The Twelve Caesars

One of the issues that faces historians who read The Twelve Caesars is its reliability as a historical source. On one hand, Suetonius does display some genuinely sophisticated techniques for historical research. When discussing the issue of Vespasian’s family background, Suetonius raises reports that Vespasian had an ancestor who came from Northern Italy and worked as a migrant agricultural laborer. He states that he could not verify this despite making “a fairly thorough investigation” (“The Deified Vespasian,” Section 1). Also, he assesses different accounts and cites evidence on the question of where Caligula was born, and offers his own opinion based on the available evidence, much like a modern historian would (“Caligula,” Section 8). Likewise, Suetonius admits when he cannot verify a fact, as when he could not find a satisfactory account of Vitellius’s ancestral origins (“Vitellius,” Sections 1-2). Elsewhere, Suetonius weighs and provides different, conflicting accounts of the same event, such as the supposed poisoning of Claudius (“The Deified Claudius,” Section 44).

As an archivist and librarian for the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, Suetonius also clearly uses the resources available to him. For example, he directly quotes letters written by Augustus to Livia regarding Claudius’s early years to demonstrate how Augustus felt about Claudius and why Claudius was not trusted with any political offices (“The Deified Claudius,” Section 4).