ABSTRACT
Once more, there was a war on. Aurelian, Augustus of a beleaguered empire, had already repelled Vandals from Pannonia and Juthungi from central Italy, crushed insurrection at Rome, and driven Goths out from Thrace and Illyricum back across the Danube to a large defeat.1 Now, crossing from Europe at Byzantium, he and his army began to strike east and south toward the overreaching principality of Palmyra.2 The city of Tyana shut its gates against them. Nevertheless, on broaching the city, Aurelian refrained from having his soldiers slaughter its citizens in revenge, as they might have expected. Aurelian’s restraint drew historiographical attention. Why should an emperor not exercise his prerogative of punitive violence against a city that had resisted him? The Historia Augusta’s Life of Aurelian offers two stories. Together, they illustrate a shift of attitudes concerning rulers and bloodshed, from the East of the Second Sophistic to lateimperial Rome.
