An Analysis Of Suvitonius's Biographical Historiography Thoughts

Suetonius who is an outstanding historical biographer of ancient Rome that had formed a very clear concept of biography that distinguishing history from biography.He avoids the areas of history carefully,and abandons the historical narrative,but uses the classification methods to decompose and reconstruct historical events.In subject matter,he tries to avoid discussing political and military matters,but focuses on Caesar's private life.He accustoms to reference to the primary archives directly,which is disgusted by ancient historians.With the biographic perception,Suetonius' biographical writing presents a very prominent feature,that is,the pursuit of truth in the writing,the use of anecdotes to characterize the character,and using the virtue as a standard of character evaluation.Obviously,the ancient biography and history become unity in the opposition through Suetonius.On the one hand,Suetonius uses the method of classification to focus on private affairs and anecdotes,which is different from history.Because of its unique narrative content,biography obtained an independent development status and biography and history have a clear distance;the other hand,because of Suetonius explore the authenticity sedulously,biography and history unified again on the basis of truth.Therefore,from the perspective of the development of biographical history,"Twelve Caesar Biography" is an important symbol of Western biography history.Suetonius' biographic perception is based on the development the biographical historiography of ancient Greek and Roman.It adapts to the development of ancient biography and is an inevitable trend in the development of biography.Therefore,the"De Vita Caesarum" was very popular in Roman and had a far-reaching impact on future generations.Based on the development history of western historiography,combining the macroscopic grasp and the microscopic study,this thesis will focus on the background,characteristics and influence of Suetonius' biography by the methods of historical theory and historical comparison.