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SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS

Volume 19 · 239 words · 1815 Edition

CAJUS, a famous Latin historian, was born at Rome, and became secretary to the emperor Adrian, about the 118th year of the Christian era; but that post was taken from him three years after, when several persons fell under that prince's displeasure for not showing the empress Sabina all the respect she deserved. During his disgrace he composed many works, which are lost. Those now extant are his History of the XII first Emperors, and a part of his treatise of the Illustrious Grammarians and Rhetoricians. Pliny the Younger was his intimate friend, and persuaded him to publish his books. His History of the XII Roman Emperors has been much commended by most of our polite scholars. He represents, in a continued series of curious and interesting particulars, without any digressions or reflections, the actions of the emperors, without omitting their vices, which he exposes with all their deformity, and with the same freedom mentions the good qualities of the very same persons; but the horrid diffolutenes and obscene actions he relates of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, &c. have made some fay, that he wrote the lives of the emperors with the same licentiousness with which they lived. The edition of this history procured by Graevius at Utrecht in 1672, with the excellent Commentaries of Torrentius and Casabon, and the notes of some other learned critics, is much esteemed. Burman also published an edition in 2 vols. 4to, with notes.