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The Play of Allusion in the “Historia Augusta”
Publication of this volume has been made possible, in part,
through the generous support and enduring vision of
Warren G. Moon.
The Play of Allusion in
the Historia Augusta
david rohrbacher
The University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
uwpress.wisc.edu
3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden

London WC2E 8LU, United Kingdom
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Copyright © 2016
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical
articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, transmitted in any format or by any means—digital, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—or conveyed via the Internet
or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.
Rights inquiries should be directed to rights@uwpress.wisc.edu.
Printed in the United States of America
This book may be available in a digital edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rohrbacher, David, 1969–, author.

The play of allusion in the Historia Augusta / David Rohrbacher.
pagesâ•…â•… cm — (Wisconsin studies in classics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-299-30600-7 (cloth: alk. paper)
1.â•‡Scriptores historiae Augustae.â•‡â•‡2.â•‡Emperors—Rome—Biography—History
and criticism.â•‡â•‡ 3.â•‡ Rome—History—Empire, 30 B.C.–284 A.D.—Sources.
4.â•‡ Rome—History—Errors, inventions, etc.â•‡â•‡ 5.â•‡ Allusions in literature.
I.â•‡ Title.â•‡â•‡ II. â•‡ Series: Wisconsin studies in classics.
DG274.R598â•…â•…â•…2016
937’.070922—dc23
2015008393
For
julia and jonathan
Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 3
1 Allusion in the Historia Augusta 16
2 The Historia Augusta and the Ancient Reader 47
3 Religion in the Historia Augusta 87
4 Imperial History Reimagined 134
Afterword 170
Notes 177
Bibliography 203
Index 221
Index Locorum 235
vii
Preface
The most recent generation of classical scholarship has witnessed a

surge of interest both in late antiquity and in allusion, but the Historia Augusta, al-
though it is positioned at the intersection of these interests, has been sadly neglected.
In The Play of Allusion, I offer a new theory of the genesis of the work that requires
a new method of interpretation. Even more important, I hope to rescue the Historia
Augusta from its current confinement to a dusty museum storeroom, where a hand-
ful of late antique historians and philologists occasionally poke and prod at its text
through the thick pelt of a century of abstruse notes and speculations. The endlessly
fascinating, often bizarre, and sometimes hilarious pseudo-biographies of the
Historia Augusta deserve a place in the main collection, to be appreciated by all
those interested in the ancient world. The Historia Augusta has much to offer any-
one pursuing studies in allusion, genre, historiography and biography, late Roman
religion, ancient humor and parody, reception theory, and more.
I am grateful to the many people and institutions who encouraged me and
aided me in the completion of this manuscript. Much of the research and writing
was done during summers in the Greek and Latin Reading Room at Memorial
Library in Madison, and I thank both the helpful staff there and the Office of the
Provost at New College of Florida, which provided me with summer research
funds. Librarians and staff at the Jane Bancroft Cook Library at New College of
Florida were endlessly helpful during the school year, and the New College Library
Association purchased on my behalf some greatly appreciated Budé volumes of
the Historia Augusta that would otherwise be out of place in an undergraduate li-
brary. My colleagues and students at New College helped in many ways. A semester
research leave granted by the Division of Humanities proved crucial to completing
the manuscript. Richard Miles gave me the strong encouragement I needed to
begin this project. François Paschoud was kind enough to share his work with me
prior to publication. Alain Gowing has been an adviser and an ally for many years.
Carl Shaw read many drafts and greatly improved the manuscript in both content
and style. His constant help as a colleague and a friend are greatly appreciated.
At the University of Wisconsin Press I owe thanks to the editors of the series
Wisconsin Studies in Classics, Mark Stansbury-O’Donnell, Patricia Rosenmeyer,
ix
Preface
and Laura McClure, and the executive editor of the press, Raphael Kadushin.
Their efforts and the efforts of the diligent and learned anonymous readers for
the press have greatly improved the manuscript. For their help in guiding me
through the publication process, I would also like to thank Adam Mehring, Sheila
McMahon, Matthew Cosby, Amber Rose, Carla Marolt, and Sheila Leary, and
the expert copyediting of Jane Barry.
Most of all, I am grateful for the love and encouragement of my wife, Anne.
She was my best editor and my greatest supporter. It could not have been done
without her.
x
Abbreviations
In addition to the abbreviations below, citations in this book

follow the ones used by the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition.
Books of the Historia Augusta (HA)
In E. Hohl, Scriptores Historiae Augustae. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1927:
Hadr. Hadrian
Ael. Aelius
Pius Antoninus Pius
Marc. Marcus Aurelius
Ver. Verus
Did. Iul. Didius Iulianus
Comm. Commodus
Pert. Pertinax
Av. Cass. Avidius Cassius
Sev. Severus
Pesc. Nig. Pescennius Niger
Carac. Caracalla
Geta Geta
Elag. Heliogabalus
Diad. Diadumenus
Macr. Macrinus
Clod. Alb. Clodius Albinus
Alex. Alexander Severus
Maximin. The Two Maximini
Gord. The Three Gordians
Max. et Balb. Maximus and Balbinus
Valer. The Two Valerians
Gall. The Two Gallieni
xi
Abbreviations
In F. Paschoud, Histoire Auguste IV.3: Vies des trente tyrans et de Claude. Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 2011:
Tyr. Trig. Thirty Tyrants

Claud. Claudius
In F. Paschoud, Histoire Auguste V.1: Vies d’Aurélien, Tacite. Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 1996:
Aur. Aurelian
Tac. Tacitus
In F. Paschoud, Histoire Auguste V.2: Vies de Probus, Firmus, Saturnin, Proculus

et Bonose, Carus, Numérien et Carin. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002:
Prob. Probus
Quad. Tyr. Quadrigae Tyrannorum: Firmus, Saturninus, Proculus, and Bonosus
Car. Carus, Carinus, and Numerian
Volumes of the Historia-Augusta-Colloquium
BHAC 1963 A. Alföldi, ed. Historia-Augusta-Colloquium. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt,

1964.
BHAC 1964/65 A. Alföldi, ed. Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium. Bonn: Rudolf
Habelt, 1966.
Habelt, 1968.
Habelt, 1970.
BHAC 1970 A. Alföldi, ed. Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium. Bonn: Rudolf
Habelt, 1972.
BHAC 1971 A. Alföldi, ed. Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium. Bonn: Rudolf
Habelt, 1974.
Habelt, 1976.
Habelt, 1978.
xii
Abbreviations

Habelt, 1980.
BHAC 1979/81 J. Straub, ed. Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium. Bonn: Rudolf
Habelt, 1983.
Habelt, 1985.
Habelt, 1987.
BHAC 1986/89 K. Rosen, ed. Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium. Bonn: Rudolf
Habelt, 1991.
HAC 1991 G. Bonamente and N. Duval, eds. Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Parisinum. Macerata: Boccard, 1991.
HAC 1994 G. Bonamente and F. Paschoud, eds. Historiae Augustae Collo-
quium Genevense. Bari: Edipuglia, 1994.
HAC 1995 G. Bonamente and G. Paci, eds. Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Maceratense. Bari: Edipuglia, 1995.
HAC 1996 G. Bonamente and M. Mayer, eds. Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Barcinonense. Bari: Edipuglia, 1996.
HAC 1997 G. Bonamente and K. Rosen, eds. Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Bonnense. Bari: Edipuglia, 1997.
HAC 1998 G. Bonamente, F. Heim, and J.-P. Callu, eds. Historiae Augustae
Colloquium Argentoratense. Bari: Edipuglia, 1998.
HAC 1999 F. Paschoud, ed. Historiae Augustae Colloquium Genevense. Bari:
Edipuglia, 1999.
HAC 2002 G. Bonamente and F. Paschoud, eds. Historiae Augustae Collo-
quium Perusinum. Bari: Edipuglia, 2002.
HAC 2005 G. Bonamente and M. Mayer, eds. Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Barcinonense. Bari: Edipuglia, 2005.
HAC 2007 G. Bonamente and H. Brandt, eds. Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Bambergense. Bari: Edipuglia, 2007.
HAC 2010 L. Milić and N. Hecquet-Noti, eds. Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Genevense in Honorem F. Paschoud Septuagenarii. Bari: Edipuglia,
2010.
xiii
The Play of Allusion in the “Historia Augusta”
Introduction
T he bizarre collection of imperial biographies that we call

