Suetonius

The first relates to, quote, Henry IX, unquote, the last of the Stuarts, and the second to a lady artist, the wife of a famous painter, quote.

I might have heard similar stories to the tales in Suetonius about the Roman emperors in Italy all day, had I not hated lewd conversations as I do.

old cardinal de yorke kept a catamite publicly at rome while i was there though a man of the best character possible for piety and charity with which as a person said to me that device has nothing to do they consider it a mere matter of taste when mrs cosway ran madding all over europe after a castrato leaving her husband a new-born baby at home here She was praying at every altar and fasting vigorously all the time.

A hypocritical hussy, say the people.

If we will remember that the real object of terror to all but the aristocratic party at Rome was, not the Senate, but Pompey, that Crassus, a personal enemy of Pompey, was at the head of the knights or capitalists, and that Piso and Outronius, Caesar and Catiline were all important adherents of a popular party which leaned, on one side, on the support of the knights, on the other, of that of the rabble, this conspiracy may lose some of the mystery which is generally attached to it.

Historians have found a considerable difficulty in the fact that the plots which Sallust and Suetonius respectively assign to this period are puzzlingly alike, and yet differ in important particulars.

Sallust speaks of a conspiracy of Piso, Catiline, and Outronius to murder the consuls for BC 65 on the first day of the year and seize the reins of government.

Their designs, he says, were discovered, and they postponed their execution until the fifth of the following month, when the precipitance of Catiline brought about an utter failure.

According to Dye and Cassius, the Senate was aware of the conspiracy, but was prevented by the veto of one of the tribunes from doing more than grant the consuls a special guard.

From Cicero we learn that Torquatus, one of the consuls who were to have been assassinated, subsequently supported Catiline on his trial for extortion, and declared that, although he had heard something about a conspiracy, he did not attach any belief to the report, and this incredulity, real or pretended, on the part of one of the intended victims, has led some writers, including Professor Tyrrell, to doubt Catiline's complicity in any plot prior to that of BC 63.

If we turn now to Suetonius, we find an account of a conspiracy also planned to take effect about the beginning of the year, in which there is no mention at all of Catiline, but the chief parts are assigned to Caesar, then Edel, Marcus Crassus, and the two unseated consuls, Sulla and Outronius, the former of whom, if we may trust Cicero, is wrongly included among the conspirators.

The objects of this plot were to make away with certain obnoxious members of the Senate, to raise Crassus to the dictatorship, with Caesar as his master of the horse, and subsequently to restore the consulship to the unseated candidate, and the fiasco in this instance was brought about not by any undue haste in giving the concerted signal, but by the timidity of Crassus, who failed to appear at the appointed time.

There were games put on in other areas of Rome as well, in the Circus Maximus.

And Suetonius tells us this great anecdote.

At the opening of the games to dedicate the Theatre of Marcellus, it happened that the joints of Augustus' curial chair gave way and he fell on his back.

That's gotta be a bad

Exactly.

There we go.

So it sounds like people were kind of a bit overwhelmed by this structure or didn't quite trust it in Suetonius' account.

Do you think it was like notably impressive for the time that, you know, it's like, wow, what is this massive roof structure that we're doing a play in? Yeah, I don't know why you'd be so worried about the walls falling in.

the persistent terror that Nero was going to rise from the dead, return with a massive eastern army and exact his bloody revenge.

The Roman historian Suetonius documents just how deeply this phantom haunted the ancient world.

There were some who for a long time decorated his tomb with spring and summer flowers and who would at one time bring out his statues dressed in the toga before the rostra.

and at another circulate his edicts as if he were still alive and would shortly return to the terror of his enemies.

At this time, Vespasian's eldest son, Titus, was around 24 years old.

What little we know of Titus' early life is provided by the Roman historian Suetonius, who tells of Titus being raised at the imperial court and becoming very close with Claudius' son Britannicus.

It was due to his father's outstanding performance in the invasion of Britain that Titus was able to be educated at the court of the emperor.

Britannicus was later assassinated by the Emperor Nero, and it is said, albeit this is difficult to confirm, that a young Titus was sitting alongside his friend when he drank the poison that would kill him.

Certainly, Britannicus' death would have a large impact on the young Titus, and he would later work to cultivate his memory.

Suetonius states that in around 57 AD, Titus served as a military tribune in Germany and Britain.

Military tribunes were officers in the Roman army who ranked below the legate and above the centurion and was a traditional preparatory role for a career in the upper echelons of Roman senatorial politics.

Following this stint in the army where he gained praise and acclaim, Titus entered the legal profession and married his first wife in around 63 AD, Arecina Tertulla, the daughter of a former prefect of the Praetorian Guard, the elite unit of the Roman army that served as personal bodyguards of the emperor.

Julius Caesar's horse is said to have had this peculiarity.

Suetonius, the writer, describes this horse as being almost human, with the hoofs cleft like toes.

This author says, quote, It was born in Caesar's own stables, and as the soothsayers declared that it showed that his owner would be lord of the world, he reared it with great care, and was the first to mount it.

It would allow no other rider, unquote.

Julius Caesar's horse is said to have had this peculiarity.

Suetonius, the writer, describes this horse as being almost human, with the hoofs cleft like toes.

This author says, quote, It was born in Caesar's own stables, and as the soothsayers declared that it showed that his owner would be lord of the world, he reared it with great care, and was the first to mount it.

He would allow no other rider, unquote.