THE SCENE: Not only was Clodius Albinus the least distinguished pretender during the Year of the Five Emperors, but he was also, according to the Augustan History, hopelessly addicted to fruit.
THE TEXT: Cordus, who recounts such things in his books, says the he was a glutton, so much so indeed that he used to consume a greater quantity of fruit than human capacities permit. For he says that Albinus, when hungry, ate give hundred dried figs, a hundred Campanian peaches, ten Ostian melons, twenty pounds of Labican grapes, a hundred fig-peckers and four hundred oysters. He does however say that he was moderate with wine – which Severus denies, claiming that he was drunk even during the war.
– The Augustan History, Julius Capitolinus, 4th Century AD
