# Dio's Roman History/Introduction

INTRODUCTION
Cassius Dio Cocceianus was a near relative, perhaps a grandson, of the famous orator, Dio Chrysostom, after whom he took the names Dio and Cocceianus, and like him was a native of Bithynia. His father was Cassius Apronianus, a Roman senator, who served as governor of Cilicia and of Dalmatia. It is now established that the correct order of Dio's names, if we follow the normal Roman usage, is that just given, his praenomen being unknown. The common Greek order, however, was Δίων δ Kάσσιος, and this order has become so thoroughly familiar to English readers that it bids fair to remain the popular usage.
The few details known regarding Dio's life are derived from casual statements occurring in his history. The date of his birth has been variously placed between 155 and 164 A.D., according to the time assumed for his admission to the senate. We learn that he was with his father during the latter's governorship of Cilicia, and that after his father's ​death he came to Rome, apparently about the year 180. In describing the behaviour of Commodus toward the senate and others at the beginning of his reign, he states that his account is henceforth the result of personal observation and not hearsay. It seems a reasonable inference, therefore, that he was already a member of the senate at this time, and therefore at least twenty-five years of age. Pertinax in 193 nominated him to the praetorship for the following year; but in the meantime both Pertinax and his successor Julianus were overthrown, and Dio thus assumed the office under Septimius Severus. The mild course of the new ruler at the outset of his reign, taken in connexion with his past record, was such as to win the enthusiastic admiration of Dio and to encourage in him the hope that a new era was now dawning.
It was at this point, apparently, that Dio's literary work began. He wrote and published a little book, as he tells us, containing an account of the dreams and portents which had foretold to Severus his future greatness. The details he had doubtless learned from the emperor himself, and he presumably had implicit faith in all these signs, to judge from his fondness for reporting omens and prodigies in general. Upon receiving a gracious letter from Severus in acknowledgment of a presentation copy, he seemed to be admonished by a dream the following night to ​write history. Accordingly he compiled an account of the events leading up to the accession of Severus. This work also met with a cordial reception, both on the part of the emperor and of the public, and Dio soon formed the resolve to cover the whole period of Roman history. It has been conjectured that his original intention was to have the work find its fitting climax in the splendour of the new era inaugurated by Severus; if such was the case, his plan must have been changed very promptly. He presently withdrew largely from public affairs for the remainder of Severus' reign, and spent the greater part of his time in retirement at his country-seat in Capua. During these years he gathered his material and wrote a considerable part of the history. In a certain vague passage he seems to imply that he had been consul (suffectus, naturally) under Severus; but this first consulship should probably be dated some years later (circa 222), shortly before his pro-consulship in Africa. Indeed, it seems altogether probable that his retirement from public life was the direct outcome of the changed policy of Severus, which could no longer command his support.
Caracalla, the successor of Severus, took Dio along as a member of his retinue on his Eastern expedition in 216, and the following winter was spent at Nicomedia; but Dio did not accompany the ​emperor to the Parthian war. By Macrinus he was placed over the cities of Pergamum and Smyrna as curator ad corrigendum stalum civitatium, and he was continued in this position by Elagabalus. Under Alexander Severus he became proconsul of Africa, and upon his return was sent out as governor successively of Dalmatia and Upper Pannonia, both imperial provinces. In 229 he became consul for the second time (consul ordinarius) with Alexander himself as colleague. But his disciplinary measures in Pannonia had made him unpopular with the praetorians, so that he found it advisable to remain away from Rome much of the time; and he soon obtained permission to retire to Nicaea, his native city, on the plea of an ailment of the foot. This is the last he tells us about himself, and we can only conjecture how many years of leisure he enjoyed in his native land; inasmuch, however, as he was presumably already past the age of seventy at the time of his retirement, it is probable that his death occurred soon afterwards.
The work for which Dio is known to the modern world is his Roman History (Ῥωραἴκὴ ιστορία or Ῥωραἴκά), originally in eighty books, covering the period from the landing of Aeneas down to the year of his own (second) consulship in 229 A.D. The last seven years, however, were treated very summarily, having been added, apparently, as an afterthought. He informs us that he spent ten years in gathering his ​material for the period down to Severus' death, that he had read everything of importance on the subject, and that twelve years was the time occupied in composing the work. The period of these labours may be roughly estimated as the years 200-222. The lexicographer Suidas attributes five other works to Dio; but it is practically certain that only one, or possibly two, of these shorter works can have been written by him. The Life of Arrian, who was a fellow-Bithynian as well as a fellow-historian, may actually have been the work of Dio. If he ever wrote an account of Hadrian's reign, it was doubtless incorporated in his large work, as was the case with his first two treatises; but it is strange that he should have made no mention of it.
