The Lives of the Caesars – With 72 Woodcuts

Suetonius Tranquillus, Gaius (ca. 70 - after 122)

[De vita XII Caesarum]. Commentationes conditae a Philippo Beroaldo in Svetonium Tranquillum. Additis quamplurimis annotamentis: quae ut facilius cognoscantur. Asterien * notavimus. Cali Svetonii vita per Philippum Beroaldum. Call Svetonii vita per Sabellicum. Cum commento eiusdem. Philippi Beroaldi vita per Bartholomeum Blanchinum. Habes insuper mi lector candidae ipsius Tran. Svetonii tabulam vocabulorum.

Venice: per Philippum Pincium Mantuanum, 18 February, 1510.

Price: $16,000.00

Folio: 31.2 x 21.7 cm. (14), cccxli (1). lvs. Collation: AA10, BB4, a-z8, &8, cum8, rum8; A-Q8, R6 (final leaf is blank and present)

The title page features a fine woodcut (8 x 11.5 cm.) depicting the birth of Caesar (repeated in the text). The text is illustrated with an additional 71 small woodcut scenes (50 x 75 mm). Bound in contemporary (Swiss or German) half pigskin over original wooden boards, the pigskin richly tooled in blind. Two brass catches are preserved (the clasps and straps now perished); Pigskin soiled, some tiny wormholes to the binding. The text is in fine, bright condition, with small wormholes in the first and last leaves, the title page lightly soiled and very slightly frayed at the edges. From the libraries of Franz von Hauslab (1798–1883), Austrian general and cartographer (small stamp on the title page); and Giannalisa Feltrinelli (her bookplate on the front pastedown and blind stamp on the title page).

A fine edition of Suetonius's “Lives of the Caesars”, featuring the significant commentary of Filippo Beroaldo the Elder (1453–1505), first printed in 1493. Suetonius’ “Lives” were written between 119 and 122 AD and first printed at Rome in 1470. The book comprises biographies of Julius Caesar and the first eleven Roman emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Suetonius served under two emperors: Trajan, who put Suetonius in charge of the public libraries, and Hadrian, for whom he worked in the imperial archives and handled the emperor’s correspondence. His access to the imperial archives -and his proximity to Hadrian- would serve Suetonius well in his composition of the work for which he is best remembered.

The large woodcut on the title page, first printed in the 1490s, represents the first illustration of a Caesarean section designed for a printed book. It showing the newborn Caesar being extracted from his mother's body. This same image reappears on leaf I at the beginning of the life of Caesar. The woodcuts used to illustrate the text had already been used—in part for 15th-century editions of Livy (some bearing the monogram F and B, as in the 1495 Livy and the 1490 Bible) and in part for an earlier (1506) edition of Suetonius.

“Suetonius’ adoption of the biographical genre shows his awareness that this is the form of historical writing best suited to explain the new form that power has assumed (i.e. the individual, personal form of the principate), and also that the biography of individual emperors is best adapted to periodizing the history of the Empire. In the rejection of the annalistic scheme (i.e. the narrative of events year by year), which senatorial culture had tied to the succession of republican magistrates, one perceives the realistic awareness that those magistracies, though still existing formally, are now a mere fiction and that only the duration of each emperor’s reign can articulate the succession of periods.

“Suetonius has a notable tendency to emphasize the private lives of the emperors, which is often deplored as a low taste for gossip. He is fond of describing their excesses and intemperance and dwelling on petty or scandalous details, a tendency that has enhanced the success of the work, since it was read as a handbook of royal perversions. In this tendency one is also inclined to see the manifestation of a desire for objectivity and demystification and of an intention to provide a comprehensive portrait of the person, illuminating all aspects of both his public and his private life, without falling into encomium and without rejecting the concrete notices the imperial archives made available to him.

“Moreover, the “Lives” provide a window on the customs, institutions, and attitudes of Romans in the first hundred years of the principate. Like the poems of Martial and Juvenal, Suetonius’ work is of importance for reconstructing the social fabric of first century Rome.

“Suetonius achieved lasting success. His influence can be felt in the work of late antique and early medieval Encyclopedists (from Eutropius to Isidore of Seville) and he seems to have become a central author during the Carolingian Renaissance. In the 9th century, Einhard modeled his Life of Charlemagne on Suetonius’ Life of Julius Caesar.

“Suetonius’ influence in Renaissance Italy was profound. Petrarch, who owned two of the surviving ten 14th c. manuscripts (and another from the 12th c.) of the “Lives”, counted Suetonius as one of his favorite authors and modeled his own “De viris illustribus”(On Illustrious Men) on the “Lives”. Boccaccio also made extensive use of the work.

“The work’s popularity only increased as the Renaissance matured. The great Italian families (Visconti, Medici, Strozzi, Piccolomini, etc.) all had manuscripts of the “Lives” in their libraries. However, it was not until late in the 15th c. that humanist commentaries began to be published.”(Conte).

Sander 7144; Essling 209; De Marinis, Il Castello di Monselice, pp. 110-111; Adams S-2028; Graesse VI, 521; L'Art Ancienne, "Early books on medicine" nr. 1742