2017. The Highs and Lows of Biography, in B. Bleckmann and H. Brandt, eds., Historia Augusta Colloquium Dusseldorpiense, Edipuglia, Bari, 2017, 175-187

Peter Van Nuffelen The highs and lows of biography The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 313153. Translations of the Historia Augusta are taken from the Loeb edition by D. Magie, with some modifications. This paper seeks to situate the Historia Augusta in its literary context and to understand its imposture as a literary play with the value judgements on the reading and writing of biography that were current in the fourth century. Drawing on evidence from fragmentary historians, I shall, first, survey how political biography was perceived in this period. In particular, I shall draw attention to a recurring negative assessment of the genre as unsuited for an elite habitus. In the second section of this paper, I shall argue that the Historia Augusta plays on these value judgements by inviting its reader to become an ‘over-reader’ On the concept of the “over-reader”, a target reader other than the addressee, cf. E. Oliensis, Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority, Cambridge, 1998, 6-7. who is aware of the distance between the’real author’ of the work and the ‘implied authors’. The perspective espoused here is socio-literary. For literary approaches to the Historia Augusta, see D. den Hengst, The Prefaces in the Historia Augusta, Amsterdam, 1981; D.W.P. Burgersdijk, Style and Structure in the Historia Augusta, Diss. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2010; S.G. Daniels, Satire in the Historia Augusta, Diss. Florida State University, 2013. 1. « They hate learning as poison »: biography and the elite habitus in the fourth century The field of biography in the fourth century was somewhat more crowded than we tend to assume. In this section I shall discuss some evidence which is rarely adduced in this context, with the aim of identifying a discourse on biography against which the Historia Augusta positions itself. The Historia Augusta seems to situate itself within the context of the confluence of historiography and biography which started in the Empire and was practised in the fourth century by the Ennmansche Kaisergeschichte, Eutropius, Aurelius Victor and the Epitome de Caesaribus. M. Zimmermann, Enkomion und Historiographie: Entwicklungslinien der Kaiserzeitlichen Geschichtsschreibung vom 1. bis zum frühen 3. Jh. n. Chr. in M. Zimmermann (ed.), Geschichtsschreibung und politischer Wandel im 3. Jh. n. Chr., Kolloquium zu Ehren von Karl-Ernst Petzold (Juni 1998) anlässlich seines 80. Geburstags, Stuttgart, 1999, 17-56. As the Historia Augusta has clear links with such works, often through their use as sources, this is an obvious way to understand the work. Yet, this is only part of the story. If we look at the reception of works of biography that were produced or used in this period, we notice that political biography did not have the sound reputation that its continuous history seems to suggest. (I restrict myself to biography of ‘political figures’, thus leaving out lives of saints, philosophers, and authors. This may generate issues about genre definition, but, as we shall see, political biography does seem to be identified as a particular type of literature.) I shall first illustrate the obvious fact that works of biography were a traditional tool in the literary training of the elite by the grammaticus and rhetor and that compendia collecting biographical material were produced for such a purpose. Then I shall argue that because of their association with basic training, works of biography tended to be judged rather negatively, but this was not the only reason: there was also the suspicion that biography was being read out of misplaced curiosity. Finally, because political biography, and in particular imperial biography, was a trite genre, we notice a tendency in the fourth century to engage with such traditional knowledge in a new, playful manner. Knowledge about the Greek past and earlier Roman history was deemed important for the aspiring orator as a source of exempla, as well as a means to understand allusions in earlier texts. R. Nicolai, La storiografia nell’educazione antica, Pisa, 1992. For an example of the intertwining of rhetoric and biography, one easily thinks of Eunapius in the fourth century, but see, e.g., also Clemens, FGrHist 102 T1 = BNJ 102 T1 (2-3rd c.?): ἱστορικός. ἔγραψε ῾Ρωμαίων βασιλεῖς καὶ αὐτοκράτορας· καὶ πρὸς ῾Ιερώνυμον περὶ τῶν ᾽Ισοκρατικῶν σχημάτων· καὶ ἄλλα. Whereas classical works, such as Thucydides, continued to be part of the reading lists, other works seemed to have designed especially for schools to offer summaries or overviews of knowledge, or, at least, appropriated as such. This is the explanation, if