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BIOGRAPHY
The form of imperial biography established in the second century by Suetonius
continued to be followed during late antiquity, and was later adopted as a model
by Einhard for his Life of Charlemagne. Of other classical forms of biography,
such as the life of the philosopher, there is no trace in the Latin west, though
the Greek east provided excellent examples in the Life of Plotinus by Porphyry
(c. 234—c. 305) and the Lives of the Sophists by Eunapius of Sardis (c. 345—
c. 414). The vie romancee, -whether its aim was to instruct or to amuse, is
represented by a single translation from a Greek original, the Res Gestae
Alexandri Magni of Julius Valerius.
The expansion of Christianity in the fourth century transformed or revivified
many classical literary genres to fulfil its own purposes. Thus Eusebius
originated a new type of history, in which the methods and skills of the antiquarian
were united with those of the rhetorician, which had dominated
historiography since Hellenistic times. So too in biography Athanasius
struck out in a new direction with his Life of Anthony', which provided the
model for lives of holy men and bishops for centuries. Latin writers soon
took up the new genre, as for example in Jerome's Life of Paul., an entirely
fictitious biography of an alleged predecessor of Anthony (MPG
23.17—28). The Life of Cyprian which survives under the name of Pontius
is, at any rate in its present form, not the third-century text which it purports
to be.
Marius Maximus, who is probably to be identified with Lucius Marius
Maximus Perpetuus Aurelianus, consul for the second time in 223, wrote
twelve biographies of the emperors from Nerva to Elagabalus (f 222). His
work, along with that of Juvenal, was avidly read by those late fourth-century
Roman aristocrats whose libraries were usually kept closed like tombs (Amm.
Marcell. 28.4.14). The biographies have not survived, and it is sometimes
hard to know how much credit to attach to statements about them in the
Historia Augusta. They seem to have followed in style and treatment, as in
number, the Lives of Suetonius, i.e. the activities of an emperor after he
attained power, which inevitably form the bulk of an imperial biography,
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