Why you'd want Loeb's cheap CP on Roman Biographers

Many NT scholars consider that the Gospels were written after the pattern of Graeco-Roman biographies. While I personally disagree with this, fact is that any recent discussion of the genre will cross-reference to these biographies which are not all found in the free Perseus collection.

Here in particular are available the biographies of Cornelius Nepos and Tranquillus Suetonius. Right now the projected price is $18 for the 12 volumes.

https://www.logos.com/product/33635/roman-biographers-collection

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GaoLu

I bid.

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/858215#Comment_858215

I am in on this for $24.

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/858222#Comment_858222

I'm in too!

Jack Caviness

I'm in for $18

Oldnewbie

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/858299#Comment_858299

I'm in at $18 as well.

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/860357#Comment_860357

I searched my library for "Suetonius," and I came up with 16,996 results in 9,858 articles in 1,706 resources. I would really like to see this succeed!

Greg F

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/860467#Comment_860467

An extract of Encyclopedia Britannica Noet Edition's article on Suetonius:

Most of Suetonius’ writings were antiquarian, dealing with such subjects as Greek pastimes, the history of Roman spectacles and shows, oaths and imprecations and their origins, terminology of clothing, well-known courtesans, physical defects, and the growth of the civil service. An encyclopaedia called Prata (“Meadows”), a work like the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, was attributed to him and often quoted in late antiquity.
Suetonius’ De viris illustribus is divided into short books on Roman poets, orators, historians, grammarians and rhetoricians, and perhaps philosophers. Very nearly all that is known about the lives of Rome’s eminent authors stems ultimately from this work, which survives only in the whole of one section and in the preface and five lives from another section. The lives of Horace, Lucan, Terence, and Virgil, for example, are known from writers who derived their facts from Suetonius.

De vita Caesarum, which treats Julius Caesar and the emperors up to Domitian, is largely responsible for that vivid picture of Roman society and its leaders, morally and politically decadent, that dominated historical thought until modified in modern times by the discovery of nonliterary evidence. The biographies are organized not chronologically but by topics: the emperor’s family background, career before accession, public actions, private life, appearance, personality, and death. Though free with scandalous gossip, they are largely silent on the growth, administration, and defense of the empire. Suetonius is free from the bias of the senatorial class that distorts much Roman historical writing. His sketches of the habits and appearance of the emperors are invaluable, but, like Plutarch, he used “characteristic anecdote” without exhaustive inquiry into its authenticity.

De vita Caesarum is still exciting reading. Suetonius wrote with firmness and brevity. He loved the mot juste, and his use of vocabulary enhanced his pictorial vividness. Above all he was unrhetorical, unpretentious, and capable of molding complex events into lucid expression.

Greg

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/860601#Comment_860601

Also, there are a bunch of other Loeb volumes languishing on CP too! The writings of Cicero and Livy come to mind!

Francis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/860609#Comment_860609

Reboot: we need to remind older and newer users of this important offering that is lingering ad infinitum in CP. Let's get it to production!!!

As I write, NT scholarship is going full steam on the belief that the Gospels are Graeco-Roman biographies. This will be reflected increasingly in commentaries, dictionaries and other resources. Serious students of the NT can either just believe everything that is being said (which has many significant holes in it imo) or have read and be able to consult as needed these biographies to see for themselves.

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/876563#Comment_876563

I would like to see these important works completed as well. I would pay $24 just for Suetonius' works in this collection.