LAMPRIDIO, ELIO. - One of the six writers to whom is owed the compilation of the history of the Roman emperors from Hadrian (117 A.D.) to Numerian (284). He lived in the age of Diocletian and Constantine, to the latter of whom two of the four lives attributed to L. are dedicated, namely those of Elagabalus and Severus Alexander.
On the complex question of the writers of the Historia Augusta v. STORIA AUGUSTA. Like the other writers of the Historia Augusta, L. too, rather than giving a political vision of the conditions of the Empire, indulges in notices concerning the life and habits of the sovereign, a thing explicable when one considers that in centralizing regimes everything is examined from the visual angle of the one who governs.
The style lacks elegance, the language is barbarous, but in compensation the notices he gives are from a source.
To him is owed the notice of the good dispositions that Severus Alexander had toward the Christians, not only in that he generically granted them the free exercise of their religion («christianos esse passus est»), but in that he specifically recalls the following cases: the veneration he paid to Jesus Christ together with Abraham and Orpheus in his domestic lararium («in larario suo... Christum Abraham et Orfeum et huiuscemodi habebat», 29, 2) and the intention of erecting a temple to him («templum Christo facere voluit eumque inter deos recipere», 43, 6); the inscription caused to be placed on the walls of the palace, relating to the maxim that imposes not doing to others what one does not wish done to oneself («quod a quibusdam sive christianis audient et tenebat: quod tibi non vis fieri, alteri ne feceris», 51, 7); the publication of the names of the candidates for public offices («cum id christiani facerent in praedicandis sacerdotibus»); the granting to the Christians of a public place, disputed from them by certain innkeepers, declaring: «melius esse ut quomodocumque illic Deus colatur quam popinariis dedatur».
Bibliography
Nicola Turchi