The presumed chronology of Suetonius’ works has always been centrally important to their interpretation. For example, Wallace-Hadrill builds his view of the Lives of the Caesars as ultimately the work of a ‘scholar’ on the belief that Suetonius first cut his teeth on minor scholarship and his collection of literary Lives, the Illustrious Men, before making his transition to imperial biography. In his view, the Caesars bears the mark of an author still interested in the scholarly themes of the Illustrious Men, and this order of composition can be held to explain much about the unique form and content of the Lives of emperors.Footnote 1
However, the evidence for this view of the relationship between these two works has always been shaky, since the only firm date we have for Suetonius’ works is the dedication of at least part of the Caesars sometime in a.d. 119–22.Footnote 2 No one has yet been able to prove that the Illustrious Men came first; scholars such as Syme simply assume it on a priori grounds: ‘From that kind of erudite compilation, the transition seemed easy to biographies of emperors’.Footnote 3 Wallace-Hadrill bases his own viewpoint about the three phases of Suetonius’ literary career on similar common sense: ‘The book [Illustrious Men] is the fruit of long years of scholarly study, and ought to follow the bulk of the less demanding philological and antiquarian essays. In its wake, Suetonius could approach the Caesars with a mind already stocked with information; and this is surely what he did, moving more or less directly from the lives of authors to Caesars’.Footnote 4 This reconstruction is made especially plausible if we think that publications aided Suetonius’ rise through positions in the imperial service, and Wallace-Hadrill himself believes that Suetonius was promoted to his post ab epistulis sometime after Hadrian's assumption of power (a.d. 117) because of the Illustrious Men.Footnote 5
Nevertheless, the reconstruction is open to valid criticism. First, very little is known about Suetonius’ scholarly works, certainly not enough to characterize them all confidently as ‘less demanding’ than the two largely extant collections of Lives. Second, tangents between the two biographical collections, or between these and the scholarly works, could be explained in the opposite way too, that is, they represent the beginnings of Suetonius’ interests in these topics, rather than their culmination; or, at any rate, research on a subject does not necessarily indicate prior publication on it.Footnote 6 The Illustrious Men could still have followed the Caesars.
In the first part of this paper I wish to explore some allusions in a letter of Pliny the Younger written to Suetonius in either a.d. 105 or 106 (Letters 5.10) which establish that the composition of the Illustrious Men was well underway at that time. I shall then argue in the second part that Suetonius’ award of the ius trium liberorum no later than a.d. 110 was probably due to a publication, which — since he was recently working on the Illustrious Men — is most likely that work. Finally, the paper's third part will draw an important implication from the discovery of this new date of the Illustrious Men for Suetonius’ next publication, the Caesars: the latter may now have appeared in their entirety by a.d. 122, contrary to the widely held scholarly belief that only the first two Caesars were dedicated to Septicius Clarus during his Praetorian prefecture.
I
Scholars have long speculated on the possibility that Pliny the Younger's letter to the biographer Suetonius urging him to publish an unnamed work (Ep. 5.10) actually refers to his Illustrious Men.Footnote 7 A possible allusion to Virgil in the letter may offer some help:
C. Plinius Suetonio Tranquillo suo s.
libera tandem hendecasyllaborum meorum fidem, qui scripta tua communibus amicis spoponderunt. appellantur cotidie, efflagitantur, ac iam periculum est ne cogantur ad exhibendum formulam accipere. sum et ipse in edendo haesitator,Footnote 8 tu tamen meam quoque cunctationem tarditatemque uicisti. proinde aut rumpe iam moras aut caue ne eosdem istos libellos, quos tibi hendecasyllabi nostri blanditiis elicere non possunt, conuicio scazontes extorqueant. perfectum opus absolutumque est, nec iam splendescit lima sed atteritur. patere me uidere titulum tuum, patere audire describi legi uenire uolumina Tranquilli mei. aequum est nos in amore tam mutuo eandem percipere ex te uoluptatem, qua tu perfrueris ex nobis. uale.
Gaius Pliny to his friend Suetonius Tranquillus, greetings.
Make good at last on the pledge of my hendecasyllables, which have promised your writings to our mutual friends. They are accosted everyday, are met with demands, and are now in danger of being forced to comply with a legal instruction to produce it. I myself am also hesitant to publish, but you exceed my reluctance and lateness too. Therefore either cease now your delays or take care that those very books of yours, which my hendecasyllables cannot elicit from you by flattery, are not wrenched out by abuse in scazons. The work is finished and complete, and no longer begins to shine from the file but is being worn away. Let me see your cover, and let me hear that my friend Tranquillus’ books are being copied, read, and produced. It is fair that in such shared fondness I take the same delight from you as you enjoy from me. Farewell.
The words emphasized above recall the first lines of the Georgics following the proem (1.43–6):
In early spring, when the icy liquid flows from the snowy mountains and the crumbling soil is softened by the western wind, let my bull then already begin to groan from the sunken plough, and my ploughshare begin to shine, worn down from the furrow.
The reasons in support of this allusion may be stated as follows:
(a) In his Letters Pliny frequently quotes from and alludes to Virgil's works, more often the Aeneid, but also sometimes the Georgics (e.g. Ep. 2.1.12 ~ Georg. 4.500–2, 523–7; Ep. 5.8.3 ~ Georg. 3.8–9; Ep. 9.2.3 ~ Georg. 4.206–8).Footnote 9 He was therefore very familiar with Virgil's poetry.
(b) There is also an adjacent allusion to the Aeneid in this letter through Pliny's command ‘rumpe iam moras’ (§ 2; cf. Aen. 4.569, 9.13),Footnote 10 and paired references to these two poems are something that Pliny likewise does in Ep. 5.8 (§ 3; Georg. 3.8–9, Aen. 5.195).Footnote 11
(c) The clear echoes of the words iam (§§ 1, 2, 3), splendesco, and attero (§ 3) cannot be explained entirely by the topos of limae labor et mora,Footnote 12 due to the rare combination of the two verbs. Besides one phrase in Ammianus (20.11.29: ‘splendescit attritu’), which may itself have been influenced by the Virgilian passage,Footnote 13 the combination occurs in extant Latin literature only in these two places.Footnote 14
(d) There are similarities of context in these two passages, which are both about delayed beginnings. The delay in Virgil's description of activities already commencing (‘incipiat iam …’) has been viewed as a metaphor for the poet's delay in beginning the Georgics only after a formal proem. In other words, the passage on farming is also about a literary work: Virgil is commenting on his own late beginning.Footnote 15 Suetonius’ delay of his own work by not yet publishing it therefore recalls the passage, and Pliny's metaphor of the lima for the literary craft parallels Virgil's metaphor of the ploughshare and furrow for the same idea.Footnote 16 Furthermore, both images of the ‘furrow’ and ‘file’ evoke freshness that comes from hard work: in Virgil freshness of the soil, and in Pliny literary freshness.Footnote 17
Taken together, the points enumerated make it reasonably certain that Pliny alludes to the Virgilian lines. In fact, Pliny's allusion to this passage of the Georgics so as to connect its imagery explicitly with a literary work may even signal his recognition of Virgil's original double meaning, the implication of the poem itself behind the metaphor of the ploughshare. The point of the allusion is clear: Pliny emphasizes Suetonius’ need to act by alluding to Virgil's own acknowledgement that the preparations have already been made for his poem, which must at last be properly begun. The next step is to ask what, if anything, the allusion can tell us about the work of Suetonius to which Pliny refers.
