Suetonius, Caligula 51.2

Imperial crowd-surfing.

adversus barbaros quoque minacissimus, cum trans Rhenum inter angustias densumque agmen iter essedo faceret, dicente quodam non mediocrem fore consternationem sicunde hostis appareat, equum ilico conscendit ac propere reversus ad pontes; ut eos calonibus et impedimentis stipatos repperit, impatiens morae per manus ac super capita hominum translatus est.

Although he also issued very many threats against the barbarians, when he was travelling in a chariot, and amid a close-packed column of men, through a narrow pass on the far side of the Rhine, someone said that there would be no little alarm if the enemy should appear from anywhere. Caligula immediately mounted a horse and rushed back to the bridges. When he found that they were crammed full of camp servants and baggage, he was impatient at the delay and was carried by hand over the men’s heads.

Suetonius, Tiberius 69

circa deos ac religiones neglegentior, quippe addictus mathematicae plenusque persuasionis cuncta fato agi, tonitrua tamen praeter modum expavescebat, et turbatiore caelo numquam non coronam lauream capite gestavit, quod fulmine afflari negetur id genus frondis.

He rather neglected matters concerning the gods and religion, as he was addicted to astrology and was fully persuaded that everything happens according to fate; nonetheless he was excessively terrified of thunder, and whenever the sky was looking rather stormy he was never without a laurel wreath on his head, because it is said that that kind of leaf does not get struck by lightning. 

Suetonius, Caligula 34.2

cogitavit etiam de Homeri carminibus abolendis, cur enim sibi non licere, dicens, quod Platoni licuisset, qui eum e civitate quam constituebat eiecerit? sed et Vergili ac Titi Livi scripta et imagines paulum afuit quin ex omnibus bibliothecis amoveret, quorum alterum ut nullius ingenii minimaeque doctrinae, alterum ut verbosum in historia neglegentemque carpebat.

He even thought about destroying Homer’s poems, asking why he shouldn’t be allowed what had been permitted for Plato, who threw Homer out of his ‘republic’. Moreover, he was very close to removing the writings and busts of Virgil and Titus Livy from all the libraries; he reviled the former as having no talent and very little learning, and the latter as verbose and careless in history.

Suetonius, Galba 6.1

honoribus ante legitimum tempus initis praetor commissione ludorum Floralium novum spectaculi genus elephantos funambulos edidit.

He began to hold public office before the legal age; when he was praetor he put on the games of the Floralia, producing a new kind of spectacle – tightrope-walking elephants.

Frontinus, Stratagems 1.12.2

From a section on how to improve morale among your troops if they observe a bad omen.

C. Caesar, cum forte conscendens navem lapsus esset, ‘teneo te, terra mater,’ inquit. qua interpretatione effecit, ut repetiturus illas a quibus proficiscebatur terras videretur.

When Gaius Caesar had happened to slip as he was embarking on his ship, he said, ‘I hold you, mother earth!’ By this explanation he brought it about that it seemed he was going to return to those lands from which he was setting out.

Suetonius (The Divine Julius 59) has a different (and slightly better) version of the same story – or perhaps Caesar used the same tactic more than once!

prolapsus etiam in egressu navis, verso ad melius omine, ‘teneo te,’ inquit, ‘Africa.’

When he fell over as he was disembarking from his ship, he turned the omen to the better by saying ‘I hold you, Africa.’

Suetonius, On Grammarians 9

Suetonius is discussing Horace’s teacher Orbilius.

librum etiam, cui est titulus περὶ ἀλογίας, edidit continentem querelas de iniuriis, quas professores neglegentia aut ambitione parentum acciperent.

He also published a book, whose title is On Folly; it contains complaints about the injustices which teachers endured through the carelessness or vanity of parents.

The title of the book has been corrupted (‘Perialogos’) in the manuscripts. ‘Peri alogias’ (‘On Folly’) seems the easiest correction.

Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 25.4

A favourite saying of Augustus, according to Suetonius.

σπεῦδε βραδέως.

More haste, less speed.

Suetonius, The Deified Julius 85

Here’s the sad end of Cinna the poet at the hands of a mob, famous from Act III Scene iii of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

plebs statim a funere ad domum Bruti et Cassi cum facibus tetendit atque aegre repulsa obvium sibi Helvium Cinnam per errorem nominis, quasi Cornelius is esset, quem graviter pridie contionatum de Caesare requirebat, occidit caputque eius praefixum hastae circumtulit.

The common people proceeded with torches straight from the funeral to the house of Brutus and Cassius. After being driven away with difficulty they met Helvius Cinna and, because of a mistake over his name, they killed him – they thought that he was the Cornelius whom they were looking for because of the disagreeable speech about Caesar which he had made the previous day – and they carried his head around impaled on the end of a spear.

Suetonius, Life of Terence 4

The comic playwright died on his way back from a visit to Greece. Suetonius quotes a poetic tribute by Volcatius Sedigitus.

post editas comoedias nondum quintum atque vicesimum egressus annum, causa vitandae opinionis qua videbatur aliena pro suis edere, seu percipiendi Graecorum instituta moresque, quos non perinde exprimeret in scriptis, egressus est neque amplius rediit. de morte eius Vulcatius sic tradit:

sed ut Afer populo sex dedit comoedias,
iter hinc in Asiam fecit, et navem ut semel
conscendit, visus numquam est; sic vita vacat.

After publishing his comedies before he had passed his twenty-fifth year, he departed from Rome – either to avoid gossip which claimed he was publishing others’ work as his own, or else to gain knowledge of the manners and customs of the Greeks, which he thought he had not yet properly put across in his writings – and he never again returned. Concerning his death Vulcatius has left us these lines:

But when [Terentius] Afer had produced six comedies,
he voyaged hence to Africa. When once he had embarked,
he was never again seen; so did he leave life.

Accius, Atreus, fragment 168

oderint dum metuant.

Let them hate me, as long as they fear me.

A line from the tragedy Atreus by Lucius Accius (170-86 BC), whose work survives only in fragments. This one, evidently spoken by the tyrannical Atreus himself, was much quoted, appearing in Seneca the Younger (On Anger 1.20.4), Cicero (On Duties 1.97), and most famously in Suetonius’ Life of Caligula 30: it was, we learn there, a line that the bad emperor particularly liked to quote.