Suetonius

In his work The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius presents the reader with biographies of the prominent Caesars who ruled Rome. Suetonius was employed as secretary to Emperor Hadrian and due to this, had access to documents describing the Caesars lives. His account combines descriptions of the Caesars public lives, their military campaigns and their rule, as well as descriptions of their character and their personal lives. While he sometimes expresses his opinions within his writing, he tries to give his readers the full image of the Caesars including both their positive and negative attributes. To do this he, unlike other historians at that time, does not have a chronological approach to his writing but rather a thematic. Suetonius wants the reader…

succeeded by his uncle, Claudius This essay is an analyzation of the biography of Gaius Caligula, written by the ancient historian Suetonius. Suetonius was most…

people in any sense) character that if they did not exist their part in history could simply not be filled by anybody else (or at least by a very few amount of people). There are countless examples of these people, the Celtic Queen Boudicca, Napoléon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Adolf Hitler, and Alexander the Great, to name a few. For the purposes of this essay I will focus on two individuals, Julius Caesar and Charlemagne. Julius Caesar was both a great military leader as well as…

In order to avenge Caesar, Mark Antony turns a shocked, confused crowd of mourners into an angry mob of rioters by using persuasive techniques. The main component of Antony’s speech, Pathos, appealed to the commoners by striking an emotional spot inside them, trying to turn the fickle crowd against Brutus. Antony displayed the persuasive technique of Pathos by repeating words, showing them Caesar’s body, and presenting Caesar’s will. In the beginning of Antony’s speech, he spoke of Brutus as…

Introduction: Suetonius and Augustus Suetonius’ approach to biography is elucidated by centring focus on the Life of Augustus. Suetonius rose to prominence as a scholar, and later gained positions in Hadrian’s court, with his work The Twelve Caesars dated tentatively to the reign of Hadrian between 117-38 C.E. He did not write in a chronological style like his contemporary Plutarch, but rather divided his work thematically, into categories such as birth, achievements, career, morals and death,…

Suetonius was born around 68-9 AD, possibly in Hippo Regius (Suetonius xviii). His mentor described him as ‘scholarly and honorable’ and many held him in high regard (xix). Suetonius completed The Twelve Caesars sometime around the 120s during the peak of his career (xxiii). Suetonius conveys his opinion of each emperor indirectly through how he portrays their vices and virtues. According to Suetonius, a Roman leader’s good and bad qualities included their military successes, relations with the…

Hispania to join his uncle during the civil war between Caesar and Pompey (Suetonius 8). Fighting a sustained illness, surviving a shipwreck, and crossing enemy territory on foot, Octavius eventually joined his uncle’s forces and earned his deepest respects. It was after these feats of bravery and loyalty that Julius Caesar adopted Octavius to become his legal son and chief benefactor of his will (Suetonius 7). It should be noted that although…

Even though both Plutarch and Suetonius talked the life of Caesar, they have different perspectives and show a different Caesar in their work. For example, both of Plutarch and Suetonius talked about Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra, Pharaoh of Egypt. But the way they described it was different. Plutarch Caesar has a detailed description of how Cleopatra captivated Caesar with her beauty and wisdom and relate her to the war on Egypt. She “stretched herself at a full length inside a bed…

In the article “Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars”, the author opens the article with a summary of the of all emperors that were responsible for the Romans society declining. The author starts by explaining how the Caesar family became the royal family of the Romans. The author starts off by introducing the audience to the Octavian family and how they are connected to Augustus’ family. Once the author gave the back ground of the Octavian family, he explains how they are related to Augustus’…

described as journalistic and detail orientated. It gave facts on who the rulers were as persons and what their live achievements were. One example would be how Suetonius writes about what Augustus preferred to eat “he particularly liked coarse bread, small fishes, handmade moist cheese, and green figs of the second crop…”. Also, a good example would the description of what Augustus used to wear at winter “in winter he protected himself with four tunics and heavy toga, besides an undershirt, a…