Suetonius

Suetonius is a greater chore to read than Tacitus, but his gossip is juicier. Pliny the Younger (of Letters fame) was Suetonius' patron, helping to secure him a sequence of senior positions in the empire. He rose to this height on the strength of his scholarship, and that is on display here in the greatest of his works. His format, however, is prone to challenge. It is not a chronological history, as in Plutarch, but a categorized listing of the key elements which stand out about each of the first twelve Caesars of Rome. This may have suited conventions of the time but perhaps not the subject matter.

Robert Graves did a famous translation of this work, and it shows in his novel "I, Claudius" which I read a couple of years ago. I'm glad I read that first, so that I could read through its source material after the fact and make all the connections. Suetonius paints a very dark portrait of Tiberius, and makes it clear that the loss of Germanicus as an alternative heir to Augustus was a terrible blow to Rome. Tiberius was malicious, and Caligula was such a horror show it's only a wonder he wasn't murdered sooner. Claudius feels more maligned than he deserves; that might be Graves rubbing off on me but surely he could have been more appreciated for not being a monster, as they soon got again in Nero (and again foregoing a better choice, Britannicus.) The next six Caesars are covered more briefly as the title was tossed around for a few months until Vespasian caught it, handing it down to his sons.

Not one of these Caesars, not even the kinder ones, envisioned the concept of restraining their power in some codified way. There is only the occasional discussion about restoring the Republic, an idea that never got serious wheels under it. Thus whenever the new Caesar started delivering random off-with-their-heads orders, off went the heads, until the inevitable assasination so that the next Caesar could start it all over again. I'm looking forward to Gibbon's story of how well that turned out for them.… (more)