The Historia Augusta is a late Roman collection of biographies, written in Latin, of the Roman emperors, their junior colleagues, designated heirs and usurpers from 117 to 284. Supposedly modeled on the similar work of Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, it presents itself as a compilation of works by six different authors, collectively known as the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine I and addressed to those emperors or other important personages in Ancient Rome. The collection, as extant, comprises thirty biographies, most of which contain the life of a single emperor, but some include a group of two or more, grouped together merely because these emperors were either similar or contemporaneous.
The cover of a 1698 edition of the Historia Augusta from Ettal Abbey, Germany
Hermann Dessau, whose groundbreaking work on the Historia Augusta led to its critical re-evaluation in the 20th century
Cicero, one of the authors whose works the Historia Augusta references obliquely.
Trebellianus, one of the fictitious tyrants included in the Historia Augusta, drawn by Guillaume Rouillé in Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum- 1553
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly referred to as Suetonius, was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies of 12 successive Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian, properly titled De vita Caesarum. Other works by Suetonius concerned the daily life of Rome, politics, oratory, and the lives of famous writers, including poets, historians, and grammarians. A few of these books have partially survived, but many have been lost.
19th-century etching of Suetonius