CAPITOLINO, GRILIUS. — According to historiographical tradition, he is one of the six authors of the Historia Augusta, a collection of biographies of various Roman emperors; to him are attributed the lives of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Pertinax, Macrinus, and others of lesser note. But while some recent critics almost deny the very existence of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, others properly attribute to C. a reworking of the entire work with the aim of giving it unity. The period of his flourishing can be fixed as the final years of the Constantinian government; on the whole, the value of his writings is slight, and in them a pro-Senatorial tendency is noticeable.
BIBL.: The critical edition of the Historia Augusta in the Teubnerian collection of Leipzig (1927), edited by E. Hohl. — N. H. Baynes, The Historia Augusta. Its Date and Purpose, Oxford 1926; G. Barbieri, Il problema del cosiddetto ultimo grande storico di Roma, in Annali R. Scuola normale di Pisa, 2nd series, 3 (1934), pp. 523–538; P. Lambrechts, Le problème de l'Histoire Auguste, in L'antiquité classique, 3 (1934), pp. 303–36.