The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta
eBook - PDF

The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta

  1. 248 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta

About this book

By turns outlandish, humorous, and scatological, the Historia Augusta is an eccentric compilation of biographies of the Roman emperors and usurpers of the second and third centuries. Historians of late antiquity have struggled to explain the fictional date and authorship of the work and its bizarre content (did the Emperor Carinus really swim in pools of floating apples and melons? did the usurper Proculus really deflower a hundred virgins in fifteen days?). David Rohrbacher offers, instead, a literary analysis of the work, focusing on its many playful allusions. Marshaling an array of interdisciplinary research and original analysis, he contends that the Historia Augusta originated in a circle of scholarly readers with an interest in biography, and that its allusions and parodies were meant as puzzles and jokes for a knowing and appreciative audience.

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Yes, you can access The Play of Allusion in the Historia Augusta by David Rohrbacher in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Historical Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Preface
  3. List of Abbreviations
  4. Introduction
  5. 1. Allusion in the Historia Augusta
  6. 2. The Historia Augusta and the Ancient Reader
  7. 3. Religion in the Historia Augusta
  8. 4. Imperial History Reimagined
  9. Afterword
  10. Notes
  11. Bibliography
  12. Index
  13. Index Locorum