STORIA AUGUSTA (Scriptores Historiae Augustae). — This is a collection of variously manipulated biographies of the emperors and Caesars from Adriano to Numeriano (A.D. 117–284), except for a gap covering the years 244–260 and relating to the emperors Filippo, Decio, Gallo, and Valeriano; the biographies are presented as dedicated to Diocleziano or Costantino, and, taken as a whole, the work—which may well have begun with the reign of Nerva, linking up with Svetonio—tends to exalt the reforms of Diocleziano in contrast with the ills of the preceding age.
The compilation is useful for the meticulous care with which it records the slightest details of the imperial court, but it does not extend its gaze beyond it and lingers over uncontrolled gossip and anecdotes. The authors of the S. A. are six: Elio Sparziano (v.), Vulcacio Gallicano, Lampridio (v.), Giulio Capitolino, Trebello Pollione, Vopisco (v.); but their personalities are so colorless that some have come to doubt the historical reality of certain of them.
In the compilation, which takes its inspiration from the Suetonian model, two clearly distinct parts may be distinguished: the first, extending from Adriano to Caracalla, is more unified; the second, extending from Macrino onward, is more rhetorical and less reliable in its information. The works cited as sources for the first series are one by a Mario Massimo, now lost, and that of a supposed great annalist of the Severan age. For the second series, an imperial Chronicle of a biographical character, reconstructed by Enmann and certainly known to have existed, is recalled; it appears to have been used by Aurelio Vittore and Eutropio. Among the Greek writers, Erodiano was certainly consulted. The question of the period in which the individual biographies were composed, and of that in which the compilation and reworking of the collection took place, remains unresolved.