According to Suetonius, the imperial bureaucracy never ran more efficiently than under Domitian, whose exacting standards and suspicious nature maintained historically low corruption among provincial governors and elected officials.

Adminius, whose power-base appears from his coins to have been in Kent, was exiled by his father shortly before AD 40 according to Suetonius, prompting the emperor Caligula to mount his abortive invasion of Britain.

In Suetonius ' Life of Nero, we read that the emperor Nero's grandfather, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, whose wife was Antonia Major, daughter of Mark Antony, " was haughty, extravagant, and cruel, and when he was only an aedile, forced the censor Lucius Plancus to make way for him on the street ": the story seems to hint at the poor reputation Plancus held after his censorship.

The emperor is described as a handsome youth, like Mars and Apollo, whose accession marks the beginning of a new golden age, prognosticated by the appearance of a comet, doubtless the same that appeared some time before the death of Claudius ; he exhibits splendid games in the amphitheatre ( probably the wooden amphitheatre erected by Nero in 57 ); and in the words " maternis causam qui vicit lulis " ( i. 45 ) there is a reference to the speech delivered in Greek by Nero on behalf of the Ilienses ( Suetonius, Nero, 7 ; Tacitus, Annals, xii.

Nero's father had been employed as a praetor and was a member of Caligula's staff when the latter traveled to the East ( some apparently think Suetonius refers to Augustus ' adopted son Gaius Caesar here, but this is not likely ).

Nero's father was described by Suetonius as a murderer and a cheat who was charged by Emperor Tiberius with treason, adultery, and incest.

Suetonius also recorded that when Vitellius was born his horoscope so horrified his parents that his father tried to prevent Aulus from becoming a consul.

According to Suetonius, this caused consternation ; the ceremony required Titus to wear a diadem, which the Romans associated with kingship, and the partisanship of Titus's legions had already led to fears that he might rebel against his father.

) According to Suetonius, the Octavian family held some renown there, and Gaius Octavius ( father of the future Caesar Augustus ) defeated a Spartacist army near there ; as a result, the future emperor was granted the surname Thurinus shortly after birth.

In defence of the identification of the group as the Domitii Ahenobarbi and of the boy as Gnaeus, Pollini has pointed out that Suetonius specifically mentions that Nero's father went " to the East on the staff of the young Gaius Caesar ".

Suetonius said that " after the birth of his daughter, complaining of his poverty, and the burdens to which he was subjected, not only as an emperor, but a father, he made a general collection for her maintenance and fortune.

When Nero castrated a boy named Sporus and married him as a wife, Suetonius quoted one Roman who lived around this time who remarked that the world would have been better off if Nero's father had married someone more like the castrated boy.

Suetonius tells us he was deposed and exiled by his father c. 39 or 40.

Suetonius alleges that Tiberius had a low opinion of Julia's character, while Tacitus claims that she disdained Tiberius as an unequal match and even sent her father a letter, written by Sempronius Gracchus, denouncing him.

The Roman historian Suetonius reports that when Vespasian's son Titus complained about the disgusting nature of the tax, his father held up a gold coin and asked whether he felt offended by its smell ( sciscitans num odore offenderetur ).

Mark Antony later charged that Octavian had earned his adoption by Caesar through sexual favours, though Suetonius, in his work Lives of the Twelve Caesars, describes Antony's accusation as political slander.

According to Suetonius, Agrippina had a strict upbringing and education.

According to Suetonius who had cited from Pliny the Elder, Agrippina had borne to Germanicus, a son called Gaius Julius Caesar who had a lovable character.

According to Suetonius, Caligula nursed a rumor that Augustus and Julia the Elder had an incestuous union from which Agrippina the Elder had been born.

Londinium was abandoned to the rebels who burnt it down, slaughtering anyone who had not evacuated with Suetonius.

The historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus tells us the crisis had almost persuaded Nero to abandon Britain.

The main ancient historians Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio all wrote after the last of the Flavians had gone.

According to Suetonius, in the first year of Caligula's reign he squandered 2, 700, 000, 000 sesterces that Tiberius had amassed.

According to Suetonius, he was the first Roman Emperor who had demanded to be addressed as dominus et deus ( master and god ).

According to Suetonius, a number of omens had foretold Domitian's death.

Furthermore, contemporary historians such as Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Suetonius all authored the information on his reign after it had ended, and his memory had been condemned to oblivion.

The first apparent usage of the term " euthanasia " belongs to the historian Suetonius who described how the Emperor Augustus, " dying quickly and without suffering in the arms of his wife, Livia, experienced the ' euthanasia ' he had wished for.

