealthy family in the equestrian class, and he may have lived until 135 AD. He owes his fame to his scholarly and writing talents, and his association with high-ranking Roman citizens. His most famous sponsor was Pliny the Elder who served in the important magistracies of praetor and consul. Surviving letters from Pliny attest to his promotion of his friend’s writing career, and after Pliny’s death Suetonius was truly fortunate to be taken under the auspices of another powerful benefactor.

Among his own accomplishments, he achieved particularly important religious offices, and his prolific writing earned him official positions under the emperor Hadrian. Suetonius was responsible for the management of Rome’s well-stocked libraries of ancient texts, a role that would require identifying, organizing, and maintaining precious official records going back to the foundation of Rome. His most responsible appointment was serving as the equivalent of the general secretary for the first five years of Hadrian’s reign, which role would ensure that every letter from the emperor went through the hands of Suetonius.

He authored several other works that are now lost to us but were well-known and used as references in antiquity. In his Concerning Illustrious Men, he wrote profiles on about 200 famous historians, philosophers, orators, and poets that formed the basis for later writers’ work that has survived, so by second-hand we depend on Suetonius for our knowledge of the lives of some of Rome’s most famous names. But the reason we still read Suetonius is his series of biographies called The Twelve Caesars. The most highly revered biographer of antiquity was Suetonius’ contemporary Plutarch with his Lives, but beyond the fact that they both wrote biographies, their writing could not be more different. While Plutarch is intellectually lofty and philosophical, with the traditional approach to history offering priceless insights into human nature, Suetonius writes in brief, often pungent language and mentions historical events almost in passing. To his unique credit, modern readers will learn many personal details of the emperors not to be found anywhere else, for better or worse.

This chapter relies on the Penguin Classics version of Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus – The Twelve Caesars, as revised and published in 2007. The original 1957 translation was done by the famous poet and novelist Robert Graves, who also wrote the popular Roman historic novels I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935). This 2007 revision of the original translation is the work of J.B. Rives, Kenan Eminent Professor of Classics at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Prof. Rives also graced this volume with an enriching combination of Introduction, Notes, and an opening set of Analyses of ‘Caesars’ that gives the reader a great overview of each of the biographies.

Even the Table of Contents provides an informative preview of each of the ‘Lives’ as we immediately get a sense of how successful each emperor was by how he was remembered, some were deified, which is not the same as being raised to the level of the Greek and Roman gods who are prayed to, but as great men worthy of gratitude and veneration. We see the Contents applying the appellation “Divus” to Julius, Augustus, Claudius, Vespasian, and Titus, while the rest are listed with their unadorned names including Tiberius, Gaius Caligula, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Domitian.

When reading these works from antiquity, their path down to us through the perils of the ages is interesting to ponder. In the Introduction Prof. Rives makes clear how fraught that journey through the millennia was for works that are now considered foundational and were widely available in antiquity. “The Twelve Caesars survived into the Middle Ages … the only manuscript available by the time of Charlemagne had lost its first few pages, which contained the preface and the beginning of the life of Julius Caesar. Although that manuscript itself no longer survives, it was the source of all later copies, which consequently also lack the opening sections of the work.”

In Divus Julius 36, Suetonius provides a recap of Caesar’s losses and close calls in the civil wars, noting the four generals he lost: Curio died in Africa, Antonius was captured in Illyricum where Dolabella also lost a fleet, and Calvinus lost his army at Pontus. Suetonius is always historically accurate, and often includes details not found elsewhere, such as the mention of Julius Caesar contemplating suicide below.

Yet, though invariably successful, he twice came close to disaster: at Dyrrachium, where Pompey broke his blockade and forced him to retreat – Caesar remarked when Pompey failed to pursue him, ‘He does not know how to win wars’ – and in the final battle in Spain, where all seemed lost and he even considered suicide.

At 37 Suetonius describes the unprecedented consecutive series of four triumphs that Caesar celebrated in April, 46 BC upon his return to Rome: “the Gallic – the first and most magnificent – the Alexandrian, the Pontic, the Pontic and lastly the Spanish.” In this passage Suetonius provides colorful coverage of Caesar’s most famous phrase Veni Vidi Vici.

In the Pontic triumph one of the decorated wagons carried a simple three-word inscription: CAME, SAW, CONQUERED! This referred not, like the rest, to the deeds of the war, but to the speed with which he had won it.

??????????????? At 55 Suetonius offers praise of Julius Caesar which is echoed by no less than Cicero, Rome’s most celebrated orator.

Caesar equaled, if he did not surpass, the greatest orators and generals the world had ever known. … Cicero, discussing the matter in his Brutus, confesses that he knew no more eloquent speaker than Caesar, and calls his style chaste and pellucid, not to say grand and noble….