The first thing we ought to observe is that Letters 5.10 is part of a carefully designed epistolary collection, and also part of an artfully polished individual book within that collection (Book 5). Recent scholarship on Pliny the Younger has acknowledged that he almost certainly revised and edited his letters, and that an appreciation of the greater context of each letter, particularly the surrounding context of the individual book, can often enhance our understanding of the letter's meaning.Footnote 18 Moreover, scholars have demonstrated that Pliny often joins letters, either by intratextual cross-reference or through a shared allusion to another text, suggesting that they should be read and interpreted together.Footnote 19
Bearing in mind this methodology for reading Pliny's work, let us see if understanding the Virgilian allusions of Letters 5.10 within the context of related letters in Book 5 can shed any light on our question.
Letters 5.10 seems to be connected to a letter that comes just before it in Pliny's Book 5, Letters 5.8, which similarly contains the theme of delay and combines allusions to the Georgics and Aeneid within the same thought (§ 3), as noted briefly above (b).Footnote 20 In that case, however, the verses are explicitly quoted, and therefore would not fail to be in the recent memory of the reader of Letters 5.10, providing Book 5 is being read in order. There is also an explicit cross-reference in 5.10 to Pliny's own hesitance to publish (§ 2: ‘sum et ipse in edendo haesitator, tu tamen meam quoque cunctationem tarditatemque uicisti. proinde aut rumpe iam moras …’), which has most recently been discussed in Letters 5.8 (§ 5: ‘cur ergo cunctor?’), and is even recalled in its final line (§ 14: ‘cunctationis et morae’). The fact that Letters 5.10 is placed so close to 5.8 and deals with the same subject of a delayed literary publication already suggests the two letters’ correlation. However, their shared double allusion to the same Virgilian works makes it almost indisputable, suggesting that the two letters should in fact be read together.
The allusion to the Georgics in Letters 5.8 that parallels the one in 5.10 is worth considering briefly. Pliny again alludes to a delayed beginning, this time Virgil's second proem, the start of Georgics Book 3, where Virgil announces a future epic work (the Aeneid), which will be even greater than the present didactic poem; it is this next, rather different writing that will make him ‘fly victorious on the lips of men’ (Ep. 5.8.3 = Georg. 3.9: ‘uictorque uirum uolitare per ora’).Footnote 21 This sort of recusatio (Georg. 40: ‘interea’, ‘Meanwhile …’) is an appropriate parallel to Pliny's own recusatio in Letters 5.8 (§ 11: ‘ideoque interim’, ‘And so, in the meantime …’), where he contemplates a change from oratory to history, and ultimately decides to continue with the former for the time being.Footnote 22
This preceding allusion to the Georgics in Book 5 may have other implications for both Letters 5.8 and 5.10. Pliny the Younger may also here be alluding to the preface to the Natural History of his uncle Pliny the Elder, particularly a section in which the Younger appears to have taken a great interest; it similarly is placed within the form of a letter and makes use of the same topos as in Virgil of an author advertising within a more modest genre a greater work of literature by himself (HN praef. 20):Footnote 23
uos quidem omnes, patrem, te fratremque, diximus opere iusto, temporum nostrorum historiam orsi a fine Aufidii. ubi sit ea, quaeres. iam pridem peracta sancitur et alioqui statutum erat heredi mandare, ne quid ambitioni dedisse uita iudicaretur.
Indeed all of you — your father [Vespasian], you [Titus], and your brother [Domitian] — I discuss in a finished work, which began a history of our times from the end of Aufidius [Bassus]. Where is this, you will ask. It is already seen through and sanctified, and had been specially placed in trust for my heir, so that my life could not be judged to have served a desire for favour.
In this case, the work under discussion is already completed (peracta), although its publication will be delayed by the author. The problems that come with publishing a work of contemporary history, which are thereby avoided by Pliny the Elder, are also a theme in Letters 5.8 (§§ 12–14). What is more, the question ‘ubi est ea?’ attributed to the Elder's addressee Titus (‘quaeres’) may be seen to be recalled by the Younger's ‘cur ergo cunctor?’ (5.8.5), which itself seems to indicate an expected question from the letter's recipient, as the following objection explicitly does (§ 7: ‘dices: “potes simul et rescribere actiones et componere historiam”’, ‘You will say: “You can rewrite your cases and compose history at the same time”’).Footnote 24 In both passages, the reason for the delay is also preventative: the immediate answer to the rhetorical question takes the form of a negative purpose clause (HN praef. 20: ‘ne … iudicaretur’ ~ Ep. 5.8.6: ‘ne … intercidat’).
This rhetorical question posed in the voice of the reader of Letters 5.8, to which Pliny seems to allude in 5.10 by comparing Suetonius to the explicit example of himself (§ 2: ‘meam quoque cunctationem’ ~ 5.8.5: ‘cur ergo cunctor?’), follows directly after an explicit comparison of himself with his uncle and the historical work mentioned in the Elder's preface (Ep. 5.8.4–7):
me uero ad hoc studium impellit domesticum quoque exemplum. auunculus meus idemque per adoptionem pater historias et quidem religiosissime scripsit. inuenio autem apud sapientes honestissimum esse maiorum uestigia sequi, si modo recto itinere praecesserint. cur ergo cunctor? egi magnas et graues causas. has, etiamsi mihi tenuis ex iis spes, destino retractare, ne tantus ille labor meus, nisi hoc quod reliquum est studii addidero, mecum pariter intercidat. nam si rationem posteritatis habeas, quidquid non est peractum, pro non incohato est.
