AUGUSTAN HISTORY, the name given to a collection of the biographies of the Roman emperors from Hadrian to Carinus (A.D. The work, which, as we have it, is mutilated, the preface and a few lines being lost, professes to have been written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, and to be the composition of six authors—Aelius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, Aelius Lampridius, Vulcacius Gallicanus, Trebellius Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus. Who really wrote it is unknown ; the date is perhaps the reign of Julian; the whole tone is interpreted by Baynes (see below) as one of disguised propaganda in his favour.
The importance of the Augustan history as a repertory of in formation is very considerable, because it is frequently our only authority for the period it covers. It is, however, a most wretched work, both as history and as literature. In form, the biographies are plainly modelled upon Suetonius; the sources are obscure, the authorities quoted mostly unknown, if not imaginary. Marius Maximus and Aelius Junius Cordus, to whose qualifications the Historia Augusta itself bears no favourable testimony, are oftenest cited, and are mere names for us. The earlier lives, however, con tain a substratum of authentic historical fact, which recent critics have supposed to be derived from a lost work of an annalistic nature. Another and less good source was a series of biographies of the emperors. As to the alleged extracts from public records, private letters, etc., of the emperors, and so forth, they are to be received with the utmost caution, so many being palpable for geries as to create a prejudice against them all. No biographical particulars are recorded respecting any of the writers. From their acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature they must have been men of letters by profession, and very probably secretaries or librarians to persons of distinction. There seems no reason to accept Gibbon's contemptuous estimate of their social position. They appear particularly versed in law. Spartianus's reference to himself as "Diocletian's own" seems to indicate that he was a domestic in the imperial household. They address their patrons with deference, acknowledging their own deficiencies, and seem painfully conscious of the profession of literature having fallen upon evil days.