i i 00 i 1 I I I I I I I I i I I VOI M i I I I 00 i 1 I I i I I it I 1 I a GO I I i I I I i i i I I 1 no i i i i n 1 i l I i I tores Historiae or Histona The Scrip Augustae, is of Augusta, a collection of biographies Roman emperors, heirs, and claimants from Hadrian to Numerianus (AD 117- 284). The work, which is modeled on Suetonius, purports to be written by six different authors and quotes documents Since and public records extensively. we of the possess no continuous account emperors of the second and third centur- has ies, the Historia Augusta naturally attracted the keen attention of scholars. In the last century, however, it has generated Present the gravest suspicions. opinion holds that the whole is the work of a author lived in the time of single (who Theodosius) and contains much that is and even downright FplagiarismO & forgery.& J The Loeb Classical Library edition of the J Historia Augusta is in three volumes. NY PUBLIC LIBRARY THE BRANCH LIBRARIES 923. 137 S Augustan h ist< 3 3333 13099 9580 99023 vol , MM The NewYork HSS Public Library Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations The Branch Libraries MID-MANHATTAN LIBRARY MM 455 Fifth Avenue fj New York, N.Y. 10016 Books and non-print media may be returned to any branch of The New York Public Library. Music scores, orchestral sets and certain materials must be returned to branch from which borrowed. All materials must be returned by the last date stamped on the card. Fines are for overdue items. charged Fomi #0692 THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED BY JAMES LOEB EDITED BY G. P. GOOLD PREVIOUS EDITORS T. E. PAGE E. CAPPS W. H. D. ROUSE L. A. POST E. H. WARMINGTON THE SCRIPTORES HISTORIAE AUGUSTAE II LCL 140 THE SCRIPTORES HISTORIAE AUGUSTAE VOLUME II WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY DAVID MAGIE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND First published 1924 Reprinted 1953, 1960, 1967, 1980, 1993 ISBN 0-674-99155-9 Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on acid-free paper. Bound by Hunter 6- Foulis Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION vii EDITORIAL NOTE xxxvii CARACALLA 2 GETA 32 OPELLIUS MACRINUS 48 DIADUMENIANUS 82 ELAGABALUS 104 SEVERUS ALEXANDER 178 THE TWO MAXIMINI 314 THE THREE GORDIANS 380 MAXIMUS AND BALBINUS 448 INTRODUCTION THE AUTHORSHIP AND DATE OF THE HISTORIA AUGUSTA THE traditional assignment of the several biographies to six different authors involves many difficulties and apparent inconsistencies and gives rise to various questions. Did each of the first four authors actually write a complete series of imperial biographies from which the various vitae of this collection have been selected ? If so, who made the selection and on what " " principle was it made ? Why did Spartianus write " " his Severus and Capitolinus his Marcus Aurelius, Verus, and Macrinus under Diocletian, and the former his Geta and the latter his Albinus, Maximini, and Gordiani under Constantine twenty years later? Why do the biographies attributed to the four authors of the earlier vitae bear a close resemblance to one another, not merely in the general scheme of con- struction (which might be attributed to the imitation of the same model), but in the use of the same un- usual phrases and words, many of which appear also VII INTRODUCTION in the vitae ascribed to Pollio and Vopiscus ? Why do the minor vitae contain material which is little more than repetition from the corresponding major 1 " " biographies, and why does Spartianus in the 2 Niger refer to the vita of Albinus as his work, when the Albinus in the collection is attributed to Capito- linus ? An answer to these questions has been sought by various scholars in various hypotheses of a more or less radical nature, and these in their turn have been attacked by conservative writers who have attempted to explain away the objections and inconsistencies and to uphold the traditional authorship. The most radical have gone so far as to attribute all the vitae to a single author, who, they maintain, assigned his " " work to six different names as a literary device. On the other hand, the most conservative stoutly uphold the plural authorship and the traditional date of the several biographies. Between these extremes are other writers more moderate, who admit a plural authorship, at the same time holding that the traditional assignment is entirely untrustworthy and ascribing many of the general resemblances, as well as the inconsistencies and the interpolations, to the hand of a later editor. The discussion was begun in 1889 when Hermann 3 Dessau advanced the startling hypothesis that the whole Historia Augusta is the work, not of a group of writers living in the early fourth century, but of a l e.g. the Marcus Aurelius and the Avidius Cassius, tne Severus and the Niger. 