SUETO'NIUS, CAMS TRANQUILLUS, son of Suetonius Lenis, a tribune of the 13th legion under Otho; was born probably a few years after the death of Nero. He is known. to us chiefly as a Roman historian and miscellaneous writer, for his merits as which he is highly praised by the younger Pliny. He was also, it is supposed, a teacher of gram mar,,and rhetoric, and a composer of exercises in pleading; nay, from a letter of Pliny's to him, it may be gathered that he sometimes pleaded causes in person. Pliny procured him the dignity of military tribune, which, by Suetonius's desire, he got transferred to another. Though childless, Suetonius was, through the same friendly agency, pre sented by Trajan with the jus trium Berorura, which, in that reign, was only to be had by great interest. He was afterward secretary of the emperor Adrian, whose favor he had secured. The date of his death is unknown. All his works (among which, as
we learn from Suidas, there were several on topics usually treated by grammarians) have been lost, except his Lives of the Ccesars, his Lives of Eminent Grammarians, and (in part only) his Lives of Eminent Rhetoricians. It is by the first of these works that he is most favorably known, replete as it is with information about the twelve from C. Julius to Domitian, which is to be had nowhere else, and abounding with anecdotes which, while they too often prove the profligacy of his heroes, testify to the impartiality of their chronicler. From a period long before the renaissance to the present, these " Lives" have always been favorite reading, and have found numerous editors, the best of whom is still Burmann (Amsterdam, 1736), and numerous translators into nearly every European language.