Review; Twelve Caesars

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was born around that fateful year of 69 CE. It was then that the Julio-Claudian dynasty finally collapsed without a direct heir. Senatorial commanders of provincial armies took to the battlefields to decide the issue of succession. Suetonius' own father, a military tribune, had fought at the battle of Betriacum in the Year of the Four Emperors. When it was all over, the Flavian dynasty stood victorious as the new masters of Rome, and the empire of the Caesars crawled out from under its cradle into a maturing adolescence. Perhaps it was for personal reasons - a sense of having one's own fate entwined with larger events - that Suetonius decided to write a history of the empire and the personalities who presided over its birth. Whatever his motivations, Suetonius became the leading witness for Rome's early empire.

...read the full review of Twelve Caesar's by Suetonius

A brilliant review of one of the best primary accounts from Ancient Rome. Suetonius's work ought to have a spot on the shelf of any dedicated Romanophile.

Salve, Amici.

Even with the presumed support of Plinian and Imperial archives, toxicology wasn't one of the strongest points of C Suetonius T (or any otherancient Roman historian, BTW). Here come some crucial implausible descriptions:

On Germanicus' death (Vita Caius, cp I):

obiit, non sine ueneni suspicione. Nam praeter liuores, qui toto corpore erant, et spumas, quae per os fluebant, cremati quoque cor inter ossa incorruptum repertum est, cuius ea natura existimatur, ut tinctum ueneno igne confici nequeat.

"There was some suspicion that he was poisoned; for besides the dark spots which appeared all over his body and the froth which flowed from his mouth, after he had been reduced to ashes his heart was found entire among his bones; and it is supposed to be a characteristic of that organ that when steeped in poison it cannot be destroyed by fire".

On Caius' (Caligula) personal reserve (ibid, cp. XLIX):

Inuenta et arca ingens uariorum uenenorum plena, quibus mox a Claudio demersis infecta maria traduntur non sine piscium exitio, quos enectos aestus in proxima litora eiecit.

"There was found besides a great chest full of divers kinds of poisons, which they say were later thrown into the sea by Claudius and so infected it as to kill the fish, which were thrown up by the tide upon the neighbouring shores".

On trying to kill Agrippina Minor (Vita Nero, cp. XXXIV):

et cum ter veneno temptasset sentiretque antidotis praemunitam

"and after thrice attempting it by poison and finding that she had made herself immune by antidotes"

Then, I must conclude Suetonius' (and others') numerous accusations of assassination by poisoning are questionable at best.

(Here is a previous thread on poisoning in the Roman world).

Salve, Amici.

I prefer to read Caius Suetonius Tranquilus' De Vita XII Caesarum backwards, as it might be the easiest way to understand his main global purpose on this series of outstanding but extremely Manichean biographies.

We begin with a relatively brief first-hand account on T.F. Domitianus, the man subject to Damnatio Memoriae whose death let Suetonius' patron dynasty succeed; unsurprisingly, Suetonius

I like the idea of reading Suetonius backwards. That's a clever perspective on the Twelve Caesars.

When we read Suetonius

Militarily and territorially, Rome expanded much less under the Julio-Claudians than under the popularly-elected consuls of the Republic.

The Parthian Empire, which defeated the Republican armies under Crassus and Antonius, was repeatedly defeated (check your own post).

The Augustean policy of foundation of Roman colonies in the Provinces, virtually unknown during the Republic, was continued on a larger scale. Britannia and Mauritania were added to the Empire.

And what's the evidence that it thrived demographically?

UNRV

And economically? Far from it, the treasury went through a roller-coaster of profligate spending under some emperors and penurious penny-pinching under others. Can you really call the fiscal health of the empire sound when Caligula is forcing the wives of senators to serve as prostitutes?

Without fiscal health, such Emperors wouldn't have been able to go through such profligate spending.

Besides, I think Suetonius was analyzing not the Imperial fiscal health but Caius' ethics when he made such observation.

All that said, my point was not that the Roman Empire under the late Julio-Claudians was thriving more or less than the Republic or any other Roman period. My point is the Empire was thriving in absolute terms by any measure, an unexpected outcome under the rule of maniac lunatics depicted by Suetonius in so much detail.

And I was certainly not trying to favour these

Fiscal health? I think the empire was able to conduct large operations because it was more capable and experienced in taking money from the people. Fiscal health from the state's point of view but...

Salve Amici.

About Suetonius on Isis in a related thread.

And in another related thead, just check out

Suetonius on the Insulae status under Nero