Only two works of Suetonius are preserved, the first entire, but for a small part at the beginning, and of the second only a part, and that much mutilated. [Sidenote: The Lives of the Cæsars.] The _Lives of the Twelve Cæsars_ (_De Vita Cæsarum_), in eight books, contains the lives of Julius Cæsar (Book I), Augustus (Book II), Tiberius (Book III), Caligula (Book IV), Claudius (Book V), Nero (Book VI), Galba, Otho, Vitellius (Book VII), Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian (Book VIII). The work is dedicated to Septicius Clarus, to whom Pliny the younger dedicated his letters, and was published between 119 and 121 A. D., for Clarus is addressed as _præfectus prætorio_, an office which he held only during those years. The beginning is lost, for the life of Cæsar begins at the point when Cæsar was sixteen years old. Suetonius is a careful and conscientious writer and makes use of various sources of information, not only published histories and biographies, but also public documents, autograph letters of the emperors, and apparently oral tradition. He lacks, however, the critical insight necessary for a good historian and the understanding of character needed by a good biographer. He collected his material with impartiality, avoiding neither what was friendly nor what was hostile to the emperors whose lives he records, and arranged this material as best he could, with no apparent endeavor to trace the development of character, or even to determine in all cases the chronological sequence of events. Dates are seldom given, and the work as a whole presents rather the material for history than real history. But this material is interesting, and the style is simple, straightforward, and clear. Although he wrote at a time when affectations of style were fashionable, Suetonius had the good taste to keep himself free from them. [Sidenote: De Viris Illustribus.] The second work of Suetonius, entitled _De Viris Illustribus_ (_On Illustrious Men_), was a series of philosophers, grammarians, and rhetoricians. The section on orators began with Cicero, that on historians with Sallust. The greater part of the section on grammarians and rhetoricians is extant, as are the lives of Terence, Horace, and Lucan from the section on poets, and that of Pliny the elder from the section on historians. Extracts from other parts of the work are preserved by Jerome and in the scholia on various writers. Each section contained a list of the authors discussed, a brief account of their branch of literature, and short lives of the authors arranged chronologically. In this work also the style is simple and clear, but brevity is sought at the expense of literary excellence.