Abstract
Departing from the progress in Constantinian studies in the last few decades, in this article the collection of imperial biographies called the Historia Augusta (HA) is reconsidered as an anti-Constantinian scripture. After all, the HA, as a literary product, is presented to the reader as a scripture from the (post-)tetrarchic era, by way of its ambiguous dedications to Diocletian and Constantine. The later books of the HA are no longer embellished with imperial dedications, but Constantine remains omnipresent: the biographies tend to panegyric, particularly the life of the emperor Claudius as the alleged ancestor in Constantine’s line, as initially advo- cated by the Panegyricus of 310. A comparison with another high-peak of bio- graphical panegyric, Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, written in Greek, is revealing: the same strategies, e.g. the idiosyncratic quotation of letters within the biography (often translated from Latin), are used to demonstrate the emperor’s excellence. In this contribution, the HA is approached as an ‘historical panegyric’ reacting to Eusebius’ praise of Constantine.