The whole period of nearly a thousand years covered by his history falls into three main divisions according to his own statements. The first is the period of the republic, when political action rested with the senate and the people; the facts were public property, and even if distorted from personal motives by some writers, could readily be ascertained from others or from the public records. The second period extends from the establishment of the monarchy to the death of Marcus Aurelius. Under the emperors action was no longer taken openly, and such versions as were given to the public were naturally received with suspicion. Dio must now ​content himself in the main with giving the published reports of events, although he proposes now and then to express his own opinion based on what he has heard and read. The third period is that of his own day; he now writes of events of which he had first-hand knowledge, and, as might be expected, introduces more of detail into this portion of his work. Incidentally he states that with the accession of Commodus his history makes a sheer descent from the golden to the iron age. There are traces of a division of the work into decads. Book XLI begins the Civil War, LI the monarchy (if we accept Dio's view, here stated, that the battle of Actium marked the beginning of the reign of Augustus), and LXXI, apparently, the reign of Marcus Aurelius; while it is very probable that Book XI began the First Punic War, XXI the Third Punic War, and perhaps XXXI the First Mithridatic War.
Dio followed the annalistic order of treatment, so popular among the Romans, according to which all the events of a given year, in whatever part of the world they occurred, were grouped together. The eponymous consuls of each year are regularly named at the appropiate points in the text, and in addition there is prefixed to each book, even for the imperial age, a table of the consuls for the period covered. ​When he comes to the empire, moreover, he is very careful to specify to a day the exact duration of each emperor's reign, and in certain other matters aims at equal exactness. Yet in spite of all his pains in this regard it would often be extremely difficult or impossible to extract a consistent chronology from his data. For it frequently happens that in his desire to trace the causes or results of a given series of events he is led to exceed the limits of a single year by a considerable margin; occasionally also this same motive is responsible for an inversion of the actual order of events.
Unfortunately the value of his history is greatly diminished for us as the result of his blind devotion to two theories governing historical writing in his day. On the one hand a sense of the dignity and true value of history demanded that mere details and personal anecdotes should give place to the larger aspects and significance of events. On the other hand the historian was never to forget that he was at the same time a rhetorician; if the bare facts were lacking in effectiveness, they could be adorned, modified, or variously combined in the interest of a more dramatic presentation. These two principles, as applied by Dio, have resulted all too frequently in a somewhat vague, impressionistic picture of events, in which precisely those data which the modern historian eagerly looks for are either largely wanting ​or else blurred and confused. Thus names, numbers, and exact dates are often omitted; geographical details are scanty; and even the distinctive features of the various battles are passed over in great part in favour of rhetorical commonplaces, culled from Thucydides and other models, thus robbing the battles of all or much of their individuality. A good illustration of the transformation the facts could be made to undergo in the interest of these two theories is to be seen in his account of the conquest of Gaul. It is now generally recognized that there is nothing in this account which need imply an ultimate source other than Caesar's Commentaries; and yet, were it not for the familiar names, the reader might readily be excused for failing to recognize many of the events narrated, to such an extent has Dio shifted the emphasis on the facts and assigned new motives, while all the time striving to bring into bold relief the contrasts between the Gallic and the Roman character. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the speeches, which in Dio occupy a disproportionate amount of space (averaging one long speech or debate to the book), seem even farther removed from the realm of actual history than those of the ancient historians generally. ​The most famous of all these speeches, that of Maecenas to Augustus regarding the establishment of the monarchy, is in reality a political pamphlet setting forth Dio's own views of government, and parts of it are an anachronism in the mouth of Maecenas. Again, the speech which Dio makes Caesar deliver to his officers (not to his troops) before the battle with Ariovistus has almost nothing in common with the address reported by Caesar himself.
The problem of Dio's sources for the periods before his own day has been investigated by various scholars with widely divergent results. It is clear that he has much in common with Livy, but the tendency of early investigators was to overrate Livy's influence. Schwartz has shown that down to the end of the Second Punic war Dio holds an independent course between the various traditions known to us. After this there is apparent an increasing similarity between his account and that of Livy, which becomes most marked in the periods of the civil war, and the natural inference is that Livy was here used directly as a principal source. There are important agreements also with Polybius, but no conclusive evidence of direct dependence. Sallust was almost certainly not among Dio's sources, and it is not probable that Caesar's Commentaries were used, at least to any extent. For the period of the empire Tacitus has been confidently claimed by some as an important source, particularly for the reign and ​characterization of Tiberius; others, with less probability, have denied any such influence. A few isolated parallels between Dio and Sallust, also Pliny the Elder, have been pointed out; but they are not of sufficient importance to establish any direct influence. In a few instances Dio refers to the memoirs of emperors (Augustus, Hadrian, and Severus), as if he had consulted them. He excels the other historians of Rome in the attention paid to constitutional and administrative matters, and it has been argued that he must have consulted some of the public records, at least the lists of magistrates. In general it may be said that his history gives evidence of being based on various sources for a given period, and he seems to have made an honest attempt to arrive at the truth. Unfortunately he was not always equal to the task of reconciling the discrepancies in his sources and thus manages to contradict himself at times.
Dio's point of view is thoroughly Roman. He writes from the standpoint of a senator who, while jealous of the prerogatives of his order, is at the same time a thorough believer in the monarchy; in fact he makes the relations of the emperors to the senate the central idea in his account of the empire. His impatience with all opposition to the monarchy is probably responsible for the almost ​bitter hostility shown towards Cicero. He has a poor opinion of the common people, and he resents the great power and influence of the praetorian guard.
