7.2.3 The Life of Claudius

Description

A writer named Suetonius (69 – 126 CE) wrote this in a biography of the emperor Claudius (who ruled Rome between 41 and 54 CE.) No Roman-era scroll survives of this biography, but someone in the Middle Ages made a copy of it in Latin, and it has been copied and translated ever since. Even though it was copied and translated, historians still consider Suetonius’s biography a primary source. Although Suetonius was not writing about Rome as a site of encounter, he recorded details that historians use as evidence for products and people from different places coming into and going out of Rome.