the Historia Augusta contains hundreds of unusual, often
humorous, details that are wholly fictitious. We read, for example, that the emperor
Carinus preferred to swim in pools filled with floating apples and melons, that the
usurper Proculus deflowered a hundred virgins in fifteen days, and that the emperor
Elagabalus used to shave the pubic hair of his friends and courtesans, and then
shave his own beard with the same razor. These particular fictions were not simply
invented out of thin air but represent allusions to other literary works—to Ammia-
nus Marcellinus, Saint Jerome, and Suetonius, respectively. The inventions found
in the Historia Augusta are largely created by allusion, and the identification of
these allusions, I believe, is one of the primary purposes for which the work was
created.
The Historia Augusta uses allusion in an anomalous manner, as a comparison
with his near contemporary, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, makes clear.
Ammianus also makes extensive use of allusion. The boundaries that moderns
seek between history and fiction were, as is well known, less sharp in antiquity,
and allusion in Ammianus, as in other authors, often serves to enhance his narrative
in ways a modern historian would see as misleading or deceitful. But Ammianus’s
artistry in using allusion, along with other techniques, typically serves his broader
rhetorical goals of praising his heroes, attacking his enemies, or increasing the
excitement or majesty of a scene or description. 1 By contrast, scholarly attempts
to explain allusions in the Historia Augusta as tools for promoting the author’s
rhetorical goals have not succeeded. Too often individual allusions have been
considered in isolation, but when we consider the totality of allusion we must
conclude that the work lacks an overarching political or religious agenda, as I
argue in particular in chapters 3 and 4 of this book. Even individual allusions are
sometimes so complex or so surprising that they approach the limits of interpret-
ability. Their extravagance draws the reader away from the source text to the
creativity of the author.
3
Introduction
It is not for the extravagance of allusion alone, however, that Syme called the
Historia Augusta “the most enigmatic work that Antiquity has transmitted.”2 The
most mysterious aspect of the work is the contrast between its self-portrayal and
its reality. The Historia Augusta is, in form, a biographical collection that presents
the lives of the emperors and usurpers of the second and third centuries, from
Hadrian to Carinus. It consists of thirty books in all, representing considerably
more than thirty individual lives, since many of the books, especially toward the
end, include two or more subjects each. The individual biographies are assigned in
the extant manuscripts to six different authors. In some of these lives, the emperors
Diocletian and Constantine are directly addressed in familiar tones, which should
date the lives to the late third and early fourth centuries. In reality, the work is not
by six people but by a single author, and it was written not in the age of Constantine
but at least half a century later. Ancient biographers and historians sometimes
shaded the truth, or even were guilty of outright fabrication, but never on a scale
so extreme.
The Historia Augusta was taken as an authentic, if deeply flawed, source of
historical information from the first recorded instance of its use in the sixth century
until the end of the nineteenth century. But although the work does preserve for
us many valuable pieces of the historical tradition, it does so only incidentally to
its creation of a game of allusion. The Historia Augusta is not a fraud but a fiction
for a knowing and appreciative audience.
The study of the Historia Augusta has traditionally been undertaken by histo-
rians who seek to identify the authentic historical material the work contains and
discard the rest.3 I propose in this book to offer, by contrast, a literary study of the
work that begins with understanding the author as a creative inventor. His in-
ventiveness is not merely a tool for filling in the gaps in his understanding of the
past, or a method of commenting, seriously or comically, on his primary interest in
biographical narrative. Instead, he invents in the service of a literary program that
values inventiveness for its own sake. In this introduction I offer a series of examples
of creative play in the Historia Augusta to serve as a background to the arguments
of this book.
The Historia Augusta Was Not Written

by Six People
One of the most surprising features of the Historia Augusta is the

single author’s decision to portray himself as six different authors: Aelius Spartianus,
Julius Capitolinus, Vulcacius Gallicanus, Aelius Lampridius, Trebellius Pollio,
and Flavius Vopiscus Syracusanus. It is difficult to find precedents for this sort of
4
Introduction
group project in antiquity.4 Close reading of the text reveals the author’s fiction. If
we were to accept the evidence of the Historia Augusta itself, the six authors did
not collaborate by divvying up lives among themselves. Instead, the authors claim
to have written many other lives that have not survived. For example, Vulcacius
Gallicanus claims to have written lives of all who have held the imperial title, back
even to Julius Caesar (Av. Cass. 3.3). In the life of the Caesar Aelius, Spartianus
announces his intention to write a life of Verus (Ael. 2.9), but the Verus in the
Historia Augusta is attributed to Julius Capitolinus. In the Clodius Albinus, Capito-
linus makes reference to his biography of Pescennius Niger (Clod. Alb. 1.4), but
the Pescennius Niger in our collection is attributed to Aelius Spartianus. Again, the
Commodus by Aelius Lampridius reference to a life of Marcus (Comm. 1.1), but our
Marcus Aurelius is by Julius Capitolinus. If it were authentically a work of multiple
authors, we would have to conjure up an unseen, unmentioned editor who united
these lives, and imagine many more lives that have vanished without even being
cited by the authors of the lives in the Historia Augusta.
The six supposedly independent authors are amazingly similar in thematic
details. They all chose to write lives of the usurpers and Caesars as well as the
emperors. They all refer to the unprecedented nature of their task and the difficulty
they face in accomplishing it, often in quite similar language.5 They share a de-
pendence on otherwise unknown historians and biographers such as Aemilius
Parthenianus and Junius Cordus, and use similar language to direct the reader to
these or to other sources, should more information be desired. They share many
errors, such as providing the incorrect name “Diadumenus” for Diadumenianus,
the son of the emperor Macrinus, and they share many peculiarities of content,
such as a focus on military discipline and on women and wine, each topic described
with similar language. The authors all offer their own translations into Latin of
poems, inscriptions, oracles, and other Greek passages, and these passages are all
fictional.6 All the authors are obsessed with feeble wordplay on the name of their
subjects: Severus is severe, Probus displays probity, Verus wrote truthfully.
A variety of unusual stylistic features recur in the different authors.7 While the
accumulation of stylistic parallels is striking, it can never be wholly decisive, since
one might credit imitation among the authors or supposed editors for the coinci-
dence. An argument by Adams for single authorship, however, seems irrefutable.8
He studied different aspects of the use of two words meaning “to kill,” occidere
and interficere, and found that their use was consistent among the HA-authors but
idiosyncratic when compared with other authors of similar time periods and
genres. For example, he finds forty-two uses of occido in relative clauses in the
various HA-authors but only one use of interficio, a ratio that is not found in other
writers and yet could hardly be the kind of thing that an editor would impose or a
5
Introduction
group of authors would conspire to agree upon. Similarly difficult to refute is the
evidence of prose rhythm. All the lives share a preference for particular metrical
sentence endings.9
The most certain proof of the unity of authorship of the Historia Augusta lies
in the thorough fictionality of at least some of the lives authored by each one of
the supposed biographers. It is ridiculous to imagine six different authors working
independently to make extensive use of fake sources, letters, documents, inscrip-
tions, and acclamations, to a degree unknown in classical literature, and then for
excerpts from these six to be gathered into the present collection.
The Historia Augusta Was Not Written

in the Early Fourth Century
The author audaciously claims, implicitly, to be writing decades

before he actually was. The gap between the purported and actual date of composi-
tion can be proven by many anachronisms. Some of these anachronisms merely
reflect the difficulty of writing historical fiction with complete accuracy, but others
may well have been meant to be recognized for their incongruity by ancient readers.
The imperial addresses provide the clearest evidence of anachronism. Some
of the lives in the collection (the Aelius, Marcus, Verus, Avidius Cassius, Severus,
Pescennius Niger, and Macrinus) address Diocletian, who was emperor from 284 to
305. Other lives address Constantine, who succeeded him, ruling from 306 to 337
(the Clodius Albinus, Geta, Elagabalus, Alexander Severus, Two Maximini, Three
Gordians, and the Maximus and Balbinus), setting a terminus ante quem of the
early fourth century. The address to Constantius Chlorus that begins the Claudius,
attributed to Trebellius Pollio, is particularly problematic. Constantius Chlorus,
the father of the emperor Constantine, is addressed with the title Caesar, which he
held between 293 and May 305. The introduction is thoroughly panegyric, cele-
brating Claudius as the greatest of all emperors, possessing “the virtue of Trajan,
the piety of Antoninus, the leadership of Augustus” (“Traiani virtus, Antonini
pietas, Augusti moderatio,” 2.3). The author reveals several prophecies from the
time of Claudius (Claud. 10) that predict that his children and grandchildren will
rule the empire, and he explicitly links praise of Claudius to praise of the house of
Constantine. But the house of Constantine was not actually descended from
Claudius.10 In 307 the usurper Constantine first legitimized his position by marry-
ing the daughter of the tetrarch Maximianus, but in 310, having dismissed his wife
and killed his father-in-law, he was in need of a new source of legitimacy. A pane-
gyricist was therefore authorized to reveal a newly invented piece of information:
6
Introduction
the emperor Constantine was a descendant of Claudius.11 So the life cannot truly
be addressed to Constantius Chlorus while showing knowledge of a genealogy
that was invented five years after his death.12 The connection between Constantine
and Claudius pervades the life, and so it cannot be a later addition.
In the introduction to the Aurelian attributed to “Vopiscus,” the author has
an extensive conversation with Junius Tiberianus, described as the urban prefect.13
This conversation, the comic nature of which is underlined by its setting during
the festival of the Hilaria, has also been shown to be historically suspect. Two men
with this name served in this office, in 291–92 and 303–4, the first the father of the
second. The Tiberianus of the Historia Augusta cannot be the prefect of 303–4,
since he did not hold office during the late March setting of the conversation. But
he cannot be the Tiberianus of 291–92, since their conversation includes discussion
of the biographer Trebellius Pollio, who, in his preface to the Claudius, addresses
Constantius Chlorus with the title Caesar that he did not take until 293. Tiberianus
provides a ride for the author in an official state chair known as the iudicale carpen-
tum. Providing this chair to the urban prefect was a new and controversial perk,
according to a letter of Symmachus written in 384 (Relat. 4), so this too is an
anachronism. Finally, the title vir illustris that is attached to Tiberianus is other-
wise first attested in 354 (Cod. Theod. 11.1.6) and only becomes common toward
the end of the fourth century, so it is probably yet another anachronism. Tiberianus
is not the only problematic figure in the HA. The names of characters of dubious
historicity there are often anachronistic.14 Names from the great aristocratic families
of the later fourth century, the Anicii, Ceionii, Postumii, and others, are retro-
jected into the family trees of emperors of the second and third centuries, as is the
rare name Toxotius (Maximin. 27.6). And the various uses of the names Maecius
and Maecia are also fantasies of the late fourth century, stemming from claims of
late Roman aristocrats to be descendants of the famous republican family of the
Gracchi.15
The HA-author’s understanding of geography also reflects that of the later,
not earlier, fourth century. The Historia Augusta attributes to the Thracian Maximi-
nus a mixed barbarian ancestry, part Goth and part Alan, but these barbarian groups
were not present in Thrace prior to the arrival of the Huns in 375.16 The use of the
plural Thraciae as opposed to the singular Thracia reflects a change that must be
dated after 312, but the dedications to the Pescennius Niger and the Aurelian in
which the plural appears would place those lives before 305 and 292, respectively.17
The Probus applies the term Getae, which properly referred to a Thracian people,
to the relatively new Germanic Goths. The term is otherwise attested only in Jerome
in 390 and then in Claudian and Orosius in the early fifth century.18 Another
7
Introduction
anachronism in ethnic geography appears in the discussion of the Samaritans as a

community separate from the Jews (Elag. 3.5; Quad. Tyr. 7.5, 8.3), a distinction
that Syme suggests is typical of the end of the fourth century, first specified thus in
a law of 390.19 Many anachronisms can be found in the administrative and military
terminology of the Historia Augusta.20 Others appear in Latin words and phrases
that are otherwise found only in the later period.21 But the most important evidence
for dating the Historia Augusta lies in its allusions. The use of Aurelius Victor by
the HA-author ensures that he is writing after 371, and the use of Ammianus Marcel-
linus and Jerome ensures a date in the 390s at the earliest.22
The Biographies in the Historia Augusta

