Classical World

Not a forgery, hoax, or imposture, but the playful contrivance of a single author (not six) composed in the early fifth century for a small circle of érudits interested in the nature of biography and alert to the work’s all-pervasive literary allusions. Such is the solution to the problem of the Historia Augusta Rohrbacher proposes in this well-informed and engaging book. He defines the collection of imperial biographies seemingly written under Diocletian and Constantine as a parodic, satirical work unconcerned with religious controversies or political events of the late imperial age, as generations of scholars have contended; it is a work primarily of fiction, the key element of which is a literary allusiveness that intentionally challenges its readers to solve the many humorous puzzles of recognition and appreciation its author creates. Dissociating himself from historians preoccupied with separating fact from fancy in the lives, Rohrbacher brings the HA’s literary playfulness to the fore in a bold, distinctive way.

Few today will dispute the HA’s single authorship or relatively late date. Rohrbacher offers no answer, however, to Momigliano’s plea from long ago for a simple explanation of why the author chose to assume six identities and pretended to write much earlier (English Historical Review 84 [1969] 569). The [End Page 436] writer himself, moreover, remains anonymous, not identified broadly, as Syme’s notorious rogue grammaticus (but see 60), or specifically (and controversially), as with Ratti’s Nicomachus Flavianus. From what is known about the participatory, antagonistic character of Roman literary composition, the putative circle of readers is reasonably supposed to have been sensitive to allusion, and the modern construct of “interpretative communities” (85) lends brief theoretical support. But contemporary notions of literary incongruity and humorous wordplay are unexplored, and the debates assumed about biography as a contested literary genre are at most hypothetical. Who precisely were the “late Roman thinkers on biography” (48) able, it appears, to notice the lives’ engagement with events of the years 408–410?

Allusion itself, indeed, is never defined. In practice it comprises direct quotation, verbal reminiscence, emulation of stylistic mannerisms and themes, and complex manipulation of subject matter—a very diffuse concept. Many suggestions consequently strain belief. Simple quotations are uncontentious, and invented names might be allowed to have sometimes produced amusement. But when meeting the fictional Gallus Antipater of Claud. 5.4, can readers then or now realistically be expected to associate him with the Coelius of Hadr. 16.3, also an Antipater but not so designated, and to recognize that Coelius is the source of Gallus Antipater’s name (25–26)? Or to see that references to the proconsulship of Cilicia (Aur. 42.4; Car. 4.6), a nonexistent position in the imperial age, “must be inspired by the example of Cicero” simply because Cicero was “the most famous holder of the office” (32)? Or to deduce that since the unusual word spinthriae occurs in Suetonius (Tib. 43.1; Calig. 16.1; also Vit. 3.2), its use at Elag. 33.1 reveals Elagabalus “as a student of Tiberius and Caligula, or at least the Suetonian account of the emperors” (55; Tac. Ann. 6.1; Petr. Sat. 113.11)? Rohrbacher acknowledges that individual examples will not always convince; but his open-ended understanding of allusiveness constantly encourages the tendentious. Suetonius’ occasional references to information received from his father and grandfather duly become the basis for a stylistic technique in the HA, and evidence of engagement with the Caesares (50–53). Cassius Dio’s report (69.1.3), however, of what his father told him about Trajan’s death and Hadrian’s accession shows that this cannot be a feature of ancient biography alone.

The most complex allusions allegedly involve Ammianus and Jerome. Rohrbacher follows Syme in connecting Quad. Tyr. 8.10 (drinking cups in Hadrian’s letter) with Amm. 15.3.7 (description of a sordid banquet), given that an Africanus appears in...