not for the actual writing of Eutropius’ Breviarium, then at least for his striking popularity in later Antiquity, both in Greek and Latin: it became one of the works that were handy within a school context and, as a sort of handbook, would stay with one. Similarly, the remarkable late antique afterlife of the second century historian Charax of Pergamon is to be understood by the same mechanism: his forty books of Greek and Roman history are virtually unattested before the sixth century, when his compendious work of mythology and history seemed to have achieved canonical status. FGrHist 103 = BNJ 103. Late antique interest was also drawn to works specifically compiled for the rhetorical school: compendia of extracts from earlier works. For example, Photius summarises the Various extracts (Ἐκλογαὶ διάφοροι) by the sophist Sopater of Apamea, traditionally identified with the early fourth-century philosopher of that name. P. Janiszewski, The Missing Link. Greek Pagan Historiography in the Second Half of the Third Century and in the Fourth Century AD (The Journal of Juristic Papyrology. Supplement 6), Warsaw, 2006, 77-84. The Suda mentions another Sopater (of Alexandria?), who composed an Ἐκλογή τῶν ἱστοριῶν. It may be the same author and work. It draws on a wide range of sources, including Apollodorus for the mythical material and Herodotus and, especially, Plutarch for the historical material (in 4 out of 12 books). The material from Plutarch was interpolated with information culled from other authors. A work like that of Sopater may help us to understand why the Plutarchean material found in John of Antioch (Fr. 144 Roberto = F101 Mariev) is not purely Plutarchean: John may very well have drawn on a collection of this sort which included additions. On the passage, see L. Zusi, L’età mariano-sillana in Giovanni Antiocheno, Rome, 1989. . The collection was explicitly designed for rhetorical training and practice as Sopater stated in his preface (Phot. Bibl. Cod. 161.105a): Εἰ γὰρ καὶ μύθων καὶ τεράτων ψευδῶν τε καὶ ἀπιθάνων, ὥς μοι καὶ πολλάκις εἴρηται, οὐ καθαρεύει, ἀλλ’ οὖν ἐν οἷς τε εἰς πολυμαθίαν ἐκ τοῦ ἑτοίμου συντελεῖ, καὶ πρὸς ἀρετὴν καὶ καλοκἀγαθίαν πλεῖστά ἐστιν αὐτῶν ἀπανθίσασθαι, πρός τε τὸ ῥητορεύειν καὶ σοφιστεύειν (ὡς καὶ αὐτὸς τοῖς ἑταίροις γράφων προοιμιάζεται) οὐκ ἐλαχίστην φέρει ῥοπήν, ἱκανὸν εἰς χρείαν καθέστηκεν. It is polluted by myths and monsters, lies and unlikelihood, as I have said often before, but, for the things that belong to ready-made knowledge, it contributes not a little and has real use when it comes to harvesting many things that contribute to virtue and uprightness and to practicing rhetoric and sophistry (as he himself states in his preface writing to his friends). Note that Photius defines the work as offering “ready-made knowledge”, whereby both terms (πολυμαθία and ἐκ τοῦ ἑτοίμου) can have pejorative overtones. Plutarch plays a key role in another lost work by an author who shows up great similarities with that of Sopater: Damophilus of Bithynia. He is a sophist and philosopher (notice the parallel with Sopater), who composed On the lives of the ancients, besides a Philobiblos – a list of books to possess. He is only mentioned in late ancient sources: Julian, John the Lydian, Evagrius Scholasticus and the Suda. We known from Julian and Evagrius that he relied on Plutarch and from Julian that it was indeed a work that served, at least in the fourth century, the needs of rhetorical training – which helps to explain why it pops up in authors working in Constantinople and Antioch. Jul. Misop. 29; Joh. Lyd. De mens. 4.2; Steph. Byz. s.v. Psittakon; Evagr. Schol. h.e. 6.1; Suda Δ 52. See L. Van Hoof and P. Van Nuffelen, « No Stories for Old Men »: Damophilus of Bithynia and Plutarch in Julian’s Misopogon, in A. Quiroja Puertas (ed.), The Purpose of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity: From Performance to Exegesis (Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 72), Tübingen, 2013, 209-222. Biographical information, and in the cases we have surveyed Plutarch in particular, was thus important in the context of rhetorical training, and it does not need further explanation why this was the case. But the fact that interest in biography was rooted in a school context had consequences for the judgement of its value. Implicit in Photius’ comments on Sopater (but he can hardly lay claim to being a witness to fourth-century views), an explicitly negative assessment is implied in Julian’s reference to Damophilus. Indeed, the emperor refers to Damophilus in the Misopogon as a source for an anecdote about Cato the Younger with the aim to suggest that this is the type of bad literature the Antiochenes read – Damophilus provides the gossip they are interested in (Misop. 