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MARTIAL AND THE HISTORIA AVGVSTA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2020

David Rohrbacher
David Rohrbacher*
Affiliation:
New College of Florida
*
rohrbacher@ncf.edu
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Extract

The short-lived emperor Macrinus had a son whose name, inscriptions reveal, was M. Opellius Antoninus Diadumenianus. Little is known about this figure, who is remembered through brief references in the late Roman breviaries and in Herodian, and in a short biography in the collection of imperial lives now known as the Historia Augusta (= HA). In 1889, Dessau argued that the lives of the Historia Augusta, which present themselves as written by six different authors in the Age of Constantine, were in fact written by a single writer closer to the year 400, an argument that has now all but prevailed in scholarly circles. Some of the biographies depend on reliable sources, at least in part, and thus can provide actual historical information; others do not, and are mostly or entirely the result of authorial invention. The life of Diadumenianus fits clearly in the latter category. The secondary lives (Nebenviten) of the Historia Augusta contain no original information, but rather are constructed from a combination of information derived from their ‘parent’ life and invented fiction. So, for example, the life of the Caesar Aelius combines information from the life of Hadrian with fiction, the life of the usurper Avidius Cassius combines information from the life of Marcus Aurelius with fiction, and the lives of Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus combine information from the life of Severus with fiction. In the case of Diadumenianus, the life is even more thoroughly fictional, since the life of Macrinus from which it is derived is itself a kind of secondary life; Cameron suggests that Marius Maximus, the probable source for the author of the Historia Augusta, treated Macrinus as a usurper in the life of Elagabalus. Almost every detail of the life of Diadumenianus is therefore the fictive invention of the author.

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Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 911 - 916
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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References

1 Kienast, D., Römische Kaisertabelle (Darmstadt, 1996), 170–1Google Scholar; PIR 2 O 107.

2 Dessau, H., ‘Über Zeit und Persönlichkeit der Scriptores Historiae Augustae’, Hermes 24 (1889), 337–92Google Scholar; more generally, see Chastagnol, A., Histoire Auguste (Paris, 1994), ix–clxxxiiGoogle Scholar, and on the date, more recently, Savino, E., Ricerche sull'Historia Augusta (Naples, 2017), 1–58Google Scholar with notes, and Rohrbacher, D., The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta (Madison, WI, 2016), 153–69Google Scholar.

3 Cameron, Alan, ‘Review of R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (Oxford, 1968)’, JRS 61 (1971), 255–67Google Scholar, at 264.

4 Eutr. 21; Aur. Vict. Caes. 22.1; Epit. de Caes. 22.

5 Rohrbacher, D., ‘The sources of the Historia Augusta re-examined’, Histos 7 (2013), 146–80Google Scholar, at 149–52, 163–4.

6 On the folk wisdom, see Plin. HN 8.260. The quotation of Martial differs in several places from our received text, either because the author had access to an earlier edition of Martial, as argued by Velaza, J., ‘Tradition indirecte et variantes d'auteur (à propos de Mart. Epigr. V, 29 et Vita Alex. Sev. 38, 1–2’, RPh 67 (1993), 295–303Google Scholar, or, as I think more likely, because the author quotes inaccurately from memory, as argued by Goffaux, B., ‘Mémoire et citation poétique dans l’Histoire Auguste’, REL 81 (2003), 215–31Google Scholar. On the passage, see also N. Baglivi, Interventi sull'Historia Augusta (Caserta, 2006), 139–57.

7 Rohrbacher (n. 2), 26–7.

8 Goffart, W., ‘Did Julian combat venal suffragium? A note on CTh 2.29.1’, CPh 65 (1970), 145–51Google Scholar, followed by Syme, R., ‘The composition of the Historia Augusta: recent theories’, JRS 62 (1972), 123–33Google Scholar = Historia Augusta Papers (Oxford, 1983), 12–29; more sceptical is Baldwin, B., ‘Fumum vendere in the Historia Augusta’, Glotta 63 (1985), 107–9Google Scholar.

9 See, in general, Grewing, F., ‘Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Vergleichs: Martials Diadumenos und Catulls Lesbia’, Hermes 124 (1996), 333–54Google Scholar.

10 Syme, R., ‘The son of the Emperor Macrinus’, Phoenix 26 (1972), 275–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar = Historia Augusta Papers (Oxford, 1983), 46–62.

11 On the physical descriptions of the emperors in the Historia Augusta, see Neri, V., ‘La caratterizzazione fisica degli imperatori nell’Historia Augusta’, in Bonamente, G., Heim, F. and Callu, J.-P. (edd.), Historiae Augustae Colloquium Argentoratense (Bari, 1998), 249–68Google Scholar; Rohrbacher, D., ‘Physiognomics in Roman imperial biography’, ClAnt 29 (2010), 94–119Google Scholar.

12 Chastagnol, A., Histoire Auguste (Paris, 1994), 479; A. Birley, Lives of the Later Caesars (London, 1976), 284Google Scholar; Hohl, E., Historia Augusta (Zürich, 1976), 271Google Scholar.

13 Cf. other examples from the TLL: Plaut. Mil. 1111; Ov. Am. 1.7.38, 3.7.42.

14 R. Pichon, ‘De sermone amatorio apud Latinos elegiarum scriptores’ (Diss., University of Paris, 1902), 257–8; see also Connor, P.J., ‘Saevitia amoris: Propertius 1.1’, CPh 67 (1972), 51–4Google Scholar; James, S., ‘Her turn to cry: the politics of weeping in Roman love elegy’, TAPhA 133 (2003), 99–122Google Scholar; Marshall, J.C.D., ‘Catullus 99’, CW 65 (1971), 57–8Google Scholar.

15 Soldevila, R.M., Castillo, A.M., Valverde, J.F., A Prosopography to Martial's Epigrams (Berlin and Boston, 2019), 89Google Scholar.