layman's thoughts on suetonius' lives
i finished this in a month1 (derogatory) and i meant to write up whatever word vomit i had about it to get the brain going earlier but i didn't want to. but now, because i don't want to do further study on it, i have the will to write my random thoughts.
the overall impression i got from reading suet was that they all seemed so regular, which is in part how he approached and wrote about his caesars and in part because i sort of have a skewed worldview in general. because i finished the deified julius caesar and was like 'well, he seems kind of chill' which seems like a strange thing for me to say about probably one of the most well-known historical figures in the Western world. i knew augustus from earlier studies, so it was kind of like revisiting an old friend2, and the rest of them?
tiberius: i sort of knew of him because of augustus but it was nice to know him a bit more. poor fucking sucker, he did not want to be emperor.2
caligula: sort of an old friend too since i did write something about him, but not to the extent of aug. i think he's like the picturesque3 roman emperor to me.
claudius: i just found it funny how suet pretty much roasts him throughout. he even pre-roasted him when mentioning him in caligula's life: "His uncle Claudius Caligula preserved as a butt for jokes."4
nero: by studying caligula i too knew of nero and was preparing myself for the worst kind of guy (since a lot of things made him out to be the epitome of the bad Roman emperor5), but he honestly seems to be like a very insane kind of theatre kid. i guess i'm trying to say that he didn't surprise me except for that he had a very extreme interest in performance.
galba: the first of some very quick successions so apologies (not much to say). he was a military man who got the soldiers to hate him enough though.
otho: the second, a friend of sorts to nero though ends up being quite noble upon death.6
vitellius: the third, almost like a flip of otho (and akin to caligula or nero). i think he had one of the most brutal deaths of the caesars.7
vespasian: kind of a chill guy too tbh. a jokester too.8
titus: guy who had the shortest life9, but also perhaps the most lovely10 (???) one?
domitian: the last of suet's caesars, and we're back to the crazy guys!!11 suet interestingly seems to attribute his vices partly to his impoverished upbringing12, which i think is quite different to other similar emperors whose vices are attributed solely to things like their nature.13 i found it funny that suet states that domitian "used to reread nothing beyond the notebooks and records of Tiberius Caesar."14, which is accompanied by a note from Edwards: "a dubious choice of model".15
because of the nature of suet's lives and my intention (this read at least?16) to kind of just take everything in and enjoy the read, ofc i was focused on the caesars themselves, but i did give some thought to some other parts of the lives. these were mainly the role signs, dreams, and omens played in his lives, and the way each life concluded.
signs, dreams and omens seemed to mainly be lead-ins for how different emperors' met their ends. for example, a chapter is dedicated in calig for listing the different prodigies that foretold caligula's death, like the Capitol in Capua and the doorman's booth in the Palatine being struck by lightning and the emperor being splattered in the blood of a flamingo when sacrificing it on the day he was to be murdered, before suet details the death itself.17 in addition, for some, the way they considered and acted upon knowing these s/d/o may have added to suet's portrait of their character, like how caesar, before entering the senate on that faithful day, could not get a good omen from his sacrifices but walked in anyways.18 s/d/o also fulfilled this explanatory role even following the description of deaths, such as in claud and dom.19 particularly striking with these two is that the omens conclude their respective lives, which conveniently leads me into my next point of interest (hooray!!!).
every life had an ending, but they were not the same as perhaps you might think based on their beginnings.20 aug and tib conclude with what they left in their wills while calig, ner, and tit end with the public reception of their deaths. i think this stood out to me in part because, well, i have a bad memory so the last lines (if good) are among what i usually remember, and partly because i always find it difficult to conclude something. i guess even how people are remembered after they die is of interest to me (hard to not come across really in the study of history). not sure where else to go with this but it is some food for thought.
ofc, the relationship between biography and history has to come up, but i have no real brain or opinion to write on this right now, especially as i'm currently going through Andrew Wallace-Hadrill's study on Suetonius (so i'll probably just regurgitate his points), but my crude contribution to this long-standing debate is that they're genres that dabble in similar areas but serve different purposes and that within the timeline of history as a field of study it has had to rely on biography to both supplement its content and stand in opposition to define what it is.
