Marius Maximus

Lucius Marius Maximus Perpetuus Aurelianus (more commonly known as Marius Maximus) (c. AD 160 – c. AD 230) was a Roman biographer, writing in Latin, who in the early decades of the 3rd century AD wrote a series of biographies of twelve Emperors, imitating and continuing Suetonius. Marius’s work is lost, but it was still being read in the late 4th century and was used as a source by writers of that era, notably the author of the Historia Augusta. The nature and reliability of Marius’s work, and the extent to which the earlier part of the HA draws upon it, are two vexed questions among the many problems that the HA continues to pose for students of Roman history and literature.

It is more or less agreed that Marius Maximus the biographer is identical with one of the most successful senators of the Severan dynasty whose career is known from inscriptions, namely Lucius Marius Maximus Perpetuus Aurelianus, twice consul and once Prefect of the City of Rome. His family may have hailed from Africa and was not senatorial; his father, L. Marius Perpetuus, was an Equestrian procurator in Gaul but evidently secured entry to the senatorial order for his son as a novus homo.

Probably born about 160 AD, Marius Maximus’ military career began in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, when he was Tribunus laticlavius of the Legio XXII Primigenia. Around 178 to 180, he held the same rank in the Legio III Italica. During Marcus Aurelius’ reign, he was also one of the quattuorviri viarum curandarum (or officer in charge of the roads outside of the walls of Rome). Around AD 182/183, Marius Maximus was the quaestor urbanus before being nominated as a candidate for the office of Plebeian Tribune.

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