Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
he has his plan, and adheres to it. Though his schematism was inimical alike
to wide historical survey and gradual delineation of character, it suited him well
enough, for he has but a fumbling grasp of history and psychology. He perceives,
for example, that Tiberius' principate somehow changed for the worse,
but offers no convincing explanation of this change. Indeed his picture of
Tiberius is glaringly self-contradictory, unless we can stomach metamorphosis
of a moderate, old-fashioned aristocrat into a perverted and sadistic tyrant.
Here, as elsewhere, Suetonius' characterization anticipates the story of Jekyll
and Hyde. "Witness the monumental crudity of his division of Caligula's
actions (Cal. 22.1) into those attributable (a) to a prince, and (&) to a monster.
But he is not always beside the mark. In his Julius he conveys something of
Caesar's extraordinary magnetism, and in his Augustus illustrates the complexities
of Augustus' personality. And he is adept at finding the revealing
anecdotes which are so essential to biography. Yet rarely, if ever, does he
complete his picture, and, by rigorous exclusion of material, however important,
not immediately relevant to the individual with whom he is concerned, he
usually leaves the background blank. Thus his approach was not properly
adjusted to treatment of major historical characters, who must be set in a full
context, diough arguably adequate for minor celebrities, such as poets and
orators. In what remains of the De viris illustribus we have some admirable
miniatures, and here, on a tiny scale, he provides the necessary background,
by sketching the development of grammar and rhetoric at Rome.
Suetonius drew on many sources for his Vitae Caesarum, and had little
compunction about copying them word for word. That he is generally uncritical
is die more to be regretted since, when he chooses to investigate a
problem, he can be sharp and judicious, as in his discussion of Caligula's
birthplace (Cal. 8). In the first three lives he uses and cites much primary
evidence, notably letters of Augustus. He had carefully scrutinized many of the
original documents (see Aug. 87—8), presumably housed in the imperial
archives and accessible to him while he held high rank in the secretariat. But,
from his Tiberius onwards, the number of citations of such material decreases
markedly, and, furthermore, the later lives are generally less detailed and
precise, in nomenclature and in reference to sources. The reason for this change
is still debated. Probably, after his dismissal from public service in (perhaps)
122, he could no longer freely consult the records he had previously exploited.
It is harder to explain why he began to take fewer pains himself in the use of
evidence available to anyone.
Suetonius writes simply and straightforwardly. He is brief, but not pregnant
or epigrammatic. He neither rounds his sentences into periods nor overloads
them with appended clauses. Indeed, apart from some liking for variation, he
seems largely indifferent to niceties of style. Yet his vocabulary is interesting,
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