Suetonius

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

BBC

Stand-up, History, Comedy

4.8 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Natalie tells the story of Suetonius, biographer of the Caesars and friend of Pliny the Younger. She's joined by guests Professor Llewelyn Morgan and biographer and journalist Anita Anand. Classical knowledge is fragile: so much is lost. We don't know, for example, when Julius Caesar was born. What we do know about the Caesars is largely because of Suetonius. And some of it is quite strange. Who knew that experts in Latin grammar were once the coolest of the cool? That Domitian wrote a treatise on hair care? That Augustus kept a bust of Hadrian in his office and used hot nuts to soften the hair on his thighs? (Please don't try this at home).

Fellow biographer Anita Anand knows - like Suetonius - that writing about the long-dead is probably sensible if you want to stay out of trouble, but she still found herself in international hot water after her book on the Koh-i-Noor diamond (co-written with William Dalrymple) was published. It's amazing how Suetonius managed to stay in imperial good books despite writing the first warts and all biographies of all time.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:04.7	Ladies and gentlemen, today I am standing up for Suetonius.
0:11.7	Suetonius, or to give him his full name, Gaius Suetonius Tranquilus, was born around the year 70.
0:22.2	There is massive upheaval in the Roman world because the year before, 69, has been civil war
0:28.3	in Rome.
0:29.3	And Suetonius's own father served under the very short-lived Emperor Otho in that civil war.
0:35.4	There's a reason why that year is described as the year of four emperors. Bye, Otho in that Civil War. There's a reason why that year is described as the year of four
0:37.6	emperors. Bye, Otho. We don't know for sure where Suetonius was born. It might be Algeria,
0:46.4	but it may well not be. He was the great Roman biographer about whom we know, ironically,
0:53.3	very little. He was a member of the equestrian class,
0:57.1	the well-to-do middle class. He was a born nerd, a magpie for facts, a massive nerd for Greek,
1:04.1	especially he loves Greek, and a friend of Pliny the Younger who angles for him to get a military
1:09.5	post. We have a lovely letter from him because Suetonius has asked
1:13.8	very politely if that military post could be transferred to a relative of his. Almost as if, obviously,
1:23.1	I am posing my own values on Pliny. Pliny didn't think about what Suetonius might like,
1:28.0	but thought about what would be good for him. They still don't fall out over it. Pliny, very graciously,
1:32.2	is writing to Suetonius again quite soon, begging him to publish his work so that Pliny
1:36.9	can enjoy his friend's acclaim. I know, not like regular writers at all. Please, will you
1:43.9	welcome to the stage, my guest, Anita Arndand and Professor Llewellyn Morgan.
1:55.7	Llewellyn, it is ironic, isn't it, that we have such a sketchy biography of the great biographer. Why do we know so little about him?
2:03.1	We know so little about ancient authors in general because nobody's particularly interested in them.
2:08.9	And it's one of the amazing things about Suetonius is that he's kind of interested in everything.
	...

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