い THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CESARS BY C. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS; TO WHICH ARE ADDED, HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, THE TRANSLATION OF ALEXANDER THOMSON, M.D. REVISED AND CORRECTED By T. FORESTER, Esq., A.M. LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK ST., COVENT GARD AND NEW YORK. H. PREFACE. SONS, LTD., C. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS was the son of a Roman knight commanded a legion, on the side of Otho, at the battle w decided the fate of the empire in favour of Vitellius. From cidental notices in the following History, we learn that he born towards the close of the reign of Vespasian, who died in year 79 of the Christian era. He lived till the time of Hadr under whose administration he filled the office of secretary; til, with several others, he was dismissed for presuming on miliarities with the empress Sabina, of which we have no fur account than that they were unbecoming his position in the perial court. How long he survived this disgrace, which app to have befallen him in the year 121, we are not informed; we find that the leisure afforded him by his retirement, employed in the composition of numerous works, of which only portions now extant are collected in the present volu Several of the younger Pliny's letters are addressed Suetonius, with whom he lived in the closest friends They afford some brief, but generally pleasant, glimpses of habits and career; and in a letter, in which Pliny makes plication on behalf of his friend to the emperor Trajan, a mark of favour, he speaks of him as a most excell honourable, and learned man, whom he had the pleas of entertaining under his own roof, and with whom |