Historia Augusta

   A collection of biographies of emperors and usurpers from Hadrian to the reign of Diocletian, thus 117-284 (with a gap for the years 244-259). The alleged authors are six biographers writing during the late third and early fourth centuries, but most modern scholars attribute the work to a single author writing in Rome (q.v.) in the late fourth century. The information for emperors from Hadrian to Caracalla is of value, but for subsequent third-century personages it is often of little value, and sometimes clearly fictional.