Abstract

T. D. Barnes has recently impugned the authenticity of these verses and calls for a defence of their genuineness. Although I agree with Fergus Millar that ‘the problem of the Historia Augusta is one into which sane men refrain from entering’,2 yet I think we can at least counter Barnes's objections. Barnes musters four arguments which he naturally calls ‘quite conclusive’. He first points out that the verses are omitted in the epitome of Dio by Xiphilinus, who is our sole source for Dio here, and claims that it is unlikely that Xiphilinus could have omitted such a ‘striking poem’. This is putting an extraordinarily high value on Xiphilinus, who is quite capable of omitting things of greater moment than five Latin verses which he would presumably have had to translate into Greek; as an epitomator of Dio, he is inferior to Zonaras, and his account of Hadrian's reign is particularly poor