This book provides biographical information for Roman emperors of the third century.

By turns outlandish, humorous, and scatological, the Historia Augusta is an eccentric compilation of biographies of the Roman emperors and usurpers of the second and third centuries. Historians of late antiquity have struggled to explain the fictional date and authorship of the work and its bizarre content (did the Emperor Carinus really swim in pools of floating apples and melons? did the usurper Proculus really deflower a hundred virgins in fifteen days?). David Rohrbacher offers, instead, a literary analysis of the work, focusing on its many playful allusions. Marshaling an array of interdisciplinary research and original analysis, he contends that the Historia Augusta originated in a circle of scholarly readers with an interest in biography, and that its allusions and parodies were meant as puzzles and jokes for a knowing and appreciative audience.

This volume brings together fifteen studies written since 1972 on the notorious Historia Augusta. Syme advances the theory, supported by computer evidence, that the papers are the work of only one person, rather than six as they purport, and that they were written considerably later than the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. He argues that, taken as a whole, the papers are a work of "fictional history" and constitute an elaborate and erudite hoax.

"This short monograph examines the authorship, date, context, redaction and reception of the Historia Augusta - a corpus of biographies of emperors and usurpers of the second and third centuries, which purports to be the work of six writers active in the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. Thomson accepts the widely held view that one author, a scholarly impostor, composed and redacted the Historia Augusta some time after about 395. Internal evidence -which includes administrative anachronisms and allusions to events, as well as spurious names, genealogies and documents - suggests that the corpus was intended for an audience among the Roman elite of the end of the fourth century. Thomson argues that the lives were not written for a polemical purpose. Their author instead responded to widespread interest in the works of Suetonius and Marius Maximus; his countless fabrications represented attempts to fill lacunae in the record with material appropriate to the genre of imperial biography. To this end, the scholarly impostor plundered the tradition for literary models and historical examples, apparently unmoved by the strict demands of chronology. This monograph advances several arguments that may be considered innovative. After examining the evidence of the text and the tradition, Thomson substantively revises existing theories on the redaction of the corpus. He proposes that an extant collection of panegyrics (the Panegyrici Latini) -or some similar work now lost- may have provided a model for the otherwise baffling imposture of collective authorship and tetrarchic date. Thomson also tentatively suggests a connection between the scholarly impostor, the spurious author Flavius Vopiscus Syracusius and a Syracusan poetaster and antiquarian active in the relevant period (Naucellius)."--Publisher's website.

Sabina Augusta: An Imperial Journey traces the development of Sabina's partnership with her husband, the emperor Hadrian (reigned 117-138), and shows the vital importance of the empress for Hadrian's own aspirations.

"The classicist and historian Alan Cameron (1938-2017) was, among other achievements, one of the scholars who most contributed to the refoundation of late-antique studies. In this tribute W. V. Harris and Anne Hunnell Chen have brought together fourteen contributions that cover a broad range of historical, literary, and art-historical topics, running from the first century AD to the ninth. Some contributions concern Cameron's own favourite themes (the Greek Anthology, the Historia Augusta, circus factions, the transmission of texts), while others seek to assess his work and its impact. Other papers branch out from his concerns to discuss slavery, simony, and hospitals. Fourth- and fifth-century writers are often to the fore and the volume includes a new text by the poet Dioscoros of Aphrodite.Contributors are: Averil Cameron, Raffaella Cribiore, Carmela Franklin, Arianna Gullo, Jean-Luc Fournet, W. V. Harris, Anne Hunnell Chen, Gavin Kelly, Michael Kulikowski, Noel Lenski, Charlotte Roueché, Michele Renee Salzman, Rita Lizzi Testa, Edward Watts"--

This historical commentary examines books 79(78)-80(80) of Cassius Dio's Roman History, which cover the period from the death of Caracalla in A. D. 217. to the reign of Severus Alexander and Cassius Dio's retirement from political life in 229. Cassius Dio, a Roman Senator, provides a valuable eyewitness account of this turbulent period, which was marked by the assassination of Caracalla, the rise of Macrinus, Rome's first equestrian emperor, and his subsequent overthrow, the tempestuous, and by all accounts peculiar, reign of Elagabalus, and the continuation of the Severan dynasty under the young Severus Alexander. In addition to elucidating important passages from these books, this study assesses Cassius Dio's political life and its relationship to his literary career; his call to history and time of composition; his historical method; and his attitude toward and subsequent presentation of the later Severan dynasty. In its investigation of books 79(78)-80(80), the work assesses an important stretch of Dio's actual text, which for other parts has been preserved largely in epitome and excerpts. Finally, the work aims to fill a gap in scholarship, as no commentary on these books of Cassius Dio's history has been produced since the nineteenth century, and its publication coincides with a renewed interest in the history and historiography of the Severan period.