The arrival of W.'s commentary on Suetonius’ Life of Augustus is significant for two main reasons. First, it is a most welcome addition to the various series of commentaries on Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars which have been appearing since the late 1970s, when there began a gradual change to the generally lukewarm, if not hostile, attitudes towards the imperial bureaucrat and his works which had prevailed during the earlier part of the twentieth century. Today there are many commentaries on the various Lives pitched at the level of the undergraduate student of Latin. In English the Bristol Classical Press started its Suetonius series in 1977 with B.H. Warmington's Nero, followed by J.M. Carter's Augustus in 1982, and by now there is a full-scale commentary on every Life except Titus (the only recent stand-alone commentary is by H. Martinet, in German, published in 1981). There are, of course, many commentaries in other languages but, in English, especially noteworthy are two commentaries seemingly aimed at postgraduate students: K. Bradley's Nero (1978) and D. Hurley's ‘Green and Yellow’ Claudius (2001). Second, however, is another development of great importance, in roughly the same period, for the contemporary study of classical antiquity – the almost total disappearance of both Greek and Latin from ‘public authority’ schools in many parts of the English-speaking world: this has given rise to what are generally labelled ‘Classical Studies’ courses, where ancient texts are studied in English translation only. This development was cannily noted by the Oxford University Press which, in 1992, began to publish a widely-ranging series of ‘authoritative translations, introductions, and commentaries’ for Greek and Latin texts studied by ancient historians (the Clarendon Ancient History Series). These volumes now number 60, the most recent being W.'s mammoth study of Suetonius’ Life of Augustus. This policy, as implemented here, means that every single Latin word is translated into English (this includes the lemmata and also applies to Greek sources cited in the commentary).

University students often ignore the introductory matter in any ‘text plus commentary’ combination. To do so in this case would be most unfortunate, since W., after telling us how the book came to be written (over eleven years), discusses Suetonius’ career in detail and does as good a job as anyone could expect, given the very disparate and contradictory material available. Next, he presents a persuasive analysis of the structural elements of the Augustus, with emphasis on the organisational aspects of the work, and this is followed by the much-discussed question of Suetonius’ sources. The final part of the introduction concerns how we should read the Augustus in the twenty-first century: any history student not versed in Latin would initially find Suetonius’ biographical methods somewhat baffling – especially his treatment of the subject matter by species (usually translated as ‘categories’). Indeed, W. points out that, given the way in which Suetonius organises his material, ‘for much of the Life chronology is not the determining factor’ (p. 29), and furthermore, since he treats the whole of Augustus’ public career (44 b.c. to a.d. 14) as a single section of his biography, ‘his Aug. does not change or develop and never displays the dissimulation typical of a tyrant. Suet.'s Aug. simply controls the state first in partnership and then alone’ (p. 33; cf. the last sentence of Chapter 8). This also means that some of the most important items in our present-day take on the history of Augustus’ career, such as his various grants of imperium, or his use of tribunician power as a modest and non-blatant way of controlling virtually everything, do not appear at all prominently, if they appear at all.

The translation is careful and generally uncontroversial (and the words and phrases used as lemmata are printed in a ‘light’ boldface type in the commentary); however, since the translation is supposed, for the Latinless student, to be the primary text on which everything depends, it should not be ‘debated’ at various points in the commentary. An example of this occurs at 17.1, where Suetonius describes Augustus’ final break with Antony. He uses the words societatem … abrupit tandem, which W. translates as ‘He finally broke off his alliance with M. Antonius’; however, in his discussion he refers to Suetonius’ use of ‘at last’ (tandem); so, why create a trivially pointless confusion? For examples of places where the translation could be improved, see 43.2, where Nonius Asprenas is hurt during the ‘Game of Troy’: W. gives us ‘injured by a fall’ for lapsu debilitatem: it should be ‘disabled by a fall from his horse’; see also 74 (on p. 462), where Suetonius, citing Augustus on the question of inviting humble people to dinner, says: Ipse scribit, invitasse se quondam, in cuius villa maneret, qui speculator suus olim fuisset. W. translates this as ‘Augustus himself writes that on one occasion he had invited the man in whose villa he was staying, who had once been his bodyguard’. Without fancy restaurants in ancient Italy, how do you invite to dinner the person in whose house you are having your meals? The imperfect force of the subjunctive maneret should be noted: D. Hurley's translation is ‘at whose villa he used to stay’. In addition, perhaps surprisingly, W. discusses the textual possibilities in some of the relatively few major cruces in the text (Ihm's Teubner edition, now over a century old, is still the best available), and in one case makes a very plausible suggestion of his own (43.1, on p. 321).

In general, the commentary is very detailed (with full translations, instead of mere citations, of relevant passages from other sources such as Augustus’ Res Gestae, Horace, Velleius, Strabo, Seneca, Pliny and, above all, Dio). The result is a kind of Encyclopaedia of Augustus, based on topics raised by Suetonius; as such, it will be an invaluable resource for students at any level who are looking for essay or thesis material and source references for modern scholarly activity; indeed, many of the ‘comments’ are so lengthy and elaborate that they resemble the research papers found nowadays in classical periodicals. Perhaps the most impressive example of this can be seen in the commentary on 94–6, which W. calls ‘Signs of his Greatness and Everlasting Good Fortune’ and subdivides into three sections: ‘Before his birth’, ‘On his birthday’ and ‘After his birth’ (pp. 509–38). For once, Suetonius lists these ‘divine indications’ in chronological order, and although much of the material can be found in other sources, his account is the ‘fullest and most systematic treatment of the subject in any ancient author’ (p. 509), with nineteen signs described. As W. has made clear, Suetonius does not present Augustus as a tyrant; but students today must inevitably question that assessment, especially when they consider Suetonius’ information about Augustus’ sexual improprieties in 69–71: the relationship with Terentia, wife of Maecenas, which lasted about 20 years (p. 443) and Augustus’ later enthusiasm for deflowering virgins (pp. 441, 449), which W. describes as ‘a flagrant contravention’ of the Julian Law concerning the Curbing of Adulteries, a law which Augustus used to the full against his daughter and granddaughter and their various paramours. The law, apparently, did not apply to him.

Finally, the bibliography. It is an almost impossible task to keep up with the constant flow of new ideas and interpretations of all aspects of Augustus’ life. W. tackles this in two ways: works which are only of ‘local’ relevance are cited with brief identifying references in the main commentary text, while others are cited in detail in the main bibliography and in the commentary text in the ‘Treggiari 1991: 288–9’ system. Inevitably, however, ‘phantoms’ do appear: some noted are ‘Syme 1958’ (p. 3; cf. n.7 on the facing p. 2); ‘Eck 1998’ (p. 159); ‘Bowersock 1990’ (p. 254); and ‘Levi 1951’ (p. 321). Other criticisms are mere niggles: typographic errors are few and easily circumnavigated, and the few examples of ‘poor English’ are often just matters of individual dogmatism – except for the topologically impossible ‘centred around’ (p. 498).