29, 358CD): Δαμοφίλῳ τῷ Βιθυνῷ πεποίηται συγγράμματα τοιαῦτα, ἐν οἷς δρεπόμενος ἐκ τῶν πολλῶν εἰργάσατο λόγους ἡδίστους νέῳ φιληκόῳ καὶ πρεσβυτέρῳ Damophilus of Bithynia has written such works, in which he, harvesting from many places, composed stories most pleasant to the ears of those, young and old, who are eager to hear gossip. The interest of the Antiochenes in low literature is then contrasted with the proper, philosophical elite habitus incorporated by Julian himself and presupposed in his intended readership, namely the empire-wide elite, who would notice from Julian’s account how inappropriate the Antiochene reaction had been. L. Van Hoof and P. Van Nuffelen, Monarchy and Mass Communication: Antioch 362/3 Revisited, in Journal of Roman Studies 101 (2011), 166-184. Again the parallel with Sopater is instructive: in the passage quoted above, Photius notices that the work is full of mythoi and terata. Many of its interpolations in Plutarch, he says, are drawn from the Roman history of a certain Rufus, tentatively dated to the 2nd or 3rd century, “in which one can encounter many worthwhile things, even if some of them lapse into myths and great nonsense”. FGrHist 826 = BNJ 826. Cf. Phot. Cod. 161: συνείλεκται δὲ καὶ ἐκ τῆς ῾Ρούφου ῾Ρωμαικῆς ἱστορίας πρώτου καὶ δευτέρου καὶ τρίτου βιβλίου καὶ τετάρτου, ἐν οἷς ἔστι περιτυχεῖν πολλοῖς ἀξιολόγοις, εἰ καὶ ἔνια αὐτῶν εἰς μύθους καὶ μακρὸν ἐκπίπτουσι λῆρον. The negative judgement by Julian on Damophilus thus implies a contrast between proper and improper reading, which is related to social distinctions (old/young, philosopher/lay person). It presupposes a reading pattern that is fit for the elite, impersonated, in this case, by Julian himself and by his intended audience. Similar presuppositions govern Ammianus’ dismissal of Juvenal and Marius Maximus (a late second or first half of third century biographer) On Marius, see T.J. Cornell (ed.), The Fragments of the Roman Historians, Oxford, 2013, Vol. 1, 602-611. On Marius in Ammianus, see M. Kulikowski, Marius Maximus in Ammianus and the Historia Augusta, Classical Quarterly 57 (2007), 244–256. Marius in the Historia Augusta: J. Schlumberger, Epitome, Historia Augusta und Marius Maximus? in Historiae Augustae Colloquium Genevense in Honorem F. Paschoud Septuagenarii (Historiae Augustae Colloquia 9), Bari, 2010, 195–209; D. Rohrbacher, The Sources of the Historia Augusta Re-Examined, in Histos 7 (2013), 143–180, 160-162. in his famous digression on the vices of Rome (Amm. 28.4.14): Quidam detestantes ut venena doctrinas, Iuvenalem et Marium Maximum curatiore studio legunt, nulla volumina praeter haec in profundo otio contrectantes, quam ob causam non iudicioli est nostri. Cum multa et varia pro amplitudine gloriarum et generum lectitare deberent, … Some of them, hating learning as they hate poison, read Juvenal and Marius Maximus with tolerably careful study; though, in their profound laziness, they never touch any other volumes; why, it does not belong to my poor judgment to decide. Whereas, considering the greatness of their fame and of their parentage, they ought to pore over many and varied works… (tr. Rolfe) It is easy to recognise here the same type of judgement as in Julian. The Roman elite has too great an interest in Juvenal and Marius Maximus, which does not suit the broad reading that should come with the glorious genealogy they boast of. In other words, Juvenal and Marius Maximus are not the right type of reading for someone who pretends to belong to the highest elite of the empire. Ammianus drives the point home by referring to an anecdote about Socrates who still sought to learn something even the day before his execution. Again, then, there is something inappropriate about reading biography. Whereas in the case of Damophilus the main point of criticism seemed to be that his work is a compilation and that one should read the original, Ammianus’ judgement on Marius Maximus and Juvenal suggests that there is something wrong with their content. In both cases the assessment is based on a link with a literary interest in low literature and lower social status. (I note in passing that both elements can also be found in Photius on Sopater.) One of the reasons for such judgements is that biography appears to be trite knowledge, something that everybody would learn in school. I would suggest we see this reflected in the catalogue format of the anonymous De viris illustribus Urbis Romae, part of the Pseudo-Aurelian corpus. A proper education, so it is suggested in Julian and Ammianus, rises above that. But there was another way of demonstrating one’s learning beyond rejecting the genre altogether: the creative play with hackneyed knowledge. For this attitude in the fourth century, Ausonius provides the best evidence. See also Symmachus’ Liber hebdomadum, attested in