Classical World

The rhetorician Isaeus mentioned by Juvenal in Satires 3 was almost certainly not discussed by Suetonius, despite Giorgio Valla’s note to this passage, due to the temporal endpoint of the Illustrious Men. A similar error can be found in Valla’s use of Suetonius for Passienus Crispus on the authority of the same “Probus.” The Suetonian fragment on Isaeus should no longer be accepted as it stands. Suetonius probably instead discussed the fourth-century orator Isaeus, following Hermippus as his source.