Editing Marcus Aurelius (section)

==Sources==

The major sources depicting the life and rule of Marcus Aurelius are patchy and frequently unreliable. The most important group of sources, the biographies contained in the ''[[Augustan History|Historia Augusta]]'', claimed to be written by a group of authors at the turn of the 4th century AD, but it is believed they were in fact written by a single author (referred to here as 'the biographer') from about 395.<ref>Rohrbacher, p. 5.</ref> The later biographies and the biographies of subordinate emperors and usurpers are unreliable, but the earlier biographies, derived primarily from now-lost earlier sources ([[Marius Maximus]] or Ignotus), are considered to be more accurate.<ref name='Birley, 1889'>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', pp. 229–230. The thesis of single authorship was first proposed in H. Dessau's 'Über Zeit und Persönlichkeit der ''Scriptores Historiae Augustae{{'}}'' (in German), ''Hermes'' 24 (1889), pp. 337ff.</ref> For Marcus's life and rule, the biographies of [[Hadrian]], [[Antoninus Pius|Antoninus]], Marcus, and [[Lucius Verus|Lucius]] are largely reliable, but those of [[Aelius Verus]] and [[Avidius Cassius]] are not.<ref>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', p. 230. On the ''HA Verus'', see Barnes, 'Hadrian and Lucius Verus', pp. 65–74.</ref>

A body of correspondence between Marcus's tutor [[Marcus Cornelius Fronto|Fronto]] and various Antonine officials survives in a series of patchy manuscripts, covering the period from c. 138 to 166.<ref>Fleury, P. 2012. "Marcus Aurelius' Letters." In A Companion to Marcus Aurelius. Edited by M. van Ackeren, 62–76. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.</ref><ref>Freisenbruch, A. 2007. "Back to Fronto: Doctor and Patient in His Correspondence with an Emperor." In Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography. Edited by R. Morello and A. D. Morrison, 235–256. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.</ref> Marcus's own ''Meditations'' offer a window on his inner life, but are largely undateable and make few specific references to worldly affairs.<ref>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', p. 227.</ref> The main narrative source for the period is [[Cassius Dio]], a Greek senator from [[Bithynian]] [[Nicaea]] who wrote a history of Rome from its founding to 229 in eighty books. Dio is vital for the military history of the period, but his senatorial prejudices and strong opposition to imperial expansion obscure his perspective.<ref>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', pp. 228–229, 253.</ref> Some other literary sources provide specific details: the writings of the physician [[Galen]] on the habits of the Antonine elite, the orations of [[Aelius Aristides]] on the temper of the times, and the constitutions preserved in the ''[[Digest (Roman law)|Digest]]'' and ''[[Codex Justinianeus]]'' on Marcus's legal work.<ref>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', pp. 227–228.</ref> [[Epigraphy|Inscriptions]] and [[numismatics|coin finds]] supplement the literary sources.<ref>Birley, ''Marcus Aurelius'', p. 228.</ref>