Cómodo: outro Calígula, outro Nero

Abstract

In this paper we try to stress the similarities between the treatment of Commodus by the Histona Augusta's author and the Suetonius lives of Caligula and Nero. Despite the inferior accuracy of the style and of the way material is organized, we can find there, in an abridge form, not only the rhetoric topoi related with tyranny, but also a lot of exempla and frequently similar expressions that the biographer of the Twelve Caesars had already employ in the portraits of those emperors. For this reason, we try to examine the way the knowledge of Suetonius text may be an important key of interpretation to the Histona Augusta's plafond.