Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was probably born about AD 69, a date deduced from his remarks describing himself as a "young man" 20 years after Nero's death. His place of birth is disputed, but most scholars place it in Hippo Regius (the modern Annaba), at the time a small north African town in Numidia, in modern-day Algeria.^[1] It is certain that Suetonius came from a family of moderate social position, that his father, Suetonius Laetus,^[3] was a tribune belonging to the equestrian order (tribunus angusticlavius) in Legio XIII Gemina, and that Suetonius was educated when schools of rhetoric flourished in Rome.

Suetonius was a close friend of senator and letter-writer Pliny the Younger. Pliny describes him as "quiet and studious, a man dedicated to writing". Pliny helped him buy a small property and interceded with the Emperor Trajan (not Hadrian) to grant Suetonius tax immunities usually granted to a father of three, the ius trium liberorum, because he was childless even though he was married; such tax immunities were also granted to thousands of inhabitants of Italy who were part of the empire at the time of Suetonius and Trajan and at the time...the population of Rome is estimated to have been more than 600,000 people. ^[4] Through Pliny, Suetonius came into favour with Trajan and Hadrian. Suetonius may have served on Pliny's staff when Pliny was imperial governor (legatus Augusti pro praetore) of Bithynia and Pontus (northern Asia Minor) between 110 and 112. Under Trajan he served as secretary of studies (precise functions are uncertain) and director of Imperial archives; while under Hadrian, Suetonius became the emperor's secretary.

According to the controversial and historically factually customized writing Historia Augusta, which has no specific author and was written more than 150 years after "The Twelve Caesars", Hadrian later dismissed Suetonius from his position for an affair with the empress Vibia Sabina who was in an unhappy marriage and childless. Note that Hadrian's Father was not a Roman emperor but a Roman senator by the name of Publius, that his mother's name was Paulina, that Hadrian was not adopted by Trajan in writing, and that Sabina's marriage to Hadrian may have been arranged by Plotina who also adopted Hadrian in writing after the death of the Emperor Trajan; one could argue that Hadrian was a false or illegitimate emperor of Rome. Under Trajan the Spanish sought to alter Roman history. In fact, Wikipedia says that "Hadrian seems to have been well connected to the powerful and influential coterie of Spanish senators at Trajan's court, through his ties to Plotina and the Prefect Attianus." Plotina was raised in Hispania and entered the imperial palace stating that she would not change. The writing "The Twelve Caesars" does not include Hadrian as emperor of Rome and the Roman senate at the time of Hadrian's death was less willing to deify Hadrian. ^[5][6]

• Robert Graves (trans.), Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd, 1957)
• J. C. Rolfe (trans.), Lives of the Caesars, Volume I (Loeb Classical Library 31, Harvard University Press, 1997).
• J. C. Rolfe (trans.), Lives of the Caesars, Volume II (Loeb Classical Library 38, Harvard University Press, 1998).
• Edwards, Catherine Lives of the Caesars. Oxford World's Classics. (Oxford University Press, 2008).
• Donna W. Hurley (trans.), Suetonius: The Caesars (Indianapolis/London: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011).
• C. Suetonii Tranquilli De vita Caesarum libros VIII et De grammaticis et rhetoribus librum, ed. Robert A. Kaster (Oxford: 2016).
• Suetonius (2025). The Lives of the Caesars. Translated by Holland, Tom. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-241-18689-3.^[9]

• Suetonius on Christians