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Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus, applied to Vespasian the prophecies that regarded the Messiah. The oracles, were often very equivocal, or so obscure that their signification was not understood but after the event. A few examples, out of a great many, will be sufficient.
"But Suetonius attacked our sacred island and slew the priests on the altars," Beric objected. "That is quite true," Norbanus said, "but his had nothing whatever to do with the religion, but was simply because the priests stirred up insurrection against us.
From their kinsmen in the northwest, Beric learned that a new propraetor had arrived to replace Suetonius, for it was reported that the wholesale severity of the latter was greatly disapproved of in Rome, so that his successor had come out with orders to pursue a milder policy, and to desist from the work of extirpation that Suetonius was carrying on.
It is related by both Tacitus and Suetonius. Vespasian having taken up his abode for some months at Alexandria, a blind man, of the common people, came to him, earnestly intreating the emperor to assist in curing his infirmity, alleging that he was prompted to apply by the admonition of the God Serapis, and importuning the prince to anoint his cheeks and the balls of his eyes with the royal spittle.
By the words "under colour of that law" he insinuates that Augustus caused it to be executed on pretence of those libels which were written by Cassius Severus against the nobility, but in truth to save himself from such defamatory verses. Suetonius likewise makes mention of it thus: Sparsos de se in curia famosos libellos, nec exparit, et magna cura redarguit.
Suetonius, recalled from the island of Mona by tidings of rebellion and disaster, marched hastily as far as London, which was even then the chief residence of the merchants and the centre of trade and commerce of the island. His army was small, not more than ten thousand men in all. That of the Britons was large.
I hope to be able to prove in the continuation of my Greatness and Decline of Rome, that the history of Cæsar's family, as it has been told by Tacitus and Suetonius, is a sensational novel, a legend containing not much more truth than the legend of Atrides.
Suetonius, although deficient both in the pomp and sententiousness of Tacitus, makes no attempt to compose his story, nor to impart moral instruction, but tells us what he knows, simply. His Lives of the Twelve Caesars is the greatest collection of horrors in history.
But we are informed by Suetonius, that the dead body of Nero, who slew himself at the villa of his freedman, was by the care of his two nurses and his concubine Atta, removed to the sepulchre of the Gens Domitia, immediately within the Porta del Popolo, on your left hand as you enter Rome, precisely on the spot where now stands the church of S. Maria del Popolo.
This is the picture that Suetonius gives us of Tiberius, the man who, in 9 B.C., after the death of Agrippa and Drusus, stood next to Augustus, his right hand and pre-established successor. At that time Augustus was fifty-four years old; not an old man, but he was ill and had presided over the Republic for twenty-one years.
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