Bibliography
| Title: A Historical and Historiographical Commentary on Suetonius' "Life of C. Caligula" Type: Thesis Year: 1991 Abstract: "This commentary is a close reading of the Suetonius' Life of Caligula, a text that, at extremes, has been dismissed as gossip or been used uncritically as a mine for historical fact. This reading examines the text in comparison with the other texts that deal with the emperor Gaius, primarily the pertinent portions of the works of Cassius Dio, Josephus, Philo and Seneca. It also uses non-literary evidence and the context of the early Empire in order to evaluate the evidence about Gaius that Suetonius records. The commentary maintains an awareness of the rhetoric of the text and its status as an integrated literary document both by itself and in comparison with the other Lives. It also takes note of Suetonius' criteria for the selection and arrangement of his material and the relevance of these criteria to his judgments about imperial behaviour. But it focuses on the content of the Life. The examination of the text reveals that Suetonius worked carefully and closely with his written sources, his own contribution notwithstanding. His method of arranging his material under rubrics encouraged the inclusion of a great quantity of detail that enriches both the tradition about Gaius and the background against which the emperor appears. Much that Suetonius writes should be accepted as fact. Confidence is not possible, however, without great caution, for there is also much that is exaggerated or that has been generated to illustrate a point. It is as wrong to accept all the information indiscriminately as it is to reject the text completely because it includes problematical information. Most importantly, the perception that Suetonius worked closely with his written sources suggests that the Life of Caligula preserves an accurate (if reedited) record of the vulgate assessment of Gaius that developed quickly and became canonical for the generation that followed his death. The text is even more interesting historiographically as a record of what was said about him that it is historically. The first century assessment of Gaius that can be seen through the Suetonius text is an important historical fact in its own right". Keywords: Greek and Roman historiography |