Symm., Ep. 1.2. His oeuvre is proudly centred on himself and on his activities as a teacher of rhetoric. Several of his works are demonstrations of his talent to do new things with worn-out learning. In this context, his playful reduction of Suetonius to monosticha de ordine imperatorum, de aetate imperii eorum, and de obito singulorum, as well as tetrasticha, and then to continue these with the emperors after Domitian is the most obvious example. Similarly, his fasti summarised the history of Rome in a single book; it cannot have been much more than a list of names, probably versified. Aus. XV.I.3-4. Cf. R.P.H. Green, Ausonius’ Fasti and Caesares Revisited, in Classical Quarterly 49 (1993), 573–578. We should notice that consular lists were a low type of work, now rendered dignified by the poetical form. Ausonius is also said to have composed a work On emperors who innovated from Decius to Diocletian, in iambic trimeters, using the books of the historian Eusebius of Nantes (de imperatoribus res novas molitis a Decio usque ad Diocletianum versu iambico trimetro iuxta libros Eusebii Nannetici ystorici). Eusebius of Nantes, T1: P. De Cicco, L’historien Eusèbe de Nantes (?): Nouvelles Perspectives, in Revue des Etudes Tardoantiques 3 (2013-2014), 211–242. I do not wish to enter the debate about who Eusebius of Nantes exactly was: the important point is that Ausonius is giving imperial biography a new face by versifying it and focusing on usurpers (which is the best interpretation for res novas molitis). The connection between social position and literary taste has been well-studied for the Second Sophistic and in the fourth century is was as strong as ever. T. Schmitz, Bildung und Macht: Zur sozialen und politischen Funktion der Zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit (Zetemata. Monographien zur klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 97), Munich, 1997; L. Van Hoof, Plutarch’s Practical Ethics. The Social Dynamics of Philosophy, Oxford, 2010. For the study of the Historia Augusta it is interesting to note that political biography seemed to have been perceived in some quarters as a problematic genre in this respect, representing an ordinary, trite form of learning and betraying an interest in gossip on the part of its readers. My suggestion in the second section of this paper is that within the fourth-century context the imposture of the Historia Augusta is another example of dealing in a creative way with knowledge and literature that were seen as banal. Moreover, it does so by playing with the negative value judgements that we have just surveyed. I disagree with the idea that the Historia Augusta should be understood as a reflection of the rise of fiction towards the end of the fourth-century, an age when the respect for the truth supposedly had dramatically declined (R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta, Oxford, 1968, 118-125 and Emperors and Biographers, Oxford, 1971, 263-266; A. Chastagnol, Histoire Auguste. Les empereurs romains des IIe et IIIe siècles, Paris, 1994, ci-cii (who misinterprets Hier. Ep. 56 = Aug. Ep. 28)). I also tend to disagree with the idea that the author of the Historia Augusta would be badly educated, unintelligent and incapable of literary play (Chastagnol, Histoire Auguste, cx; A. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome, Oxford, 743). I also do no think Christian biography if the implicit point of reference of the work (as suggested by S. Ratti, Polémiques entre païens et chrétiens, Paris, 2012). 2. Curiositas nihil recusat: the Historia Augusta, its readers and ‘over-readers’ The Historia Augusta puts its readers in a very specific position, and, I would argue, consciously so. It presents itself as a series of imperial biographies by six authors, dedicated to emperors (in particular Diocletian and Constantine) and high-ranking friends of the writers. The ubiquitous critique on the way others write history and biography suggests, at first sight, a close intertwining of a high social position (at least in aspiration) and proper writing on the part of the author. The reader is, again at first sight, invited to assimilate himself to the implied audience, namely that of the highest imperial elite. But only a naïve reader would actually continue reading the work like that. Soon indications multiply that shed doubt on the authors E.g. wrong cross-references suggest the unity of authorship: Sev. Alex. 64.2, Max. duo 1.2. and the quality of his work. Already the biography of Aelius, the second in the series, opens with an oblique self-designation of the work as fabula and concludes on a questioning of the usefulness of the work. Ael. 1.3: et quoniam nimis pauca dicenda sunt, nec debet prologus inormior esse quam fabula, de ipso iam loquar. (Since I can tell but