Sometimes the Best History is Fiction (ca. 4th C AD)
While the scribes here at the Ancient Standard would never stoop so low as to fabricate history for the sake of the reader – there is more than enough interesting ancient history to begin with! – it seems that an author living during the Late Roman Period didn’t necessarily subscribe to this commitment of authenticity.
The Historia Augusta – or in English, Augustan History – is a collection of supposed biographies about a number of Roman Emperors who lived during the second and third centuries AD. The history is constructed as though it was written by six different authors during the reigns of Constantine and Diocletian, however the true nature of the authorship – not to mention when it was written and why – remains to be seen. The fact of the matter is, it’s not a history of the Emperors at all – most of the book is complete fiction, plain and simple, from the narrative details all the way down to the quotations included from supposedly ‘historical’ documents!
First of all, the most likely period in which the Historia was written was the 4th century, during the reign of Emperor Theodosius I, since it seems to quote some material from contemporary authors of this period. However, it’s rather difficult to say with any authority when it was written. The consistency of style throughout the text does reveal one thing – there certainly weren’t six authors involved in writing it, and in fact it was probably written by only one author, who for some reason felt the need to play this practical joke on future historians.
Why would an author in the 4th century AD feel the need to fabricate over 130 fake documents – quoting from them, using anecdotes and “facts” from them – and then use them to not only substantiate some claims but in many cases to disagree with them?! Was this intended to be a real history, but the historian was lazy? Or, as has been suggested by others, was this intended to simply be a work of fiction or satire to entertain readers? Some historians believe that this is an early case of historical fiction, produced by an author who wanted to make fun of the “antiquarian tendencies” of the period he lived in. In fact, in the introduction to one section of the book entitled ‘The Life of Aurelian’, the “author” Flavius Vopiscus has recorded a conversation he had with the City Prefect of Rome, in which Vopiscus is urged by the Prefect to write whatever he wants, and invent the parts he doesn’t know.
As much as it is a work of fiction, the Historia Augusta cannot simply be dismissed as a lacking any historical value, because as much as it isn’t a reliable source for the period it claims to document, it is one of the only sources of information available about the years 253-284 AD. The key is in separating the fact from the fiction, and historians agree that the book actually contains a number of important pieces of information about ancient Rome that no one else mentions – things that can be fit into the real line of history and that can be substantiated with comparison to other texts written about the time period.
In effect, the Historia Augusta is a work of historical fiction, written during a period of ancient history about ancient history! And like any good piece of fiction, real events have been combined with figments of the author’s imagination to create a good, compelling story, leaving it up to the reader to discern reality from fiction. After all, it’s not like ‘imagination’ was something invented recently – humans have always created stories. It just so happens that this author chose to do something a little more complex – and isn’t that what makes fiction interesting?
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Tomorrow: Egyptian fortress of kings!
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