Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, a Roman historian is better known as Suetonius and also for his book ‘The Twelve Caesars’ which essentially changed the way in which history was written. For many, they believe that Suetonius’ ‘De Vita Caesarum' established a new framework, an original genre of historical biography unseen before which consequently made a significant contribution to historical scholarship. This review will look in particular at the aspects of Suetonius’ style of writing seen in the first chapter, which focuses on Julius Caesar, and also how specific writing techniques used by Suetonius inspired other authors in the future. Although there are some faults to his work, Suetonius through the cohesive method of singular analysis he embraces in his twelve biographies of the first emperors, creates a clear perspective of the lives of these great men that ruled the Roman Empire.
In each life of the twelve Caesar’s, Suetonius includes a description of the emperors appearance and personality, celestial portents, famous quotes, and a recapitulation of major events. It is precisely this background knowledge, the fascinating build up, and the series of exciting stories told from birth to death and what took place in between that pulls the reader into the narrative. Suetonius’ method of writing is engaging and intriguing exploring the activities of great, powerful men and in several times God comes into play to show the importance of a person. English philosopher Francis Bacon comments on the structure of Suetonius’ and praises it, “For as when I read in Tacitus the actions of Nero or Claudis, with circumstances of times, inducements, and occasions, I find them not so strange: but when I read them in Suetonius Tranquillus gathered into titles and bundles, and not in order of time, they seem more monstrous and incredible”. Through this different structure which challenged previous interpretations of history, the author is trying to create a window into the culture of the past through the celebration of individuals. To go as far as to say this is a panegyric would not be correct, undeniably the author praises the first twelve emperors of the Roman Empire but nonetheless he is fairly critical of the emperors at times, giving a fair representation of their character.
Suetonius’ evocative storytelling uses another technique which gives the reader an insight into the past, the author paints a portrait of a landscape, where glimmers of intimate daily life enables a personal connection to another place and time. Through this, if we can begin to understand Julius Caesar, we understand the beginning of imperial Rome and in its entirety this book becomes an in depth source for understanding the history of the Roman Empire. In Suetonius’ chapter on the life of Julius Caesar it is clear the motivation behind the use of foreshadowing and the importance of predicting future events using signs from celestial portents, and especially from God, as this intrigues the reader to continue. A certain passage of Suetonius’s writing epitomises the captivating nature of his work, where he foreshadows the death of Julius Caesar using signs and scripture. It is the foretelling and prediction of Caesar’s death which engages the reader to continue reading and find out if the scripture comes true. Suetonius’s ‘De vita Caesarum’ is also responsible for two famous pieces of literature. One is when Caesar is crossing the Rubicon and cries out those famous three words in Latin “iacta alea est", meaning in English the die is cast and this proclaimed that the army were to march onwards into battle and the other, the graphic account of Julius Caesar’s death where he is stabbed several times even by his own friend Marcus Brutus, and he questions him, asking “You too, my child?”. This is no coincidence that these two quotations are well known, essentially it comes down to Suetonius’ storytelling and writing.
Not only does Suetonius’ writing encapsulate and consume the reader but as well as this, his book defined an entire genre for future authors and contributes hugely to historical scholarship. Eusebius of Caesarea, who many claim is the father of church history, uses Suetonius’ model, and adopts his techniques to talk about emperor Constantine in order to project him as a great figure. Although Eusebius uses a similar method to Suetonius, scholars often criticise this text because it is a panegyric where Eusebius is constantly praising the “Blessed Emperor Constantine”, which undeniably is a negative point in terms of accuracy. Eusebius also uses first person which is unlike Suetonius and also changes our sense of the accuracy and the authority of the document. Suetonius on the other hand consistently maintains focus on the action of his subject using a third person voice, he does not use the first person making the story sound subjective. Instead, the author is objective by distancing both himself and the reader which gives more of a sense of his reliability. However, this does not mean he is not still forcing his own opinions into his work. Einhard was another author influenced by Suetonius. Einhard has admitted that he self consciously modelled his life of Charlemagne on roman models such as Suetonius, in particular the chapter on Augustus. To a certain extent Einhard plagiarises Suetonius’ work, lifting quotations from the text of Suetonius about how to be a great emperor and grafting it on to his account of Charlemagne, ‘Vita di Carlo Magno’. The fact that authors centuries later are so heavily inspired by Suetonius’ work is impressive but what is most impressive is that almost two thousand years and many translations later, today the reader can still engage with Suetonius’ writing despite the fact that times have changed significantly.
There is however one noteworthy fault with Suetonius’ work which creates historiographical controversy, as stated in Andrew Wallace-Hadrill’s book Suetonius, “Suetonius’ De vita Caesarum appeared within a decade or so of the accession of the emperor Hadrian in AD 117” meaning that the author is writing about events which occurred many years in the past and this historical distance creates a historical problem with the reliability of his reportage. The fact that ‘The Twelve Caesar’s’ appears almost two centuries after the reign of Julius Caesar presents problems with deducing the authenticity and accuracy, as this means that Suetonius is fundamentally relying on libraries, letters and even to some extent rumours, as the basis of his work. This is even supported by Donna W.Hurley who explains how “Modern scholarship routinely damned the author of De vita Caesarum as a mechanical collector of gossip”. As Suetonius is writing this chapter on Julius Caesar years after the events took place, there is a sense of a loss of trust in the author and his writing, as the evidence has become more fragile.
Historian E.H.Carr is renowned for his famous book ‘What is History?’ And in it criticises Suetonius’ manipulation of the facts when referring to Caesar’s crossing of the rubicon. Carr suggests that this particular crossing of the Rubicon is significant because of the way it is portrayed by Suetonius, and that it is he, the historian, who has “decided for his own reasons that Caesar’s crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history”. Suetonius wanted to make this particular crossing significant, that he portrays it as a prophesied act by injecting these divine portents and signs. His use of the apparition for example, the mythical “being of wondrous stature and beauty”, a sign given by God that encouraged him to go forward into battle where he was victorious and became Emperor, is perhaps an over exaggeration or just in fact incorrect. However this is how Suetonius documented the ‘iconic moment’ and this is how he as the author wanted to portray this famous crossing and was thus how it was written. In reality the rubicon is as Carr describes it a “petty stream”, but due to the way in which historians have portrayed it from Suetonius’ documented biography of Julius Caesar, it has become a much more significant point in time whereas “the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all”.
In conclusion, ultimately it would be unjust to argue Suetonius’ work was not heavily influential in shaping the future of historical biographies and in particular imperial biographies. Undoubtedly, Suetonius inaugurated a new style of imperial biography which influenced writers such as Einhard and Eusebius of Caesarea who were galvanised to use this Roman model where the story is told from birth to death, structured with signs and celestial portents in the middle and moving chronologically through different chapters. However there are several flaws in Suetonius’ writing, the historical distance and subsequently the potential inaccuracies mean that there are still question marks held over this famous book, but despite that the legacy which Suetonius established was long lasting mainly due to the way it is written. The fact that Suetonius’ distances himself from the various scenarios means that us readers almost two thousand years later can still make a judgement and understand the lives these great emperors lived.