However, a familial precedent too beckons me to this endeavour. My uncle, who was also my father by adoption, wrote historical narratives, and very zealously. Moreover, I find that according to the philosophers it is most honourable to follow in the footsteps of one's ancestors, provided that they led by a righteous path. Why, then, do I delay? I have pleaded some great and important cases. These, though I have meagre hopes for them, I intend to rework, so that all that work of mine, for lack of adding this remaining attention, might not equally perish with me. For if we take account of posterity, whatever is not seen through is the same as never begun.
Pliny the Elder, who made sure his history was peracta (HN praef. 20), is brought to mind in this passage not only through the context of his being mentioned, the use of the same topos (both in the letter and its intertext the Georgics) of a greater future work by the author, and the employment of a similar rhetorical question and answer, but also through the echo of the word peractum.Footnote 25 When one considers these connections of Letters 5.8 to the Elder's preface, and the intratextual link of the Younger's cross-reference between 5.10 and 5.8, the double emphasis in 5.10 on the fact that Suetonius’ work is ‘finished and complete’ (§ 3: ‘perfectum … absolutumque’) recalls the Elder's work, which was not only unpublished too but similarly ‘seen through and sanctified’ (HN praef. 20: ‘peracta sancitur’).
The example of Pliny the Elder, whose unexpected death in the eruption of Vesuvius will be described by Pliny the Younger in Book 6 (and also famously recounted in Suetonius’ Illustrious Men), is relevant here in Letters 5.8 to the Younger's point about his own necessity to finish his speeches, but also to 5.10, where he pleads with Suetonius to finish his work. It is the differences that are instructive: in the Natural History, the Elder gives advance notice of a work that has been completed and will certainly appear; in Letters 5.8, the Younger advertises a future work that he may not write, and decides to complete a different work; and in 5.10, he has already praised a work by Suetonius that has been completed, but which may not appear. The point of Pliny's comparison of these situations is that the Elder's work did not ‘perish’ (‘intercidat’) with him, as Pliny's speeches and Suetonius’ unnamed work may still do.
The concern in the above passage of Letters 5.8 for protecting one's writings from the same oblivion (‘intercidat’) that awaits their author also echoes the very beginning of the letter (§ 1: ‘occidere’):Footnote 26
C. Plinius Titinio Capitoni suo s.
suades ut historiam scribam, et suades non solus: multi hoc me saepe monuerunt et ego uolo, non quia commode facturum esse confidam — id enim temere credas nisi expertus — sed quia mihi pulchrum in primis uidetur non pati occidere, quibus aeternitas debeatur, aliorumque famam cum sua extendere.
Gaius Pliny to his friend Titinius Capito, greetings.
You urge me to write history, and are not alone in urging: many have often advised me to do this, and I am willing, not because I should be confident in a satisfying result — for indeed you should hardly believe that unless you are an expert — but because it seems to me an especially beautiful thing not to allow to perish those to whom immortality is owed, and to increase the fame of others along with one's own.
This passage contains yet another allusion to a passage in Virgil, one which ironically emphasizes the glory of real action, not the mere glory of its telling (Aen. 10.467–72):
Each man has his own day, and the time of life is brief and unrecoverable to all; but to increase one's fame through deeds, this is a work of virtue. Under the high walls of Troy so many children of the gods have died — indeed, together with them my son Sarpedon fell; even Turnus is called by his fates, and has reached the limits of the youth he was given.
The implied contrast with this Virgilian passage introduces a tension in the letter between Pliny as an historian and as a character within an historical work.Footnote 27 The resolution of the letter rests ultimately on neither alternative, but rather on the importance of a completed opus, which for the time being will be Pliny's speeches.Footnote 28
What is particularly illuminating about Letters 5.8 with regard to 5.10 is that, in addition to opting finally for being a writer (presently of speeches), Pliny also appears to find a middle ground in this letter between writing history and participating in it, just as he does in composing notes for Tacitus in Letters 6.16 and 6.20.Footnote 29 The act of revision itself is portrayed as an important historical deed in 5.8, especially by Pliny's intratextual equating in the above passages of the potential loss of his hard work as a writer (§ 6: ‘tantus ille labor meus’) with the potential loss of the deeds represented by great men's lives (§ 1: ‘quibus aeternitas debeatur’).Footnote 30 A similar equating is evident in 5.10 through Pliny's allusion to the Aeneid (§ 2: ‘rumpe iam moras!’, cf. Aen. 4.569, 9.13), which implies a comparison of Suetonius’ act of publishing to Aeneas’ founding of Rome (retaining the original anagrammatic pun on mora as Roma) and to his final battle with Turnus (cf. Aen. 12.699: ‘praecipitatque moras omnis, opera omnia rumpit’, ‘and he draws to a close all delays, ceases all endeavours’).Footnote 31
A second cross-reference of Letters 5.10 to another letter in Book 5 reinforces this importance of revision and the precariousness of unfinished works — a theme of such great importance that Pliny even devotes the end of the book to it.Footnote 32 Morello and Gibson notice that Pliny's phrase ‘perfectum opus’ (5.10.3) is reminiscent of the phrase used in Letters 5.5 of Gaius Fannius’ incomplete work at the time of his death: ‘opus imperfectum’ (§ 2).Footnote 33 In fact, the echo is even more extensive than this, and other correspondences in Letters 5.5, not only to 5.10 but to 5.8, may also be found (Ep. 5.5.2–4):
sed hoc utcumque tolerabile; grauius illud, quod pulcherrimum opus imperfectum reliquit. quamuis enim agendis causis distringeretur, scribebat tamen exitus occisorum aut relegatorum a Nerone et iam tres libros absoluerat subtiles et diligentes et Latinos atque inter sermonem historiamque medios, ac tanto magis reliquos perficere cupiebat, quanto frequentius hi lectitabantur. mihi autem uidetur acerba semper et immatura mors eorum, qui immortale aliquid parant. nam qui uoluptatibus dediti quasi in diem uiuunt, uiuendi causas cotidie finiunt; qui uero posteros cogitant, et memoriam sui operibus extendunt, his nulla mors non repentina est, ut quae semper incohatum aliquid abrumpat.
But this is somehow bearable; more crushing is the fact that he left a most beautiful work unfinished. For although he was busy with acting in cases, he was nevertheless writing the deaths of those killed or exiled by Nero and had already completed three books that were simple, accurate, and in a Latin halfway between conversation and history; and the more widely these were being read, the more eager he was to turn out the rest. Yet it seems to me always distressing and untimely when those die who are preparing something immortal. For indeed those who live devoted to the pleasures of the day, as it were, finish their reasons for living every day; but those who think of posterity, and increase their remembrance through their works, for them there is no death that is not too sudden, as it always cuts short something begun.
