Head Of Tiberius, second of the Roman Emperors (A.D. 14-37). The portrait conveys something of the character painted by Tacitus
in his Annals: a man of ability but of an underlying viciousness whose true nature was only revealed as the layers of hypocrisy were
gradually cast off. Modern historians take a more charitable view, attributing Tiberius' failure to indecisiveness. reserve, and
mistrust.
Suetonius
Tacitus' achievement was to adapt traditional principles to the history of the early principate and create a historical style which
reflected the period. For over two centuries no one writing in Latin tried to match his achievement. Already in his lifetime literary
fashion was turning from history to biography, where special attention could be given to psychology and personal relations, the
subjects that had fascinated Tacitus himself. Moreover, from the point of view of the Roman upper class the lives of the Emperors
were the main thread of history. Monographs might be written on their achievements, especially their campaigns. Fuller biographies
would spice their official career with succulent details of their private life and judgements on their character. Tacitus' younger
contemporary, C. Suetonius Tranquillus, is the most effective exponent of this literary genre known to us and he was followed by
other writers, whose -work was the basis for the creation in the late empire of the Historia Augusta, a collection of imperial
biographies whose authorship and reliability are much disputed.
The core of Suetonius' work is the raw material of a Roman epitaph or funeral oration-the public record of an Emperor, his exploits
at home and abroad, and the moral qualities revealed by these. Set against the official career is his private life. The domestic virtues
of an Emperor had become a topic for panegyric by the time of the Younger Pliny. But there was much more scope there for
detraction. Certainly, an Emperor was criticized for military failure, the waste of public money, and brutality towards the rest of the
upper class (Suetonius did not on the whole judge the administrative reforms he recorded). Yet public faults could best be exploited
as the result of the personal inadequacies of the Emperor, and his vices were revealed in his home, especially in his dining-room and
bedroom. So we find in Suetonius catalogues of achievements placed side by side with scandalous descriptions of the Emperor's
more intimate life, both copiously illustrated by anecdotes. In spite of the fact that these two elements are rarely well fused, an
effective, though not necessarily accurate, character portrait often results.
Suetonius may be compared with a Greek contemporary of Tacitus, Plutarch of Chaeronea, the greatest biographer of antiquity