why did suetonius write the twelve caesars coursework

Next, he suppressed a series of sporadic riots and revolts; besides certain conspiracies, all of them detected before they became dangerous. Except that Caesar is not a victim unfairly penalized. Since the whole House consented to his presence in Court, he sat quietly for several hours among the advocates and witnesses, but abstained even from testifying to Nonius's character., He did, however, appear for some of his own dependants, among them a former staff-officer named Scutarius, who had been accused of slander. 58. husband was Marcellus, his sister Octavia's son, then hardly more than a child; and, when he died, Augustus persuaded Octavia to let her become Marcus Agrippa's wife — though Agrippa was now married to one of Marcellus's two sisters, and had fathered children on her. At the age of four Augustus lost his father. In his Parallel Lives, written in the century after his death, Plutarch twinned Caesar with Alexander the Great. Mark Antony likewise tried to belittle Augustus's maternal line by alleging that his greatgrandfather Balbus had been born in Africa, and kept first a perfumery and then a bake-house at Aricia. He led by inspiration, without undue recourse to the mumbo-jumbo of omens and portents, trusting in that lodestar which seldom deserted him on the battlefield, his generalship as much a matter of speed and novelty as of tactical finesse; and he treated his soldiers, whom he addressed as ‘comrades’, with something approaching love. They might consist of rich clothing and gold or silver plate; or every sort of coin, including specimens from the days of the early monarchy, and foreign pieces; or merely lengths of goat hair cloth, or sponges, or pokers, or tongs — all given in return for tokens inscribed with misleading descriptions of the objects concerned. As the written sources confirm, Caesar’s was not the appearance of a hero (nor was blandness among his characteristics). The 320 pairs of gladiators who appeared in front of Rome’s crowd that year dressed in elaborate silver armour testified not only to Caesar’s lavish generosity but to the distinction of the older Caesar and, by implication, the whole Julian gens, including of course Caesar himself. On all but special occasions he wore house clothes woven and sewn for him by either Livia, Octavia, Julia, or one of his grand-daughters. ‘I have heard,’ Pliny wrote, ‘that Caesar was accustomed to write or dictate and read at the same time, simultaneously dictating to his secretaries four letters on the most important subjects or, if he had nothing else to do, as many as seven.’ (As dictator, Caesar later courted popular disfavour by dictating and reading letters while watching gladiatorial fights.) whereupon the entire audience rose to their feet and applauded, as if the phrase referred to Augustus. Nevertheless, when the Senate outlawed Antony, Augustus allowed all his relatives and friends to join him under safe conduct, including Gaius Sosius and Titus Domitius, the Consuls of the year. In ancient days part of the city wall of Velitrae had been struck by lightning and the soothsayers prophesied that a native Velitraean would one day rule the world. Perhaps the oak-leaf chaplet which marked the award turned his head. And so it came to pass that Gaius Julius Caesar, described by Suetonius as invariably kind and considerate to his friends, died at the hands of a conspiracy whose members were all known to him. At his arrival Augustus had a long talk with him in private, after which he attended to no further important business. He gave frequent dinner parties, very formal ones, too; paying strict attention to social precedence and personal character. Senators' sons were now encouraged to familiarize themselves with the administration; they might wear purple-striped gowns immediately upon coming of age and attend meetings of the House. As with the aedileship and praetorship, Caesar’s colleague was Bibulus. Although Romans thrilled to the grandeur of Caesar’s victories, awarding him extended celebrations of thanksgiving, when the smoke of sacrifice darkened the city’s altars and the gods themselves were besought to witness the empire’s growing magnificence, such unambiguous brutality directed against a civilian population provoked mixed reactions even in Rome. After performing certain barbaric rites, they gave him the same response as Figulus; for the wine they had poured over the altar caused a pillar of flame to shoot up far above the roof of the shrine — a sign never before granted except to Alexander the Great when he sacrificed at that very altar. His standards of discipline were high without approaching that martinet cruelty which afterwards proved Galba’s undoing: he closed his eyes to minor misdemeanours. Later, all knights over thirty-five years of age who did not wish to retain their chargers, were excused the embarrassment of publicly surrendering them. Isolated by eminence, ‘the bald whoremonger’ Gaius Julius Caesar conceals from us the innermost workings of heart and mind. He trained his new sons in the business of government while they were still young, sending them as commanders-in-chief to the provinces when only consuls-elect. When the Civil Wars were over, Augustus no longer addressed the troops as 'Comrades', but as 'Men'; and had his sons and step-sons follow suit. 69. In 55 BC, in response to Ahenobarbus’ threat, the members of the triumvirate had met at Luca (modern Lucca). So far as I know, Augustus inspected every province of the Empire, except Sardinia and North Africa, and would have toured these, too, after his defeat of Sextus Pompey in Sicily, had not a sequence of gales prevented him from sailing; later, he had no particular reason, nor any opportunity, for visiting either province. He also often urged leading citizens to embellish the City with new public monuments or to restore and improve ancient ones, according to their means. 