Differ Sharply in Nature
A reader of the Historia Augusta will quickly recognize that the

lives differ sharply in the amount of sober biography and ludicrous fiction that
each contains. Syme and Chastagnol offer fairly similar schemes for categorizing
the lives, which my own categories reflect.23 These conventional categories make
it more convenient to discuss the work as a whole. While the differences in content
between the groups of lives can in part be attributed to the sources available to the
author, they are in part the result of authorial choice.
First, we can distinguish a list of primary lives: the Hadrian, Antoninus Pius,
Marcus, Verus, Commodus, Pertinax, Didius Julianus, Severus, Caracalla. These
lives are rich in names and dates that can be shown to be true by recourse to other
sources or that simply meet the test of plausibility, although this is not to say that
they do not contain material that is suspect or demonstrably false. The primary
lives can be distinguished from the secondary lives of usurpers and Caesars.
Among the secondary lives, I include the Aelius, Avidius Cassius, Pescennius Niger,
Clodius Albinus, Geta, Macrinus, Diadumenianus. All of these lives offer little that
is historically accurate. What is true in them is taken from the primary life with
which they are associated; what is false is often grossly or comically exaggerated.
The Elagabalus and the Alexander Severus, which stand near the middle of the
Historia Augusta, deserve a category of their own. They are a matched pair, the
comic-book villain Elagabalus balanced by the fantasy hero Alexander. The ElagabÂ�
aÂ�lus contains some reliable passages, including some places where the author
quotes the extant Greek historian Herodian as his source, while the Alexander
contains almost nothing factual, but in both the amount of fiction is large. The
extent and the thoroughness of the fiction differentiate them from the scattered
inventions that were typical of the much shorter secondary lives.
8
Introduction
The next three biographies—the Two Maximini, the Three Gordians, and the
Maximus and Balbinus—we can call the intermediate lives. They discuss multiple
lives within a single book. All three focus on the events of the year 238 from different
perspectives, and all three mix real information taken from Herodian with fiction.
The intermediate lives are followed by a gap between 244 and 260, and the Historia
Augusta picks up partway into the Two Valerians. Four lives attributed to Trebellius
Pollio are followed by five of Flavius Vopiscus. All nine of these final lives offer
only a minimal outline of factual material filled out with vast amounts of invention.
These final lives, like the intermediate lives, include group biographies. The Two
Valerians is followed by the Two Gallieni, and the final biography of the collection
collects Carus and his two sons, Carinus and Numerian. There are also two group
portraits of usurpers. The biographies of Firmus, Saturninus, Proculus, and Bono-
sus are often referred to collectively as the Quadrigae Tyrannorum, or “four-horse
chariot of usurpers,” from a phrase at the end of the Probus (24.8). The extreme
case of group portraits is found in the Thirty Tyrants, short accounts of thirty-two
different usurpers. The final lives also include some single biographies: the short
Claudius and Tacitus, the more substantial Probus, and the lengthy Aurelian. The
HA-author offers his most elaborate webs of allusion in these last lives.
The Lacuna between the Three Gordians and

the Two Valerians Is a Fiction of the Author
The Three Gordians concludes with the death of Gordian III in

244. The next section of the text in all surviving manuscripts begins with comments
from the very end of the reign of Valerian, after his capture by the Persians in 260.
We are thus missing the reigns of Philip and his son (249–51), of Trebonianus Gal-
lus and Volusianus (251–53), of Aemilianus (253), and most of the life of Valerian
(253–60).24 It is a triumph of modern scholarship on the Historia Augusta to have
demonstrated that this lacuna is not just the unexceptional result of textual disloca-
tions common in ancient manuscripts but is actually the purposeful construction
of our creative author.25 A variety of arguments converge on this conclusion. First,
because of a scarcity of sources, the HA-author appears to have known only a few
actual facts about Philip, which, in line with his regular approach to the later lives,
he would likely have deployed in the life itself, had one existed. But most of this
small collection of facts about Philip that would appropriately be found in the life
itself can be found outside it in extant parts of the Historia Augusta, such as Philip’s
attacks on male-male sex (Elag. 32.6; Alex. 24.4) and his Secular Games (Gord.
33.1–4). The HA-author has even placed a Scythian invasion that properly belongs
9
Introduction
to the time of Philip in the reign of Gordian III (Gord. 31.1).26 In addition, the list
of the Thirty Tyrants, described by the author as usurpers who arose during the
reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, in fact includes numerous invented personages
and figures from other periods of time, as early as the reign of Maximinus, in order
to fill it out, but does not include any of the usurpers who would naturally have
been described in the lacuna: Jotapianus, Marinus Pacatianus, Lucius Priscus, and
Uranius Antoninus.27
The lacuna marks more than just a break between lives. It also occurs at the
very point where Herodian, one of the author’s sources, leaves off. The two
pseudo-authors Trebellius Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus, who are credited between
them with all nine of the lives after the lacuna, do not appear before the lacuna.28
This marks the break as otherwise formally significant to the HA-author. These
last lives are the most inventive and allusive. In addition, the lacuna does not
present the “frayed edges” we often see in authentic cases of damaged texts. 29
Birley argues that the HA-author is teasing his readers with his own references to
the missing books. When making a list of bad emperors, he adds, “although I
ought to leave out the Decii” (“tametsi Decios excerpere debeam,” Aur. 42.6),
perhaps an allusion to his omission of their lives. A similar double meaning can be
read at Carus 3.5. In a survey of the vicissitudes of the Roman state, the HA-author
makes his way slowly to Alexander Severus, at which point he leaps to Gallienus
with the following transition: “It would take too long to compose all the things that
followed, for [the Roman state] was not able to experience the emperor Valerian”
(“longum est quae sequuntur universa conectere: uti enim principe Valeriano
non potuit”). And the HA-author offers a flurry of remarks about books and
scrolls before and after the fragmentary Valerian (Max. et Balb. 1.1–2; Gord. 1.1–5;
Valer. 8.5).
Scholars have seen a religious motive for the creation of a false lacuna, since
Philip was said by fourth-century writers to have been a Christian, while Decius
and Valerian were prominent persecutors of Christians who met with untimely
ends. Birley argues that it would have been more difficult for the pagan HA-author
to celebrate the greatness of Valerian and mourn his capture by the Persians if his
persecutions were detailed, since Christians saw his misfortunes as his just deserts.30
More recently den Hengst has suggested that the death of Valerian would remind
readers of the ignoble death of Julian, an emperor whom the HA-author appears
to favor in other contexts.31 But the HA-author is generally inventive enough to
avoid discussing matters that he would prefer to avoid, and Valerian is certainly
praised highly in the extant part of his life. The lacuna should better be seen as
part of the author’s creative play, a witty challenge to readers in a scholarly milieu
familiar with truly lacunose texts.32
10
Introduction
The Historical Sources of the Historia Augusta

Are Few and Are Freely Manipulated
The HA-author draws heavily from both literary and historio-

