The Motives and Influences on Suetonius writing...

To many historians, Suetonius is perceived as one of the most reliable classical historiographers on the lives of the Roman emperors. This is due to how Suetonius rarely states his own opinions and makes little effort to reach decisions about the characters he is writing about. Combined with this, the availability of information which Suetonius had as private secretary to the Emperor Hadrian also helps him to be perceived as a reliable historian.

Suetonius had access to the imperial archives while he worked as private secretary for the Emperor Hadrian, It was during this time that he began writing The Twelve Caesars, though he is likely to have lost access to the archives at some point due to being dismissed by the Emperor Hadrian. Historians believe he was dismissed during or after writing the biography on the Emperor Augustus, so information on the Emperor Nero may be more prone to gossip.

Strangely, as a member of the rank of equestrians, it would be expected that Suetonius would speak against the establishment, but his writings seem fairly complimentary of the establishment, an observation which Ronald Martin observed in his review of Suetonius: The Scholar and his Caesars by Andrew-Wallace Hadrill.

“Suetonius accepts the traditional hierarchy of social graduations and clearly approves of a consensus of omnes ordines. It is this ordinariness that makes what Suetonius says so important for our understanding of his society.”
(Martin R.H. (1985) The Classical Review (Volume 35). Oxford: Oxford University Press)

This possible bias in favour of the emperors may even make the source more reliable. If Suetonius is trying to write in favour of the Emperor Nero, then when he writes negative comments about him, Suetonius is likely being truthful. It may in fact be true that the Emperor Nero was worse than Suetonius portrays him because Suetonius may have left out even more abominable acts but did not want Nero to be portrayed even worse.

From this analysis it seems that the reliability of the account of Nero in The Twelve Caesars is disputable. On the one hand, the lack of Suetonius’ own opinions and his lack of a desire to make a judgement on the Emperors shines favourably upon the reliability of Suetonius’ writings, though the fact that he lost access to the Imperial archives before writing the account of Nero’s life, makes his account prone to gossip and not totally dependable.

Reflections...

It was in this section that I sought to explain why the source may not be reliable, not if it is or is not, yet it is difficult to do that without coming to some sort of conclusion as to whether I believed the source to be reliable or not, yet I did not want to say anything definitive as I was writing in the main section and I wanted to save anything conclusive for the conclusion. It appears to be difficult to maintain a hypothesis sometimes without concluding too ultimately.

For this section I used two main sources other than The Twelve Caesars. I used the review of Suetonius: The Scholar and his Caesars in The Classical Review by Andrew-Wallace Hadrill. This was a useful secondary source in explaining how Suetonius’ place in the Roman class system did not make him biased against the emperors that in fact he appears to have been in favour of the emperors.

I also used the introduction of The Twelve Caesars written by Michael Grant who also explained about Suetonius' position as an equestrian, but also how he lost his position shortly after writing the account of Augustus, which puts the reliability of the biography on Nero into question.

I seek to continue with the point I feel I was leading onto from the quote from the review, that Suetonius’ place in society is useful in assessing how equestrians viewed their emperor and the establishment.

In the next section I will be explaining how the biography on Nero in The Twelve Caesars can help us understand about the emperor and about Roman society.