little of him, and the prologue should not be more extensive than the play, I shall now proceed to tell of the man himself), Ael. 7.5: meae satisfaciens conscientiae, etiamsi multis nulla sit necessitas talia requirendi (thereby to satisfy my own sense of justice, even if there be many who will feel no compelling need of seeking such information). Cf. Max. duo 31.4, Tyr. Trig. 32. As the reading progresses, the reader becomes aware that the surface presentation of the text is not what it really is. He starts to notice a disjunction between the surface authors and the author and hence dissociates himself from the implied audience. The reader effectively becomes an over-reader who is conscious of the fact that surface authors and implied audience are part of a play conducted by the author. The over-reader and the author share the fact that they know what is going on and, I would surmise, this is what drives the Historia Augusta: its fun is produced by the identification of the over-reader with the author and the adoption of his perspective. I am conscious that I might be accused of insidiously taking the outcome of a century of study of the Historia Augusta as my starting point. It has been common to see its author as someone who wanted to hide the traces of his imposture. He then appears as particularly inept, for, as has often been noticed and as I shall illustrate below, he shoots himself quite often in the foot. I take this to be an unlikely scenario (the background knowledge of contemporary readers must have been many times greater than ours and they would hence more easily detect the ironical posture of the author), and a less interesting at that, but shall refrain from further justification. I just want to note that there are clear similarities with, for example, Julian’s Misopogon. Regarding the audience, the work also drives on a disjunction between the implied audience the over-reader, whereas it can be argued that there is a similar disjunction between implied and real author: Julian consciously creates a self-abasing imperial author, who lowers himself to the level of the Antiochenes, precisely to underline the vileness of their behaviour. Cf. Van Hoof and Van Nuffelen, Monarchy and Mass Communication. As in the Misopogon, the meaning of the text lies in the invitation extended to the over-reader to conspire with the real author against implied audience and author. One obvious way in which this situation presents itself is the tendency of the surface authors to shoot themselves in the foot. Instances are numerous. Halfway through the Life of Heliogabalus, Aelius Lampridius states (Heliog. 18.4): De huius vita multa in litteras missa sunt obscena, quae quia digna memoratu non sunt, ea prodenda censui, quae ad luxuriam pertinebant, quorum aliqua privatus, aliqua iam imperator fecisse perhibetur, cum ipse privatus diceret se Apicium, imperatorum vero <Neronem> Othonem et Vitellium imitari Concerning his life many filthy anecdotes have been put into writing, but since they are not worthy of being recorded, I have thought I ought to relate only such deeds as illustrate his extravagance. Some of these, it is said, were done before he ascended the throne, others after he was made emperor; for he himself declared that, as a private person, his models were Apicius See A. Gutsfeld, L’Histoire Auguste et Apicius, in C. Bertrand-Dagenbach and F. Chausson (eds.), Historiae Augustae Colloquium Nanceiense (Historia Augusta Colloquia 12), Bari, 2014, 265-278. and, among emperors, Nero, Otho and Vitellius This statement, half way through the life, is followed by a long list of trivia on Heliogabalus’ way of life. At the end, the author begs for forgiveness (Heliog. 34.2-3): sed primum omnium ipse veniam peto, quod haec, quae apud diversos repperi, litteris tradidi, cum multa improba reticuerim et quae ne dici quidem sine maximo pudore possunt; ea vero, quae dixi, praetextu verborum adhibito, quantum potui, texi. But first of all I ask for pardon for having set down in writing what I have found in various authors, even though I have passed over in silence many vile details and those things which may not even be spoken of without the greatest shame. But whatever I have told, I have covered up as best I could by the use of veiled terms. Semblance or propriety is seemingly upheld by claiming that the vile has been left out or dressed up properly, but coming after sixteen chapters of salacious detail, the sérieux of the author is seriously in doubt. On these passages, see C. Zinsli, Kommentar zur Vita Heliogabali der Historia Augusta (Antiquitas. Reihe 4, Beiträge zur Historia-Augusta-Forschung. Serie 3, Kommentare), Bonn, 2014, 583-585, 824-826. Even more explicitly, in the Quadrigae tyrannorum, Flavius Vopiscus admits to writing levia and frivola, a