A Suetonius Reader: Selections From the Lives of the Caesars and the Life of Horace
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Résumé
The popular appeal of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars is obvious. Who would not thrill reading about the great Julius Caesar's delight in the Senates bestowal of the right to wear a laurel wreath on all occasions because it covered… his baldness? Or that the Divine Augustus had rotten teeth and wore special platform shoes to make himself look taller? Suetonius, however, has not always been as enthusiastically received among historians, who sometimes overlook that he intended his work as biography, not history, or that he patently aimed for prose that was not literary, but instead unadorned, clear, and concise. Such qualities of prose, however, happily make his Latin enjoyable both to teach and to read. And while Suetonius' details of the weird worlds of extraordinary men are endlessly entertaining, they are not merely that. This business like biographer produced an extraordinarily influential work. His Caesars is a landmark in the history of biographical writing, and remains a key source for the history of Rome, its transition from Republic to Empire, and contemporary efforts to come to terms with individual destiny, through astrology, physiognomy, dream analysis, and more. Through to the present day Suetonius has profoundly shaped modern perceptions of Roman society.