C. Tranquillus, a celebrated Roman historian, who flourished in the reigns of Trajan and Ha- drian. The facts known about his biography are few, and are mainly derived from the letters of Pliny, and from one or two allusions in his own works. He was born about the year A.D. 70, since he calls himself "adolescens" at the period of the false Nero's appearance in Parthia, which was twenty years after the true Nero's death, A.D. 68 (Nero, c. liv.), and "adolescentulus" in the reign of Domitian (Domit., xii.). His father, C. Suetonius Lenis, was a tri- bune of the 13th legion, and probably of equestrian rank (augustusclavus), and he had been present at the battle of Bedriacum, in which Otho was defeated by Vitellius (Otho, x.) In the face of this direct testimony, it is absurd in Muretus to argue, from a supposed various reading, that the father of the historian was that famous Suetonius Pauli- nus whose splendid achievements have been recorded by Tacitus. Nor is it possible that Paulinus could have been his grandfather, since Suetonius would otherwise have un- questionably mentioned the fact when he alludes to his grandfather in the Life of Caligula (c. xix.). Why he altered the cognomen Lenis into Tranquillus is uncertain; perhaps merely from the same sense of euphony which induced Melanchton to Gracise his own harsh German patronymic. At one time Suetonius was in the army, and Pliny, to whose friendship and patronage he owed most of his advantages, obtained for him the rank of tribune; this position was, however, unsuited to his studious habits, and at his own request it was transferred to one of his relatives. He also seems to have practised at the bar, for he begs Pliny to procure him a delay in pleading a cause in conse- quence of an ill-omened dream. But we should infer from the term "scholasticus," which we find applied to him, and from the fact that Suidas only calls him a grammarian, that his public appearances as an orator were few, although he may have given private lessons in rhetoric as well as in grammar. He generally lived in Rome or its environs, and his circumstances must have been easy, for he requests Pliny to purchase for him a little estate which had many attractions. The same firm and constant friend obtained for him the jus trium liberorum, although, as he had no children, he was not legally entitled to enjoy it: the privi- lege was so important, that it was only obtained by the exercise of strong court influence. Suetonius was finally elevated to the post of magister epistolarum, an office prob- ably founded by Hadrian, which would be likely to give him ample opportunities of private intercourse with the emperor, and a free access to the imperial archives. He lost this office in consequence of an indiscreet familiarity with the Empress Sabina, and Septicius Clarus, the prato- rian prefect, with many others, were involved in his disgrace. We can account for this conduct when we are told that Hadrian himself was in the habit of treating his wife like a common servant, and that she was ultimately driven to commit suicide. This example was one which courtiers would not be slow to imitate, but Hadrian resented it as unauthorized ("injussu ejus familiarissimi se egerebat"). That there was nothing directly culpable in the conduct of Suetonius is clear, both from the language of Spartanus, and from the certainty that the moral character of the empress afforded her husband no pretext for the divorce which he so ardently desired. This event took place in the year 119; and although we acquit Suetonius of guilt, it is clear that his behaviour must have been notoriously irregular, or it would hardly have reached the ears of Ha- drian, who was at that time busily engaged in building the great wall by which he hoped to protect Britain from the incursions of the Picts and Scots. From this time forward Suetonius we lose sight of Suetonius, who probably spent the remainder of his life in the composition of his numerous works, and the uninterrupted enjoyment of literary pursuits.

It is difficult to estimate the personal character of Suetonius: except his rudeness to Sabina, we know of no positive facts against him, and Pliny speaks in the highest terms of his learning and uprightness. "Suetonium Tranquillum," he writes to the emperor, "probiissimum, honestissimum, eruditissimum virum, et mores ejus secutus et studia jam pridem, domine, in contubernium assumpsit; tantoque magis diligere cepit, quanto hunc propius inspexi." On the other hand, it is impossible to acquit him of the grossest and most detestable prurience in his writings. He glories over the distortions of debauchery, and betrays a hideous familiarity with the arcana of crime. He clearly enjoys the loathsome details of excesses which exhausted the fertility of a vicious vocabulary, or he would not go out of his way to record them with such fatal accuracy. There is something sickening in the manner in which he thinks it necessary to chronicle with the minutest fidelity the merely personal excesses of a series of monsters; and the words "de quibus singillation ab exordio referant"—which preface two chapters wherein he sees fit to plunge us under the Stygian stream of iniquity, which even the vilest of emperors thought it necessary to conceal on an inaccessible rock—are unmatched for their philosophic indifference.

