![]() ![]() However, his behavior changed when he left Rome and stayed on the island of Capri, where he reveled in who he truly was and engaged in decadent sexual behavior while becoming more brutal and tyrannical. As emperor Tiberius was conservative, reluctant to act against critics, and modest. Suetonius implies that Augustus reluctantly had Tiberius succeed him to the imperial office because no one was suitable. Tiberius went on to have a promising military career and was forced to divorce his wife Vipsania so he could marry Augustus’s widowed daughter Julia. However, Tiberius’s fortunes changed when his mother Livia divorced his father and married Augustus. Tiberius was the son of a man who fell on the wrong side of the civil wars and so began his life as a fugitive. Suetonius begins “Tiberius” with a lengthy discussion of Tiberius’s family, the Claudii, an ancient Roman aristocratic family. Finally, Suetonius discusses Augustus’s widely mourned death. Suetonius also presents Augustus as a leader who, despite his power, avoided being perceived as a monarch. Particularly, Suetonius stresses Augustus as a reformer who streamlined the government and tried to impose moral change. Augustus used his powers to improve the city of Rome. The Senate gave Octavian the name Augustus after the fall of Mark Antony, and he assumed various political powers, becoming the de facto ruler of the Roman Empire and its first emperor while still leaving the republican institutions of Rome largely intact. Using Caesar’s fortune and political alliances with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, Octavian took control of the Roman Empire, defeating Caesar’s enemies and then his former ally Mark Antony as well as Antony’s lover, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, in war. After impressing his great-uncle Julius Caesar with his characteristics, Caesar made Octavian his heir. “The Deified Augustus” is the longest book because, naturally, it describes the longest-reigning Caesar, Augustus, whose original name was Octavian. Because of this, historians of ancient Rome usually agree that Suetonius is reliable overall but should be read with a critical eye. Also, many of Suetonius’s key claims are corroborated by other historical sources. Nonetheless, as someone who worked in the imperial archives, Suetonius would have had complete access to a wealth of first-hand materials, like letters, memoirs, wills, political decrees, and so on, dating back to the time of Julius Caesar, and he often cites such sources. Finally, it should be noted that Suetonius only lived through the lives of the last five emperors he described the first subject of The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, died just under a century before he was born. Also, The Twelve Caesars is well-known for its lurid, gossipy content, suggesting that Suetonius was not too careful in considering the biases of his sources or the plausibility of certain stories. ![]() After all, it was Domitian’s assassination that paved the way for Trajan to become emperor, and Hadrian was Trajan’s chosen successor and relative by marriage. As someone working for Trajan and Hadrian, he likely had a political motive in making the emperor Domitian (reigned 81-96 CE) look bad. This is partly because Suetonius clearly has a bias as a member of the Roman aristocracy. Historians still debate how reliable The Twelve Caesars is.
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