Imperial building in Suetonius' Caesares : function and significance
Date
1982
Authors
Havers, Colin Bruce
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Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the information on imperial building activity contained in Suetonius' Caesares, and to ascertain the reasons for his inclusion of this material. The issue of accuracy has often been raised in Suetonian scholarship, usually to the biographer's discredit, but in this instance Suetonius can be shown to have reported his information faithfully.
After a brief introduction dealing mainly with the history of Suetonian scholarship, Chapter I examines Suetonius' biographical technique and connects his approach to Roman and Greek strains of biography. Suetonius can be shown to organize the information on his subjects, the first twelve Roman emperors, into chronological and non-chronological portions, the latter into set categories under separate headings. The type of information he includes reflects contemporary views on how the public activities of the emperor were perceived. Many of these views are inferable from coin issues of the early second century A. D., the period when Suetonius was composing.
Chapter II analyzes the information on public building in the Caesares. It is determined that Suetonius includes only certain types of buildings within the separate units on opera publica, omitting projects that lack a religious or utilitarian significance. Chapter III assembles a wide variety of purely non-Suetonian evidence, including coins and inscriptions, which shows that the emperor wished certain public works to be associated with his name permanently. The effect of imperial building was thus to perpetuate the emperor's public reputation, and to benefit the populace by providing both the services of buildings themselves and a source of employment for the urban poor. Building programmes created a means by which an emperor's initiative and motivation might be judged by his subjects. In the first century A.D., every emperor built, and his reputation among the populace was in part governed by the type and scale of public works executed.
In Chapter IV the roots of this tradition are traced to the monumental building of Hellenistic kings and to the projects of elected officials at Rome during the Republic. In the first century B.C. these discrete elements coalesced in the building projects of Sulla, Pompey, and Julius Caesar, all of whom had special advantages over their predecessors in this sphere. What became a tradition of building on the part of a powerful individual, able to meet the needs of the urban populace at Rome, was inherited by Augustus and his successors.
A brief conclusion summarizes the main findings of the thesis. The development of public works as a criterion for assessing an emperor's performance is recognizable in the early second century A.D . Suetonius' use of this convention, therefore , as revealed in his inclusion of the information on imperial building, makes him fully representative of his age as far as the assumptions underlying his portrayal of the emperors are concerned.