Photius,Phlegon, and Virgil

Abstract

In his Bibliotheca, codex 97, Photius passes under review the Compilation of Olympic Victors and Chronicles by Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of Hadrian. This work was dedicated by Phlegon to an imperial official, P. Aelius Alcibiades. Neither the official nor the book are mentioned in the Historia Augusta or the extant Byzantine epitomes of Dio Cassius, or indeed in any literary source. The name Aelius, however, might have helped the HA to create one of its many bogus sources, to wit Aelius Maurus, a supposed freedman of Phlegon himself and supplier of an anecdote about Septimius Severus on his deathbed.