This passage's language (§ 4: ‘posteros cogitant’ ~ 5.8.7: ‘rationem posteritatis habeas’, § 4: ‘memoriam sui operibus extendunt’ ~ 5.8.1: ‘famam cum sua extendere’, § 4: ‘incohatum aliquid’ ~ 5.8.7: ‘quidquid … incohato’) and very topic are the same as those surveyed by us already in Letters 5.8; and in both letters Pliny juxtaposes legal cases with activities of writing (5.5.3: ‘agendis causis’ ~ 5.8.6: ‘egi … causas’). Moreover, the connection with 5.10 is even more complete if we read in parallel the two successive sentences of 5.5.2–3: ‘opus imperfectum reliquit … tres libros absoluerat’ (~ 5.10.3: ‘perfectum opus absolutumque est’). Pliny's distress in Letters 5.5 that a literary endeavour is often ‘cut short’ (§ 4: ‘abrumpat’) is also ironically counterbalanced in 5.10 by Pliny's command that the delays of Suetonius’ literary endeavour be ‘ceased’ (§ 2: ‘rumpe’) — a word already highlighted through the allusion to Virgil discussed above. Pliny cautions that Suetonius must interrupt his delays before some unforeseen circumstance interrupts him, and that by not preventing his procrastination he may be preventing his work itself. The biographer must choose between the two: perfectum opus or opus imperfectum.
With this earlier context of Book 5 in mind, we can now better interpret Letters 5.10. At the beginning of this paper I translated Pliny's line containing the allusion to the Georgics in Letters 5.10 as follows: ‘The work is finished and complete, and no longer begins to shine from the file but is being worn away’ (§ 3: ‘perfectum opus absolutumque est, nec iam splendescit lima sed atteritur’).Footnote 34 However, it now seems from our comparison with Letters 5.5 and 5.8 above that a better translation of ‘atteritur’ would be ‘is being squandered’.Footnote 35 The point of Pliny's earlier passages is that without the final act of publishing and circulating a text, all of the author's hard work is for nothing.
In this sense, an irony emerges when we contrast Virgil's original scene in the Georgics (1.43–6), where the polishing of the ploughshare from the earth is a sign of the farmer's (and according to Virgil's metaphor, the poet's) brilliant talent.Footnote 36 Whereas Virgil's lines appear in a text that has already been published and is well known, the toil of Suetonius may yet end up being in vain. Pliny reverses the order of the verbs, facilitating this new logic and the different sense of attero: Virgil's ploughshare is rubbed smooth (‘iam … attritus’), so it starts to shine (‘splendescere’); Suetonius’ work is no longer starting to shine (‘nec iam splendescit’), so it is being wasted (‘atteritur’). This interpretation renders more significant the emphasis by Pliny towards the end of Letters 5.10 on actually seeing Suetonius’ book in final form and knowing that it is in full production and circulation (§ 3: ‘patere me uidere titulum tuum, patere audire describi legi uenire uolumina Tranquilli mei’).
This combined reading of Letters 5.5, 5.8, and 5.10 suggests the importance of another intertext in Pliny's letter to Suetonius, Catullus 42:Footnote 37
Be here, hendecasyllables, as many as you are, all of you from all sides, however many you all are. A foul adulteress thinks that I am a joke, and refuses to return to me our writing-tablets, if you can suffer it. Let us pursue her and demand them back. Who is she, you will ask. She is the one you see strutting foully, with a forced smile like a mime and the face of a Gallic puppy. Surround her, and demand them back: ‘Vile adulteress, return the writing-tablets, return them, vile adulteress, the writing-tablets!’ You do not care at all? O you filth, you brothel, or if you could be anything baser. But still it should not be thought that this is enough, because if nothing else is possible, let us force a blush from the dog's unfeeling face. Shout together again in a louder voice: ‘Vile adulteress, return the writing-tablets, return them, vile adulteress, the writing-tablets!’ But we achieve nothing; she is not at all moved. Our plan and manner should be changed, if you can achieve anything more: ‘Chaste and upright girl, return the writing-tablets’.
The poem is about the loss of Catullus’ writing-tablets (pugillaria), which presumably contained nearly finished drafts, good enough to show to others but not yet copied onto papyrus.Footnote 38 The letter is a fitting epistolary model for Pliny: Catullus tries to recover his drafts from a young girl through insults, but the power of the insults is cleverly contrasted with the futility of his request for her to return the tablets, which she does not do.Footnote 39 If we are familiar with this original Catullan context, we may see an implication that Suetonius’ own tablets could be stolen, and that he should set down his work in final form before such a fate befalls them; Suetonius’ situation is no less precarious. Perils are threatening writings throughout this letter, from the legal actions against Pliny's verses to the abuse of Suetonius’ own work by Pliny, and the intertext of Catullus 42 suggests in addition the potential theft of Suetonius’ work and possibly other dangers.Footnote 40
One last possible allusion of Letters 5.10 is worth examining that may draw all of Pliny's other allusions together and reveal the identity of Suetonius’ unnamed work. A passage in Suetonius’ biography of Virgil (Virg. 39–41), which was part of his larger work Illustrious Men, reads as follows:
egerat cum Vario, priusquam Italia decederet, ut si quid sibi accidisset, Aeneida combureret; at is ita facturum se pernegarat. igitur in extrema ualetudine assidue scrinia desiderauit, crematurus ipse; uerum nemine offerente, nihil quidem nominatim de ea cauit. ceterum eidem Vario ac simul Tuccae scripta sua sub ea conditione legauit, ne quid ederent, quod non a se editum esset. edidit autem auctore Augusto Varius, sed summatim emendata, ut qui uersus etiam imperfectos, si qui erant, reliquerit. quos multi mox supplere conati non perinde ualuerunt ob difficultatem, quod omnia fere apud eum hemistichia absoluto perfectoque sunt sensu, praeter illud ‘quem tibi iam Troia’.Footnote 41
He had discussed with Varius, before leaving Italy, that if anything were to happen to him, he should burn the Aeneid; yet he persistently denied he would do so. Therefore, in his worst sickness he called repeatedly for his writing chests, in order to ignite it himself; but when no one brought them, he in fact gave no express wishes about the work. However, to this same Varius and also Tucca he bequeathed his writings under the condition that they not publish anything which would not have been published by him. Nevertheless, on the authority of Augustus, Varius published it, but only lightly revised, so that even if there were verses unfinished, he left them. Many soon tried to complete these verses and were unequal to the task, due to the difficulty that practically all the half-lines in his work had a complete and finished meaning, except for one: ‘whom now at Troy your …’.
