**LAMPRIDIUS, Aelius.** – One of the six writers to whom we owe the compilation of the history of the Roman emperors from Hadrian (117 AD) 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 authors of the *Historia Augusta* V. AUGUSTA. Like the other writers of the *Historia Augusta*, L., rather than providing a political view of the conditions of the Empire, indulges in details concerning the life and habits of the sovereign, a tendency explainable by considering that in autocratic regimes everything is examined from the perspective of those who govern.
His style lacks elegance, his language is barbarous, but in compensation the information he provides is reliable.
To him we owe the account of the favorable disposition that Severus Alexander had toward Christians, not only inasmuch as he generally allowed them the free exercise of their religion (“christianos esse passus est”), but also in that he specifically recalls the following instances: his veneration of Jesus Christ together with Abraham and Orpheus in his domestic lararium (“in lariario suo... Christian Abraham et Orfeum et huiuscemodi habebat,” 29, 2) and his intention to erect a temple to Him (“tempium Christi facere voluit eumque inter deos recipere,” 43, 6); the inscription he had placed on the walls of the palace, relating to the maxim that commands one not to do to others what one does not wish done to oneself (“quod a quibusdam sive christianis audierat et tenebat: quod tibi non vis fieri, alteri ne feceris,” 51, 7); the publication of the names of candidates for public offices (“cum id christiani facerent in praedicandis sacerdotibus”); and the granting to Christians of a public place, which had been contested by certain tavern-keepers, when he declared: “it is better that God be worshipped there in some way than that it be given over to taverns.”
**Nicolò Turchi**