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BIOGRAPHY
were treated not chronologically, but by categories arranged in an elaborate
system of dichotomies. What we cannot be sure of is whether Marius Maximus
really wrote at much greater length than Suetonius — he is called homo omnium
uerbosissimus by S.H.A. Firm, i .2 — or whether he included more documentary
material. He seems to have had, in an even higher degree than Suetonius,
a taste for trivial and occasionally scabrous details. But he was clearly a thoughtful
writer who used his own judgement, and, within the limits imposed by the
genre, a reliable source. There is no reason to believe, however, that he had
the access to material in the imperial archives which confers particular historical
value on Suetonius* Lives. His popularity seems to have been shortlived. He is
not quoted by later writers except in the Historia Augusta.
The Historia Augusta is a collection of lives of emperors from Hadrian to
Numerian, dealing not only with reigning emperors, but with co-emperors
and pretenders as well. It is likely that Lives of Nerva and Trajan have been
lost from die beginning. The title was given by Isaac Casaubon, who published
the editio princeps in 1603. The manuscripts have variations on the theme
'Vitae diuersorum principum et tyrannorum a diuo Hadriano usque ad
Numerianum a diuersis scriptae' 'Lives of the various Princes and Usurpers
from Hadrian to Numerian written by divers hands'. There are thirty biographies
in all, some dealing with groups of emperors or pretenders. They are
addressed to Diocletian, Constantine and various personages of their period,
and purport to have been written at various dates from before 305 till after
324. They are attributed to six authors, of whom nothing else is known:
Aelius Spartianus (7 lives), Julius Capitolinus (9), Vulcatius Gallicanus (1),
Aelius Lampridius (4), Trebellius Pollio (4) and Flavius Vopiscus (5). The
lives range in length from 49 printed pages (Severus Alexander) to 6 (Antoninus
Geta), though in the composite biography entitled Tyranni Triginta,
'The Thirty Tyrants', 'Trebellius Pollio' polishes off thirty-two alleged
pretenders in exactly as many pages. The arrangement of the lives is Suetonian,
in that each author recounts his subject's life chronologically until
he becomes emperor, and thereafter by categories — public life and private
life, war and peace, at home and abroad, and so on — until with the approach
of his death the chronological method takes over again. The lives contain
more documents, letters, speeches, laws and the like, than those of Suetonius,
and at least as much curious anecdotal information on the personal lives of
their subjects — Firmus ate an ostrich a day (Firm. 4), Maximus consumed a
' Capitolina amfora' of wine and 40 pounds — or as some say 60 — of meat
per day (Maximini duo 4), Tacitus on the other hand entertained a convivium
with a single chicken eked out with eggs, and rarely took a bath {Tac. 11),
Elagabalus had tame lions and leopards which were trained to take their places
at the dinner-table, to the discomfiture of the guests (Heliog. 21). Many other-
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