Suetonius: Hadrian's Fired Secretary Who Wrote The Twelve Caesars

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Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus was born around AD 69, a date known because he placed his age relative to Nero's death. He likely came from Hippo Regius in Numidia, now Annaba in Algeria; his father was an equestrian and a narrow-striped military tribune in the 13th Legion. Sent to Rome for a rhetorical education, he found a patron in Pliny the Younger, who described him as quiet and studious and persuaded Emperor Trajan to grant him the ius trium liberorum, a tax privilege meant for fathers of three, though Suetonius was married and childless. Around 110 to 112 he likely served on Pliny's staff in Bithynia and Pontus. He then rose to secretary of studies, director of the imperial libraries and, under Hadrian, ab epistulis.

Hadrian dismissed him along with Praetorian prefect Septicius Clarus, according to the unreliable Historia Augusta for being too familiar with Empress Vibia Sabina; a purge of Trajan's men is another explanation. Out of office, he wrote De Vita Caesarum, The Twelve Caesars, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and dedicated it to the disgraced Septicius Clarus. He arranged each life by topic, covering ancestry, birth omens, looks, diet and sayings alongside public deeds. He stopped before Hadrian. His other works included lives of poets such as Virgil and Horace and of grammarians and rhetoricians, plus lost books on Roman customs, festivals, clothing, timekeeping, weather signs and the names of the winds.

• The ius trium liberorum belonged to laws penalizing childless members of the elite, so his exemption required the emperor's own approval.
• As ab epistulis he handled the emperor's correspondence, including frontier reports and imperial family letters.
• The Twelve Caesars gives the earliest recorded account of Julius Caesar's epileptic seizures.
• He wrote two books in Greek, one on Greek games and one a dictionary of Greek terms of abuse, surviving only in fragments.
• A translation of his work became a bestseller in 2025, nearly 2,000 years after his death.