1913] ROLFE— SUETONIUS AND HIS BIOGRAPHIES. 207 



mentaries on " Claudius "* and " Galba-Vitellius "^ have been pub- 

 lished abroad. Ihm seems to have had a full commentary in mind, 

 but the appearance of this, as well as of his new text of the frag- 

 ments, has been delayed, if not prevented, by his untimely death. A 

 survey of the philological journals, both in English and in foreign 

 languages, shows few articles dealing with Suetonius, compared with 

 the number of those devoted to the text and elucidation of many 

 other Roman writers. 



The neglect of an author once so popular may be attributed in 

 the main to two causes : first, to a more critical attitude towards the 

 Roman writers as regards their style and a tendency to restrict the 

 reading of the modern student to those which are rated as " clas- 

 sical " in the restricted sense of the term ; and secondly, to a more 

 rigorous standard in historical investigation, which has thrown dis- 

 credit on Suetonius as a source. 



While Suetonius must be condemned on both these counts, there 

 are reasons which make the relegation of his biographies to com- 

 parative obscurity unfortunate. They are a mine of information 

 on public and private antiquities, they are of surpassing interest for 

 their wealth of anecdote and curious detail, and they are an im- 

 portant representative of a branch of ancient literature of which 

 few examples have come down to us. 



The vogue of Suetonius in still earlier days than those of the 

 printed editions is shown by the great number of existing manu- 

 scripts, which are counted by hundreds. These are all apparently 

 derived from a single survival, which formed a part of the librarv at 

 Fulda in 844, as we know from a letter of Servatus Lupus,*^ abbot 

 of Ferrieres, at whose request a copy was sent to France and exten- 

 sively copied. The original codex Fiildcnsis has since been lost. 



As in the case of Horace, a multiplicity of manuscripts has rather 

 added to the difficulties of editors than favored their attempts to 

 establish a standard text. The greater number belong to the four- 

 teenth and fifteen centuries, and are suspected of containing the cor- 



* H. Smilda, Groningen, 1896. 

 *C. Hofstee, Groningen, 1898. 



' L. Traube, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft fiir iiltere Deutsche Ge- 

 schichtskiinde, XXVII., pp. 266 ff. ; cf. Hermes, XL., p. 179. 



