The little that is known of Suetonius is derived from his lives of the Caesars and the letters of his friend, the younger Plinius.
He states that he was a young man (adolescens) twenty years after the death of Nero (Nero, 100.57.), and Nero died A. D. 68. Accordingly he may have been born a few years after Nero's death. In his life of Domitian (100.12) he speaks of being present at a certain affair, as adolescentulus. It appears from various passages in his work that he might have received oral information about the emperors who lived before he was born, at least Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. His father Suetonius Lenis (Otho, 100.10), a tribune of the thirteenth legion, was in the battle of Bebriacum or Bedriacum, in which Otho was defeated by Vitellius. The words Lenis and Tranquillus have the same meaning; but there may be some doubt about the reading Lenis, in the passage in the life of Otho. In the collection of the letters of the younger Plinius there are several to Suetonius Tranquillus, from one of which (1.18) it appears that Suetonius was then a young man and entering on the career of an advocate. In another letter (1.24) he speaks of his friend Tranquillus wishing to buy a small estate, such as suited a man of studious habits, enough to amuse him, without occupying him too much. Suetonius does not appear to have been desirous of public employment, for he requested Plinius to transfer to a relation, Caesennius Silvanus, a tribuneship, which Plinius had obtained for Suetonius (3.8). In a letter of uncertain date (5.11) Plinius urges Suetonius to publish his works (scripta), but without giving any intimation what the works were; Plinius says that he had already recommended the works of Suetonius in some hendecasyllabic verses, and jocularly expresses his danger of being called on to produce them by legal process (ne cogantur ad exhibendum formulam accipere). In a letter to Trajanus (10.95) Plinius commends to the emperor the integrity and learning of Suetonius, who had become his intimate friend, and he says that he liked him the better, the more he knew him : he requested the emperor to grant Suetonius the jus trium liberorum, for though Suetonius was married he had no children, or at least had not the number of three, which was necessary to relieve hint from various legal disabilities. The emperor granted the privilege to Suetonius.
Suetonius became Magister Epistolarum to Hadrianus, a situation which would give him the opportunity of seeing many important documents relating to the emperors. In a passage in the life of Augustus (100.7). Suetonius makes mention of his having given to the Princeps a bronze bust which represented Augustus when a boy. The critics generally assume that the Princeps was Hadrianus ; but it is immaterial whether it was Hadrianus or Trajanus, so far as concerns the biography of Suetonius. Hadrianus. who was apparently of a jealous disposition, deprived of their offices at the same time, Septicius Clarus, who was Praefectas