Marius Maximus
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Marius Maximus was a Roman biographer, writing in Latin, who in the early decades of the 3rd century AD wrote a series of biographies of twelve Emperors, imitating and continuing Suetonius. Marius’s work is lost, but it was still being read in the late 4th century and was used as a source by writers of that era, notably the author of the Historia Augusta. The nature and reliability of Marius’s work, and the extent to which the earlier part of the HA draws upon it, are two vexed questions among the many problems that the HA continues to pose for students of late Roman history and literature.
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[edit] Career
It is more or less universally agreed that Marius Maximus the biographer is identical with one of the most successful senators of the Severan dynasty, whose career is known from inscriptions, L. Marius Maximus Perpetuus Aurelianus, twice consul and once Prefect of the City of Rome. His family may have hailed from Africa and was not senatorial; his father, L. Marius Perpetuus, was an Equestrian procurator in Gaul but evidently secured entry to the senatorial order for his son as a novus homo. Marius Maximus was probably born about 160 AD and became a senator under Commodus. In 193, when Septimius Severus seized power, he was legate of Legio I Italica on the lower Danube and was involved in the campaign against Pescennius Niger. In 197 he fought at the Battle of Lugdunum against Clodius Albinus and was then appointed governor of Gallia Belgica. His first, suffect consulship is presumed to have fallen about 199. In 208 he was governing Coele-Syria and a few years later he became the first ex-consul ever to hold both the Proconsulship of Asia, and that of Africa, in succession. (The order is not certain; it was unprecedented to hold both Proconsulships, either one of which conventionally crowned a senator’s career.) This suggests he was high in favour with Caracalla, but Marius went on to serve as Praefectus Urbi in 217 under Macrinus. He was consul for the second time in 223 as colleague of the Emperor Alexander Severus. His date of death is unknown. His son was consul in 232.
[edit] The biographies
It is not known for certain when Marius wrote his work, apparently entitled Caesares, but presumably towards the end of his career. It was intended as a continuation of the Twelve Caesars of Suetonius, and apparently covered the next twelve reigns, from Nerva to that of Elagabalus. As an eyewitness who experienced at least seven of these reigns from positions of authority, Maximus could have taken up the writing of history like his contemporary Dio Cassius, but he preferred the anecdotal and, indeed, frivolous forms of biography. His writings come in for adverse criticism from Jerome, Ammianus Marcellinus, and also the anonymous author of the Historia Augusta, who nevertheless cites him directly at least 26 times (apparently in most cases quoting or summarizing passages from Marius’s lost work) and probably uses him in many places elsewhere. Marius’s intention seems to have been to follow and out-perform Suetonius in serving up gossip, spicy details of the Emperors’ private lives, cynical comments, scandalous anecdotes and curiosa. He also quoted from letters, senatorial edicts and so on, but seems to have invented some of these – a practice which the HA author adopted with enormous enthusiasm and bravura. However his work, sensationalist or not, must have contained much valuable information. The HA’s narration of the assassination of Elagabalus, well told and full of authentic-seeming circumstantial detail, is generally considered to derive from Marius Maximus.
[edit] 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. 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’.
[edit] Sources
- Sir Ronald Syme, Ammanius and the Historia Augusta (Oxford, 1968)
- Sir Ronald Syme, Emperors and Biography (Oxford, 1971)
