Suetonius

Suetonius

Suetonius, in full Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (70?-160? A.D.), was a Roman biographer and historian. He was a friend of Pliny the Younger, who, when appointed proconsul of Bithynia by the emperor Trajan, took Suetonius with him as a companion.
   After Pliny's death Suetonius was befriended by Gaius Septicius Clarus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, to whom he dedicated his well-known work, The Lives of the Caesars. As private secretary to the emperor Hadrian from 119 to 121 B.C., Suetonius had access to imperial documents and was able to verify the facts in this work. The biographies contain information about twelve rulers of Rome, from Gaius Julius Caesar to the emperor Domitian, which is found nowhere else; much of it is in the form of scandalous anecdotes. Suetonius was the author of numerous other works now lost, including Miscellanies, an encyclopedic work on Roman antiquities and scientific subjects. His De Viris Illustribus contains biographies of poets, orators, philosophers, historians, grammarians, and rhetoricians; most of the section on grammarians and rhetoricians, and also the biographies of several poets, including those of Terence, Vergil, and Horace, have been preserved.