Table Of ContentSUETONIUS
DOMITIAN
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION,
COMMENTARY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY BY
BRIAN W. JONES
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SUETONIUS
DOMITIAN
Edited with Introduction, Commentary
and Bibliography by
Brian W. Jones
Bristol Classical Press
First published in 1996 by
Bristol Classical Press
an imprint of
Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd
61 Frith Street
London W1D 3JL
e-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.ducknet.co.uk
Reprinted 2001
O 1996 by B.W. Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 1-85399-454-5
Printed in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne
Contents
Preface
iv
Abbreviations
Introduction
Suetonius' Career
His Sources
Suetonius' Works
Suetonius and the Biographical Tradition
Suetonius' Domitian
Textual Variants
Text
Commentary
Bibliography
158
Preface
In this edition of Suetonius’ Domitian, my aim has been to examine the political,
social and, to a lesser extent, the literary and grammatical questions posed by the
Life. 1 hope that it will be of value not only to students of Latin but also to those
interested in Ancient History with little or no Latin, who have to rely on the
standard translations which are misleading in a number of vital areas (e.g. Dom.
B81) 3.2, 72).
The debt I owe to previous scholars is obvious. In particular, Birley, Blake,
Buttrey, Eck, Syme and Waters have examined and clarified various aspects of
the Flavian period, whilst Anderson, Carradice, Rogers, Strobel, Thompson and
Weaver have done the same for Domitian’s principate. I have also found much
of value in previous commentaries on the Domitianus, especially that of Mooney
(1930) and have relied heavily on Bauman’s ‘Résumé of Legislation in Suetonius’
(1982).
I am indebted to the many colleagues who have helped me over the years in
my work on Domitian. They are too numerous to mention here. But I must thank
Hugh Lindsay with whom I have often discussed the intricacies of Suetonius’
career, Alastair Blanshard for his comments on the lex Scantinia and also Penny
Peel for her assistance in preparing my manuscript for publication. My particular
thanks, though, are due to Professor Bob Milns for his help and encouragement
over many years; he has also read and carefully dissected the introduction and
concluding chapters of the present work. I need hardly say that he is not to be
blamed for the errors and misconceptions that remain.
In the commentary, all dates are AD unless otherwise indicated; references to
modern works are made by surname of the author(s) and date of publication; and
the Domitianus is cited by chapter and section only, e.g. 10.1 and not Dom. 10.1.
The bibliography contains only those works cited in the commentary.
Brisbane, June 1995
iv
Abbreviations
The abbreviations are those of L' Année Philologique and The Oxford Classical
Dictionary (2nd edn. 1970), with the following additions:
AE L ‘Année Epigraphique (Paris, 1888-)
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rémischen Welt, ed. H. Temporini (De
Gruyter, 1972-)
BMC Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, ed. H. Mattingly
(London, 1923-40)
CAH Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge, 1923-)
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin, 1869-)
DS Daremberg, C.V. and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grec-
ques et Romaines (Hachette, 1877-1919)
Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes (Leroux, 1901 -27)
Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (Weidmann, 1882-1916)
Bauman, R.A., /mpietas in Principem (C.H. Beck, 1974)
McCrum, M. and A.G. Woodhead, Select Documents of the Princi-
pates of the Flavian Emperors including the Year of Revolution AD
68-96 (Cambridge University Press, 1966)
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd edn (Clarendon Press, 1970)
Oxford Latin Dictionary (Clarendon Press, 1982)
Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites ed. R. Stillwell (Princeton
University Press, 1976)
Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec. LILIII, 1st edn (Reimer,
1897-8)
Prosopographia Imperii Romani Saec. LIT, HI, 2nd edn (De Gruyter,
1933-)
Realencyclopádie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Metzler
and others, 1894-)
Syme, R., Roman Papers (Clarendon Press, 1979-91)
Schol. in Scholia in Iuuenalem Vetustiora
Juy,
SG Friedlander, L., Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der
Zeit von Augustus bis zum Ausgang der Antonine, trans. Magnus
(repr. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968)
Str Mommsen, T., Rómisches Staatsrecht (Duncker and Humbolt, 1887-88)
ZSS Bauman, R.A., *The Résume of Legislation in Suetonius' ZSS 99
(1982), pp. 81-127
Introduction
Tempora mutantur and so do fashions in scholarship. Suetonius, not so long ago
described as a "literary man with the muck-rake, too keen upon petty and prurient
detail to produce a scientific account of his subjects’ (Duff [1964] 508), is now
seen as a courtier and as the author of a ‘long list of scholarly, antiquarian and
biographical works’ (Millar [1977] 91): so Wallace-Hadrill devotes over twenty
pages to Suetonius the *Scholarly Biographer’. This change of attitude has not
occurred overnight, but the impetus for it has undoubtedly been the discovery of
an inscription from Hippo Regius with hitherto unknown details of Suetonius"
career (4E 1953, 73). A series of articles by Townend appeared not long after, as
did monographs by Anna (1954), della Corte (1967), Mouchova (1968), Gugel
(1977) and Cizek (1977); then came De Coninck (1983) and Gascou (1984). The
lack of major works in English was remedied in 1983 by both Wallace-Hadrill
and Baldwin, with Lounsbury following in 1987. At around the same time
appeared articles by Syme and Bradley, whilst this decade saw the (belated)
publication of ANRW 2.33.5 (1991) with articles by Galand-Hallyn (3576-622),
Lewis (3623-674), De Coninck (3675-700) and Bradley (3701-732).
So, too, there had been a dearth of up-to-date commentaries in English on the
Caesares; Shuckburg's Diuus Augustus, published in 1896, was reprinted
seventy-four years later and Mooney's Galba to Domitian of 1930 was reprinted
in 1979. Once more, the remedy has been comparatively recent, with the Bristol
Classical Press’ series of commentaries by Warmington (Nero: 1977), Carter
(Augustus: 1982), Mottershead (Claudius: 1986), Murison (Galba, Otho and
Vitellius. 1992) and Lindsay (Gaius: 1993; Tiberius: 1995). The Vita Domitiani,
at least, has been better served with commentaries by Janssen (1919), Gephardt
(1922), Mooney (1930), Arias (1945) and Galli (1991) - two of them in English
(Gephardt and Mooney).
Suetonius' Career
Debate on his official career has been intense of late (see above) though somewhat
inconclusive. Four distinct sources of information about him survive from
antiquity, viz. (a) what he tells us himself (Calig. 19.3; Claud. 15.3; Nero 9T
Otho 10.1; Dom. 12.2; De Gramm. 4 and Vita Lucani), (b) what emerges from
vi
