'Caesareana tempora e Historia Augusta (Vita Aureliani' 6,4), Su certe periodizzazioni della storia romana proposte dagli scrittori tardoantichi

Abstract

The words 'Caesareana tempora' in the 'Historia Augusta' (Life of Aurelianus) have never been fully understood by annotators. I plan to discuss this expression, which appears with some variations in two other fourth and fifth century texts, within the debate on the chronology of composition and edition of imperial biographies, aiming to correct not only the wrong dates suggested in the Scriptores’ inscriptions (i.e. those to Diocletian’s Tetrarchs and to Constantine and his offsprings), but also the majority of the contemporary scholars’ opinions (i.e. the exact time of the ‘terminus ante quem’). In addition, this paper offers a brief overview of the different consecutive phases of Roman history suggested by the late antique religious and profane historians, writing both in Latin and Greek. Julius Caesar’s dictatorship was a crucial turning point, soon followed by Augustus’s principate, which Christian writers from Iulius Africanus and Eusebius on inevitably associated with Jesus’s birth.