Documentary Fallacies

Called “a “hoax,” “a fraud,” “an imposture” (Syme 1968, 1983), the series of imperial biographies known as the Historia Augusta has been the victim of a rather notorious reputation. Dessau first suggested that the Historia Augusta (HA) is the work of a single author from the mid- to late-fourth century CE instead of what it purports to be, the collective work of six biographers writing during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine (Dessau 1889, 1892).

The coinage of most Roman imperial usurpers ignores direct mention of the legitimate regime with which they were in conflict. However, starting in the third century, some men in tension or conflict with the legitimate regime nonetheless had coins struck in their name advertising a positive relationship between themselves and the ruling emperor(s). This paper will examine three examples of this phenomenon. Firstly, the coinage of Vaballathus, prior to his proclamation as Augustus, featuring the Palmyrene on the obverse, and Aurelian on the reverse (eg, RIC V(1) 260, 308).

In December 63 BCE, Roman soldiers, on orders from the consul Cicero, intercepted several letters written on wax-tablets (tabellae), which the Catilinarian conspirators had given to the Allobroges’ ambassadors in an effort to forge an alliance with this tribe. In the Third Catilinarian, Cicero carefully describes the physical features of these tabellae as he narrates to the populus how he confronted the conspirators before the senate with this proof of their treachery (10-11).

The Alexander Romance, a historical novel composed between the late Hellenistic and High Imperial period, features over thirty letters inserted into the narrative framework. The drastic variation in length, content, and style of these letters has made it difficult to understand what role they play within the novel. Reinhold Merkelbach’s seminal study of the Alexander Romance in 1954 established a helpful distinction between the novel’s fantastical letters and those with a semblance of historical authenticity.