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Suetonius Quotes
b. 122
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c. 69–after 122 AD) was a Roman historian. Among his surviving works are some thumbnail sketches of the lives of Roman grammarians, rhetoricians and poets, but he is best known for his De Vita Caesarum, often known in English as The Twelve Caesars.
Random Suetonius quote
23 quotes
These innovations in the customs and principles of our forefathers do not please us nor seem proper.
On one occasion the people cheered the team he opposed; he cried angrily: "I wish all you Romans had only one neck!"
Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from the city.
Again, during a sacrifice, the augur Spurinna warned Caesar that the danger threatening him would not come later than the Ides of March.
The fox changes his skin but not his habits.
He answered some governors who had written to recommend an increase in the burden of provincial taxation, with: "A good shepherd shears his flock; he does not flay them."
The method of execution he preferred was to inflict numerous small wounds; and his familiar order: "Make him feel that he is dying!" soon became proverbial.
And to emphasize the bad name Caesar had won alike for unnatural and natural vice, I may here record that the Elder Curio referred to him in a speech as: "Every woman's man and every man's woman."
Caesar exclaimed: "Let us accept this as a sign from the Gods, and follow where they beckon, in vengeance on our double-dealing enemies. The die is cast."
Nero watched the conflagration from the Tower of Maecenas, enraptured by what he called "the beauty of the flames"; then put on his tragedian's costume and sang The Sack of Ilium from beginning to end.
One evening at dinner, realizing that he had done nobody any favour throughout the entire day, he spoke these memorable words: "My friends, I have wasted a day."
More quickly than asparagus is cooked.
Dead! And so great an artist!
That he had love-affairs in the provinces, too, is suggested by another of the ribald verses sung during the Gallic triumph:
Twenty-three dagger thrusts went home as he stood there. Caesar did not utter a sound after Casca's blow had drawn a groan from him; though some say that when he saw Marcus Brutus about to deliver the second blow, he reproached him in Greek with: "You, too, my child?"
A remarkably modest statement of his is recorded in the Proceedings of the Senate: "If So-and-so challenges me, I shall lay before you a careful account of what I have said and done; if he should continue, I shall reciprocate his dislike of me."
Caesar overtook his advanced guard at the river Rubicon, which formed the frontier between Gaul and Italy. Well aware how critical a decision confronted him, he turned to his staff, remarking: "We may still draw back but, once across that little bridge, we shall have to fight it out."
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 bricks; I leave her clothed in marble."
Some characteristic expressions he used rather frequently in everyday speech can be seen in letters in his own hand, in which he sometimes writes, when he wants to say that certain men will never pay: "they'll pay on the Greek Kalends." And when he wants to encourage his addressee to put up with present circumstances whatever they are, he says: "Let us be satisfied with the Cato we have."
However, he had a particular bent for mythology and carried his researches in it to such a ridiculous point that he would test professors of Greek literature – whose society, as I have already mentioned, he cultivated above all others – by asking them questions like: "Who was Hecuba's mother?" – "What name did Achilles assume when he was among the girls?" – "What song did the Sirens sing?"