graphical texts to weave his fictions. The historiographical texts are of particular
interest because they often provided the framework for individual lives, and of
course because they are the sources from which the author drew his potentially
true information. The task of source criticism is more complicated for the Historia
Augusta than for true historiographical texts, since historical accuracy was not a
primary concern of the author, and he was happy to alter the texts that he did
follow. Our author did not carefully sift and compare various sources as a conscien-
tious biographer might but instead used his few historiographical sources as points
of departure for his fictive purposes. The study of the sources reveals that the author
did not, as is sometimes assumed, use all of the material at his disposal first and
only then, out of desperation, turn to fabrication. The HA-author was not the
passive victim of his sources but rather the willing and able manipulator of them.
I have treated the question of sources in considerable detail elsewhere and will
provide only the essential information here.33 The HA-author relied on the lost
work known as the Kaisergeschichte and the breviaria dependent upon it, by Eutro-
pius and Aurelius Victor, as a framework for the whole work. He relied on the
biographer Marius Maximus for the early lives through Elagabalus, on Herodian
for the year 238, on Dexippus’s Chronicle until 270, and finally on a source with
affinities to the sources of later Greek authors like Zosimus.
The lost work known as Enmann’s Kaisergeschichte (abbreviated KG in the
English-language literature and EKG in European works) is used throughout the
Historia Augusta.34 The KG presented short sketches of each emperor from Augus-
tus up to Constantius II. Although it was short and not especially reliable, the
paucity of Latin sources for the second and third centuries led many later historians
to turn to it for information. The use of the KG can be most easily detected in the
Historia Augusta by finding parallels in language or in content with the brief his-
tories of Aurelius Victor and of Eutropius, who relied on the KG alone for their
accounts of the imperial period. The HA-author uses not only the KG itself, how-
ever, but also makes direct use of Victor and Eutropius.35 Sometimes, of course, it
is difficult to know which of these works he is using.
The KG and the breviaries that derive from it served as a guide or framework
for the author. In some of the later lives of the Historia Augusta, virtually the only
true information derives from the paragraph-long description of the emperor in
the KG, embellished by the HA-author’s invented material. The KG tradition
often served as a starting point for more elaborate invention. For example, the KG
11
Introduction
described the death of the usurper Aureolus at a place known still to contemporaries
as pons Aureoli; the HA-author follows his account of the death by quoting a short,
invented verse inscription, supposedly translated from Greek, that marks Aureolus’s
tomb and bridge (Tyr. Trig. 11.4–5). The HA-author also enjoys using the KG in a
kind of scholarship-theater, where he contrasts his base source with information
from the KG, referred to as “other historians” or “Latin writers.” For example, the
HA-author purports to be sometimes unsure whether the “Maximus” he finds in
Herodian and Dexippus and the “Pupienus” he finds in the KG (Victor 26–27;
Eutropius 9.2) are the same person (they are: the emperor Marcus Clodius Pupienus
Maximus). At one point he contrasts the views of Herodian and Dexippus with
those of “Latin writers” in expressing this quandary (Max. et Balb. 33.2).
The first group of primary lives—from the Hadrian to the first half of the
Elagabalus—are by far the most factual and likely derive from the work of the lost
biographer Marius Maximus, cited twenty-nine times by the HA-author, and
once by an ancient commentator on the text of Juvenal 4.53.36 Like Suetonius,
Maximus offered extensive genealogical information on the emperors (Marc. 1.6),
and he is probably the source of this information in all of the early lives of the
Historia Augusta. He was an innovator in including many primary sources in his
biographies: letters, documents, acclamations, and orations (e.g., Marc. 25.10;
Comm. 15.4, 18.2; Pert. 2.8, 15.8). The Historia Augusta provides citations to lives
by Maximus of eight emperors, and the scholiast to Juvenal implies a life of Nerva;
it is natural, then, to assume that Marius Maximus has followed Suetonius with
lives of the second twelve emperors, and natural as well to identify Marius Maximus
with the senator L. Marius Maximus Perpetuus Aurelianus, the general and holder
of high offices who was consul for the second time in 223.
The HA-author used Maximus for historical material in the early lives but also
adapted and parodied many of his characteristic features in the later fictionalized
lives. Maximus’s use of documents and speeches, for example, may have inspired
the numerous exchanges of fake letters that round out the last books. Maximus’s
careful but exhausting prosopographical studies may also have inspired the HA-
author to create similar lists of absurd and bizarre names in the later lives. Maximus
offers extensive material about the emperors prior to their coronations, at one point
in the Pertinax quoting from a speech that Marcus Aurelius had made in praise of
him. The later lives of the Historia Augusta make it seem as if the archives are over-
flowing with letters written by previous emperors to their eventual successors.
The primary lives of the emperors, which rely on some truthful material from
Marius Maximus, contrast sharply with the secondary lives: the lives of usurpers
and Caesars. Each secondary life is associated with a particular primary life: Aelius
with Hadrian, Avidius Cassius with Marcus, Pescennius Niger, Clodius Albinus,
12
Introduction
and Geta with Septimius Severus, Macrinus and Diadumenianus with Elagabalus.
Material in a secondary life that is true almost always comes from the primary life
with which it is associated, and occasionally from another primary life. Otherwise,
the secondary lives are mostly the products of invention.
The imperial bureaucrat Herodian is the main source for the account of the
years 235–38 in the Historia Augusta, encompassing the lives collected under the
Two Maximini, the Three Gordians, and the Maximus and Balbinus. Herodian’s
history, which has been preserved in its entirety, covers the period from the death
of Marcus Aurelius in 180 to the accession of Gordian III in 238. Herodian was
also used in an unsystematic way in several other lives; some of the ten citations of
Herodian by name in the Historia Augusta are found in the Clodius Albinus and
the Alexander Severus, for example, and he is used without citation in the Elagaba-
lus.37 The HA-author did not use Herodian as much as he might have for the Alex-
ander Severus.38 Instead, when Marius Maximus ran out, the HA-author chose to
use the KG for the chronological structure of the Alexander Severus, which is other-
wise an elaborate and fantastic invention.
Because we actually possess the text of Herodian, we can watch the HA-author
as he works with his source. In his comprehensive studies of the use of Herodian
by the Historia Augusta, Kolb has classified the different approaches of our author
to Herodian into several categories: word-for-word translation, abbreviation,
supplementation, and the wholesale transformation or transposition of details or
entire scenes.39 In many places, the HA-author has supplemented Herodian with
false details, invented letters, and fake scholarly digressions. We must expect that
he has acted similarly in using other sources that are now lost to us.
For the period from 238 to 270, scholars largely agree that the source of the
main historical narrative, in addition to the KG, is the third-century Athenian
historian Dexippus.40 Dexippus’s Chronicle covered about a thousand years, so
even if it became more dense toward its conclusion, it was not nearly as rich a
source as Marius Maximus or Herodian. Syme mentions in passing that “it cannot
be taken as certain that the HA is accurate in reporting Dexippus,” and Paschoud’s
detailed study demonstrates the correctness of Syme’s intuition.41 For example, an
anecdote found in Caesar, Frontinus, and Servius auctus is attributed implausibly
to Dexippus.42
The last lives of the Historia Augusta, from Claudius to Carinus, are largely
fiction after the end of Dexippus’s history in 270. The author continued to use the
KG, as we can see by continuing parallels with works derived from the KG like
Eutropius and Victor. Yet it has long been recognized that some details of the later
lives find parallels in certain later Greek works, such as the fifth-century historian
Zosimus and the twelfth-century historian Zonaras. A variety of historians have
13
Introduction
been proposed as the common source, in particular the fourth-century Greek

historian Eunapius and the fourth-century Latin historian Nicomachus Flavianus,
though it is also possible that we have lost the name along with the work that lies
behind these passages.43 We can say little of the source, and thus little of the use of
the source by the HA-author, but we can guess that he has freely distorted and
adapted it for his own purposes.
Conclusion
The Historia Augusta looks like a collection of imperial biographies