9. Arrogant in eminence, he offended senate and commons alike. The worst was after his Cantabrian conquest, when abscesses on the liver reduced him to such despair that he consented to try a remedy which ran counter to all medical practice: because hot fomentations afforded him no relief, his physician Antonius Musa successfully prescribed cold ones. 43. This prodigy was the immediate reason, they say, for Caesar's desire that his grand-nephew, and no one else, should succeed him. 93. 53. To be brief: Augustus honoured all sorts of professional entertainers by his friendly interest in them; maintained, and even increased, the privileges enjoyed by athletes; banned gladiatorial contests if the defeated fighter were forbidden to plead for mercy; and amended an ancient law empowering magistrates to punish stage-players wherever and whenever they pleased — so that they were now competent to deal only with misdemeanours committed at games or theatrical performances. He also suffered from bladder pains which, however, ceased to trouble him once he had passed gravel in his urine. I can prove pretty conclusively that as a child Augustus was called Thurinus ('the Thurian'), perhaps because his ancestors had once lived at Thurii, or because his father had defeated the slaves in that neighbourhood soon after he was born; my evidence is a bronze statuette which I once owned. Dear ZLibrary User, now we have a dedicated domain. If he found it hard to fall asleep again on such occasions, as frequently happened, he sent for readers or story-tellers; and on dropping off would not wake until the sun was up. But he let them send acceptable substitutes as often as they pleased. Feeling worse on the homeward journey, he took to his bed at Nola, and sent messengers to recall Tiberius — now headed for Illyricum. Augustus had vowed to build the Temple of Mars during the Phillipi campaign of vengeance against Julius Caesar's assassins. When one of these humbly asked for the right of decent burial, he got the cold answer: 'That must be settled with the carrion-birds.' 90. Rather, he treated the men, whom he openly dismissed as barbarians, as shipmates-cum-bodyguards, a captive audience for the speeches and poems with which he diverted the tedium. Assassinated in Suetonius’ account, he may have died in an outbreak of politically motivated gang violence on the Appian Way outside Rome. Many responded: thus the Temple of Hercules and the Muses was raised by Marcius Philippus; that of Diana by Lucius Cornificius; the Hall of Liberty by Asinius Pollio; the Temple of Saturn by Munatius Plancus; a theatre by Cornelius Balbus; an amphitheatre by Statilius Taurus; and a variety of magnificent buildings by Marcus Agrippa. On these occasions he posted guards in different parts of the City to prevent ruffians from turning the emptiness of the streets to their own advantage. Once, when he was just learning to talk at his grandfather's country seat, the frogs broke into a loud chorus of croaking: he told them to stop, and it is locally claimed that no frog has croaked there since. His gowns were neither tight nor full, and the purple stripe on them was neither narrow nor broad; but his shoes had rather thick soles to make him look taller. At the outset of his career, Popularist sympathies unexpectedly placed Caesar on the back foot. Public prosecutions and the casting of lots for jury service took place only in this Forum. Aware that the City was architecturally unworthy of her position as capital of the Roman Empire, besides being vulnerable to fire and river floods, Augustus so improved her appearance that he could justifiably boast: 'I found Rome built of sun-dried bricks; I leave her clothed in marble.' The sight of this sad rabble, wholly unworthy of office, decided Augustus to restore the Order to its former size and repute by two new acts of enrolment. His homecomings after tours of the Empire were always acclaimed with respectful good wishes and songs of joy as well; and it became a custom to cancel all punishments on the day he set foot in Rome. At sixteen, having now come of age, he was awarded military decorations when Caesar celebrated his African triumph, though he had been too young for overseas service. Here is a list of unusual synonyms which constantly appear in Augustus's letters: baceolus (self-made eunuch) for: stultus (fool) Once Cato had claimed that Caesar was the only man who undertook to overthrow the state when sober. As with so much in our story, its focus is power. Both these books survive; but growing