Word: suetonius
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...random polymorphous perversity, it would be hard to top The Twelve Caesars by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (born circa A.D. 69). A classic capital insider, Suetonius served as chief secretary to the Emperor Hadrian and wrote a number of books that certainly sound like best sellers, most of them, unfortunately, now lost. Connoisseurs of the carnal particularly lament the disappearance of his Lives of Famous Whores. But The Twelve Caesars still packs plenty of punch per sesterce: Augustus as an elderly man, relentlessly deflowering virgins, some of them procured for him by his wife; Tiberius training young boys, whom he dubbed...
What we hear in Tolstoi or Flaubert or Dickens or Proust, wrote Novelist Mary McCarthy, "is the voice of a neighbor relating the latest gossip." Literature coalesces out of base gossip, from Suetonius to Boswell's Journals to Diana Trilling's new account (Mrs. Harris) of the Scarsdale Diet doctor's murder...
...bride and her bridegroom, their Caligula, unlike Vidal's, is as straight as the Appian Way. Says McDowell: "Historically, there is nothing to show that Caligula was in any way homosexual." That is a bit of instant scholarship that would no doubt surprise Gibbon, not to mention Suetonius...
...lavish praise of Augustan virtues. Emperor Trajan was so taken by his triumphs, that to satisfy his pride he had 2,500 of his followers' names carved into a 137-ft.-high marble pillar in the Forum at Rome. Alas, the custom has largely fallen into desuetude since Suetonius, who as the Emperor Hadrian's private secretary had the opportunity-and encouragement-to sift imperial dossiers. Had the practice been followed, history might read quite differently...
...Preston, we are reminded with his every movement what a great musical comedy performer he is. Unfortunately, the depressing influence of the Literary has dimmed the euphoria with which he used to light into all those trombones. Nowadays, he resembled no one so much as Tiberius Caesar of whom Suetonius said, "he habitually wore the expression of an man straining on the stood...