in the style of Suetonius, but it is fictional, not only in much of its content but
even in much of its form. The imperial addresses imply a date for the work that it
cannot have, just as the title pages claim multiple authors for a work by a single
man. Structural features like the lacunae are inventions as well. Although the HA-
author uses authentic historical and biographical sources, they serve only as a
starting point for his playful alterations and augmentations.
Scholars have struggled to understand the Historia Augusta with the tools an
ancient historian brings to a historiographical text. This book aims, instead, to
situate the work in a literary and scholarly context by studying its most pronounced
literary element, the extensive use of allusion, and to explore where such allusions
would have been produced and appreciated. The Historia Augusta is a biographical
collection in appearance alone, for it does not have biography’s normal goal of
instructing its readers about the lives of its subjects. It must be studied as literary
fiction, not as history.
The plan of attack is as follows. In chapter 1, I survey the evidence for allusion
in late Latin literature and then provide a representative sample of allusions to
authors such as Cicero and Vergil in the Historia Augusta. The extravagance of
allusion in the Historia Augusta makes interpretation challenging. In chapter 2 I
explore what sort of audience would be able to appreciate this extravagance. I sug-
gest that the audience would be familiar with debates over the boundaries between
history, biography, and fiction that the Historia Augusta regularly transgresses.
Drawing on recent work on the sociology of reading in the Roman empire, I argue
that situating the Historia Augusta within an active circle of readers and interpreters
helps explain the unusual use of allusion in the work. In chapter 3 I turn to the
question of Christianity in the Historia Augusta. While many interpreters have
seen anti-Christian polemic as an important, or even the most important, purpose
of the work, I show that the Historia Augusta is, on the whole, neutral toward
Christianity. It does, however, include numerous allusions to Jerome, which typi-
cally mock his radical views on food, drink, and sex. In chapter 4 I argue that
14
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arms, and cried upon her shoulder. Perhaps because she was frightened and
distrustful in other particulars of her life, she was utterly believing here.
Here was the ideal for which she had looked—a friend, who yet should be
something more than a friend; more tender than Cara could remember her
mother to have been, yet something like what an ideal mother, a mother of
the imagination, would be. Sweet looks, still beautiful, the girl thought in
the enthusiasm of her age, yet something subdued and mild with experience
—an authority, a knowledge, a power which no contemporary could have.
Cara abandoned herself in utter and total forgetfulness of all prejudices,
resistances, and doubts, to this new influence. Her mother’s friend, the
boys’ mother, who had been her own playmates, and about whom she was
so curious, without knowing it—her nearest neighbour, her natural succour,
a daughterless woman, while she was a motherless girl. Happiness seemed
to come back to her with a leap. ‘I shall not mind if I may always come to
you, and ask you about everything,’ she said.
‘And of course you must do that. Did not Cherry tell you so? I thought
Cherry would have been faithful to me. Ah! she did? then I am happy, dear;
for if I have one weakness more than another it is that my friends should not
give me up. But Cherry should have come with you,’ said Mrs. Meredith,
shaking her head.
‘It was all for papa——’
‘But that is what I find fault with—papa’s only daughter, only child,
thinking for a moment that her happiness was not what he wanted most.’
Cara drooped her guilty head. She was guilty; yes, she did not deny it;
but probably this goddess-woman, this ideal aid and succour, did not know
how little in the happier days had been thought of Cara. She had always
thought of ‘the boys’ first of all; but then Mr. Meredith—Cara had an odd
sort of recollection somehow that Mr. Meredith was not first, and that
perhaps this might account for the other differences. So she did not say
anything, but sat down on a stool at her new-old friend’s feet, and felt that
the strange, rich, beautiful room had become home.
‘Now I never could do anything like this,’ said Mrs. Meredith, looking
round. ‘I am fond of china too; but I never know what is good and what is
bad; and sometimes I see your papa take down a bit which I think beautiful,
and look at it with such a face. How is one to know,’ she said, laughing
merrily, ‘if one is not clever? I got the book with all the marks in it, but, my
dear child, I never recollect one of them; and then such quantities of pretty
china are never marked at all. Ah, I can understand why he doesn’t come
here! I think I would make little changes, Cara. Take down that, for
instance’—and she pointed at random to the range of velvet-covered
shelves, on the apex of which stood the Buen Retiro cup—‘and put a
picture in its place. Confuse him by a few changes. Now stop: is he in? I
think we might do it at once, and then we could have him up.’
Cara shrank perceptibly. She drew herself a little away from the
stranger’s side. ‘You are frightened,’ cried Mrs. Meredith, with a soft laugh.
‘Now, Cara, Cara, this is exactly what I tell you must not be. You don’t
know how good and gentle he is. I can talk to him of anything—even my
servants, if I am in trouble with them; and every woman in London, who is
not an angel, is in trouble with her servants from time to time. Last time my
cook left me—— Why, there is nothing,’ said Mrs. Meredith, reflectively,
‘of which I could not talk to your papa. He is kindness itself.’
This was meant to be very reassuring, but somehow it did not please
Cara. A half resentment (not so distinct as that) came into her mind that her
father, who surely belonged to her, rather than to any other person on the
face of the earth, should be thus explained to her and recommended. The
feeling was natural, but painful, and somewhat absurd, for there could be no
doubt that she did not know him, and apparently Mrs. Meredith did; and
what she said was wise; only somehow it jarred upon Cara, who was
sensitive all over, and felt every touch, now here, now there.
‘Well, my dear, never mind, if you don’t like it, for to-day; but the longer
it is put off the more difficult it will be. Whatever is to be done ought to be
done at once I always think. He should not have taken a panic about this
room; why should he? Poor dear Annie! everything she loved ought to be
dear to him; that would be my feeling. And Cara, dear, you might do a great
deal; you might remove this superstition for ever, for I do think it is
superstition. However, if you wish me to say no more about it, I will hold
my tongue. And now what shall we do to-day? Shall we go out after
luncheon? As soon as you have given your papa his lunch, you shall put on
your things, and I will call for you. My people never begin to come before
four; and you shall come in with me and see them. That will amuse you, for
there are all sorts of people. And your papa and you are going to dine with
us; I told him last night you must come. You will see Oswald and renew
your acquaintance with him, and we can talk. Oswald is very good-looking,
Cara. Do you remember him? he has dark hair now and dark eyes; but I
wish he had always remained a boy; though of course that is not possible,’
she said, shaking her head with a sigh. ‘Now I must run away, and get
through my morning’s work. No, don’t disturb your papa; evening is his
time. I shall see him in the evening. But be sure you are ready to go out at
half-past two.’
How little time there seemed to be for moping or thinking after this visit!
Cara made a rapid survey of the drawing-room when she returned to it, to
see what changes could be made, as her friend suggested. She would not
have had the courage to do any such thing, had it not been suggested to her.
It was her father’s room, not hers; and what right had she to meddle? But
somewhat a different light seemed to have entered with her visitor. Cara
saw, too, when she examined, that changes could be made which would
make everything different yet leave everything fundamentally the same. Her
heart fluttered a little at the thought of such daring. She might have taken
such a thing upon her at the Hill, without thinking whether or not she had a
right to do it; but then she never could have had time to move anything
without Miss Charity or Miss Cherry coming in, in the constant cheery
intercourse of the house. But for these changes she would have abundant
time; no one would come to inspect while her re-arrangements were going
on. However, there was no time to think of them now; the day was busy and
full. She came downstairs for luncheon with her bonnet on, that she might
not be too late. ‘I am going out with Mrs. Meredith,’ she said to her father,
in explanation of her out-of-door costume.
‘Ah, that is right!’ he said. ‘And we are to dine there this evening.’ Even
he looked brighter and more genial when he said this. And the languid day
had grown warm and bright, full of occupations and interest; and to keep
Mrs. Meredith waiting—to be too late—that would never do.
CHAPTER XII.
THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR.
Mrs. Meredith’s drawing-room was not like the twin room next door. It
was more ornate, though not nearly so beautiful. The three windows were
draped in long misty white curtains, which veiled the light even at its
brightest and made a curious artificial semblance of mystery and retirement
on this autumn afternoon, when the red sunshine glowed outside. Long
looking-glasses here and there reflected these veiled lights. There was a
good deal of gilding, and florid furniture, which insisted on being looked at.
Cara sat down on an ottoman close to the further window after their walk,
while Mrs. Meredith went to take off her bonnet. She wanted to see the
people arrive, and was a little curious about them. There were, for a country
house, a good many visitors at the Hill; but they came irregularly, and
sometimes it would happen that for days together not a soul would appear.
But Mrs. Meredith had no more doubt of the arrival of her friends than if
they had all been invited guests. Cara was still seated alone, looking out,
her pretty profile relieved against the white curtain like a delicate little
cameo, when the first visitor arrived, who was a lady, and showed some
annoyance to find the room already occupied. ‘I thought I must be the first,’
she said, giving the familiar salutation of a kiss to Mrs. Meredith as she
entered. ‘Never mind, it is only Cara Beresford,’ said that lady, and led her
friend by the hand to where two chairs were placed at the corner of the fire.
Here they sat and talked in low tones with great animation, the ‘he saids’
and ‘she saids’ being almost all that reached Cara’s ear, who, though a little
excited by the expectation of ‘company,’ did not understand this odd
version of it. By-and-by, however, the lady came across to her and began to
talk, and Cara saw that some one else had arrived. The room filled
gradually after this, two or three people coming and going, each of them in
their turn receiving a few minutes particular audience. Nothing could be
more evident than that it was to see the lady of the house that these people
came; for, though the visitors generally knew each other, there was not
much general conversation. Every new-comer directed his or her glance to
Mrs. Meredith’s corner, and, if the previous audience was not concluded,
relapsed into a corner, and talked a little to the next person, whoever that
might be. In this way Cara received various points of enlightenment as to
this new society. Most of them had just returned to town. They talked of
Switzerland, they talked of Scotland; of meeting So-and-so here and there;
of this one who was going to be married, and that one who was supposed to
be dying; but all this talk was subsidiary to the grand object of the visit,
which was the personal interview. Cara, though she was too young to relish
her own spectator position, could not help being interested by the way in
which her friend received her guests. She had a different aspect for each.
The present one, as Cara saw looking up, after an interval, was a man, with
whom Mrs. Meredith was standing in front of the furthest window. She was
looking up in his face, with her eyes full of interest, not saying much;
listening with her whole mind and power, every fold in her dress, every line
of her hair and features, falling in with the sentiment of attention. Instead of
talking, she assented with little nods of her head and soft acquiescent or
remonstrative movements of her delicate hands, which were lightly clasped
together. This was not at all her attitude with the ladies, whom she placed
beside her, in one of the low chairs, with little caressing touches and smiles
and low-voiced talk. How curious it was to watch them one by one! Cara
felt a strong desire, too, to have something to tell; to go and make her
confession or say her say upon some matter interesting enough to call forth
that sympathetic, absorbed look—the soft touch upon her shoulder, or half
embrace.
It was tolerably late when the visitors went away—half-past six, within
an hour of dinner. The ladies were the last to go, as they had been the first
to come; and Cara, relieved by the departure of the almost last stranger,
drew timidly near the fire, when Mrs. Meredith called her. It was only as
she approached—and the girl felt cold, sitting so far off and being so
secondary, which is a thing that makes everybody chilly—that she
perceived somebody remaining, a gentleman seated in an easy-chair—an
old gentleman (according to Cara; he was not of that opinion himself), who
had kept his place calmly for a long time without budging, whosoever went
or came.
‘Well, you have got through the heavy work,’ said this patient visitor,
‘and I hope you have sent them off happier. It has not been your fault, I am
sure, if they are not happier; they have each had their audience and their
appropriate word.’
‘You always laugh at me, Mr. Somerville: why should I not say what I
think they will like best to the people who come to see me?’
‘Ah, when you put it like that!’ he said; ‘certainly, why shouldn’t you?
But I think some of those good people thought that you gave them beautiful
advice and consolation, didn’t you? I thought it seemed like that as I looked
on.’
‘You are always so severe. Come, my darling, you are out of sight there;
come and smooth down this mentor of mine by the sight of your young
face. This is my neighbour’s child, Miss Beresford, from next door.’
‘Ah, the neighbour!’ said Mr. Somerville, with a slight emphasis, and
then he got up somewhat stiffly and made Cara his bow. ‘Does not he come
for his daily bread like the rest?’ he said, in an undertone.
‘Mr. Beresford is going to dine with me to-night, with Cara, who has just
come home,’ said Mrs. Meredith, with a slight shade of embarrassment on
her face.
‘Ah! from school?’ said this disagreeable old man.
It had grown dark, and the lady herself had lighted the candles on the
mantelpiece. He was sitting immediately under a little group of lights in a
florid branched candlestick, which threw a glow upon his baldness. Cara,
unfavourably disposed, thought there was a sneer instead of a smile upon
his face, which was partially in shade.
‘I have never been to school,’ said the girl, unreasonably angry at the
imputation; and just then someone else came in—another gentleman, with
whom Mrs. Meredith, who had advanced to meet him, lingered near the
door. Mr. Somerville watched over Cara’s head, and certainly his smile had
more amusement than benevolence in it.
‘Ah!’ he said again, ‘then you miss the delight of feeling free: no girl
who has not been at school can understand the pleasure of not being at