According to Suetonius, a physician later established that only one wound, the second one to his chest, had been lethal.

As Emperor he became known for his generosity, and Suetonius states that upon realising he had brought no benefit to anyone during a whole day he remarked, " Friends, I have lost a day.

Suetonius reports that he had refused to return to Rome just before his death.

Tacitus charges that Livia was not altogether innocent of these deaths and Cassius Dio also mentions such rumours, but not even the gossipmonger Suetonius, who had access to official documents, repeats them.

An inquiry was set up under Nero's freedman, Polyclitus, and an excuse, that Suetonius had lost some ships, was found to relieve him of his command.

Suetonius was captured by Vitellius and obtained a pardon by claiming that he had deliberately lost the battle for Otho, although this was almost certainly untrue.

The Roman writer Suetonius recorded an anecdote of the heroic centurion Cassius Scaeva, who fought under Caesar in the Battle of Dyrrachium:

Later, Suetonius describes the first century Roman invasion of Vectis by the Second Legion Augusta, commanded by the Claudian legate and future emperor Vespasian, who " proceeded to Britain where he fought thirty battles, subjugated two warlike tribes, and captured more than twenty towns, besides the entire Isle of Vectis ".

Passages from the works of Juvenal, Seneca, and Suetonius suggest that those retiarii who fought in tunics may have constituted an even more demeaned subtype ( retiarii tunicati ) who were not viewed as legitimate retiarii fighters but as arena clowns.

Suetonius states that Domitius was congratulated by friends on the birth of his son, whereupon he replied " I don't think anything produced by me and Agrippina could possibly be good for the state or the people ".

In AD 60 or 61, while the current governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, was leading a campaign against the island of Mona ( modern Anglesey ) in the north of Wales, which was a refuge for British rebels and a stronghold of the druids, the Iceni conspired with their neighbours the Trinovantes, amongst others, to revolt.

Agricola was a military tribune under Suetonius Paulinus, which almost certainly gave Tacitus an eyewitness source for Boudica's revolt.

According to an anecdote preserved by Suetonius, Caesar did not deny that Catullus's lampoons left an indelible stain on his reputation, but when Catullus apologized, he invited the poet for dinner the very same day.

Suetonius states that a total of 35 senators and 300 knights were executed for offenses during Claudius ' reign.

Suetonius claims that Caligula was already cruel and vicious: he writes that, when Tiberius brought Caligula to Capri, his purpose was to allow Caligula to live in order that he "... prove the ruin of himself and of all men, and that he was rearing a viper for the Roman People and a Phaëton for the world.

A brief famine of an unknown size occurred, perhaps caused by this financial crisis, but according to Suetonius a result of Caligula's seizure of public carriages, according to Seneca because grain imports were disturbed by Caligula using boats for a pontoon bridge.

According to Suetonius, some were convicted for corruption or treason, others on trivial charges, which Domitian justified through his suspicion:

According to Suetonius, the people of Rome met the news of Domitian's death with indifference, but the army was much grieved, calling for his deification immediately after the assassination, and in several provinces rioting.

Nevertheless, the account of Suetonius has dominated imperial historiography for centuries.

Einhard's literary model was the classical work of the Roman historian Suetonius, the Lives of the Caesars, though it is important to stress that the work is very much Einhard's own, that is to say he adapts the models and sources for his own purposes.

* Caesar ( as, for example, in Suetonius ' Twelve Caesars ).

However, for himself, Suetonius says Caesar said nothing.

The ancient historical writers, chiefly Suetonius and Tacitus, write from the point of view of the Roman senatorial aristocracy, and portray the Emperors in generally negative terms, whether from preference for the Roman Republic or love of a good scandalous story.

According to Suetonius, he was known for his cruelty and debauchery through his perversion on the island of Capri where he forced young boys and girls into orgies.

This view is based on the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, the main surviving sources for Nero's reign.

: Suetonius wrote "... for even if he was not the instigator of the emperor's death, he was at least privy to it, as he openly admitted ; for he used afterwards to laud mushrooms, the vehicle in which the poison was administered to Claudius, as " the food of the gods ," as the Greek proverb has it.

If the palace was designed for Lucullus, then it may have only been in use for a few years, for the Roman historian Suetonius records that Lucullus was executed by the delusional emperor Domitian in or shortly after AD 93.

Three brief ancient lives, the earliest attributed to Suetonius, another to an otherwise unknown Vacca, and the third anonymous and undated, along with references in Martial, Cassius Dio, Tacitus's Annals, and one of Statius's Silvae, allow for the reconstruction of a modest biography.