DIVVS IVLIVS EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY BY H. E. BUTLER, M.A. PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE AND M. CARY, M.A., D.LITT. READER IN ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS Oxford University Press London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai Printed in Great Britain PREFACE THERE is, we believe, no English edition of the Divus Iulius now in print. Peck's edition (New York, 1893) we have not been able to secure. The commentary, which is almost entirely historical, is based in the main on the study of the original authorities, supplemented by the work of numerous writers on the life and times of Julius Caesar, to whom, we hope, adequate, acknowledgement has been made in our notes. For the text we are deeply indebted, as all students of Suetonius must be, to the work of Ihm, to whose edition we refer our readers for details as to manuscripts. Textual difficulties are not numerous in this biography; a few critical notes have been appended: the actual text differs from that of Ihm in a good many points, mostly, however, of minor importance. H. E. B. 661789 INTRODUCTION I THE LIFE AND WORKS OF SUETONIUS GAIUS SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS1 was the son of Suetonius Laetus, an eques who served as a military tribune (angusticlavius) in the army of Otho during the Civil War of 69 B.C.2 The date of his birth is uncertain; but as he speaks of himself as being an adulescens, when twenty years after the death of Nero a false Nero appeared in the East in A. D. 88, it is not unduly rash to assume that he was born somewhere in the neighbourhood of A. D. 70, later perhaps rather than earlier." He was a friend of the younger Pliny, whom we find about the year A. D. 97 seeking to calm his fears of failure in a suit which he is about to plead, an alarm engendered by a terrifying dream. A little later in the same year Pliny begs Baebius Hispanus to persuade a friend, who has land to sell, to let Tranquillus, his contubernalis' (a term denoting considerable intimacy), have the property at a reasonable price, since it is just about the size suited to 'owners who are professional scholars' (scholastici domini)." Though he had doubtless studied rhetoric, and had actually pleaded in court, Suetonius was undoubtedly, before all things, a scholar, and a grammaticus rather than a rhetor; though there is no need to assume that 1 The controversies to which the scanty data for his life have given rise are mainly contentions over shadows (cf. Macé, Essai sur Suétone). Only such inferences as seem reasonably certain are here included. 2 Suet. Otho 10. Suet. Nero 57. The other reminiscences of Suetonius (Dom. 12; de Gramm. 4) throw no light on his age or life. It is true that in Dom. 12 he speaks of himself as adulescentulus; but an adulescentulus is not necessarily younger than an adulescens, both being very vague terms. 4 Plin. Ep. 1. 18. For the approximate dates of the books of Pliny's letters see Mommsen, Hermes, iii (1869), p. 31; his conclusions have not been seriously shaken. 5 Plin. Ep. 1. 24. 6 Suidas (s. v. Τράγκυλλος) calls him γραμματικός. |