It is no excuse to say that he is merely recording facts, and that the record was necessary and desirable for the warning of mankind. When we have paid Suetonius the very questionable compliment of St Jerome, that he wrote as freely as the emperors lived, we have said all that can be said in his apology. But there are some facts so horrible, that as their commission is an insult to humanity, so the narrative of them is an unpardonable injury. We hold with Tacitus, "Ostendi debent sceleta, abscondi flagitia." It is true that we find in the highest and holiest histories a record of the most fearful crimes, but the manner of the record makes all the difference. In Tacitus, nay, even the Holy Scriptures, we find proofs sufficiently deadly of human depravity; but they are narrated only with horror and reluctance. Quintilian's dictum, that "historia scribitur ad narrandum non ad probandum," though it has been taken as the motto of an historical school, may serve to excuse the cold and naked analysis of Suetonius, but could never be adopted by men whose powers of moral indignation have been unweakened by familiarity with vice. It is unjust to compare Suetonius and Tacitus in their account of the same disgraceful enormities. Tacitus alludes to them, indeed, but only in such a way as would make the blush of honest shame burn on every cheek; Suetonius lingers over them with a gloating curiosity, which makes him share their guiltiness. Tacitus writes to visit the offenders with the vengeance of posthumous execration; Suetonius perseveringly degrades himself into an incentive of jaded sensuality. Of him, as of writers like Spartanus and Lampridius, we are forced to say, "parum abest a docente qui talia narrat;" and we agree with Muretus, that the biography of the emperors is a course of reading "ruinous to youths, and dangerous even to men of full years."

As an historian, Suetonius ranks very low. "He was a man of great learning, and did not write badly; but he had no survey of his subject, nor any historical talent. His description of the time in which he himself lived is even worse than those of previous periods, in which he had the works of others which he could follow; and this circumstance is the best evidence that he had no vocation to write history. Sueton, Le His history is written in the form of biographies, and this idea is quite right; but he had no plan: he wanders about from one subject to another, in consequence of which his biographies are without any definite character." For chronology he is nearly worthless, and he was incompetent to form any distinct or profound conception of those whose lives he wrote. He heaps together a loose and incoherent heap of separate details, from which we must judge for ourselves. No doubt he was accurate, impartial, and laborious, and was in no hurry to publish his writings until he had carefully elaborated them; but he must be regarded, not as an historian, but as an "anecdotic," a very good name applied to him by Laharpe. In spite of the pains which he took to collect information from every possible source—tradition, conversations, documents, memoirs, inscriptions—we should find ourselves very much at a loss for anything like history, if we had nothing to guide us but his scandalous gossip. Linguet, in the Révolutions Romaines, went so far as to say, that no fact need be believed if Suetonius was the only authority for it; but Krause and others have sufficiently defended him from the charge of wilfully perverting truth, although he occasionally admits an incredible calumny.

Suetonius is valuable as the commentator and supplement of Tacitus. It is doubtful whether the Vitae Caesarum or the Annales were written first, but Niebuhr thinks it certain that the work of Suetonius was published early in his life, and that it would not have been so unsatisfactory as it often is, if he had been able to avail himself of the guidance of Tacitus.

Napoleon once remarked, that Tacitus did not explain how it was that the emperors, monsters as they were, continued the idols of the people. This enigma is solved by Suetonius, who ruthlessly pulls up the curtain which hides the dark interior into which Tacitus would not descend to intrude. The people, as Montesquieu has observed, did not hate those in whom they saw a magnified reflection of their own baseness, and at whose hands they received the spoils of wealthy families and fertile provinces. In supplying us with the facts that were requisite for a complete understanding of a deeply interesting, though a deeply degraded period, Suetonius has rendered a service which almost makes us forget his sluggish sensibilities, in admiration for the interest of his communications, and the graphic simplicity of his style.

Suetonius was a voluminous writer. Besides the Vitae XII. Caesarum, and the treatises, De Illustribus Grammaticis, and De Claris Rhetoribus, the extant lives of Terence, Horace, Lucan, Juvenal, Persius, and Pliny the Elder, pass under his name; and Suidas attributes to him a long list of other works of which only small fragments exist, and the names of which are hardly worth recording. He was long a favourite author, and the editions of his works are very numerous; before the year 1500 there were no less than fifteen editions, of which the oldest with a date is, Romar, 1470. Others are—Casaubon, Paris, 1610; Schild, 1647; Burmann, 1736; and Baumgarten-Krusius, ed. Nase, Paris, 1828. There is an expurgated French translation by Duteil, 1699; and English translations by Philemon Holland, 1606; and S. Thomson, 1796. (F. W. F.)

SUEUR, L.E. See PAINTING.