Marius Maximus - Marius and The Historia Augusta

Marius and The Historia Augusta

There has long been a school of thought that holds that the lives of the Emperors Hadrian to Elagabalus in the HA employ Marius as their primary source material. Anthony Birley has recently offered the most detailed defense of this position. There is however a contrary view, most convincingly put by Sir Ronald Syme, who points out that all the passages in which Marius is cited by name can be shown to be interpolations in the author’s main narrative, brought in to provide colour, frivolous anecdote or critical comment. Examples include the meat dish (tetrafarmacum) that Aelius Verus invented, Hadrian’s supposed expertise in astrology, various stories to the discredit of Marcus Aurelius and his consort Faustina the Younger, the senate’s craven catalogue of acclamations for Commodus, and so on. It is more likely in Syme's opinion that Marius was a secondary source, and that the HA author was following in the main a more sober source, ‘Ignotus, the Good Biographer’.