T8S 



SUETONIUS 



SUEZ 



U extensively used in cookery, while purilir< 

 mutton suet under tlie name at .sv.-m I'm/Htm 

 turn occurs in the Pharmacopeia, and is obtained 

 by melting anil straining the internal abdomina 

 fat. It consists of a mixture of the ordinary ani 

 nial fats, with a great preponderance of the' most 

 solid of them viz. -ii-.-irin. which constitutes aboul 

 three-fourths of the whole. The pure suet of the 

 Pharmacopoeia is ' white, soft, smooth, almo8l 

 scentless; and is fusible at 103 (39-4'C.).' It is 

 u-fd as an ingredient in plasters and ointments. 

 Ordinary melted suet is frequently employed in 

 the same manner as lard, to preserve potted meats, 

 fish, &c. from the action of the air. See FATS. 



Suetonius. CAIUS SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS, 

 grammarian, critic, and chronicler, was contempor- 

 ary with Domitian, Trajan, and Hadrian, having 

 been born (birthplace and parentage unknown] 

 under Vespasian. Of his manhood we find some 

 traces in the letters of the younger Pliny, who, 

 when appointed bv Trajan proconsul of Uithvnia, 

 took Suetonius with him. Pliny's friendship, mani- 

 fested in bringing him under the emperor's notice 

 as ' probissimum, honestissimum, eruditissimum 

 viriim,' procured him means and leisure enough for 

 literature, of which he was a professed votary. 

 After Pliny's death he was befriended by C. Septi- 

 cius darns, prefect of the pretorians, to whom he 

 dedicated his best-known work, in eight books, The 

 Lives of the First Twelve Caxars. He became 

 Hadrian's private secretary, a post he long held till, 

 compromised in a court intrigue, he forfeited it, to 

 devote himself entirely to literature. He was then 

 about fifty years of age, but no further incident of 

 his life is known to us. 



In the compilation of his Lives Suetonius must 

 have had liefore liim the Annals and Histories of 

 Tacitus; perhaps (according to some scholars ) the 

 Lives of Plutarch. But he has neither the dra- 

 matic power of the Roman nor the philosophy of 

 the Greek. The Augustan historian Vopiscus 

 praises him as a ' most finished and impartial 

 writer '( emendatissimus et candidissimtui scrijitar) 

 merits which later criticism still allows him. 

 His method, indeed, is of the. simplest. After 

 detailing the emperor's family history, he describes 

 his youth and manhood till he assumes the purple ; 

 after this he alwndons the chronological order and 

 dwells on the character of his subject, as shown in 

 public and private, according to virtues and vices, 

 irrespective of periods of life ; next he reverts to 

 the order of time in relating the portents of death, 

 the mode of death itself, and the terms of the em- 

 peror's will. Ever anxious to exclude uncertainty 

 from his narrative, he deals with ascertained fact 

 and does nothing by interposed di-ctissioii to biii-s 

 the reader's judgment one way or another. With 

 no affectation of epigram, his brevity is masterly, 

 and probably no writer ever compressed so much 

 that is interesting into NO brief a space. He had 

 many imitators I Si Jerome among tln-m) in an- 

 tiquity ami in the middle ages. \\\- other works, 

 De Illustrious (TnMMtofMU (of which a complete 

 cony existed in the 15th century) and De Claris 

 Itnttiiriliu*, neeil only l>e mentioned here, as also 

 the 'ragmentary lives of Terence, Horace, Persius, 

 Lucan, Juvenal, and 1'liny. 



British scholarship hu done nothing for the text or 

 exegens of Suetoniun. After the rditin princrpt ( !:.,,.. 

 1470). the belt are those of Caianbon (1596 and If.loi. 

 F. A. Wolf (18021, Roth, with admirable prolegomena 

 ( 1867 ), and Reiflenohcid ( 1860 ). See aim D. Kuimkrn's 

 .VWm (Leyd. 1888). Of tnuulationi thoae of Ad., If 

 Htahr in German ( 1864 ) and of Kigutini in Italian ( 1HH2, 

 with Roth'i text) are among the best That in Bohn'n 

 Clauical Library in fair, tor Suetoniu* 1'aulinun, the 

 Roman governor of Britain, ice BOAOIOCA. 



