# Loeb Suetonius prints the Caligula vita as a catalogue of imperial cruelty

Date: 1913

## The fact

In 1913–14 J. C. Rolfe’s Loeb Suetonius issued the [Caligula](/people/caligula) life, a completed Latin-English instrument that catalogues executions, humiliations, and arbitrary killings. The dated carrier is the Loeb, not a palace daybook. Suetonius wrote under later dynasties with reason to blacken Gaius.

## Context

Anecdote-lives mix documentable deaths (Gemellus, Macro) with theatrical set-pieces. Confidence on any single joke-killing stays medium. The pattern of unprotected persons around the princeps is the rights path.

Caligula is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, museum, or agency page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Suetonius, Loeb vol. 1 (Rolfe) scan (https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.13483; Internet Archive / Loeb Classical Library).

## Significance

A printed cruelty-vita is a rights-harm heading. Do not invent a numbered body-count from Suetonius’s jokes.

A printed cruelty-vita is a rights-harm heading. Do not invent a numbered body-count from Suetonius’s jokes.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Caligula: https://factrail.ai/people/caligula

## Drivers

- Protection of Minority Rights: https://factrail.ai/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caligula-Roman-emperor
- https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.13483

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cal-suetonius-loeb-cruelty