210 ROLFE— SUETONIUS AND HIS BIOGRAPHIES. [April 17. 



also owe information about his uncle, the elder Pliny/^ Silius 

 Italicus,^^ Martial/^ and other writers of the day. C. Suetonius 

 Tranquillus, as he himself tells us,^* was the son of Suetonius 

 Laetus, a Roman knight, who in April of the year 69, as tribune of 

 the Thirteenth Legion, took part in the battle of Betriacum, where 

 Otho's forces were defeated by those of his rival Vitellius. In 

 other casual allusions of a personal nature, four in number, ^'^ Sue- 

 tonius gives us no additional information of importance, although 

 they are of some help in drawing conclusions as to the date of his 

 birth. 



His birthplace is unknown. Arguing r.r sUentio, it is possible 

 to infer that he was one of the few Roman writers who were born 

 in the city itself." The dates of his birth and death are also uncer- 

 tain. The former is assigned by Mommsen^' to the year yy ; b_\ 

 Mace with somewhat greater probability to 69.^^ To determine the 

 exact year is impossible, but the facts of his life, so far as we know 

 them, point to the beginning of the reign of Vespasian. The date 

 of his death is equally uncertain. Our last reference to him as still 

 living is in the year 121, but the implication in one of Pliny's letters^^ 

 that he was slow to publish, taken in connection with the long list of 

 his writings, would seem to indicate that he must have lived to a 

 good old age, including a part of the reign of Antoninus Pius. 



From another of Pliny's letters, a reply to a request to have a 

 suit in which his friend is about to plead postponed in consequence 

 of an unfavorable dream,-" we learn that Suetonius practised at the 



"III., 5; VI., 16 and 20. 



"III., 7. 



"III., 21. 



"Otho, 10, I. 



" Calig., 19, ^; Domit., 12; Nero, 57, 2; cum post viginti annos (after 

 Nero's death), adulescente me, extitisset condicionis incertae qui se Neronem 

 esse iactaret; Gr. 4. 



'""The number of these is at most small, and there is no writer of promi- 

 nence about whom it can be asserted positively; it is probable in the cases 

 of Caesar, Lucretius and Suetonius ; cf. Mace, " Essai sur Suetone," Paris, 

 1900, pp. Z2, ff- 



^''Hermes, III., p. 43. 



"L. c, pp. 35ff. 



^"V, 10. 



=»I., 18. 