Suevl. See SWABIA. 



Suez, a town of Egypt, is situated at the 

 southern extremity of the Suez Canal and on 

 the Gulf of Suez, a northern arm of the lied 

 Close beside the town the Peninsular and 

 < Mental Steam-hip Company have extcnsi\e - 

 houses and magazines, there is a large English 

 ho-pital, and the sweet-water canal from Nmailia 

 tci initiates here. The railway from Ismailia inns 

 through the town on to the spacious harlMiur 2 

 miles lie) ond. The streets are generally neglected 

 and uneven, and by night anlighted. Suez has 

 not a very large trade of its own (800,000 to- 

 900,000 annually); most of the commerce parses 

 through it without making halt. Top. (1890) 

 13,000. The town is surrounded by the MMlt 

 At more than one |>eiiod in the past this place was 

 the seat of a flourishing trade, as for instance in the 

 time of the Ptolemies, when it was called Arsinoe ; 

 under the lirst Moslem rulers of Egypt, wlm called 

 it Kolzum, the Greek name being then Clysma ; 

 and ftpm the 16th to the 18th century, when it 

 formed an hnportul ftttjie in the BuropNl trade 

 with India; but by the iK'ginning of the li)th cen- 

 tury it was again quite decayed. It began to 

 revive when the overland mail route between Eng- 

 land and India was opened in 1837, and has im- 

 proved yet more since the completion of the 

 canal. 



SUEZ CANAL. The ancient Egyptian king, 

 Barneses II., seems to have been the first to ex- 

 cavate a canal l>etween the Nile delta and the l!ed 

 Sea. This, having been allowed to (ill up and 

 become disused, wag reopened by Darius I. of 

 Persia. It was once more cleared and made ser- 

 viceable for the passage of boats by the Arab con- 

 querors of Egypt. The plan of connecting the 

 Mediterranean and the Red Sea by means of a 

 canal wide enough to admit of the passage of ocean- 

 going vessels caught the attention of Napoleon, 

 and lie commissioned the engineer Lepere in 1798 

 to examine and report to him as to the practica- 

 bility of the idea. This expert's opinion, which 

 was de facto erroneous, that the surface of the Red 

 Sea was nearly 30 feet higher than that of the 

 Mediterranean, put an end to the project. But the 

 mistake having been corrected by English officers 

 in 1841, the French diplomat Lessens (q.v.) set him- 

 self (in 1849) to study the isthmus more thoroughly, 

 and in 1854 he managed to enlist the interest of 

 Said Pasha, khedive of Egypt, in his scheme. Two 

 years later the Porte granted its permission and 

 the Universal Company of the Maritime Sue/ 

 Canal was formed, receiving important concessions 

 from the ruler of Egypt. Half the capital was 

 raised by public suliscription in Europe, chiefly in 

 France ; the other half was contributed by "the 

 khedive. The first spadeful of earth was turned 

 at Port Said, the Mediterranean terminus of the 

 canal, on 25th April 1859. Boon from 98,000 to 80,000 

 men were at work excavating. But in 1862 pro- 

 was greatly delayed owing to the necessity 

 of first completing the canal that was to bring 

 drinking-water from the Nile to Ismailia, near the 

 middle point of the isthmus, and thence carry it 

 southwards to Suez on the Red Sen; moreover'the 

 new viceroy, Ismail, refused to ratify the conces- 

 sions that had been made to the company ; it \\as, 

 liowever, agreed to let him buy them back for the 

 sum of 3,800,000. This hindrance being removed, 

 the work went on again; and at length, on 16th 

 November 1869, the canal was duly opened for 

 vessels. It had cost altogether about 20 million 

 Hinnds. The total length is 100 miles ; the width 

 >f the water-surface was at first 160 to 300 feet, 

 the width at the liottom 72 feet, and the minimum 

 lepth 26 feet At Port Said two strong break- 

 waters, 6940 and 6020 feet long respectively, were 

 run out into the Mediterranean ; at Suez another 



