Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/40

 Mithraic worship which Constantine desired to extirpate, as the most formidable opponent of his own new religion.

Lampridius dedicates his Life of Elagabalus to this Emperor, which at once shows us that at least 100 years had passed since the events recorded had taken place, and calls for an inquiry into the sources of Lampridius' information. The text as it stands to - day is at times incomprehensible, largely through the efforts of scholars of the Bonus Accursius and Casaubon type, while Dodwell in 1677 played his part in corrupting, according to his lights, what must always have been a document whose need of further mutilation was highly unnecessary. The first attempt at modern criticism of the texts began in 1838, when Becker of Breslau endeavoured to reassign the various lives to their respective authors, without very much success. In 1842 Dirksen of Leipzig attempted to ascertain the sources employed by the various Scriptores, and their use or misuse of the material to their hands. He founded his criticism mainly on the recorded speeches and messages of the Emperors, which, unfortunately for the theories then put forward, were discovered by Czwalina, in 1870, to be largely spurious.

The next work of any importance was done by Richter and Peter, when the former tried to date