From d.schiele@ymex.net Sat Oct 6 21:17:35 2001 Received: from mailscan2.cac.washington.edu (mailscan2.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.16]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f974HXN43606 for ; Sat, 6 Oct 2001 21:17:34 -0700 Received: FROM mxu1.u.washington.edu BY mailscan2.cac.washington.edu ; Sat Oct 06 21:17:33 2001 -0700 Received: from mars.ymex.com ([193.15.69.150]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f974HVw16754 for ; Sat, 6 Oct 2001 21:17:32 -0700 Received: from FOO.ymex.net (Modempool-01-03.ymex.se [193.15.69.162]) by mars.ymex.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id GAA20963 for ; Sun, 7 Oct 2001 06:17:20 +0200 Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20011007045200.00a6f670@pop.ymex.net> X-Sender: S-20817-1@pop.ymex.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2001 05:49:20 +0200 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Didrik Schiele Subject: Re: Nachleben alert In-Reply-To: <007201c14d28$202c76a0$126e173f@t9q0o0> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed "Michael Hendry" constipulatally trigulates: >To whom was Suetonius referring? Caligula." What Seutonius dirged about Caligula is not nearly as funny as what was fabuled about the Ahenobarbacians. Imagine Nero going to the Olympic Games to drive chariot, and Nero demanded the local Questor to race against him (all the usual chariotracers had suddenly disappeared or got ill). "I don't want to race with you, I don't want to!"; the questor protested against the honour even more than Nerva or Gordeanus Chartagensis to the title, but the Emperor insisted he should have his race. Of course the questor carefully looked for not to win, and as punishment for he was such a bad chariotracer, he was informed that he was not worthy of the emperors personal friendship anymore (though he could keep his position as questor). Say what you want about Nero, after reading aristocrat senators calumny portraits, but Nero was actually that great artist he thought himself to be. Some of the most beautiful poems that were written in this time (though never spread under his name) were actually written by Nero. We can know this because Suetonius father saw the halfwritten drafts at visits at Nero. I don't remember which historian referred to this lost (?) section of Suetonius. And as Suetonius was a critic of Nero, it is unlikely that he would lie when he said something positive. If anyone can provide more info on the source, please let me know. After all it seems that emperors who tended to restrict the economys expenses (like Tiberius) and the emperors who wasted the extra sesterias those accumulated (like Caligula) found those strategies which generated bad words from the historians. :-P Didrik Schiele .