CHAPTER VII.

C. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS—HIS BIOGRAPHY—SOURCES OF HIS HISTORY—HIS GREAT FAULT—Q. CURTIUS RUFUS—TIME WHEN HE FLOURISHED DOUBTFUL—HIS BIOGRAPHY OF ALEXANDER—EPITOMES OF L. ANNÆUS FLORUS—SOURCES WHENCE HE DERIVED THEM.

C. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS.

C. Suetonius Tranquillus[1228] was the son of Suetonius Lenis, who served as tribunus angusticlavus of the thirteenth legion at the battle of Bedriacum, in which the Emperor Otho was defeated by Vitellius. The time of his birth is uncertain; but from a passage at the end of his Life of Nero[1229] it may be inferred that he was born very soon after the death of that emperor, which took place A. D. 68; for in it he mentions that, when twenty years subsequent to Nero’s death, a false Nero appeared, he was just arriving at manhood (_adolescens_.) The knowledge of language and rhetorical taste displayed in the remains of his works on these subjects prove that he was well instructed in these branches of a Roman liberal education: and a letter of the younger Pliny,[1230] whose intimate friend he was, speaks of him as an advocate by profession. This letter represents him as unwilling to plead a cause, which he had undertaken, because he was frightened by a dream. It is probable that this anecdote is an authentic one, because so many examples occur in his memoirs of his superstitious belief in dreams, omens, ghosts, and prodigies.[1231]

The affectionate regard which Pliny entertained for his friend was very great, and led him to form too high an estimate of his talents as a writer and an historian. On one occasion he used his influence at court to get him a tribuneship; which, however, he did not accept.[1232] On another he obtained for him, from Trajan,[1233] the “_jus trium liberorum_,” although he had no children. But this privilege, as in the case of Martial, was sometimes granted under similar circumstances. In this letter, which he wrote to the Emperor, he speaks of Suetonius as a man of the greatest probity, integrity, and learning; and adds that, after the experience of a long acquaintance, the more he knows of him the more he loves him.

Subsequently Suetonius became private secretary (_Magister Epistolarum_) to Hadrian,[1234] but was deprived of the situation. Owing to the only sources of information respecting Suetonius being his own works, and the few scattered notices in the letters of Plinius Secundus, nothing more is known respecting his life.

A catalogue of his numerous writings is given by Suidas:[1235] but, with the exception of the Lives of the Twelve Cæsars, it does not contain his chief extant works. These are notices of illustrious grammarians and rhetoricians, and the lives of the poets Terence, Horace, Persius, Lucan, and Juvenal.

Niebuhr[1236] believed that the history, or rather the biography of the Cæsars was written when Suetonius was still young, before he was secretary to Hadrian, and previous to the publication of the Histories of Tacitus. If so, he neither enjoyed the opportunities of consulting the imperial records which his situation at court would have given him, nor of profiting by the accurate guidance and profound reflection of Tacitus. Krause,[1237] on the other hand, adduces many parallelisms between the language of Tacitus and Suetonius; and as Tacitus did not publish his earliest historical work before A. D. 117,[1238] assumes that Suetonius did not write his biographies until after the accession of Hadrian.

It is very difficult to determine which of these theories is the correct one; but there can be no doubt that the sources from which he derived his information are quite independent of the authority of Tacitus; and that the Lives of the Twelve Cæsars would have contained all that we find in them, even if the Annals and Histories had never been written. He does not only trust to the works of the Roman historians, but his exact quotations from acts of the senate and people, edicts, fasti, and orations, and the use which he makes of annals and inscriptions, prove that he was a man of diligent research, and that he examined original documents for himself.

Again, as a writer of biographical memoirs rather than of regular history, and fond of anecdote and scandal, he availed himself largely of such private letters of Emperors and their dependants as fell in his way, of testamentary documents, and of the information he could collect in conversation. Many of the lives which he wrote were those of his contemporaries. Some of the events recorded were passing under the eyes of the public, and were matters of notoriety. He himself asserts in three several places[1239] that he received some of the accounts which he gives from the testimony of eye-witnesses. The more secret habits of the Emperors, either truly told or exaggerated by an appetite for scandal, would ooze out. Anecdotes of the reigning Emperor’s private life would be eagerly sought for, and be the favourite topic of gossip in all circles of Roman society. Nor would he have any difficulty in procuring copious stores of information respecting those Emperors who reigned before he was born from those of his contemporaries who were a generation older than himself, and who were spectators of, or actors in, many of the scenes which he describes. As a biographer, there is no reason to doubt his honesty and veracity; he is industrious and careful; he indulges neither in ornament of style nor in romantic exaggeration; the picture which he draws is a terrible one, but it is fully supported by the contemporary authority of Juvenal and Tacitus. Nevertheless, his mind was not of that comprehensive and philosophical character which would qualify him for taking an enlarged view of political affairs, or for the work of an historian. He has no definite plan formed in his mind, without which an historian can never hope to make his work a complete whole; he wanders at will from one subject to another, just as the idea seizes him, and is by no means careful of committing offences against chronological order.