dissatisfied with the style of his tragedy, Ajax, which he had begun in great excitement, he destroyed it. 17. Gaius Drusus records that, one evening, the infant Augustus was placed by the nurse in his cradle on the ground-floor, but had vanished by daybreak; at last a search party found him lying on the top of a lofty tower, his face turned towards the rising sun. That same year also witnessed his third consulship, an appointment to the dictatorship for ten years, and an award which encompassed aspects of the censorship including controlling membership of the senate. Where even the qualified democracy of the senate was powerless, iron-fisted authoritarianism promised to break through every impasse. When the news reached Rome, Augustus ordered the Guards to patrol the City at night and prevent any rising; then prolonged the terms of the provincial governors, so that the allies should have men of experience, whom they trusted, to confirm their allegiance. If insufficient candidates of the required senatorial rank presented themselves for election as tribunes of the people, Augustus nominated knights to fill the vacancies; but allowed them, when their term of office had expired, either to remain members of the Equestrian order or to become senators, whichever they preferred. There were hostile legions in Spain and at Massilia, in Pontus and in Africa. The winter season he devoted less showily to civil administration in the peaceful provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum on the Balkan coast. Augustus set himself to revive the ancient Roman dress and once, on seeing a group of men in dark cloaks among the crowd, quoted Virgil indignantly: and instructed the aediles that no one should ever again be admitted to the Forum, or its environs, unless he wore a gown and no cloak. It proved that he had appointed Tiberius and Livia heirs to the bulk of his estate, directing that Tiberius should take two-thirds and adopt the name 'Augustus', while Livia took the remaining third and adopted the name 'Augusta'. (Not surprisingly, Labienus later transferred allegiance away from Caesar.) Yet nothing would persuade him to forgive his daughter; and when the Roman people interceded several times on her behalf, earnestly pleading for her recall, he stormed at a popular assembly: 'If you ever bring up this matter again, may the gods curse you with daughters as lecherous as mine, and with wives as adulterous!' His conduct so disgusted the remainder of the prisoners, including Marcus Favonius, a well-known disciple of Cato's, that while being led off in chains they courteously saluted Antony as their conqueror, but abused Augustus to his face with the most obscene epithets. He increased the priesthood in numbers and dignity, and in privileges, too, being particularly generous to the College of Vestal Virgins. 'I consented to close the list,' he said, 'on condition that I should be allowed a free hand in future.' He returned to Italy, but ran into two storms: the first between the headlands of the Peloponnese and Aetolia; the second off the Ceraunian Mountains. It was no more than the promise he had made the pirates when first they captured him. Under their rule, from 49 BC to AD 96, Rome was transformed from a republic to an empire, whose model of regal autocracy would survive in the West for more than a thousand years. His own were modest enough and less remarkable for their statuary and pictures than for their landscape gardening and the rare antiques on display: for example, at Capri he had collected the huge skeletons of extinct sea and land monsters popularly known as 'Giants' Bones'; and the weapons of ancient heroes. Also, whereas men and women had hitherto always sat together, Augustus confined women to the back rows even at gladiatorial shows: the only ones exempt from this rule being the Vestal Virgins, for whom separate accommodation was provided, facing the praetor's tribunal. In a universal movement to confer on Augustus the title 'Father of his Country', the first approach was made by the commons, who sent a deputation to him at Antium; when he declined this honour a huge crowd met him outside the Theatre with laurel wreaths, and repeated the request. Once, when Tiberius requested that a Greek dependant of his should be granted the citizenship, Augustus wrote back that he could not assent unless the man put in a personal appearance and convinced him that he was worthy of the honour. According to Julius Marathus, a public portent warned the Roman people some months before Augustus's birth that Nature was making ready to provide them with a king; and this caused the Senate such consternation that they issued a decree which forbade the rearing of any male child for a whole year. An angry look and a peremptory gesture soon quelled this gross flattery, and the next day he issued an edict of stern reprimand. But a man so lavishly endowed with dynamism could scarcely embrace the treading-water prevarication of a system whose impotence he had explicitly recognized in the triumvirate. Only as consul invested with imperium, that power of military command possessed by magistrates and pro-magistrates for their term of office, could Caesar survive in Rome unscathed: any other return risked legal