SOURCE: Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. “The Man and the Style,” “The Scholar and Society,” and “The Scholarly Biographer.” In Suetonius: The Scholar and His Caesars, pp. 1-72 New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983.

In the following excerpt from his book-length study of Suetonius, Wallace-Hadrill discusses authorial choices made by Suetonius that account for his literary style, examines educational practices and scholarship in Suetonius's time, and summarizes what is known of Suetonius's lost work, The Lives of Illustrious Men.

The Man and the Style

Suetonius' De vita Caesarum appeared within a decade or so of the accession of the emperor Hadrian in ad 117. No exact publication date can be fixed. The preface bore a dedication to one of Hadrian's current praetorian prefects, Septicius Clarus, and the author must still at the time have held office in the imperial secretariat as ab epistulis. Both officials were to lose their posts in an...