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32 The Translator’s InvisibilityGrant’s account suggests that the Latin text does not offer a coherentposition of subjectivity for the reader to occupy: we are unable toidentify with either the author (“the author’s own opinions are rarelypermitted to intrude”) or the characters (“the personalities” are notgiven “a coherent account”). As a result, Suetonius’s narrative mayseem to possess a “relatively high degree of objectivity,” but it alsocontains passages that provoke considerable doubt, especially since“his curiously disjointed and staccato diction can lead to obscurity”(ibid.:7–8). Graves’s fluent translation smooths out these features of theLatin text, insuring intelligibility, constructing a more coherentposition from which the Caesars can be judged, and making anyjudgment seem true, right, obvious.Consider this passage from the life of Julius Caesar:Stipendia prima in Asia fecit Marci Thermi praetoriscontubernio; a quo ad accersendam classem in Bithyniam missusdesedit apud Nicomeden, non sine rumorem prostratae regipudicitiae; quern rumorem auxit intra paucos rursus diesrepetita Bithynia per causam exigendae pecuniae, quaedeberetur cuidam libertino clienti suo. reliqua militia secundiorefama fuit et a Thermo in expugnatione Mytilenarum coronacivica donatus est.(Butler and Cary 1927:1–2)Caesar first saw military service in Asia, where he went as aidedecampto Marcus Thermus, the provincial governor. WhenThermus sent Caesar to raise a fleet in Bithynia, he wasted somuch time at King Nicomedes’ court that a homosexualrelationship between them was suspected, and suspicion gaveplace to scandal when, soon after his return to headquarters, herevisited Bithynia: ostensibly collecting a debt incurred there byone of his freedmen. However, Caesar’s reputation improved laterin the campaign, when Thermus awarded him the civic crown ofoak leaves, at the storming of Mytilene, for saving a fellowsoldier’s life.(Graves 1957:10)Both passages rest on innuendo instead of explicit judgment, ondoubtful hearsay instead of more reliable evidence (“rumorem,”“suspicion”). Yet the English text makes several additions that offer