Ahve, and welcome to Emperors of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Rianen Evans, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode XL I XI-X-S-Euitonius.

Now, for those of you who haven't heard of Suitonius,

who are you and what podcast have you been listening to?

Suitonius is one of the fonts of all knowledge when it comes to the

Emperor of Rome. He's a biographer who lived during the era that we're

currently talking about and he wrote one of the most valuable texts that we have for

studying Roman emperors that is the 12 Caesars. So now

that we're in between Trajan and Hadrian, we thought we'd take the time to discuss the life

of one of ancient Rome's most important biographers. Here's Rianna Evans.

Sutoneus was born around 70 CE, like most authors we don't know exactly when,

and we don't know for certain exactly where he might have been born in Rome and the

current scholarship tends towards him being born in North Africa.

Yeah what's the current scholarship basing that on?

Because I try to look for the source of that.

The main basis for thinking that he was born in North Africa is from an inscription that was

found in the 1950s, or at least first published in the 1950s in modern

Algeria and this clearly says that he was an important person there gives his name.

It's a fragmentary inscription like a lot of the inscriptions we've got, but it's got his full name, Gaius Suetonius Tranquilus, and it says that he holds several important priesthoods, that he was, for example, the priest of Vulcan,

which may have been a priesthood that he held at Rome, but that he was selected for this role by the deified Emperor Trajan.

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