Suetonius's Lost Works

Suetonius served as the emperor Hadrian's secretary (ab epistulis) from around AD 119 until his dismissal circa 122, which gave him access to the imperial archives. His surviving work, Lives of the Twelve Caesars, is a masterpiece of biographical writing — gossipy, vivid, and structured around character rather than chronology. But the Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine encyclopaedia, lists numerous other works. On Famous Courtesans would have provided an extraordinary window into Roman sexual culture and the lives of women excluded from respectable historical narrative. On Kings apparently covered rulers beyond the Roman sphere. His encyclopaedic works on Roman customs, festivals, and public games would be invaluable for understanding daily life in the Empire. The partial survival of De Viris Illustribus — biographies of notable grammarians, rhetoricians, poets, and historians — gives a tantalising sense of what was lost: concise, anecdote-rich portraits that humanise their subjects. Suetonius's loss is especially frustrating because his accessible style and love of telling detail would make his works uniquely useful for modern social history.