50 pages • 1 hour read
SuetoniusThe Twelve Caesars
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 121A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Historical Accuracy
One of the issues that faces historians who read The Twelve Caesars is its reliability as a historical source. On one hand, Suetonius does display some genuinely sophisticated techniques for historical research. When discussing the issue of Vespasian’s family background, Suetonius raises reports that Vespasian had an ancestor who came from Northern Italy and worked as a migrant agricultural laborer. He states that he could not verify this despite making “a fairly thorough investigation” (“The Deified Vespasian,” Section 1). Also, he assesses different accounts and cites evidence on the question of where Caligula was born, and offers his own opinion based on the available evidence, much like a modern historian would (“Caligula,” Section 8). Likewise, Suetonius admits when he cannot verify a fact, as when he could not find a satisfactory account of Vitellius’s ancestral origins (“Vitellius,” Sections 1-2). Elsewhere, Suetonius weighs and provides different, conflicting accounts of the same event, such as the supposed poisoning of Claudius (“The Deified Claudius,” Section 44).
As an archivist and librarian for the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, Suetonius also clearly uses the resources available to him. For example, he directly quotes letters written by Augustus to Livia regarding Claudius’s early years to demonstrate how Augustus felt about Claudius and why Claudius was not trusted with any political offices (“The Deified Claudius,” Section 4).
On the other hand, Suetonius also cites unsourced reports and obvious rumors of his day. Given the amount of time separating Suetonius from some of his subjects, one can imagine that gossip from the lifetimes of these subjects became exaggerated or changed over the decades. A cautious reader can spot when Suetonius refers to such unreliable accounts, such as when he uses phrases like “it is even said” or “he is even believed,” or when he neglects to refer to any source at all when listing series of anecdotes about the private lives of the imperial family (i.e., “Nero,” Sections 26-29).
None of this means that The Twelve Caesars should be rejected as a historical source. Suetonius weighs his sources and different accounts carefully, and his critical standards are familiar to modern historians. However, like with any historical source, readers should approach The Twelve Caesars carefully.
Class and Rank in Roman Society
One of the overriding themes throughout The Twelve Caesars is Suetonius’s concern with class origin. Each biography except “The Deified Julius” begins with a detailed discussion of the Caesar’s family background, and “The Deified Julius” is likely the only exception because the relevant sections were lost. Even then, the biography contains an account of Julius Caesar delivering a eulogy, in which he highlights his family’s distinguished and even godly ancestry (“The Deified Julius,” Section 6). Even with Vespasian, who had the least noble family origins, Suetonius suggests that he may come from an ancient lineage, and he takes care to describe Vespasian and his family’s many years of military service.
This trope certainly reflects Suetonius’s own bias as a member of the Roman aristocracy. At one point Suetonius even describes Vitellius’s potential lineage as possibly “disgraceful” (“Vitellius,” Section 1). However, this bias does not belong to Suetonius alone. The Twelve Caesars is full of indications of Roman society’s own preoccupation with class. For example, Suetonius mentions how Mark Anthony “taunts Augustus with having as his great-grandfather an ex-slave who had earned his living as a rope-maker […] while his grandfather was a financial agent” (“The Deified Augustus,” Section 2). Having a family that is “ancient and illustrious” (“Otho,” Section 1) is not just a subject of interest for readers. In Roman eyes, proving that one came from an esteemed and well-established family with generations of service to the empire meant demonstrating one’s individual merit for the imperial office.
Private Life and Politics
The private lives of the emperors and their families are of great concern to Suetonius. While Suetonius likely did find these details important as a historian seeking to preserve the past and as a writer trying to interest his audience, these anecdotes serve another purpose as well. For Suetonius, each Caesar’s private life and relationships with family and friends reflected what they were like as a ruler.
This is especially important when it comes to the Caesars’ sexual and romantic lives. Suetonius calls attention to Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian’s excessive and abusive behavior, which reflects how they act as emperors. Similarly, tyranny is revealed through abusive relationships toward spouses, relatives, and comrades. This is especially clear in “Caligula,” where in a single passage Suetonius slips from talking about how Caligula destroyed the lives of those who supported his rise to power to how he persecuted members of the Senate (“Caligula,” Section 27).
There are possible exceptions, such as when Suetonius admits that Augustus, a “good” Caesar, was guilty of adultery with a married woman. However, he includes a report that Augustus committed adultery for political reasons, which fits into Suetonius’s argument that “good” Caesars do not allow their private desires to shape their political actions (“The Deified Augustus,” Section 69). The ideal Suetonius presents is Titus, who acknowledges this connection between the private and the political by ending his relationship with Queen Berenice (“The Deified Titus,” Section 7).