In Letters 5.10 through the words ‘perfectum opus absolutumque est’ (§ 3) Pliny may be drawing Suetonius’ attention to the example of the biographer's own subject matter, that of Virgil himself, whose half-lines were ‘imperfectos’ but also ‘absoluto perfectoque sunt sensu’, which would identify the Illustrious Men as the work under discussion.Footnote 42 Virgil's Aeneid was both imperfecta and perfecta, and Suetonius’ paradoxical use of both words and the double emphasis that he adds to the latter make the phrase ‘absoluto perfectoque’ a memorable one in this passage.
Although the combination of the verbs perficio and absoluo (or of the nouns perfectio and absolutio) is not unique,Footnote 43 the similarities of context between Pliny and Suetonius are compelling. First, the subject of the Suetonian passage is the literary process behind Virgil's writing, which, as we have shown, is also the subject of the allusion to the Georgics found in the same sentence of Pliny as the phrase ‘perfectum … absolutumque’. Second, the precise context is a writer's hesitance to publish a literary work and the importance of publication to saving it from destruction, with an emphasis on the writing materials themselves (Verg. 39: ‘scrinia’, cf. Ep. 5.10.2–3: ‘istos libellos … titulum … uolumina’). Of this very theme developed by Pliny in Letters 5.5, 5.8, and 5.10, that is, the disastrous fates that threaten unpublished writings, there is perhaps no more salient example than the above anecdote about the Aeneid, which was arguably the most famous ‘unfinished’ work in antiquity.Footnote 44
Therefore, while perfectus absolutusque is a somewhat common expression, the rarity of the shared context suggests allusion, since both scenes relate to the publication of a literary work. In Suetonius’ Virgil, this combination of words refers to the completeness of Virgil's unfinished verses in sense as opposed to metre, and its use by Pliny in a sentence directly after his mention of switching from his usual hendecasyllables to a metre that ends more abruptly (Ep. 5.10.2: ‘hendecasyllabi … scazontes’),Footnote 45 together with echoes of Virgil's own poetical phrasing ‘attritus splendescere’ (Georg. 1.46), might cause Suetonius to think of his own Life of the poet, in which he places great emphasis on Virgil's unfinished lines in the Aeneid. Suetonius even describes these unfinished lines, along with some of the poet's completed lines that were lacking in substance, earlier in the biography (Virg. 24) as produced through a negotiation between delay and completeness similar to that seemingly proposed to Suetonius by Pliny in Letters 5.10, as well as through a similar process of ‘shining’:
ac ne quid impetum moraretur, quaedam imperfecta transmisit, alia leuissimis uersibus ueluti fulsit, quos per iocum pro tibicinibus interponi aiebat ad sustinendum opus, donec solidae columnae aduenirent.
And so as not to delay any of his momentum, some things he left unfinished, others he shined up, as it were, with very light verses, which he jokingly said were put in place as props to support the work, until the sturdy columns arrived.
Here Suetonius uses his own metaphor of ‘shining’ (‘ueluti fulsit’) for the verses that Virgil used to fill out some of the parts of his work that he did complete, which he later replaced with better lines. If Virgil could not polish each verse to a perfect shine, he at least made certain it would suffice.Footnote 46 Through the closeness of contexts, and through the language of Letters 5.10 (§§ 2–3: ‘moras … perfectum opus absolutumque … splendescit’, cf. Virg. 24: ‘moraretur … imperfecta … fulsit … opus’), Pliny may be said to evoke both of these passages in Suetonius (Virg. 24, 39–41), which are already linked within the Life through the recurring subject of Virgil's unfinished work.
Any discussion by Pliny of the extent of the ‘finished’ quality of a literary work, especially one for which a great amount of anticipation has been created, could conceivably make the reader think of the Aeneid, since as Suetonius tells us, that work was similarly praised and advertised in verse (Prop. 2.34.65–6: ‘cedite, Romani scriptores, cedite Grai: / nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade’, ‘Give way, Roman writers, give way Greeks: something greater than the Iliad is born’) and was expected anxiously even by the emperor Augustus (Virg. 30–1). However, it is significant that Pliny revises the order of Catullus’ abuse and flattery, and also his word ‘reflagitate’ (Catull. 42.10) into ‘efflagitantur’ (Ep. 5.10.1),Footnote 47 since this more closely resembles Suetonius’ description of Augustus’ demands for the Aeneid (Virg. 31):
Augustus uero, nam forte expeditione Cantabrica aberat, supplicibus atque etiam minacibus per iocum litteris efflagitaret, ut sibi de Aeneide, ut ipsius uerba sunt, ‘uel prima carminis ὑπογραφὴ; uel κῶλον quodlibet’ mitteretur.
Augustus in fact, for he happened to be away on a Cantabrian expedition, demanded with entreaties and even threats jokingly in letters, that he should send him from the Aeneid, to use his own words, ‘either the first draft of the poem or whatever section he pleased’.
Pliny's attempt to obtain Suetonius’ work by flattering entreaties as well as the threat of slander (Ep. 5.10.2: ‘efflagitantur … caue ne eosdem istos libellos, quos tibi hendecasyllabi nostri blanditiis elicere non possunt, conuicio scazontes extorqueant’) therefore recalls not only the situation of Catullus 42 but also the demands of Augustus in Suetonius’ biography of Virgil for rough material, which is sought by two similar methods in the same humorous tone and would presumably have been sent, like Catullus’ work, on writing-tablets.Footnote 48 More importantly, Augustus’ attempts to see the tablets are no less futile, since just like the girl of Catullus 42, Virgil also seems not to have sent them.Footnote 49 Pliny's obvious allusions to Catullus 42, a poem which has associations of the extreme reluctance to send a literary work, might also therefore make Suetonius think of his Virgil. That Pliny the writer of letters would have taken a special interest in the epistolographic theme of this passage about Augustus seems probable. The scene may also be recalled by another intertext of Letters 5.10, Pliny the Elder's Natural History, in which the author denies an emperor access to the complete literary work which is of great interest to him, and in which he is described, until after the author's death (HN praef. 20).
