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Suetonius and the Politics of Gossip

"Suetonius’ Life of the Caesars" is both a fascinating and a frustrating source. It offers us many memorable stories about larger-than-life characters – but, faced with a succession of lurid anecdotes and scandalous rumours, we have to ask whether it is ever possible to get at the ‘reality’ of the emperors being discussed. Why has the great tradition of Latin historiography been reduced to gossip and innuendo? What Suetonius shows us is how members of the Roman elite thought about their rulers, and how, under an autocracy, the political inevitably becomes personal.