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until young Agrippa was cut off. The officer who acted as his gaoler put him to death, on receipt of a written warrant. There was some doubt whether Augustus had left this order when he was dying, with a view to preventing trouble after he was gone, or Livia had dictated it in the name of Augustus, and, if so, whether Tiberius was privy to the transaction or ignorant of it. (Tib. 22.) In spite of this, however, the guilt of Tiberius is practically taken for granted almost at once, when in a list of conspiracies against him the first item is that "a slave of Agrippa, Clement by name, had got together a considerable force to avenge his master.' (Tib. 25.) Again, when dealing with the death of Claudius, Suetonius says it was agreed that the Emperor was poisoned, but there were different views as to where and by whom. Some maintained that the poison was administered when Claudius was feasting with the priests in the citadel, and by his praegustator or taster, the Eunuch Halotus; others, that it was at a banquet in the palace, and by the Empress Agrippina. (Claud. 44.) He says further that there were varying accounts of the immediate consequences. When we turn to the Nero, however (chapter 33), we find that Suetonius has settled down comfortably to the mushroom story and the Agrippina alternative, though Nero was so far an accomplice that this may be put down as the first of his murders. Agrippina might of course be really guilty whether the poisoning was done at the Capitol or in the palace, by herself or through the praegustator; but, on the other hand, in a case where there was evidently no clear proof, and only wild floating rumours to go upon, one may seek relief in a merciful scepticism, and hope that Claudius was not poisoned at all. Suspicions and charges of poisoning were as common then as they were in the days of the Borgias in Italy, or for a century after Catherine de Medici's time in France. And for the same reason, no doubt the times were evil; human life was held cheap, and there was a traffic in poison, as in much besides that was criminal.

Death that came suddenly, and could not be readily explained, was at once attributed to poison.

Suetonius, it is said, was at great pains to tap all available sources for materials. We may admit that, while suspecting that he was too much like simple people who during these days believe everything they see in the newspapers. If half were true of what he tells about Tiberius, that Emperor's life would be an insoluble riddle; but there can be no doubt that he read or heard every word of it somewhere. Perhaps much of this nightmarish stuff was, as Merivale suggests, what the notorious delators of the reign accused their victims of say ing against the Emperor. If so, there surely never was a plainer case of tyranny overreaching itself, and branding itself with an infamy blacker than it deserved, by the very means it resorted to for security.

Tacitus, at the beginning of his Annals, says that the affairs of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius and Nero were misrepresented in one way through fear and flattery while they lived, and then in another through hatred after their death. He thought he stood far enough away from them to be above bitterness or partiality. When we look into the matter, however, we find that he was already about ten years old when Nero perished, and he stood no further from Tiberius than one born in England or in France about the time of Queen Victoria's accession would stand from the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon. We need not, therefore, be surprised if he did not quite keep his word about ira and studium. Suetonius, who came later, was far from being of the same magnitude, and so more likely to accept current preconceptions, and more excusable if he did. At the same time, his very weaknesses made him incapable of the ira and studium, which Tacitus deprecated but did not wholly escape. Suetonius, it has been said, was not so much impartial as indifferent; his object was not to inculcate political or any other doctrines, but to draw lifelike portraits of the Emperors with materials

of every kind diligently, if not always judiciously, collected.

That brings us to what makes the strength and life of his work. History too often leaves us in the dark as to what the men were like whose doings and misdoings it records. They are but names to us, and we are correspondingly grateful to an author who takes trouble to tell us all he can discover about their personal appearance, their habits, their common sayings and doings-to give us, in short, a breathing man and not a mere historical x. "We wanted," Carlyle writes in his essay on Diderot, "to see and know how it stood with the bodily man, the clothed, boarded, bedded, working and warfaring Denis Diderot, in that Paris of his how he looked and lived, what he did, what he said: had the foolish biographer so much as told us what colour his stockings were!" Carlyle might have been moderately well satisfied with Suetonius in this respect, however he might have judged of him otherwise. For one supreme service, Suetonius was at pains to give in every one of his biographical sketches a picture of the man as he looked to his contemporaries, so that we have a veritable picture gallery of these twelve Cæsars of his, and it will be our own fault if we go without a good working conception of their build and stature, the colour of their eyes and their hair, whether they were pale or ruddy, slender or fat, whether they spoke well or stammered, extemporized or read carefully prepared speeches, ate and drank temperately or to excess. The portraiture might have satisfied Cromwell; for the warts are put in, but no fine feature is left out. This careful work it is that more than anything else kept the Twelve Cæsars of Suetonius alive where so much has died.

