TheyCallMeIgnotus

The Historiae Augustae are a set of biographies of Roman emperors, supposedly written by 6 different authors some time during the Fourth Century AD.  However, on closer examination, they all turned out to have been written by a single playful author, who became known to Roman historians as Ignotus.  It was as if a writer from the Sun or the National Enquirer had sat down to write history, using the cast from Dallas.

As the eminent historian Sir Ronald Syme once put it: “Season and society at Rome fostered fraud and imposture as well as erudition.  Combining both, the author of the great hoax concords with his own time,” and T.D. Barnes, in his exhaustive study of the SHA, pointed out that: “Beneath much fluent fiction, there is a factual framework.”

This is the spirit I have embraced.  My work is an accurate portrayal of the history of the Roman Republic as told by Livy, Plutarch and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.  Every great event that happens in this story is a real part of Roman history.  But beneath the history lurks a sinister secret which explains how the Republic came to be.

They call me Ignotus, and this is my story.