These and the other very specific reminiscences of Suetonius’ Virgil that we have discussed make the argument for direct allusion by Pliny, not to the tradition on Virgil in general, but to the text of this Suetonian biography, particularly persuasive. Pliny in his own jokingly threatening letter to Suetonius (cf. Virg. 31: ‘minacibus per iocum litteris’) adopts not only the rôle of the messenger of the gods to Aeneas (‘rumpe iam moras!’)Footnote 50 but also the rôle of Augustus to that hero's author Virgil (‘efflagitantur … blanditiis … conuicio’). What is more, by thus equating the publications of both Virgil and Suetonius with the deeds of Aeneas, Pliny implies that in addition to literary endeavours, these are also important historical acts themselves worthy of recording — a blurring of distinctions which we have seen is a major theme of Pliny's Book 5, and one fittingly shared by Suetonius’ Illustrious Men.
That Pliny may have seen at least part of the Suetonian work mentioned in Letters 5.10 is certainly plausible, since it was not uncommon during this period for writers to send each other sections from a work for critical comments prior to its wider publication.Footnote 51 Walsh sees a change in Pliny's attitude towards Suetonius beginning in Book 5, and believes that Suetonius may have even given readings of parts of the Illustrious Men by the time Letters 5.10 was written.Footnote 52 This conjecture more fully explains why their communes amici (Ep. 5.10.1) would have been excitedly enquiring about the collection, not merely because of its advertisement through Pliny's hendecasyllables but because excerpts of the Lives may have been copied for these readings and circulated among friends; such was a usual custom with forthcoming works.Footnote 53 Walsh's view lends credence to the possibility that in Letters 5.10 Pliny might be recalling the specific passages above from Suetonius’ Virgil (24, 31, 39–41), since he would have seen the text and known that allusions to it would cohere well with the overall point of the letter and its other allusions: Suetonius’ reluctance, like Virgil's, is unwarranted, since to the fresh eyes of others the work is finished.
Furthermore, the fact that Pliny already draws attention to the phrase ‘perfectum opus absolutumque est’ through the intratextual link (to Letters 5.5) within Book 5 that we have already discussed seems to highlight its significance, annotating the allusion to Suetonius’ biography of Virgil not only in Letters 5.10, but in 5.5. If we read Letters 5.10 together with 5.5, the Suetonian allusion is even more complete, especially if we recall the passage in the latter on Fannius’ dream about Nero (§§ 5–6):
Gaius quidem Fannius, quod accidit, multo ante praesensit. uisus est sibi per nocturnam quietem iacere in lectulo suo compositus in habitum studentis, habere ante se scrinium — ita solebat; mox imaginatus est uenisse Neronem, in toro resedisse, prompsisse primum librum quem de sceleribus eius ediderat, cumque ad extremum reuoluisse; idem in secundo ac tertio fecisse, tunc abisse. expauit et sic interpretatus est, tamquam idem sibi futurus esset scribendi finis, qui fuisset illi legendi: et fuit idem.
In fact, Gaius Fannius foresaw much earlier what occurred. He appeared to himself through a dream at night lying on his couch arranged in his state of study, holding before him his writing chest — as he was accustomed; soon he imagined that Nero arrived, sat down on the bed, took out the first book which he had published on his crimes, and read through all the way to the end; he did the same for the second and third, and then left. He was terrified and interpreted that his own writing would have the same ending as his reading: and it was so.
This passage contains the same focus on the physicality of the writing materials (§ 5: ‘scrinium … primum librum … reuoluisse … secundo ac tertio’) as in Suetonius’ Virgil (39: ‘assidue scrinia desiderauit, crematurus ipse; uerum nemine offerente …’), as well as the other contextual similarity of an emperor determining for the writer a decision with regard to publication that is contrary to the writer's own wish, even though in Fannius’ case the books are suppressed rather than published; the resemblance between the two situations of Pliny's Fannius and Suetonius’ Virgil is nonetheless striking, especially when one considers this letter's emphasis on Fannius’ work as ‘opus imperfectum’ (§ 2). The one author was effectively forced by an emperor posthumously to publish, and the other was prevented from doing so by an emperor in a dream, which then forecasted his death. Pliny's syntax even suggests the usurpation of Fannius by Nero in a way similar to that of Virgil by Augustus in Suetonius, since Nero's act of ‘reading’ effectively becomes Fannius’ act of ‘writing’ (Ep. 5.5.6: ‘idem sibi futurus esset scribendi finis, qui fuisset illi legendi’), just as Augustus overshadows Virgil and also Varius in becoming literally the ‘author’ of the Aeneid, a point emphasized through the emperor's prominence in the word order (Virg. 39: ‘edidit autem auctore Augusto Varius’).Footnote 54
In this way, Pliny compares both Fannius and Suetonius to Virgil, connecting Letters 5.5 and 5.10 through a shared allusion as well as a cross-reference, but he also compares both Fannius and Virgil to Suetonius as implicit exempla. Fannius, like both Pliny the Elder and Virgil, is confronted by an emperor who wishes to read the work that has been written about him. In Letters 5.10, by assuming the rôle of the emperor (Augustus/Nero/Titus) eager to see the work of the writer of his deeds (Virgil/Fannius/Pliny the Elder), Pliny implies that what Suetonius has written has a specific bearing on him, perhaps because it describes his uncle and adoptive father Pliny the Elder, whom, in another letter (Ep. 6.16), he is eager to see immortalized also by Tacitus’ Histories.Footnote 55 Pliny the Elder's own work was of interest to Titus as much for its portrayal of his father Vespasian as for that of Titus himself (cf. HN praef. 20: ‘uos quidem omnes, patrem, te fratremque, diximus’). The implied similar relevance of Suetonius’ work to Pliny the Younger may equally hint at the Illustrious Men. This understanding of Letters 5.10 may also uncover a meaning of the letter's ending (§ 3: ‘aequum est nos in amore tam mutuo eandem percipere ex te uoluptatem, qua tu perfrueris ex nobis’), which may refer not to Pliny's publications in general, but specifically to those about Suetonius, including this letter itself: just as Pliny has spread the fame of Suetonius in his hendecasyllables and in letters such as 5.10, so too Suetonius’ work will spread the fame of Pliny's family. This personal significance of the work to Pliny may also explain Suetonius’ extra care and delay in finally showing it to him in full, just as Virgil was hesitant to show Augustus a work which described his ancestors.
