The little we know of his life is chiefly gathered from the Letters of Pliny the Younger, and from scattered allusions in his own works. The son of an officer of the Thirteenth Legion, Suetonius in early life practised as an advocate, and subsequently became one of Hadrian’s private secretaries (magister epistularum), but was dismissed from office in 121 A.D. After his retirement from the service of the Court he devoted the rest of his long life to literary research and compilation, and published a number of works on a great variety of subjects, so that he became famous as the Varro of the imperial period.
2. Works.
His extant works are:
(1) De Vita Caesarum, the Lives of the Twelve Caesars, in eight Books (I-VI Julius-Nero; VII Galba, Otho, and Vitellius; VIII Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian). This is his most interesting and most valuable work. His Lives are not works of art: he is simply a gatherer of facts, collected from good sources with considerable care and judgment. ‘He follows out with absolute faithfulness his own theory, which makes it necessary to omit no possible detail that can throw light upon the personality of his subject.’—Peck.
(2) De Viris Illustribus, a history of Latin literature up to his day. The greater part of the section De grammaticis et rhetoribus is extant, as well as the Lives of Terence, Horace, and Lucan (partly), from the section De poetis, and fragments of the Life of Pliny the Elder from the section De historicis.
Extracts made from this work by Jerome (circ. 400 A.D.) in his Latin version of Eusebius’ Chronicles are the source from which much of our information as to Latin authors is derived.
‘Suetonius is terse, and in that respect he resembles Tacitus; he is deeply interesting, and there he shows some likeness to Livy; but his style is one of his own creation. His chief desire is to present the facts stripped of any comment whatever, grouped in such a way as to produce their own effect without the adventitious aid of rhetoric; and then to leave the reader to his own conclusions.’—Peck.
Probissimus, honestissimus, eruditissimus vir.
Pliny, Epist. ad Trai. 94.