one last point of interest: suet's personal voice in his lives. less so of the implicit voice, but the one that interjects and inserts his own personal details in the narrative, e.g., when he supports that augustus' former name was Thurinus with him owning a little bronze bust of augustus as a child with than name inscribed in it21 and when he notes that his father took part in the battles between Otho and Vitellius, even including some information about the former that his father had told him before.22 in the last year i have been interested in how scholars show their relationship (particularly their interest and devotion) to their study in their works so ofc suetonius' own anecdotes have their place in this compartment of my mind. i think it's because i'm really finally seeing how academia is very intertwined with the ('non-academic') life of a scholar in today's world, which is probably not dissimilar to back then.
overall i'm glad to have read in full the author i've probably encountered the most as an undergrad ancient history student (although this is definitely contingent on the types of units i've been taking lol) before reading this, i also thought that it was necessary to decide on a favourite caesar based on suet's biographies of them, which i have not figured out (because favourite is too broad for my indecisive brain). stay tuned though - i will, one day!
read Catharine Edwards' translation (part of the Oxford World Classics series). Just a note that the Julio-Claudian family tree on the back is very confusing (i understand the struggle though) but also got at least one part wrong so. i'm also quoting directly from this translation.↩
i'm honestly still trying to figure out what the hell do i think about him because he's such a beast in terms of his role in transforming rome. i do remember reading his life being like 'he's so fucking strange'. i don't think i'm gonna come to a conclusion anytime soon, but he was so real for wearing like 6 layers of clothing in winter (just like me fr, suet. aug. 82) and being sick often (just like me fr, suet. aug. 81.). also that he was kind of a serial snacker (suet. aug. 76.).↩
picturesque as in like this is who i imagine to be the roman emperor and not as in i think this is what roman emperors should be like. yea.↩
suet. calig. 23.↩
suet. ner. 1., literally concludes with "I have decided to report on a number of members of the family to make clearer how Nero lapsed from the virtues of his ancestors yet reproduced each one's legacy of vice."↩
suet. oth. 9-12. "Immediately Otho took the decision to die rather (as many believe and with good reason) from shame because he could not bring himself to perservere in his claim to power when it would place the state and human lives in such danger, than from any desperation or lack of faith in his troops..." (10) in here is also an interesting and close (in proximity) contrast to galba and his relationship with soldiers.↩
suet. vit. 17. yea i'd say he deserved all that.↩
suet. vesp. 22-23. most of them are a hit to me.↩
in Edward's Oxford Classics edition, his is a grand total of 6 pages (compare that to augustus' roughly 55 pages...). although the shortness of his life gives you the sense that he was taken too quickly (just like in real life, suet. tit. 10.).↩
i think another word would be more generally suitable, but honestly i read his and felt a bit wistful afterwards... as well, compared to how suet wrote about other emperors, he seemed to hold some kind feelings towards titus.↩
there are hints already before, but suet. dom. 3., does a great job introducing the kind of guy this next emperor would be: "At the beginning of his principate, he would spend hours every day closeted on his own, occupied with nothing other than catching flies and impaling them with a very sharp writing implement." Reminds me of when i saw once on the internet that people confessed they used to dissect insects for fun and many other people called them psychos.↩
suet. dom. 3.: "...it seems that it was poverty that had made him grasping and fear that had made him cruel, beyond what was in his nature."↩
e.g., suet. tib. 59.. i think there's also some semblance of this equation in caligula and nero but i'm too lazy to go find them (sorry).↩
suet. dom. 20.↩
p. 357.↩
honours... i did kind of say to my supervisor i'd checked out livy too so i'm not entirely sure what my topic might be, hence the suggestion of (at least) another read-through.↩
suet. calig. 57-58. 57 is the prodigies, 58 is where caligula is killed.↩
suet. jul. 81.↩
suet. claud. 46. and suet. dom. 23. also see suet. vit. 18. and suet. vesp. 25., although the latter's dream was not concerned with his death but rather the length of the new dynasty he established (Flavian).↩
with the exception of caesar (because we lost his intro i think) and titus and domitian (who were the direct descendants of vespasian who had already covered it), all the lives start with a couple chapters dedicated to detailing the titular emperor's lineage. i might've generalised too hard though in this regard.↩
suet. aug. 7.↩
suet. oth. 10.↩