Through the interconnections of Book 5, Pliny the Younger in Letters 5.10 is able to suggest implicitly Catullus, Virgil, Pliny the Elder, Gaius Fannius, and himself all to Suetonius as edifying and cautionary examples of the perils of a literary endeavour and the need to finish one's work when the timing is right and the stage has been set. Pliny the Younger builds up a network of allusions in Book 5; their associations are cohesive rather than dissonant, and their theme of the dangers that attend unpublished writing is pointed. He leaves his allusions not so ambiguous as to lose their precise meaning, but veiled enough to reward only the careful reader, and to preserve at all times the irony of his initial protestations that his Letters are anything more than mere compilation (Ep. 1.1).Footnote 56 However, Pliny's distinct references in Letters 5.10 to the hesitations behind Virgil's poetry that self-consciously delay the beginning of the Georgics and almost prevent the publication of the Aeneid, as well as to the joking demands of Augustus for Virgil's work through both entreaties and threats, strongly call to mind Suetonius’ biography of that poet, making it likely that Pliny is indeed referring to the Illustrious Men. Virgil was the most obvious example in antiquity not merely of labor limae, but of the more specific topos of its dangers and the overcoming of those dangers. In Letters 5.8, Pliny compares his own delayed publication to the Aeneid (§ 3: ‘uictorque uirum uolitare per ora’), and it is therefore fitting that he would make the same comparison in the related letter about Suetonius’ delayed work. To Syme, the fact that in Letters 5.10 Pliny refers to the Illustrious Men is ‘the general and painless belief’.Footnote 57 However, the relatively solid evidence of allusions discussed in this part of the paper gives us something more substantial on which to hang that belief.
II
If we can accept that these allusions in Pliny, Letters 5.10 convincingly support an identification of Suetonius’ unnamed work in that letter with the Illustrious Men, a reasonable conjecture can be made about the order of Suetonius’ biographical collections.
As the original composition of all three of the letters discussed above (Section I) — Letters 5.5, 5.8, and 5.10 — can be dated to a.d. 105–6,Footnote 58 it has long seemed to provide us only with a terminus post quem for Suetonius’ first literary debut of significant note, but nothing more.Footnote 59 While at least part of the Lives of the Caesars can be pinned securely to a.d. 119–22,Footnote 60 it could not previously have been said with any certainty whether the Illustrious Men were published earlier, contemporaneously, or later than that work. Although the possibility of a terminus ante quem of c. a.d. 118 being established for the Illustrious Men through allusions to them in Juvenal 7 has been accepted by some scholars,Footnote 61 the proposal does not stand scrutiny. These allusions are by no means certain, since a common source can too easily be posited for details on the grammarian Remmius Palaemon (Gramm. 23), on whom there was no deficiency of sources;Footnote 62 and Juvenal's logical, if hardly standard, combination of literary categories can be seen as a coincidence in light of the prominence of grammarians and rhetoricians at that time.Footnote 63 Unfounded too is the claim for the same boundary at the time of Pliny's death c. a.d. 113 simply because he seems not to have been included by Suetonius;Footnote 64 this argument is not cogent, since the biographer had apparently resolved not to go beyond Flavian authors.Footnote 65 However, the new evidence examined in this paper now validates much previous speculation about Letters 5.10 as providing a terminus post quem of a.d. 105–6 for the Illustrious Men in particular, and about the general relationship between this work and the Caesars.Footnote 66
Nevertheless, the accepted chronology of these two works still requires adjustment, since it is often assumed that Suetonius was still occupied with the Illustrious Men during the last years of Trajan's reign, possibly owing his promotion as ab epistulis under Hadrian to its final publication over a decade after this letter was written.Footnote 67 So great an amount of time spent polishing a work which already by a.d. 106, and possibly as early as 105, was considered finished by Pliny somewhat strains acceptance. It now makes better sense that the publication of the Illustrious Men followed only a few years after the receipt of Pliny's letter.
Another conjecture may be ventured that would define the terminus ante quem for the Illustrious Men as not longer than five years after the original composition of Letters 5.10. Suetonius is seen in another letter of Pliny's (Ep. 10.94), which was first written and sent in a.d. 110,Footnote 68 being introduced to Trajan as ‘probissimum honestissimum eruditissimum’ (§ 1: ‘most upright, honourable, and learned’). The letter asks for the privileges of the ius trium liberorum on Suetonius’ behalf, which are then granted by Trajan in his reply to Pliny (Ep. 10.95). Although the first two of Pliny's words, ‘probissimum’ and ‘honestissimum’, could be dismissed as language common in letters of recommendation, and therefore more reflective of Pliny himself than the recommendee,Footnote 69 the last word ‘eruditissimum’ cannot, and seems to imply a literary reputation.Footnote 70 For example, Pliny also uses this word in a letter recommending Septicius Clarus’ nephew, Erucius Clarus (Ep. 2.9.3), who is mentioned as a known literary figure by Gellius (NA 7.6.12, 13.18.2–3).Footnote 71
Furthermore, the privileges of the ius trium liberorum could be awarded to literary men as rewards for publication. Pliny himself is one example of a writer who received this special status (Ep. 10.2), although the exact merits stated for it are unknown.Footnote 72 However, the parallel of Martial provides a fitting comparison for the similarly equestrian career of Suetonius.Footnote 73 Martial requested the same privileges in recognition of his writing (Mart. 2.91.3–4: ‘si … detinuere oculos carmina nostra tuos’, ‘if our poems catch your eyes’), and was granted them (2.92). The award appears to have been due to Martial's production of a book of epigrams celebrating the opening of the Flavian Colosseum in a.d. 80, which was later republished as part of his Liber de spectaculis.Footnote 74 Although some of Martial's books on spectacles from which the Liber de spectaculis was composed may have been for small occasions and therefore presented privately to the emperor,Footnote 75 this does not preclude the publication of the collection in honour of Titus’ Colosseum, to which so many of the epigrams pertain.Footnote 76 Suetonius’ privileges may very well likewise have been granted in recognition of the publication of part of the Illustrious Men, a work which demonstrated his wide-ranging erudition.Footnote 77 It is therefore likely that Pliny's description of Suetonius as ‘eruditissimum’, and Trajan's granting of this request, signify the publication of some of the Illustrious Men no later than a.d. 110; and a more exact time period for at least the partial appearance of the work may thus be determined as a.d. 105–10.Footnote 78 Suetonius’ literary reputation had by a.d. 110 reached farther than his inner circle, possibly due to the publication of this entire collection of biographies, but perhaps only the Poets.Footnote 79
III
Let us now draw some conclusions from these new dates for the composition of Suetonius’ later work, Lives of the Caesars.
