This 2000 PhD thesis at the Université de Nice was slow into print and hardly revised; in this regard, it suffers from the same fault as the French monograph on Suetonius by J. Gascou (cf. A. Wallace-Hadrill, CR n.s. 36 (1986), 243). It represents the third commentary on Suetonius for the series ‘Collection Latomus’ at intervals of every sixteen years, following K. R. Bradley's entry on the Nero (1978) and D. Wardle's on the Caligula (1994), although Louis' book is longer than both of these works combined! It is also the first commentary on the Divine Augustus in almost three decades, and as such fills a major gap in Suetonian scholarship. L.'s book has already been reviewed in English by Wardle online (BMCR 2011.11.12), and by A. A. Barrett in Gnomon (84 (2012), 321–4), so it would be pointless to go over the same ground. I shall, therefore, confine myself to two important points about the work that have been left unsaid.
First, L. is more dependent on non-English scholarship than she may seem — in fact, much more so. There is a misleading disjunction between L.'s bibliography, which contains several works never cited by her (such as Wallace-Hadrill's book on Suetonius and the articles of G. B. Townend), and the commentary itself, which cites articles not found in the bibliography. Some works in English and other languages are occasionally mentioned by L., but her book is essentially grounded in French works. R. Hanslik's useful article in German on the Augustus (WS 67 (1954), 99–144), for example, nowhere appears. Although L.'s legwork appears to have been concluded by 2001, as evidenced by her bibliography, a brief addendum with material through 2009 has been supplied for publication (687–9). In this space, L. might have at least listed Wardle's papers on the Augustus from the mid-2000s, in order to make the work of greater use to Anglophone scholars.
L.'s overreliance on French scholarship unfortunately leads to some ironies of omission, such as her noticeable neglect of B. Baldwin's substantial book on Suetonius (1983), which could have been helpful to L. on many occasions had she used it, since it shares several of her prosopographical concerns; its inclusion would have profited the kind of readers who will be attracted by her ‘historical’ commentary. The fact that L. sidesteps the milestone represented by the books of Wallace-Hadrill and Baldwin is difficult to ignore in any assessment of her achievement: she derives no benefit from some of the most central debates on her subject. Even more ironic is the fact that, if L. is independent in spurning scholarship in English on the Augustus, she is tralatitious (e.g. 74, 82, 84, 87, 91, 96 etc.) in directing the reader to the Italian notes of her much earlier predecessor M. A. Levi (1951).
This leads to the second point. A crucial predecessor between Levi and L. has been disregarded to the detriment of the present commentary. Previous reviewers have claimed E. S. Shuckburgh's edition of the Augustus (1896) as the prior standard commentary, viewing that of J. M. Carter for the Bristol series (1982) as a minor addition that is overly concerned with administrative detail. Yet Carter's work, which is slightly longer than Shuckburgh's, is more useful on stylistic matters than one might think. Glimpses of literary appreciation for Suetonius can be found, for example, in Carter's discussion of the biographer's prose, especially his style of diuisio and tendency not to repeat his subject's name (pp. 4–5, 8–9), or his careful structuring of chapters in Augustus 57–60 (pp. 178–81) and 68–72 (p. 190) for eulogistic effect. Carter also provides interesting comments on Suetonius' overall divisions (e.g. pp. 98–9, 181), his moralism (e.g. pp. 99, 128), and even his grammatical fondness for quasi (p. 95). If a more balanced treatment is needed, Carter's commentary is still the best starting-point, and will at any rate continue to be favoured in classrooms for its convenient size and price.
Though failing to use Carter, L.'s commentary is itself not devoid of literary and grammatical analysis, especially in her introduction — even if, like another recent book on Suetonius (R. Poignault (ed.), Présence de Suétone: actes du colloque tenu à Clermont-Ferrand (25–27 novembre 2004) (2009); cf. CR n.s. 61 (2011), 485–7), that introduction lacks footnotes documenting previous work on topics such as Suetonius' use of the first person. Perhaps most noteworthy is her examination of the subtle language by which Suetonius clarifies his credence in facts (50–65). This is easily the best discussion to date of the biographer's bias and techniques of emphasis and understatement.
However, the two main points above vitiate a scholarly contribution which, like Gascou's Suétone historien (1984), is essentially too little condensed and updated, but unlike Gascou, does not often help the reader to understand how Suetonius writes. In any one note, L.'s discussion of other parts of the Caesars is focused on overlaps of specific content, rather than the biographer's tendency to treat particular topics; grammatical analysis (e.g. 453) is also a rare occurrence. Scholars will certainly find many individual notes in the commentary with which to wrestle, even if these notes are not always tied to other relevant scholarship. L.' s book will no doubt be consulted by advanced readers in addition to other resources on the Augustus, but, despite its hefty size, it cannot be relied on as a one-stop shop. Caueat emptor.