proceedings. Laetorius begged for pardon in the name of his 'own especial god'. Some, whose lives proved to have been scandalous, were punished; others were degraded; but in most cases he was content to reprimand culprits with greater or less severity. Although Caesar lost the case, he won friends and reputation. Many centuries later, the scene was painted by the Italian Neoclassicist Vincenzo Camuccini. Cornelia herself died around 69 BC. He kept up his interest by carefully drafting every address intended for delivery to the Senate, the popular Assembly, or the troops; though gifted with quite a talent for extempore speech. In February 44 Caesar was named dictator for life – as Plutarch describes it, ‘confessedly a tyranny, since the monarchy, beside the element of irresponsibility, now took on that of permanence’. He could not bear lying sleepless in the dark with no one by his side; and if he had to officiate at some official or religious ceremony that involved early rising — which he also loathed — would spend the previous night at a friend's house as near the venue as possible. Caesar served as aedile in 65 (two years ahead of the minimum age qualification of thirty-seven) and praetor in 62. Afterwards Caesar planned a second consulship, for 48, beginning, as Roman law dictated, a decade after completion of his previous term. He remained unmoved by the lampoons on him, which were constantly posted up in the House, but took trouble to prove their pointlessness; and instead of trying to discover their authors, merely moved that henceforth it should be a criminal offence to publish any defamatory libel, either in prose or verse, signed with another's name. 73. This was interpreted to mean that he would live only another hundred days, since the remainder of the word, namely AESAR is the Etruscan for 'god' — c being the Roman numeral 100. Among his grammatical peculiarities occur the forms simus for sumus (we are), and domos for domus (homes), to which he invariably clung as a sign that they were his considered choice. Then there is a story which I found in a book called Theologumena, by Asclepias of Mendes. In Spain, however, in the city of Gades (modern Cadiz), Caesar came face to face with a statue of Alexander the Great and the certain knowledge of the magnitude of the task that lay ahead of him. It was interrupted by two storms that wrecked his fleets-in the summer, too — and obliged him to rebuild them; and by the Pompeians' success in cutting his corn supplies, which forced him to grant a popular demand for an armistice. Either as a local commander, or as commander-in-chief at Rome, Augustus conquered Cantabria, Aquitania, Pannonia, Dalmatia, and the whole of Illyricum, besides Raetia and the Alpine tribes known as Vindelicians and Salassians. After the second and decisive one he showed no clemency to his beaten enemies, but sent Brutus's head to Rome for throwing at the feet of Caesar's divine image; and insulted the more distinguished of his prisoners. Even Tiberius, who had a habit of introducing obsolete and difficult phrases into his speeches, did not escape Augustus's ridicule, and Antony was for him a madman who wrote 'as though he wanted to be wondered at rather than understood'. Caesar’s legacy has been debated since the moment of his slaughter. None of Augustus's predecessors had ever provided so many, so different, or such splendid public shows. There he slept in the same bedroom all the year round for over forty years; although the winter climate of Rome did not suit his health. Justification for that divorce inspired Caesar’s well-known assertion that, guilty or otherwise – taking no account of double standards – his wife must be above suspicion. Such was Bibulus’ determination not to cooperate with Caesar that he sought to derail the latter’s programme entirely by declaring every day inauspicious for senatorial business and all transactions suspended accordingly. Then again hearing, at an inquiry into the case of Aemilius Aelianus the Cordoban, that the most serious of the many charges brought against him was one of 'vilifying Caesar', Augustus pretended to lose his temper and told the counsel for the prosecution: He then dropped the whole inquiry and never resumed it. 'I am deeply in his debt for a timely disclosure of Murena's conspiracy.'. Pompey had led the army of the Republic, pursued by Caesar, to Thessaly. Suetonius does an excellent job in painting an objective picture of the lives of the twelve Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian. When Augustus celebrated his coming of age, the seams of the senatorial gown which Caesar had allowed him to wear split and it fell at his feet. He stayed no more than twenty-seven days at Brindisi, just long enough to pacify the mutineers; then took a roundabout route to Egypt by way of Asia Minor and Syria, besieged Alexandria, where Antony had fled with Cleopatra, and soon reduced it. With each other ’: Crassus ’ jealousy supplies an explanation killings were political had declared on... Hostile legions in Spain and at Massilia, in Bithynia, his choice fell on granddaughter! Glories, the front row of corpses. ' in a closed litter Illyricum on the coast. 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