choice of topics usually attributed to bad biographers, such as Iunius Cordus (Quadr. Tyr. 4.4): SHA, Quadr. Tyr. 4.4, 6.3-5, 11.4. nam quidam Burburus nomine de numero vexillariorum, notissimus potator, cum ad bibendum eundem provocasset, situlas duas plenas mero duxit et toto postea convivio sobrius fuit; et cum ei Burburus diceret, « Quare non faeces bibisti? » respondit ille, « Stulte, terra non bibitur. » levia persequimur, cum maiora dicenda sint. For example, when a certain fellow named Burburus, one of the standard-bearers and a notable drinker, challenged him [Firmus] to a contest in drinking, he drained two buckets full of wine and yet remained sober throughout the whole banquet; and when Burburus asked, « Why did you not drink up the dregs? » he replied, « You fool, one does not drink earth. » But we are narrating mere trifles when we should be telling what is of greater importance. This is one of many instances where the over-reader gets explicit confirmation of what he notices implicitly all along: the failure of the surface authors to live up to their own rhetoric of excellence. Explicit admission of such failure and justification for it are relatively common in the later lives. Flavius Vopiscus admits (Aurel. 10.1): See also Aurel. 15.4, Max. duo 27.7-29.10, Tyr. trig. 31.7-12. Frivola haec fortassis cuipiam et nimis levia esse videantur, sed curiositas nihil recusat. These details may perhaps seem to someone to be paltry and over trivial, but research stops at nothing. Similarly, Trebellius Pollio admits that his thirst for knowledge is hard to keep in check (Tyr. Trig. 32.7): Longius mihi videor processisse quam res postulabat. sed quid faciam? scientia naturae facilitate verbosa est. I seem to have gone on further than the matter demanded. But what am I to do? For knowledge is ever wordy through a natural inclination. Such passages create the image of a gullible and gossipy author, lacking self-control, and, therefore, failing to live up the high standards of serious biography he projects in numerous explicit statements throughout the work. It is to these statements that we now turn, as they will allow us to set the Historia Augusta within the discourse I sketched in my first section. As is well-known, the authors of the Historia Augusta deploy two distinctions to characterise their own work of biography, namely, on the one hand, a distinction between historiography and biography, and, on the other, one between good and bad biography. The first distinction is most famously made in the preface to the Life of Probus (Prob. 2.7-8): The author can identify his own work as historiography, as the genre of biography could also be located within historiograhy: Gord. 1, Tyr. Trig 1.1. et mihi quidem id animi fuit ut non Sallustios, Livios, Tacitos, Trogos atque omnes disertissimos imitarer viros in vita principum et temporibus disserendis, sed Marium Maximum, Suetonium Tranquillum, Fabium Marcellinum, Gargilium Martialem, Iulium Capitolinum, Aelium Lampridium ceterosque, qui haec et talia non tam diserte quam vere memoriae tradiderunt.  sum enim unus ex curiosis, quod infitias ire non possum, incendentibus vobis, qui, cum multa sciatis, scire multo plura cupitis. And it was, indeed, my intention not to imitate Sallust, Livy, Tacitus and Trogus and all other most eloquent writers when narrating the life of the emperors and their times, but Marius Maximus, Suetonius Tranquillus, Fabius Marcellinus, Gargilius Martialis, Julius Capitolinus, Aelius Lampridius and others, who have committed these and other facts to memory not with eloquence but truthfully. For I am one of the « interested » (I cannot hide it), under your impulse, you who knows much and desires to know much more. The author here pitches grand names of historiography against a tradition of biography which is partly of his own invention and partly self-referential. A. Momigliano, Ammiano Marcellino e la Historia Augusta (a proposito del libro di Ronald Syme), in Quinto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Rome, 1975, 93-103 followed by den Hengst, The prefaces, 135-136 argues that the Historia Augusta here does not oppose biography and historiography. But Syme’s argument is to be preferred (Ammianus and the Historia Augusta, 94-102, but not his idea of a jibe at Ammianus). See also C. Sogno, Curiositas Nihil Recusat. A Playful Defense of “Low” Biography against “High” History, in D. Brakke (ed.), Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity, Farnham, 2012, 73-84. The point is, however, that by this time into the Historia Augusta, the reader will have acquired an image of Marius Maximus as a gullible writer, not outdone by the surface author’s own efforts under the guise of Capitolinus and Lampridius. The opposition is articulated around the terms eloquence, truth, and curiosity, whereby the author inverses the tables on historiography by suggesting they prefer style to truth. At the same time, he claims to be a curiosus. The context and the sentence, especially the apologetic « I cannot hide it », make it unlikely that curiosus is here merely used in a neutral sense (see also the earlier passages quoted). den Hengst, Prefaces, 127-129. The neutral meaning does occur in the Historia Augusta (Aurel. 