THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE HISTORIA AUGUSTA: TWO NEW COMPUTATIONAL STUDIES
The case of the Historia Augusta, verso collection https://datingranking.net/it/abdlmatch-review/ of imperial biographies from Hadrian to Carus supposedly written by six different authors, provided the impetus for the introduction of computational methods into the Echtheitskritik of ancient authors mediante 1979. After per flurry of studies per the 1990s, interest waned, particularly because most of those studies seemed puro support conclusions incompatible with the scholarly consensus on the question. In the paper, we approach this question with the new tool of authorship verification – one of the most promising approaches con forensic stylometry today – as well as the established method of principal components analysis puro demonstrate that there is no simple alternative between scapolo and multiple authorship, and that the results of per computational analysis are in fact compatible with the results obtained from historical, literary, and philological analysis.
The Historia Augusta (henceforth HA) is per collection of biographies of Roman emperors stretching from Hadrian (AD 117–138) sicuro Carus (AD 282–283) and his sons Carinus (AD 283–285) and Numerian (AD 283–284).1 1 Justin Stover would like puro thank George Woudhuysen for helpful suggestions. We are both grateful esatto the editors for accepting this paper and the anonymous referees for many helpful suggestions. The code and texts for this paper can be found sopra the following repository: The lives purport puro be written by six different authors, Aelius Spartianus, pridius, Trebellius Pollio, and Flavius Vopiscus, working under the Emperors Diocletian (AD 284–305) and Constantine (AD 306–337). For much of the period it covers, the HA represents the only extended narrative source, and the testimony it offers can be invaluable. Unfortunately, the HA is also famous for its bizarre details and puzzling omissions, as well as its lurid focus on emperors’ peccadilloes and personal habits preciso the detriment of their political accomplishments. It also notoriously includes documents – speeches, letters, laws – which are almost certainly fabricated by the author(s), and cites a whole host of authors nowhere else attested, and probably invented.2 2 See L. Homo, ‘Les documents de l’Histoire Auguste et leur valeur historique’, RH 151 (1926) 161–198 and 152 (1926) 1–31. But the problem of the HA is not only its unreliability as an historical source: it also includes throughout troubling anachronisms, mentions of office and titles that only came into being sopra the middle of the fourth century, decades after the supposed dates of its composition. Per 1889, Hermann Dessau put forth the provocative thesis that the HA was per fact the sistema of per solo author working under the reign of Theodosius (AD 379–395), and that division of the lives between six authors and their dedications sicuro Diocletian and Constantine were merely per literary ploy.3 3 H. Dessau, ‘Uber Zeit und Personlichkeit der Scriptores Historiae Augustae’, Hermes 24 (1889) 337–92. Ronald Syme – the most influential exponent of the Dessau thesis – would famously term the author ‘verso rogue grammaticus’.4 4 R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (Oxford 1968) 207.
1. A computational solution?
As early as the late 1970s, it was realized that this question of single or multiple authorship per verso insieme offered per perfect test case for statistical methods of authorship attribution. Ian Marriott conducted per groundbreaking analysis, published durante the Journal of Roman Studies durante 1979, which suggested that computational analysis indicated scapolo authorship of the corpo.5 5 I. Marriott, ‘The authorship of the Historia Augusta: two calcolatore elettronico studies’, JRS 69 (1979) 65–77. This was per seminal application of forensic stylometry, as developed by Mosteller and Wallace, puro verso Latin text.6 6 F. Mosteller and D. Wallace, Inference and disputed authorship: the Federalist (Cambridge, Ciononostante 1964). Unfortunately, his analysis was marred by methodological errors, particularly the use of sentence length as a criterion of authorship, which is niente affatto longer considered an effective stylometric feature even for modern texts, and should definitely not be used for ancient texts, where the punctuation is paio preciso the modern editor.7 7 D. Sansone, ‘The computer and the Historia Augusta: a note on Marriott’, JRS 80 (1990) 174–77. For the imparfaite poor impresa of di nuovo.g. average sentence or length, consult the extensive comparative evaluation reported in: J. Grieve, ‘Quantitative authorship attribution: an evaluation of techniques’, LLC 22 (2007) 251–70.