The classical historians of Greece and Rome are all fascinating — and distinct — as writers. There is Thucydides, who is terse and direct and strictly factual. He is not at ease with events where there was no eye witness he can cross-examine. Then there is Herodotus, who is more liberal in his recording of material and more expansive. On the side of the Romans also there exists a similar difference between Livy, who wrote voluminous tomes on the early history of Rome, much of which is legend. And we have Polybius who, though he was Greek, recorded the Roman history of the time of Hannibal. He is a much more Thucydides-like writer, who is strictly on fact.
The most entertaining of the lot is Suetonius. He can be compared to a gossip, and his writing was probably seen in his time (he died in the second century after Christ) in the same way as we see the society diarists in newspapers today. Meaning writers concerned with personal lives. This may be slightly unfair to Suetonius, mainly because we do not have his writings in full except for one book, the one being discussed here. It is called The Twelve Caesars and records the lives of the first 12 rulers of Rome after the end of the Republic.
July and August
Readers will be familiar with the fact that the Romans were ruled as a sort of democracy till the first century BC, when Julius Caesar “crossed the Rubicon” with his army and claimed his right to rule by the strength of his arms. This ended the Republic permanently and began the kingdom of Rome, though the king was referred to as ‘Caesar’, from the founder, or ‘imperator’, the Latin title given to the emperor.
It is in this book that we hear of the line attributed to Julius Caesar — Veni, Vidi, Vici (I came, saw and conquered). There is also the revealing story of Caesar being kidnapped by pirates and promising them that he would have them crucified, and then he did. Caesar was the individual who introduced the month of July, named after himself, into the Roman calendar. His successor Octavius was also called Augustus and has a month named after him too. He was the man who ended the civil wars and brought all the Roman empire, including Egypt after the death of Cleopatra, under his rule. Suetonius says that his one major defeat — to the Germans in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest — haunted him for the rest of his days.
The third emperor, Tiberius, was a pervert according to Suetonius. It is this chapter that established Suetonius as someone willing to write about rulers as nobody has before him. Sample this:
“On retiring to Capri he designed a garden for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Its bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required.
Then in Capri’s woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of venery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes: people openly called this “the old goat’s garden,” punning on the island’s name.” (Capri is thought to have originated from the Latin word for goat and it is why the Capricorn sun sign is represented by a goat.)
Gross depravities
Suetonius continues: “Tiberius acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles. Unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction.”
It gets worse. Of the next ruler Caligula, Suetonius writes that he committed incest with his sister and also married her. Caligula also decided that he was a god and had the statues of existing gods remodelled to include his head. The prurient nature of the writing was also accompanied by great interest in the other aspects of the Caesars’ characters. For example we get the information on Nero and his love of performance (incidentally, Nero was also a pervert according to Suetonius and made love to a boy whom he had castrated).
And we also know from this work about the three Caesars of the Flavian dynasty — Vespasian, Titus and Domitian. The first of these men was dying of a stomach ailment and in bed but decided that he would stand up during a bout of diarrhoea, “because an emperor ought to die standing.”
It is this sort of detail that makes Suetonius an absolute delight to read and he achieves the rare task (for historians) of being informative and entertaining at the same time.
(A monthly series on the world literary classics.)
The writer is a columnist and translator of Urdu and Gujarati non-fiction works.