2.1), but the adjective was famously ambiguous and one should not extend its meaning in one passage to another. For the negative meaning of curiosus, see Cic., De fin. 5.51, with K. Heldmann, Sine ira et studio. Das Subjektivitätsprinzip der römischen Geschichtsschreibung und das Selbstverständnis antiker Historiker (Zetemata 139), Munich, 2011, 22. On curiositas, see K. Schlapbach, Solinus’ Collectanea rerum memorabilium and Augustine’s curiosa historia, in K. Brodersen (ed.), Solinus. New Studies, Frankfurt am Main, 2014, 141-156. Rather, the author presents himself as someone thirsty for knowledge, knowledge of the kind that was deprecated by Photius, Ammianus and Julian. In other words, the passage just quoted does two things. First, it claims truthfulness and factuality for biography and argues that historiography is only interested in style; in other words, biography is the higher genre. Yet, in the second place, the high claim of biography is immediately unmasked by drawing attention to the shared curiositas of implied author and implied audience: the dedicatee is someone who wants to know, just for knowledge’s sake and the author is equally curiosus. The grandiose claim of truthfulness for biography is further undercut by the models of the genre he cites, which, with the exception of Suetonius (who is, consciously I would suggest, not cited as first In an article on the Historia Augusta, one is allowed to speculate that it may not be accidental that the very first mention of Suetonius is Hadr. 11.3, where it is said that he was dismissed for being too familiar with Sabina, Hadrian’s wife, and where Hadrian is described as curiosus. Suetonius and Hadrian swap roles in this passage: the emperor is curiosus, the biographer is gossiped about.) are familiar to the reader of the Historia Augusta as not very elegant specimens of the genre. Rather than revaluating political biography, then, this passage confirms the negative view we found in other fourth-century sources: political biography is seen as interested in the trivial and unsuited for a proper elite habitus. The Historia Augusta does not simply pitch biography against historiography but also suggests differing qualities among imperial biographers. It is well-known that the fictitious Iunius Cordus serves as the “whipping boy” of the work and represents all the interest in the slanderous gossip that marks bad biographers. Is this an attempt by the author to situate himself on the right side of the fence (even if he unintentionally fails to live up to the ideal he projects)? A. Scheithauer, Kaiserbild und literarisches Programm. Untersuchungen zur Tendenz der Historia Augusta (Studien Zur Klassischen Philologie 32), Frankfurt am Main, 1987, 137-142. The name of Cordus is supposed to be derived from Juv. Sat. 1.2. As Juvenal writes against Cordus, the Historia Augusta writes against Cordus: Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta, 97; den Hengst, Prefaces, 48-49. Given the link between the reading of biography and of satire in Ammianus, as two activities unsuited for the Roman elite, this derivation would be significant within the context of this article. In fact, as we have noticed already, the author observes the rules of the good writing of biography often in the breach by admittedly engaging in the narrative of levia and frivola. Only at the level of a superficial interpretation does the fictitious Iunius Cordus serve the purpose of situating the implied authors on the right side of the dividing line of high and low. Read from the perspective of the over-reader, Iunius Cordus rather demonstrates the company the implied authors tend to find themselves in, as well as the type of reading the implied audience longs for. Indeed, the author offers Iunius Cordus too much air space for comfort and often suggests that his readers can go and look things up in his work. E.g. Clod. Alb. 5.10, 11.2, Op. Macr. 1. In this way, the over-reader notices that the implied authors and audience are engaged in an activity (the reading and writing of biography), which they know is socially inappropriate but which they fail to abandon. The present argument invites to be extended to other levels within the Historia Augusta. Indeed, one notices that the connection between social status and bad literary taste is not only played out in the interaction