Niebuhr accuses him of inconsistency in the character which he draws and the praise which he bestows on Vespasian:[1240] but adds what may, in some sort, be considered a defence, namely, that Vespasian was, negatively speaking, a good, upright, and just man, and that the dark side of his character must be considered in reference to the fearful times in which he reigned. He also mentions, as an example of his deficiencies as an historian, the bad accounts which he has left of his own times, especially of the anarchy which followed Nero’s death, and the commencement of the reign of Vespasian. But in his praise it may be said that Suetonius has formed a just estimate of his own powers in undertaking to be a biographer and not an historian; and it is scarcely fair to criticise severely his unfitness for a task to which he made no pretensions.

One great fault pollutes his pages. The dark pictures which he draws of the most profligate Emperors, the disgusting annals of their unheard-of crimes, are dwelt upon as though he took pleasure in the description, and loved to wallow in the mire of the foulest debauchery. Truth, perhaps, required that they should not have been passed over in silence, but they might have been lightly touched, and not painted in detail with revolting faithfulness. He is often brief, sometimes obscure: in such passages of his narrative we would have gladly welcomed both brevity and obscurity.

Q. CURTIUS RUFUS.

The doubts which have always been entertained respecting the time when the biographer of Alexander the Great flourished, and which no investigations have been sufficient to dissipate, render it impossible to pass him by unnoticed, although he may, perhaps, belong to an age beyond the chronological limits of this work. The purity of his style has, in the opinion of some critics, entitled him to a place among the writers of the silver age; whilst Niebuhr, judging by the internal evidence, thinks that he must have lived as late as the reign of Caracalla or Septimius Severus.

No valid argument, however, can be based upon his style, because it is evidently artificial: it is, indeed, infected with a love of declamatory ornament; it is sometimes more like poetry than prose; it abounds in metaphors, and therefore proves that he lived in a rhetorical age; but it is upon the whole an imitation of the Latinity of Livy. This rhetorical character of his style gives some value to the opinion of F. A. Wolf, that he was the Q. Curtius Rufus mentioned by Suetonius in his treatise on Illustrious Orators. If so, he was probably a contemporary.

With respect to internal evidence, reference has been made to two passages as containing allusions to his times. (1.) Multis ergo casibus defuncta (sc. Tyrus,) nunc tamen longa pace cuncta refovente, sub tutela Romanæ mansuetudinis acquiescit.[1241] (2.) Proinde jure meritoque P. R. salutem se principi suo debere profitetur, qui noctis, quam pæne supremam habuimus, novum sidus illuxit, hujus hercule, non solis ortus, lucem caliganti reddidit mundo, cum sine suo capite discordia membra trepidarent.[1242] The former has been considered descriptive of many periods in Roman history: although Niebuhr[1243] makes the unqualified assertion, that it has no meaning, unless it alludes to the times of Septimius Severus and Caracalla. The latter is equally vague: Niebuhr thinks it might refer to Aurelian: Gibbon considers that it alluded to Gordian. But to how many Emperors might a spirit of eulogistic flattery make it applicable! Upon the whole, it is most probable that he lived towards the close of the first century.

The biography of Alexander is deeply interesting; for, although Curtius evidently disdains historic reality, his hero always seems to have a living existence: it is a romance rather than a history. He never loses an opportunity by the colouring which he gives to historical facts of elevating the Macedonian conqueror to a superhuman standard. He has no inclination to weigh the merits of conflicting historical testimonies: he selects that which supports his partial predilections; nor are his talents for story-telling checked by a profound knowledge of either tactics or geography, or other objective historical materials, for correct details in which he is too frequently negligent.[1244] His florid and ornamented style is suitable to the imaginary orations which are introduced in the narrative, and which constitute the most striking portions of the work. The sources from which he derived his information are various, the principal one being the account of Alexander’s exploits by the Greek historian Clitarchus, who accompanied the Macedonian conqueror in his Asiatic expedition. He is, however, by no means a servile follower; for in one instance he does not hesitate to accuse him of inaccuracy. They were, however, kindred spirits: both would sacrifice truth to romantic interest; both indulged in the same tale-telling tendency. His work originally consisted of ten books. Two of these are lost, and their places have been supplied, in a very inferior manner, by Cellarius and Freinsheim. Even in the eight books which are extant, an hiatus of more or less extent occasionally occurs.

L. ANNÆUS FLORUS.

Brief as the epitomes are which bear the name of L. Annæus Florus, the style is characterized by the rhetorical spirit of the age to which they belong. They are diffuse and declamatory, and their author is rather the panegyrist of his countrymen than the grave and sober narrator of the most important events contained in their history. This short summary, entitled “_Rerum Romanarum_, Libri IV.,” or “_Epitome de Gestis Romanorum_,” is a well-arranged compilation from the authorities extant; but it is probable that, like all other Roman historians except Velleius Paterculus, he derived his materials principally from Livy. Such a dry skeleton of history, however, must be uninteresting. Who the author was is by no means certain. Some have supposed him to be the same with Annæus Florus, who wrote three trochaic verses to Hadrian. Titze[1245] imagines that it is the work of two authors, one a contemporary of Horace,[1246] the other belonging to a later literary period.

It is generally assumed that the author[1247] of the Epitomes was either a Spaniard or a Gaul; and, if we may consider the introduction to the work as genuine, he lived in the reign of Trajan.