2 c ix 3 3 Hermes, xxiv. (1889), pp. 337-392; xxvii. (1892), pp. 561- 605. viii INTRODUCTION " " single forger of the period of Theodosius, who, in order to secure for his work a semblance of authority, sought to give it the appearance of an earlier origin, and in order to arouse additional interest, used the expedient of attributing his vitae to six different authors. A further motive was alleged namely, his realization of the lack of material for his work and his desire to cover up his shortcomings by fabrications which would be less easily discovered were his biographies assigned to an earlier period. In support of his theory Dessau found in the various biographies many inconsistencies with the period in which they claim to have been written. He argued that the glorification of Constantius Chlorus in the Vita Claudii would not have been composed while he was merely Caesar. He con- tended, moreover, that the names of many persons introduced into the biographies are those of important families of the latter part of the fourth century, and that no persons of these names were prominent in the earlier that the of details period ; ignorance many displayed in the vitae of Aurelian and Carus is incom- prehensible if these biographies were really written about and that of the technical terms 305 ; many employed in reference to the administration of the Empire do not seem to have been in use under Diocletian and Constantine, but were, on the other hand, current in the age of Valentinian and Theo- dosius. He argued, further, that the relationship J between the duplicate narrative in the vita of Marcus and the corresponding passage in Eutropius, and between the summary of Severus* reign and the corresponding section of Victor, can be explained 1 See Intro, to Vol. i. p. xxii. f. * IX INTRODUCTION only by the hypothesis that the writer took his material from Eutropius and Victor, who composed their works in the third quarter of the fourth century. He then proceeded to point out the obvious difficulties of the traditional plural authorship the uniformity in use of conventional rubrics, in phraseology, and in rhetorical devices, the similarity of the various apologies pleading a lack of material in extenuation of the shortcomings of the work, and the fact that each of the alleged writers included documents which are evident forgeries. On these and similar grounds Dessau argued for a single authorship and that at the end of the fourth century. The conclusions of Dessau were carried further by 1 Otto Seeck. He, too, held that the biographies are the work of a single writer, but attempted to set him " at a date later than Dessau's Theodosian forger," contending that he lived at the beginning of the fifth century. In defence of his theory he enumerated many apparent allusions to the post-Constantinian ad- ministrative and military system and asserted the presence of many inconsistencies with the earlier period. He discovered also various covert thrusts at the Emperor Honorius 2 and concluded that the work was written under Constantine III., a usurper who appeared in Gaul in 407 and maintained his rule for three years. In reply to these extreme theories of Dessau and Seeck a more conservative position was maintained cxli. 609-639 ijahrbb.f. Class. Philol, (1890), pp. ; Bhewi. MILS., xlix. (1894), pp. 208-224. He has repeated his theory, with many ingenious arguments, in Rhein. Mus., Ixvii. (1912), pp. 591-608. 2 In Sev., xx. 4 xxi. 12; Alex., Ixii. 2; Claud., ii. 6. INTRODUCTION l 2 by Elimar Klebs and Eduard von Wolfflin. Klebs admitted that the assignment of the vitae from the Hadrian to the Maximus-Balbinus to the four tradi- tional authors is certainly incorrect and that there is a confusion in the names of the writers which cannot be rectified, but at the same time he contended that the Historia Augusta is altogether a product of the period of Diocletian and Constantino. He showed at great length that the sections in the Marcus and the Severus which bear a close relationship to the cor- responding portions of Eutropius and Victor were not taken from these authors but from their common source, and maintained that these sections could not be omitted from the respective vitae without breaking the connexion with what follows and that therefore they cannot be regarded as later interpolations. In his second article Klebs emphasized the differ- ences exhibited by the various groups. While ad- mitting that they bear a certain resemblance to one another, which he explained by their common imita- tion of Suetonius, he showed that the several groups exhibit well-marked peculiarities both in content and in form even the ascribed to Pollio and ; thus, groups Vopiscus, while they resemble each other closely in containing elaborate prefaces, in introducing citations from oral tradition, and in naming contemporaries, show marked differences in style and method, which distinguish them, not only from the earlier vitae, but also from each other.