between implied author and implied audience, but is also reflected in the narrative itself. Many an emperor and usurper is badly educated and has low tastes. Clodius Albinus, for example, eruditus graecis et latinis mediocriter (Cl.Alb. 5.1) is said to have written Georgica and Milesian Tales (Cl.Alb. 11.8 and 12.12). Often particular food tastes are named in one breath with low literary taste: Aelius (Ael. 5.9), it is said, atque idem Apicii (ab aliis relata), idem Ovidii libros amorum in lecto semper habuisse, idem Martialem, epigrammaticum poetam, Vergilium suum dixisse. always kept the work of Apicius (things said by others) and also Ovid's Amores at his bedside, and declared that Martial, the writer of epigrams, was his Vergil. This habit is explicitly qualified as levis (Ael. 5.10). Food and low literature is, in fact (and unsurprisingly), a recurring connection in the Historia Augusta. This is the clue to the interpretation of the following passage in the Life of Caracalla (4.4): caedes deinde in omnibus locis. et in balneis facta caedes, occisique nonnulli etiam cenantes, inter quos etiam Sammonicus Serenus, cuius libri plurimi ad doctrinam extant. Then there was a slaughtering in all manner of places. Even in the public baths there was slaughter, and some too were killed while dining, among them Sammonicus Serenus, many of whose books dealing with learned subjects are still in circulation Serenus Sammonicus makes a number of appearances in the Historia Augusta. He is the favourite author of Geta, of whom it is noted in the same passage that his knowledge does not rise above the level of the grammaticus and that he had particular food tastes (Geta 5.1-6), and the low-level reading a good emperor like Alexander Severus indulged in after Cicero and Plato (Alex. Sev. 30.1-2). Serenus Sammonicus is attested elsewhere in fourth and fifth century literature and one of his work was entitled res reconditae. Obscure detail was indeed his domain. Macr. Sat. 3.16.6-7, 3.17.4, 3.9.6-12; Arn. Adv. Nat. 6.7. For speculation about the identity of Serenus Sammonicus, see E. Champlin, Serenus Sammonicus, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), 189–212; P. Mastandrea, Sereno Sammonico: Res reconditae e dati di fatto, in Lexis 30 (2012), 505–517. The life of Gordianus pokes fun at his learning by narrating how his son left all 62000 books of his father’s library to Gordian (Gord. 18.2 – note that the life opens by a praise of brevitas). Again, the bookish knowledge of Sammonicus is here depicted as of interest for those of a lower literary taste. In contrast, it is suggestive that Alexander Severus, who gets the best press in the Historia Augusta and is praised for the quality of his learning, Alex. Sev. 3.1-5. did creative things with biography. Not only did he inform his own biographers, but he also « composed in verse lives of good emperors » (Alex. Sev. 27.8: vitas principum bonorum versibus scripsit). He did what a clever littérateur was supposed to do at the end of the fourth century: make trite knowledge fun. Conclusion I wish to emphasise that the context I have suggested is not a panacea for all the ills of the Historia Augusta, but one aspect that helps us to understand what is going on in this text. We are dealing with a work that consciously depicts itself as an expression of bad taste. In doing so, it does not seek to turn low literature into a high genre: the Historia Augusta is not a defence of low biography against its detractors. On the contrary, the over-reader is constantly confirmed in his value judgements, by an author who therefore situates himself on the high side of the dividing line. This is achieved by situating implied author and implied audience at the wrong side of the fence. The use of imposture should maybe worry us less than it has in the past, as there are precedents for this: at some point in the first-second century AD a certain Ptolemy Chennus wrote his kaine historia, which contained invented mythological and historical tales. It has been argued that we should understand his work against the background of high level learning and paideia of the Second Sophistic: the fun stems from seeing how the fiction is fabricated, which presupposes high and not low levels of learning. Phot. Bibl. Cod.190. Cf. M. Hose, Ptolemaios Chennos und das Problem der Schwindelliteratur, in S. Heilen, R. Kirstein, and R.S. Smith (eds.), In Pursuit of Wissenschaft. Festschrift für William M. Calder III zum 75. Geburtstag, Hildesheim, 2008, 177-196. I suggest we finally abandon all remnants of ideas about the decline of culture in the fourth century and take the Historia Augusta seriously, as a witty display of knowledge against the background of cultural debates about appropriate literary tastes for the elite. It is serious fun.