I9I3] ROLFE— SUETONIUS AND HIS BIOGRAPHIES. 221 



spondence, published and iinpul)lishcd. His intimacy with Phny 

 gave him access to senatorial opinion, while his position under 

 Hadrian opened to him the imperial archives, either directly or 

 through his colleague Ab studiisS'* Few men could have had such 

 opportunities, and he seems to have been as diligent a collector of 

 material as the elder Pliny.*'° While he made little use of the in- 

 scriptions which are so highly valued in our day,"" this was due to 

 the abundance of his literary material and to the plan of his work. 

 He occasionally makes use of them and shows an appreciation of 

 their value."' 



In general his methods are rather those of the scholar and inves- 

 tigator than of the inquirer and observer. He is a diligent searcher 

 of records, but rarely records hearsay evidence, gathered from his 

 grandfather and other men of the earlier time, or the results of his 

 own observation."^ As he comes nearer to his own day, when the 

 former material was more scanty and the opportunities for gathering 

 information of the latter kind more abundant, his interest visibly 

 wanes. In the rare cases when he gives us an insight into his 

 method of handling his material, as in the discussion of the varying 

 opinions about the birthplace of Caligula,"'* he seems to examine it 

 with care and good judgment, whenever he considered it necessary 

 to do so ; but the plan of his work seldom called for such critical 

 methods, and it is quite possible that he has given us notice of all 

 the cases in which he employed them. What he mainly desired was 

 entertaining anecdotes and personalities, and he drew them indis- 

 criminately from every quarter, either not realizing, or trusting his 

 reader to discern that impartial opinions about Augustus were not 

 to be expected in the letters and speeches of Mark Antony, or that 

 one historian was not as trustworthy as another. 



The result is that none of the Caesars cuts a very heroic figure 



" See Mace, /. c, p. no f. 



•^ Pliny, " Epist.," III., 5, i/- 



°' See Dennison, "The Epigraphic Sources of Suetonius," Amer. Jour, of 

 Arch., sec. sen, II., pp. 20 ff. 



°^ See Aug., 7; Tib., 5; Calig., 23; Claud., 41; and for a full discussion 

 of the subject, Dennison, /. c. 



"^ See the references in note 15. 



»' Calig., 8. 