??????????????? At our distance of 2000 years from Suetonius’ writing, we must sometimes question if we understand the tone and intent of his commentary. He discusses Caesar’s forgiving nature, even for former “bitterest enemies” and confers his kindness on people from the highest to the lowliest station. Readers of Caesar’s own Commentaria in the Civil Wars especially are familiar with the great general presenting himself as acting with these graces, and here that characterization is supported. In this context, we must wonder if we are to read 74 as Suetonius being ironic.

Yet, even when he did take action, it was his nature to show restraint; if he crucified the pirates who had held him to ransom, this was only because he had sworn in their presence to do so, and he first mercifully cut their throats.

??????????????? Suetonius describes the reading of Caesar’s will after his assassination, where he unexpectedly not only left three-quarters of his estate to his sister’s grandson Gaius Octavius, the future Augustus, but also adopted the teenager as his son. Most surprising, showing how unsuspecting he must have been walking into the Senate on the Ides of March, he appointed several of his assassins as guardians to his son should he have one at the time of his death, and even included as a second-degree heir the infamous Decimus Brutus, the trusted general who led the conspiracy to kill Caesar. As for those men who intended to save Rome from rule by a king, and who were relentlessly pursued by his adoptive son Octavian, Suetonius finishes their stories at Divus Julius 89 in a memorable closing.

Very few, indeed, of the assassins outlived Caesar by more than three years or died naturally. All were condemned to death, and all met it in different ways – some in shipwreck, some in battle, some using the very daggers with which they had treacherously murdered Caesar to take their own lives.

??????????????? Suetonius begins his chapter on Divus Augustus with the standard review of his life before moving into the action. Summarizing Augustus’ rule, we learn that upon Caesar’s assassination he returned to Rome to assume his inheritance and took command of the army and governed the commonwealth. At first, he shared power with Lepidus and Antony in the Second Triumvirate, then only with Antony for twelve years, and finally as sole ruler for forty-four more years. At 9 and 10, Suetonius provides an overview and insight into Augustus’ driving motivation.

He fought five civil wars … Mutina, Philippi, Perusium, Sicily and Actium. The first and last were against Mark Antony, the second against Brutus and Cassius, the third against Antony’s brother Lucius, and the fourth against Sextus Pompey, son of Pompey the great. The underlying motive of every campaign was that Augustus felt it his duty, above all, to avenge Caesar and keep his decrees in force.

??????????????? In the above brief passage, brimming with historical facts in the shortest possible rendition, it is obvious that he was writing for an audience familiar with these world-changing series of events from 150 years earlier that established the Roman Empire they were living in during the early second century AD. Clearly, Suetonius is focused on providing biography, not history.

??????????????? Among the singular insights provided by Suetonius, we learn about the literary tastes of Augustus, who had earlier been portrayed as a caring personal tutor to his own sons. At 86 we are provided several specific opinions of the emperor, and coming from this author who is himself a scholar of the highest rank we can be sure these observations are carefully chosen

He cultivated a simple and easy oratorical style, avoiding overly contrived epigrams, affected rhythms, and ‘the stink of far-fetched phrases’, as he called it; his main object was to say what he meant as plainly as possible. … He expressed contempt for both innovators and archaizers … his friend Maecenas, whose ‘perfume-drenched ringlets’ he parodied mercilessly. … Antony was for him a madman who wrote ‘as though he wanted to be wondered at rather than understood’. … Your use of antique diction borrowed by Sallust from Cato’s Origins….

??????????????? As we have seen with the other Roman writers, the supernatural is always part of the story. At 94 Suetonius announces a list of omens associated with Augustus’ birth “from which his future greatness and lasting good fortune could clearly be prognosticated.” In this section the author mentions some of his sources, indicating the great assets he had in his role of managing Rome’s libraries, such as when he says he found a story in “Asclepiades of Mendes’ Theologumena” and he mentions several specific individuals who experienced and reported omens in dreams and visions. The future emperor’s father Octavius visited a sacred grove in the wilds of Thrace and consulted the priests about his son’s destiny.

After performing certain barbaric rites … the wine they had poured over the altar caused a pillar of flame to shoot far above the roof of the shrine – a sign never before granted except to Alexander the Great when he sacrificed at that very altar.

??????????????? At 99, Augustus is dying, and Suetonius describes the greatest Roman in his final hour with these unforgettable quotations.

Presently he summoned a group of his friends and asked, ‘Have I played my part in the farce of life creditably enough?’, adding the theatrical tag: If I have pleased you, kindly signify / Appreciation with a warm goodbye. … Finally he kissed his wife with ‘Goodbye, Livia; remember our marriage!’, and died almost at once.