school any longer. Where have you been, then, while your father has been
away?’
‘With my aunts, at Sunninghill,’ said Cara, unnecessarily
communicative, as is the habit of youth.
‘Ah, yes, with your aunts! I used to know some of your family. Look at
her now,’ said the critic, more to himself than to Cara—‘this is a new phase.
This one she is smoothing down.’
Cara could not help a furtive glance. The new comer had said something,
she could not hear what, and stood half-defiant at the door. Mrs. Meredith’s
smile spoke volumes. She held out her hand with a deprecating, conciliatory
look. They could not hear what she said; but the low tone, the soft aspect,
the extended hand, were full of meaning. The old gentleman burst into a
broken, hoarse laugh. It was because the new-comer, melting all at once,
took the lady’s hand and bowed low over it, as if performing an act of
homage. Mr. Somerville laughed, but the stranger did not hear.
‘This is a great deal too instructive for you,’ he said. ‘Come and tell me
about your aunts. You think me quite an old man, eh? and I think you quite
a little girl.’
‘I am not so young! I am seventeen.’
‘Well! And I am seven-and-fifty—not old at all—a spruce and spry
bachelor, quite ready to make love to any one; but such are the erroneous
ideas we entertain of each other. Have you known Mrs. Meredith a long
time? or is this your first acquaintance?’
‘Oh, a very long time—almost since ever I was born!’
‘And I have known her nearly twenty years longer than that. Are you
very fond of her? Yes, most people are. So is your father, I suppose, like the
rest. But now you are the mistress of the house, eh? you should not let your
natural-born subjects stray out of your kingdom o’ nights.’
‘I have not any kingdom,’ said Cara, mournfully. ‘The house is so sad. I
should like to change it if papa would consent.’
‘That would be very good,’ said the volunteer counsellor, with alacrity.
‘You could not do anything better, and I dare say he will do it if you say so.
A man has a great deal of tenderness for his wife’s only child when he has
lost her. You have your own love and the other too.’
‘Have I?’ said the girl wistfully. Then she remembered that to talk of her
private affairs and household circumstances with a stranger was a
wonderful dereliction of duty. She made herself quite stiff accordingly in
obedience to propriety, and changed her tone.
‘Is not Oswald at home?’ she said. ‘I thought I should be sure to see
him.’
‘Oswald is at home, but he keeps away at this hour. He overdoes it, I
think; but sons like to have their mothers to themselves: I don’t think they
like her to have such troops of friends. And Oswald, you know, is a man,
and would like to be master.’
‘He has no right to be master!’ said Cara, the colour rising on her
cheeks. ‘Why should not she have her friends?’
‘That is exactly what I tell him; but most likely he will understand you
better. He is not my ideal of a young man; so you have no call to be angry
with me on account of Oswald.’
‘I—angry with—you; when I don’t know you—when I never saw you
before! I beg your pardon,’ cried Cara, fearing that perhaps this might
sound rude; but if it was rude it was true.
‘Must you go?’ said Mrs. Meredith to her visitor. ‘Well, I will not delay
you, for it is late; but that is all over, is it not? I cannot afford to be
misunderstood by anyone I care for. Won’t you say “How d’ye do?” to Mr.
Somerville, my old friend, whom you see always, and Miss Beresford, my
young friend, whom you have never seen before?’
‘I have not time, indeed,’ said the stranger, with a vague bow towards
the fireplace; ‘but I go away happy—it is all over, indeed. I shall know
better than ever to listen to detractors and mischief-makers again.’
‘That is right,’ she said, giving him her hand once more. When he was
gone she turned back with a little air of fatigue. ‘Somebody had persuaded
that foolish boy that I thought him a bore. He is not a bore—except now
and then; but he is too young,’ said Mrs. Meredith, shaking her head. ‘You
young people are so exigent, Cara. You want always to be first; and in
friendship that, you know, is impossible. All are equal on that ground.’
‘I am glad you have a lesson now and then,’ said Mr. Somerville. ‘You
know my opinion on that subject.’
‘Are you going to dine with us, dear Mr. Somerville?’ said Mrs.
Meredith, sweetly, looking at her watch. ‘Do. You know Mr. Beresford is
coming, who is very fine company indeed. No? I am so sorry. It would be
so much more amusing for him, not to speak of Cara and me.’
‘I am very sorry I can’t amuse you to-night,’ he said, getting to his feet
more briskly than Cara expected. Mrs. Meredith laughed; and there was a
certain sound of hostility in the laugh, as though she was glad of the little
prick she had bestowed.
‘Cara, you must run and dress,’ she said; ‘not any toilette to speak of,
dear. There will only be your father and Oswald; but you must be quick, for
we have been kept very late this evening. I wonder you can resist that
young face,’ she said, as Cara went away. ‘You are fond of youth, I know.’
‘I am not fond of affording amusement,’ he said. He limped slightly as
he walked, which was the reason he had allowed Cara to go before him.
‘Yes; I like youth. Generally it makes few phrases, and it knows what it
means.’
‘Which is just what I dislike.’
‘Yes; elderly sirens naturally do. But next time Beresford comes to dine,
and you ask me, if you will give me a little longer notice I will come, for I
want to meet him.’
‘Let it be on Saturday, then,’ she said; ‘that is, if he has no engagement. I
will let you know.’
‘As if she did not know what engagements he had!’ Mr. Somerville said
to himself: ‘as if he ever dreamt of going anywhere that would interfere
with his visits here!’ He struck his stick sharply against the stairs as he went
down. He had no sense of hostility to Mrs. Meredith, but rather that kind of
uneasy liking akin to repugnance, which made him wish to annoy her. He
felt sure she was made angry by the sound of his stick on the stairs. Her
household went upon velvet, and made no noise; for though she was not
fanciful she had nerves, and was made to start and jump by any sudden
noise.
Cara heard him go with his stick along the Square, as nurse, who was her
maid, closed the windows of her room. The sound got less distinct after
this, but still she could hear it gradually disappearing. What a disagreeable
old man he was, though he said he did not think himself old; at seven-and-
fifty! Cara thought seven-and-twenty oldish, and seven-and-thirty the age of
a grandfather; and yet he did not think himself old! So strange are the
delusions which impartial people have to encounter in this world. Nurse
interrupted her thoughts by a question about her dress. One of her very
prettiest evening dresses lay opened out upon her bed.
‘That is too fine,’ said Cara; ‘we are to be quite alone.’
‘You haven’t seen Mr. Oswald, have you, Miss Cara, dear? He has
grown up that handsome you would not know him. He was always a fine
boy; but now—I don’t know as I’ve ever seen a nicer-looking young man.’
‘I will have my plain white frock, please, nurse—the one I wore last
night,’ said Cara, absolutely unaware of any connection that could exist
between Oswald Meredith’s good looks and her second-best evening dress
—a dress that might do for a small dance, as Aunt Cherry had impressed
upon her. It never occurred to the girl that her own simple beauty could be
heightened by this frock or that. Vanity comes on early or late, according to
the character; but, except under very favourable (or unfavourable)
circumstances, seldom develops in early youth. Cara had not even begun to
think whether she herself was pretty or not, and she would have scorned
with hot shame and contempt the idea of dressing for effect. People only
think of dress when they have self-consciousness. She did not understand
enough of the a, b, c of that sentiment to put any meaning to what nurse
said, and insisted upon her plain muslin gown, laughing at the earnestness
of the attendant. ‘It is too fine,’ she said. ‘Indeed I am not obstinate: it
would be a great deal too fine.’ Her father was waiting for her in the hall
when the simple toilette was completed, and Mrs. Meredith had not yet
made her appearance when the two went into the drawing-room next door.
Mr. Beresford sat down with his eyes turned towards the door. ‘She is
almost always late,’ he said, with a smile. He was a different man here—
indulgent, gentle, fatherly. Mrs. Meredith came in immediately after, with
pretty lace about her shoulders and on her head. ‘Oswald is late, as usual,’
she said, putting her hand into Mr. Beresford’s. He looked at her, smiling,
with a satisfied friendly look, as if his eyes loved to dwell upon her. He
smiled at Oswald’s lateness; did not look cross, as men do when they are
waiting for their dinner. ‘Cara is punctual, you see,’ he said, with a smile.
‘Cara is a dear child,’ said Mrs. Meredith. ‘She has been with me all day.
How odd that you should be made complete by a daughter and I by a son,
such old friends as we are! Ah! here is Oswald. Would you have known
him, Cara? Oswald, this is——’
‘There is no need to tell me who it is,’ said Oswald. Cara saw, when she
looked at him, that what the others had said was true. It did not move her
particularly, but still she could see that he was very handsome, as
everybody had told her. He took her hand, which she held out timidly, and,
without any ceremony, drew it within his arm. ‘We must go to dinner at
once,’ he said, ‘or Sims will put poison in the soup. She longs to poison me,
I know, in my soup, because I am always late; but I hope she will let me off
for your sake, Cara. And so really you are little Cara? I did not believe it,
but I see it is true now.’
‘Why did you not believe it? I think I should have known you,’ said
Cara, ‘if I had met you anywhere. It is quite true; but you are just like
Oswald all the same.’
‘What is quite true?’ Oswald was a great deal more vain than Cara was,
being older and having had more time to see the effect of his good looks.
He laughed, and did not push his question any further. It was a pleasant
beginning. He had his mother’s sympathetic grace of manner, and, Cara felt
at once, understood her and all her difficulties at a glance, as Mrs. Meredith
had done. How far this was true may be an open question; but she was
convinced of it, which for the moment was enough.
‘We did not come downstairs so ceremoniously last time we met,’ he
said. ‘When you came for the nursery tea, with nurse behind you. I think
Edward held the chief place in your affections then. He was nearer your
age; but thank Heaven that fellow is out of the way, and I have a little time
to make the running before he comes back!’
Cara did not know what it meant to ‘make the running,’ and was
puzzled. She was not acquainted with any slang except that which has crept
into books, but an expression of pleasure in Edward’s absence appalled her.
‘I remember him best,’ she said, ‘because he was more near my age; but
you were both big boys—too big to care for a little thing like me. I
remember seeing you come in with a latch-key one afternoon and open the
door—ah!’ said Cara, with a little cry. It had been on the afternoon of her
mother’s death when she had been placed at the window to look for her
father’s coming, and had seen the two big boys in the afternoon light, and
watched them, with an interest which quite distracted her attention for the
moment, fitting the key into the door.
‘What is it?’ he said, looking at her very kindly. ‘You have not been here
for a long time—yes, it must bring back so many things. Look, Cara! Sims
is gracious; she will not poison me this time. She has not even frowned at
me, and it is all because of you.’
‘I like Sims,’ said Cara, her heart rising, she could not tell why. ‘I like
everybody I used to know.’
‘So do I—because you do; otherwise I am not so fond of my fellow-
creatures; some of them plague one’s life out. What are you going to do
when you get used to the excitement of seeing us all again? You will find
yourself very badly off for something to do.’
‘Do you?’ said Cara, innocently.
‘My mother does for me. She thinks me very idle. So I am, I suppose.
What is the good of muddling what little brains one has in work? One in a
family who does that is enough. Edward is that excellent person. He goes in
for Greek so that my head aches; though why he should, being intended for
the Civil Service, I don’t know.’
‘Won’t it do him any good?’ said Cara, with regret. She was practical,
and did not like to hear of this waste of labour. ‘Is Edward—changed—like
you?’ she added softly, after a pause. He looked at her with laughing bright
eyes, all softened and liquid with pleasure. He knew what she meant, and
that his handsome face was having its natural effect upon Cara; though,
being much older than Cara, he could not have believed how little effect his
good looks really had.
‘I think he is very like what he always was,’ he said; ‘he is such a good
fellow, Cara. If anyone asks you which is the best of the Merediths, say
Edward. You may be sure you will be right. Listen what the elders are
saying; they are talking about you and me.’
‘Why about you and me?’ Cara was always slightly alarmed to hear that
she was being talked of. It roused the latent suspicion in her which had been
startled into being at her mother’s death. She stopped talking, and looked at
the other two. His mother was opposite to Oswald, and her father was
opposite to her. What an odd arrangement it seemed when you came to
think of it! If papa had got one of the boys, and she, Cara, had fallen to the
lot of Mrs. Meredith—would that have been better? She looked at Oswald’s
mother and wondered; then bethought herself of the Hill and blushed. No,
such an idea was nothing but treachery to the Hill, where it was Cara, and
no other, who was the chosen child.
‘She has grown into a little lily,’ said Mrs. Meredith. ‘She is shy, but
open and winning, and I like girls to be shy like that. I do not wonder that
you are proud of her.’
‘Am I proud of her? I am not sure. She is nice-looking, I think.’
‘Nice-looking? She has grown into a little lily. It is wonderful how she
blends two likenesses; I see you both. Ah! have I said too much? A happy
child so often does that; you will forgive me if I say anything that hurts
——’
‘You could not say anything that hurts,’ he said in a low voice, ‘it would
not hurt coming from you.’
‘Well, perhaps it ought not,’ she said, with a smile, ‘because it is said in
true friendship. I noticed that at once in Cara—sometimes one and
sometimes the other—like both. That is not the case with my boys. I shall
not have Edward till Christmas. You know it has always been my happy
time when the boys were here.’
‘Is Oswald doing anything—?’ A close observer would have seen that
Mr. Beresford was not fond of Oswald. He was not nearly so well-disposed
to him as Mrs. Meredith was to Cara. Perhaps it was purely on moral
grounds and justifiable; perhaps the young man and his senior came in each
other’s way more than the girl and the matron did. This abrupt question
rather put a stop to poor Mrs. Meredith. She blushed a little and faltered as
she replied.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE YOUNG PEOPLE.
Cara’s second evening at home was passed much more happily than the
first, thanks to Mrs. Meredith, and her spirits rose in consequence; but next
morning there ensued a fall, as was natural, in her spiritual barometer. She
went to the window in the drawing-room when she was all alone, and gazed
wistfully at as much as she could see of the step and entrance of the house
next door. Did they mean her to ‘run in half-a-dozen times a day,’ as Mrs.
Meredith had said? Cara had been brought up in her aunt’s old-fashioned
notions, with strenuous injunctions not ‘to make herself cheap,’ and to
cultivate ‘a proper pride.’ She had often been told that running into sudden
intimacy was foolish, and that a girl should be rather shy than eager about