Here, for example, is Tiberius :-" He was a man of a big brawny frame, and above the ordinary height, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with the rest of his members down to the soles of his feet well-matched and proportioned. He could use his left hand more freely

and effectively than the right, and his joints were so well knit that he could bore through with his finger a sound apple fresh from the tree, and break a boy's or even a young man's head with a fillip. His complexion was light fair, and he wore his hair so long behind as to cover his whole neck, which was a fashion the Claudian family affected. He had a handsome face, which, however, often broke out suddenly in a thick crop of pimples, with uncommonly large eyes, which had a strange power of seeing by night and in the dark, though only for a short while after he woke from sleep, for they soon turned dim again. He used to walk about with his head thrown stiffly back, generally with contracted brows and in silence, seldom or never saying a word even to those who were close beside him; when he spoke at all he did so very slowly, making some soft play with his fingers." (Tib. 68.)

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And here is Claudius :-" In bodily appearance he wanted not for majesty and dignity, whether sitting or standing, and particularly when he was reposing. For he was long-limbed, and yet not lank, with a handsome face, beautiful grey hair, and a goodly neck. But his thighs were flabby and gave under him as he walked, and alike when taking things easy and when working hard he had many ungainly ways: a coarse spluttering laugh, a gaping slobbering mouth and a running nose when he was angry; with a stammer to the bargain, and a head that was always shaking, but most of all when he was doing anything, no matter what. His health, which had before been poor, was excellent after he became emperor, except for a pain in the stomach, which he said made him think of suicide when it gripped him." (Claud. 31, 32.)

The personalia are most detailed in the life of Augustus. Some extracts will show with what curious minuteness Suetonius must have sought out everything discoverable about the first of the Emperors.

"After a bit of lunch at midday," Suetonius writes, "he lay down for a short siesta, just as he was in his

clothes and shoes, with a rug over his feet, and his hand over his eyes. From supper he withdrew to a couch in his cabinet, where he remained to a late hour, until he cleared off the whole or the bulk of the day's arrears of business. He then went to bed, and slept at the longest not more than seven hours, and even that not at one stretch, for he woke three or four times in the course of the night. If he could not get to sleep again, as sometimes happened, he would send for some one to read to him or tell him stories, till he dropped off, and then he would often go on sleeping till well after daybreak. He never lay awake in the dark without some one sitting by him. He disliked early rising, and if he had to be up earlier than usual for some business or a religious ceremony, rather than be put about, he would pass the night with one or another of his domestics that happened to lodge nearest the place he had to go to. Thus too it often chanced that, having had a scanty night's rest, he would fall asleep while he was being carried through the streets, and when his litter was set down during any block in the traffic." (Aug. 78.)

Suetonius seldom forgets to tell his readers what sort of health his Cæsars enjoyed, but he excels himself when dealing with Augustus :

"He had several severe and dangerous illnesses in the course of his life; one in particular, after the conquest of Cantabria, when he was brought to death's door by a derangement of the liver, and had to undergo two contrary kinds of medical treatment; for as hot fomentations did him no good, he was induced to try cold ones on the advice of Antonius Musa. He was liable to some ailments which recurred at a certain time every year. Thus he was generally in poor health about his birthday, and at the beginning of spring he used to suffer from flatulence, while he always had a cold in the head during the southerly gales. With a shattered constitution he found both cold and hot weather hard to bear. To keep him warm in winter he wore with a thick toga four tunics, an under-shirt, a woollen