The Suetonius we do not know

I doubt that many people reading this blog are unfamiliar with the master work of Q. Suetonius Tranquillus, Lives of the 12 Caesars (and if you are, go and buy the Penguin translation by Robert Graves NOW).  But how many of us have read the other surviving works: the Lives of the Grammarians, Poets, Rhetoricians?  I certainly never have.

This afternoon, sitting at the keyboard, for some reason I found myself reading the Wikipedia article, which linked to the Gutenberg translation which included these texts.  They deserve to be better known.

XIII. LABERIUS HIERA was bought by his master out of a slave-dealer’s cage, and obtained his freedom on account of his devotion to learning. It is reported that his disinterestedness was such, that he gave gratuitous instruction to the children of those who were proscribed in the time of Sulla.