overtures of ordinary friendship. All these things restrained her, and her
own disposition which favoured all reserves. But she could not help going
to the window and looking out wistfully. Only a wall between them! and
how much more cheerful it was on the other side of that wall. Her heart beat
as she saw Oswald come out, not because it was Oswald—on the whole she
would have preferred his mother; but solitude ceased to be solitude when
friendly figures thus appear, even outside. Oswald glanced up and saw her.
He took off his hat—he paused—finally, he turned and came up the steps
just underneath where she was standing. In another moment he came in, his
hat in his hand, his face full of brightness of the morning. Nurse showed
him in with a sort of affectionate enthusiasm. ‘Here is Mr. Oswald, Miss
Cara, come to see you.’
The women servants were all the slaves of the handsome young fellow.
Wherever he went he had that part of the community on his side.
‘I came to see that you are not the worse for your dull dinner last
evening,’ he said. ‘It used to be etiquette to ask for one’s partner at a ball;
how much more after a domestic evening. Have you a headache? were you
very much bored? It is for my interest to know, that I may be able to make
out whether you will come again.’
‘Were you bored that you ask me?’ said Cara. ‘I was very happy.’
‘And, thanks to you, I was very happy,’ he said. ‘Clearly four are better
company than three. Your father and my mother have their own kind of
talking. Why, I have not been in this room since I was a child; how much
handsomer it is than ours! Come, Cara, tell me all about the pictures and the
china. Of course you must be a little connoisseur. Should one say
connoisseuse? I never know. Virtuosa, that is a prettier word, and we are all
in the way of the cardinal virtues here.’
‘But I am not at all a virtuosa. I don’t know. I was a child, too, when I
used to be at home, and I suppose it hurts papa to come into this room. He
has never been here since I came; never at all, I think, since mamma died.’
‘Does he leave you by yourself all the evening? what a shame!’ said
Oswald. ‘Is he so full of sentiment as that? One never knows people. Come,
Cara, if that is the case, it is clear that I must spend the evenings with you.’
Cara laughed frankly at the suggestion. She did not understand what he
meant by a slight emphasis upon the pronouns, which seemed to point out
some balance of duties. She said, ‘I have only been here for two evenings.
The first was very dull. I had nothing to read but that book, and I was not
happy. The second was last night. Oh, I am not accustomed to much
company. I can be quite happy by myself, when I am used to things.’
‘That means you don’t want me,’ said Oswald; ‘but I shall come all the
same. What is the book about? You don’t mean to say you understand that!
What is unconscious cerebration, Cara? Good heavens! how rash I have
been. Are you an F.R.S. already, like the rest of your father’s friends?’
‘I don’t know what it means,’ said Cara, ‘no more than I know about the
china. But I read a chapter that first night; it was always something. You see
there are very few books in this room. They have been taken away, I
suppose. Nobody, except mamma, has ever lived here.’
She gave a little shiver as she spoke, and looked wistfully round. Even in
the morning, with the sunshine coming in, how still it was! Oswald thought
he would like to break the china, and make a human noise, over the head of
the father who was sitting below, making believe to think so much of the
memory of his dead wife, and neglecting his living child. The young man
had a grudge against the elder one, which gave an edge to his indignation.
‘You shall have books,’ he said, ‘and company too, if you will have me,
Cara: that will bring them to their senses,’ he added to himself in a half-
laughing, half-angry undertone.
What did he mean? Cara had no idea. She laughed too, with a little
colour starting to her face, wondering what Aunt Charity would think if she
knew that Oswald meant to spend his evenings with her. Cara herself did
not see any harm in it, though she felt it was a joke, and could not be.
‘You were going out,’ she said, ‘when you saw me at the window. Had
you anything to do? for if you had you must not stay and waste your time
with me.’
‘Why should I have anything to do?’
‘I thought young men had,’ said Cara. ‘Of course I don’t know very
much about them. I know only the Burchells well; they are never allowed to
come and talk in the morning. If it is Reginald, he always says he ought to
be reading; and Roger, he is of course at work, you know.’
‘I don’t know in the least,’ said Oswald; ‘but I should like to learn. What
does this revelation of Rogers and Reginalds mean? I never supposed there
were any such persons. I thought that Edward and myself were about the
limit of friendship allowed to little Cara, and here is a clan, a tribe. I
forewarn you at once that I put myself in opposition to your Reginalds and
Rogers. I dislike the gentlemen. I am glad to hear that they have no time to
talk in the mornings. I, for my part, have plenty of time.’
‘Oh, you are not likely to know them,’ said Cara, laughing, ‘unless,
indeed, Roger comes on Sundays, as he said. They are probably not so rich
as you are. Their father is a clergyman, and they have to work. I should like
that myself better than doing nothing.’
‘That means,’ said Oswald, with great show of savagery, setting his
teeth, ‘that you prefer the said Roger, who must not talk o’ mornings, to me,
presumably not required to work? Know, then, young lady, that I have as
much need to work as your Roger; more, for I mean to be somebody. If I go
in for the bar it is with the intention of being Lord Chancellor; and that
wants work—work! such as would take the very breath away from your
clergyman’s sons, who probably intend to be mere clergymen, and drop into
a fat living.’
‘Roger is an engineer,’ said Cara; ‘he is at the College; he walks about
with chains, measuring. I don’t know what is the good of it, but I suppose it
is of some good. There are so many things,’ she added, with a sigh, ‘that
one is obliged to take for granted. Some day, I suppose, he will have bridges
and lighthouses to make. That one can understand—that would be worth
doing.’
‘I hate Roger!’ said Oswald. ‘I shall never believe in any lighthouses of
his making; there will be a flaw in them. Do you remember the Eddystone,
which came down ever so often? Roger’s will tumble down. I know it. And
when you have seen it topple over into the sea you shall come and see me
tranquilly seated on the woolsack, and recant all your errors.’
Upon which they both laughed—not that there was much wit in the
suggestion, but they were both young, and the one lighted up the other with
gay gleams of possible mirth.
‘However,’ said Oswald, ‘that we may not throw that comparison to too
remote a period, where do you think I was going? Talk of me as an idler, if
you please. Does this look like idling?’ He took from his pocket a little roll
of paper, carefully folded, and breaking open the cover showed her a
number of MS. pages, fairly copied out in graduated lines. Cara’s face grew
crimson with sudden excitement.
‘Poetry!’ she said; but capital letters would scarcely convey all she
meant. ‘Oswald, are you a poet?’
He laughed again, which jarred upon her feelings, for poetry (she felt)
was not a thing to laugh at. ‘I write verses,’ he said; ‘that is idling—most
people call it so, Cara, as well as you.’
‘But I would never call it so! Oh, Oswald, if there is anything in the
world I care for—— Read me some, will you? Oh, do read me something.
There is nothing,’ cried Cara, her lips trembling, her eyes expanding, her
whole figure swelling with a sigh of feeling, ‘nothing I care for so much. I
would rather know a poet than a king!’
Upon this Oswald laughed again, and looked at her with kind
admiration. His eyes glowed, but with a brotherly light. ‘You are a little
enthusiast,’ he said. ‘I called you virtuosa, and you are one in the old-
fashioned sense, for that is wider than bric-à-brac. Yes; I sometimes think I
might be a poet if I had anyone to inspire me, to keep me away from petty
things. I am my mother’s son, Cara. I like to please everybody, and that is
not in favour of the highest pursuits. I want a Muse. What if you were born
to be my Muse? You shall see some of the things that are printed,’ he
added; ‘not these. I am more sure of them when they have attained the
reality of print.’
‘Then they are printed?’ Cara’s eyes grew bigger and bigger, her interest
grew to the height of enthusiasm. ‘How proud your mother must be,
Oswald! I wonder she did not tell me. Does Edward write, too?’
‘Edward!’ cried the other with disdain; ‘a clodhopper; a plodding,
steady, respectable fellow, who has passed for the Civil Service. Poetry
would be more sadly in his way than it is in mine. Oh, yes, it is sadly in
mine. My mother does not know much; but instead of being enthusiastic she
is annoyed with what she does know. That is the kind of thing one has to
meet with in this world,’ he said, with a sigh over his own troubles.
‘Sometimes there is one like you—one more generous, more capable of
appreciating the things that do not pay—with some people the things that
pay are everything. And poetry does not pay, Cara.’
‘I don’t like you even to say so.’
‘Thanks for caring what I say; you have an eye for the ideal. I should
like to be set on a pedestal, and to have something better expected from me.
That is how men are made, Cara. To know that someone—a creature like
yourself—expects something, thinks us capable of something. I am talking
sentiment,’ he said, with a laugh; ‘decidedly you are the Muse I am looking
for. On a good pedestal, with plenty of white muslin, there is not a Greek of
them all would come up to you.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Oswald. Now you are laughing at me.’
‘Well, let us laugh,’ he said, putting his papers into his pocket again.
‘Are you coming to my mother’s reception this afternoon? I hear you were
there yesterday. What do you think of it? Was old Somerville there with his
wig? He is the guardian angel; he comes to see that we all go on as we
ought, and that no one goes too far. He does not approve of me. He writes to
India about me that I will never be of much use in the world.’
‘To India.’
‘Yes; all the information about us goes out there. Edward gives
satisfaction, but not the rest of us. It is not easy to please people so far off
who have not you to judge, but only your actions set down in black and
white. Well, I suppose I must go now—my actions don’t tell for much:
“Went into the house next door, and got a great deal of good from little
Cara.” That would not count, you see; not even if I put down, “Cheered up
little Cara, who was mopish.” Might I say that?’
‘Yes, indeed; you have cheered me up very much,’ said Cara, giving him
her hand. Oswald stooped over her a moment, and the girl thought he was
going to kiss her, which made her retreat a step backwards, her countenance
flaming, and all the shy dignity and quick wrath of her age stirred into
movement. But he only laughed and squeezed her hand, and ran downstairs,
his feet ringing young and light through the vacant house. Cara would have
gone to the window and looked after him but for that—was it a threatening
of a visionary kiss? How silly she was! Of course he did not mean anything
of the kind. If he did, it was just as if she had been his sister, and Cara felt
that her momentary alarm showed her own silliness, a girl that had never
been used to anything. How much an only child lost by being an only child,
she reflected gravely, sitting down after he left her by the fire. How pleasant
it would have been to have a brother like Oswald. And if he should be a
poet! But this excited Cara more when he was talking to her than after he
was gone. He did not fall in with her ideas of the poet, who was a being of
angelic type to her imagination, not a youth with laughter glancing from his
eyes.
That evening Cara sat solitary after dinner, the pretty silver lamp lighted,
with its white moon-orb of light upon the table by her; the fire burning just
bright enough for company, for it still was not cold. She had said, timidly,
‘Shall you come upstairs this evening, papa?’ and had received a mildly
evasive answer, and she thought about nine o’clock that she heard the hall
door shut, just as John came into the room with tea. She thought the man
looked at her compassionately, but she would not question him. The room
looked very pretty in the fire, light and lamplight, with the little tray
gleaming in all its brightness of china and silver, and the little white figure
seated by the fire; but it was very lonely. She took up a book a little more
interesting than the one which had been her first resource, but presently let
it drop on her knee wondering and asking herself would Oswald come?
Perhaps he had forgotten; perhaps he had noticed her shrink when he went
away, and, meaning nothing by his gesture, did not know why she had
retreated from him—perhaps——. But who could tell what might have
stopped him? A boy was not like a girl—he might have been asked
somewhere. He might have gone to the theatre. Perhaps he had a club, and
was there among his friends. All this passed through her head as she sat
with the book in her hand, holding it open on her knee. Then she began to
read, and forgot for the minute; then suddenly the book dropped again, and
she thought, with a sort of childish longing, of what might be going on next
door, just on the other side of the wall, where everything was sure to be so
cheerful. If she could only pierce that unkindly wall, and see through! That
made her think of Pyramus and Thisbe, and she smiled, but soon grew
grave again. Was this how she was to go on living—lonely all the evening
through, her father seeking society somewhere else, she could not tell
where. She thought of the drawing-room at the Hill, and her eyes grew wet;
how they would miss her there! and here nobody wanted Cara. Her father,
perhaps, might think it right that his child should live under his roof; but
that was all he cared apparently; and was it to be always thus, and never
change? At seventeen it is so natural to think that everything that is, is
unalterable and will never change. Then Cara, with a gulp, and a
determination to be as happy as she could in the terrible circumstances, and
above all, to shun Oswald, who had not kept his word, opened her book
again, and this time got into the story, which had been prefaced by various
interludes of philosophising, and remembered no more till nurse came to
inquire if she did not mean to go to bed to-night. So the evening did not
hang so heavy on her hands as she thought.
Next day Oswald came again, and told her of a forgotten engagement
which he had been obliged to keep; and they chatted gaily as before; and he
brought her some poems, printed in a magazine, which sounded beautiful
when he read them, to her great delight, but did not seem so beautiful when
she read them over herself, as she begged she might be allowed to do. After
this there was a great deal of intercourse between the two houses, and
Cara’s life grew brighter. Now and then, it was true, she would be left to
spend an evening alone; but she got other friends, and went to some parties
with Mrs. Meredith, Oswald attending them. He was always about; he came
and had long private talks with her, reading his verses and appealing to her
sympathies and counsel; he walked with her when she went out with his
mother; he was always by her side wherever they went. ‘I know Edward
will cut me out when he comes, so I must make the running now,’ he said
often, and Cara no longer wondered what making the running meant. She
got so used to his presence that it seemed strange when he was not there.
‘It’s easy to see what that will end in,’ said Nurse to John and Cook in
the kitchen.
‘I wish as one could see what the other would end in,’ Cook replied. But
the household watched the two young people with proud delight, going to

