Historia Augusta (Scriptores Historiae Augustae)

HISTORIA AUGUSTA (Scriptores Historiae Augustae). - It is a collection of biographies, variously manipulated, of the emperors and caesars from Hadrian to Numerian (117-284 A.D.), except for a gap for the years 244-60 relating to the emperors Philip, Decius, Gallus, and Valerian; the biographies are presented as dedicated to Diocletian or to Constantine, and on the whole the work, which it is not improbable was begun with the reign of Nerva, linking up with Suetonius, tends to exalt the Diocletianic reforms in the face of the evils of the preceding era.

The compilation is useful for the meticulous care with which it records the smallest details of the imperial court, but it does not cast its gaze outside it and lingers over gossip and uncontrolled anecdotes. The authors of the S. A. are six: Aelius Spartianus (v.), Vulcacius Gallicanus, Aelius Lampridius (v.), Julius Capitolinus, Trebellius Pollio, Flavius Vopiscus (v.), but their personalities are so colorless that doubts have arisen as to the historical reality of some of them.

In the compilation, which is inspired by the Suetonian model, two clearly distinct parts are distinguished: the one running from Hadrian to Caracalla, more unified, and the one running from Macrinus onward, more rhetorical and less reliable in its information. Cited as sources of the first series are the work of a certain Marius Maximus, now lost, and that of a supposed great annalist of the Severan age. Of the second series, mention is made of an imperial Chronicle of a biographical character reconstructed by Enmann, which certainly existed and which seems to have been used by Aurelius Victor and Eutropius. Of the Greek writers, Herodian was certainly consulted. The problem of the date of composition of the individual biographies and of that of the compilation and reworking of the collection remains unsolved.