| The Historia Augusta (HA) is a collection of biographies of Roman emperors from Hadrian to Diocletian covering the period 117 - 284 CE. It is an important document, because it provides the only source material in material for parts of third century Roman history. According to the modern communis opinio the work is a pseudepigraphon. The six scriptores mentioned in the mss. are pseudonyms for a single author, who wrote the biographies in the last decade of the 4th century, but pretends that he is writing during the reign of Constantine the Great, i.e. at the beginning of the 4th century. Most work on the HA is being done by ancient historians sifting the material for reliable historical data. The present study focuses on style and structure of the HA, in order to reach a better understanding of the literary aspects and of the genesis of this enigmatical work. |