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The Play of Allusion in the Historia

Augusta 1st Edition David Rohrbacher

Spontaneous Play in the Language Classroom: Creating a

The Greek Historia Monachorum in Aegypto : monastic

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Edward Lear and the play of poetry James Williams

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Tetris The Games People Play Box Brown

The University of Wisconsin Press

3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden

Printed in the United States of America

This book may be available in a digital edition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rohrbacher, David, 1969–, author.

1 Allusion in the Historia Augusta 16

2 The Historia Augusta and the Ancient Reader 47

3 Religion in the Historia Augusta 87

4 Imperial History Reimagined 134

The most recent generation of classical scholarship has witnessed a

In addition to the abbreviations below, citations in this book

Books of the Historia Augusta (HA)

In E. Hohl, Scriptores Historiae Augustae. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1927:

Tyr. Trig. Thirty Tyrants

In F. Paschoud, Histoire Auguste V.2: Vies de Probus, Firmus, Saturnin, Proculus

Volumes of the Historia-Augusta-Colloquium

BHAC 1963 A. Alföldi, ed. Historia-Augusta-Colloquium. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt,

BHAC 1977/78 A. Alföldi, ed. Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium. Bonn: Rudolf

T he bizarre collection of imperial biographies that we call

The Historia Augusta Was Not Written

One of the most surprising features of the Historia Augusta is the

The Historia Augusta Was Not Written

The author audaciously claims, implicitly, to be writing decades

anachronism in ethnic geography appears in the discussion of the Samaritans as a

The Biographies in the Historia Augusta

A reader of the Historia Augusta will quickly recognize that the

The Lacuna between the Three Gordians and

The Three Gordians concludes with the death of Gordian III in

The Historical Sources of the Historia Augusta

The HA-author draws heavily from both literary and historio-

been proposed as the common source, in particular the fourth-century Greek

The Historia Augusta looks like a collection of imperial biographies

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR.

THE YOUNG PEOPLE.

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