Since at least part of the Illustrious Men had been completed and published by a.d. 110, this leaves at least nine years before any publication of the Caesars. One possibility is that, if we assume only a partial appearance of the Illustrious Men is signified by Suetonius’ award of the ius trium liberorum, as discussed above (Section II), some of the following nine to twelve years may have been spent simply finishing the rest of this work. However, even if that were the case, this reconstruction still allows for considerably more time for the writing of the Caesars before a.d. 119–22, during which time we know that there was a publication of that work with a dedication to Septicius Clarus. The Lives of emperors may now have been begun by Suetonius a whole decade earlier than this publication of them (especially if the Illustrious Men — according to the second possibility — had been published by a.d. 110 in full), rather than merely a few years earlier at the time of Hadrian's assumption of power (a.d. 117). It is difficult to imagine that, if sections of the Illustrious Men were still unfinished in a.d. 110, the majority of the years unaccounted for would have been devoted to completing them.
If we assume that Suetonius had roughly a decade to write what he published of the Caesars in a.d. 119–22, then it is fair to conclude that this publication may have been of the whole Caesars, and not merely the first two books (Divine Julius and Divine Augustus) as argued by Townend more than half a century ago and still widely believed by scholars.Footnote 80 While it is still possible that other literary works or the duties of his earlier posts a studiis and a bibliothecis delayed Suetonius’ work on the Caesars under Trajan, their full publication during Clarus’ prefecture is now far more plausible. In this final part of the paper, some further objections to Townend's theory may be adduced.
Townend's theory that the last ten of the twelve Caesars were published after Suetonius’ dismissal rests mainly on two pieces of evidence. First, Townend argues for contemporary allusions suggestive of a later date, which are easily discounted as unconvincing.Footnote 81
Second, Townend questions the scale and documentation in the later Lives, especially the seeming over-reliance on the private letters of Augustus and no other emperor, since this research may have been conducted in restricted imperial archives during Suetonius’ employment in the civil service, to which he lost access after his dismissal.Footnote 82 This decline in quality and the loss of access as its explanation were later accepted by Syme, who, however, argued that the loss originally occurred instead when Suetonius’ travelled abroad with Hadrian to Germany in a.d. 121, a year before his dismissal by him in Britain.Footnote 83 Syme also believed that Suetonius may have simply lost interest in writing the Caesars after his dismissal.Footnote 84 Wallace-Hadrill agrees with Townend that there is a perceivable decline towards the end of the collection,Footnote 85 but suggests that it should be connected not to Suetonius’ dismissal and a resulting loss of enthusiasm, but rather to his greater interest in the Principate's foundation, a period which would have been less well known to his audience.Footnote 86
However, scholarship since Syme has greatly exposed the lack of foundation for this notion of a qualitative decline in the Caesars. Several scholars, including Wallace-Hadrill, have shown that some of the letters of Augustus in Suetonius may well have been circulated, even if they were not widely published like the collection of Augustus’ letters to his grandson Gaius that is mentioned by Quintilian (Inst. 1.6.19) and Gellius (NA 15.7.3).Footnote 87 In fact, we may now revive an older point that not all of the letters of Augustus in the Caesars must have derived from imperial archives, since they are quoted also in Suetonius’ Virgil and Horace,Footnote 88 which, based on our new date for the Illustrious Men, were probably written before he held any of his high official offices. It is possible that at least one of the letters in the Horace had been published, since it is introduced by the verb extant (Hor. 2.10 Klingner).Footnote 89
Yet even if Suetonius’ remarks on the authenticity of a few of the letters based on handwriting (Aug. 71.2, 87.1) and his comments on Augustus’ unique diction and orthography (87–8) suggest that he did personally inspect some originals, Pliny the Elder attests the widespread availability of documents written in Augustus’ and Virgil's hands (HN 13.83: ‘manus … Diui Augusti Vergilique saepenumero uidemus’).Footnote 90 Moreover, there are similar instances of private and unpublished first-hand material by the emperors themselves in the later Lives, most notably the memoirs of Tiberius (Tib. 61) and Claudius (Claud. 41.3), Nero's revised poems (Ner. 52), and Domitian's handbook on hair (Dom. 18.2). Nero's poems are even introduced by Suetonius with the phrase ‘uenere in manus meas’ (Ner. 52: ‘There have come into my hands’), which he uses also in the Horace (3.20 Klingner) on the poet's spurious letters and poems; such material too, like Augustus’ letters, may not have been the result of archival research.Footnote 91 In addition, Augustus’ letters may have been the only ones by an emperor to be preserved because of their epistolary style, or Suetonius may have decided to use them so frequently to underscore the exemplary status of Augustus within the Caesars.Footnote 92
The other aspects of declining quality that Townend sees in Suetonius’ later Caesars can also be briefly addressed. Aside from Suetonius’ generally greater interest in the early Principate discussed above, the smaller scale of the Lives of the second hexad can also be explained by the shortness of reigns in the case of the emperors of a.d. 69, to which we may compare Plutarch's equally short Galba and Otho;Footnote 93 and by the close proximity to Suetonius’ own time in the case of the Flavian emperors, for whom the audience would have had recourse to much other available material.Footnote 94 Furthermore, Townend exaggerates the decline in the later part of the collection with respect to diligent research. In addition to the evidence for Suetonius’ usual research at the beginning of the Divine Vespasian (1.3–4) conceded by Townend,Footnote 95 some further examples in the later Lives may be added (Vit. 1–2, Vesp. 16.3, Dom. 11.3).Footnote 96 Townend's view of an increase in the number of unnamed sources in these biographies due to a lack of sources is also suspect,Footnote 97 since this appears to be a literary device, having more to do with the fact that the later Lives are mostly negative portraits where Suetonius wishes to attack his subjects.Footnote 98 With these arguments refuted, we are now justified in no longer reading Suetonius’ dismissal into the shape and quality of the Caesars.
In conclusion, although scholars have generally believed (previously without sufficient cause) that Suetonius’ Illustrious Men came first in the chronology of his two mostly extant collections of Lives, the commonly agreed date for the work has been much later than that proposed in this paper. Since Suetonius probably published the Illustrious Men by a.d. 110, he may have been working on the Lives of the Caesars much earlier than scholars have thought, and possibly published them in their entirety before his dismissal in a.d. 122. The later Caesars should therefore no longer be seen as necessarily suffering from a lack of resources or the apathy of exile. This conclusion adds weight to the view that they are no less carefully created, and that the proportions, documentation, and polish of all of the Caesars may be exactly as intended.