In style and diction the history is modelled on Thucydides. Not alone the long involved periods of the Athenian historian, but also a multitude of single words, constructions, and phrases either peculiar to him or shared with a few other writers, reappear in these pages. It would seem that Dio steeped himself in the vocabulary and thoughts of his great model until he could think almost unconsciously in the words of the other.
Dio exerted no appreciable influence on his immediate successors in the field of Roman history. But among the Byzantines he became the standard authority on the subject, a circumstance to which we doubtless owe the preservation of such a large portion of his work.
About one third of Dio's History has come down to us intact. The extant portions are: (a) Books XXXIV-LX (in large part), contained in eleven Mss.; (b) Book LXXVIII with part of LXXIX (or LXXIX with part of LXXX according to Boissevain's division), preserved in a single Ms.; (c) the Paris fragments describing events of the years 207-200 B.C, recovered from the binding of a Strabo Ms. ​For our knowledge of the lost portions of Dio's work we have two kinds of sources: (1) Excerpts contained in various Byzantine collections, together with brief quotations made by lexicographers and grammarians; and (2) Epitomes by Zonaras and Xiphilinus, supplemented by occasional citations in other historical writers. The quotations of the first class may be supposed to give, as a rule, the very words of Dio, subject of course to necessary changes in phraseology at the beginning, and sometimes at the end, and to occasional omission elsewhere of portions unessential to the excerptor's purpose. These constitute the Fragments of our author in the strict sense of the term. The Epitomes, on the other hand, while they often repeat entire sentences of Dio verbatim, or nearly so (as may readily be seen by comparing extant portions of the histories with Zonaras or Xiphilinus), must, nevertheless, be regarded as essentially paraphrases. A brief description of these various sources follows:
(1) The Excerpts De Virtutibus et Vitiis (V) are found in a Ms. of the tenth century, the Codex Peirescianus, now in the library of Tours. It was first published in 1634 by Henri de Valois, whence the fragments are sometimes called Excerpta Valesiana, as well as Peiresciana. The collection consists (at present) of quotations from fourteen historians, extending from Herodotus to Malalas. From Dio ​alone there are 415 excerpts, and the Ms. originally contained still more.
The Excerpts De Senteniiis (M) are contained in a Vatican palimpsest (Vaticanus Graecus 73) of the tenth or eleventh century. The Ms. is in very bad condition; numerous leaves were discarded and the others disarranged when the Ms. was used for the second writing. Angelo Mai, who first published the collection in 1826, employed chemical reagents to bring out the letters and even then had to despair of many passages. Since his use of the Ms. the letters have naturally faded still more, and parts of some leaves have been covered in the work of repair. The excerpts attributed to Dio are drawn from nearly all periods of Roman history, and fall into two groups, the first extending down to 216 B.C., the other from 40 B.C. to the reign of Constantine; between the two portions several leaves, and probably entire quaternions, have been lost from the Ms. That the former set of fragments is taken from Dio none will deny. The later collection, however, extends much beyond the reign of Alexander Severus, where Dio ended his history; furthermore, the style and diction are considerably different from Dio's own. It is now generally agreed that all the excerpts of this second set were the work of one man, whom Boissevain, following Niebuhr, would identify with Petrus Patricius, a historian of the sixth century. Nevertheless, though not direct ​quotations from Dio, they are of value in filling out both his account and that of Xiphilinus.
The Excerpts De Legationibus—Embassies (a) of Foreign Nations to the Romans (U$^G$), and (b) of the Romans to Foreign Nations (U$^R$)—appear in nine Mss., all derived from a Spanish archetype (since destroyed by fire) owned by Juan Paez de Castro in the sixteenth century. First published by Fulvio Orsini in 1582, and hence called Excerpta Ursiniana.
The three collections thus far named are known collectively as the Excerpta Constantiniana. They formed a small part of a great encyclopedia of more than fifty subjects, compiled under the direction of Constantine VII. Porphyrogennetus (A.D. 912—59). They have recently been reedited by Boissevain, de Boor, and Büttner-Wobst (Berhn, 1903-06).
The Florilegium (Flor.) of Maximus the Confessor contains excerpts from various authors, arranged under seventy-one categories, the first of which is Virtue and Vice. Mai first published a number of fragments of Dio from this collection (from a Vatican Ms.), but inserted several which have since been rejected. There are at least six Mss. of the Florilegium containing excerpts from Dio. From one of these (Parisinus 1169, of the fourteenth or fifteenth century) Boissevain adds to the previous fragments No. 55, 3$^a$ and 3$^b$. ​The short syntactical lexicon (IIερὶ Συντάξεως) published in Bekker's Anecdota Graeca (vol. i. pp. 117-180) contains nearly 140 brief citations from Dio, nearly all of which are assigned to their several books, though unfortunately many of the numbers have been corrupted. On the basis of these citations, compared with the epitomes, von Gutschmid and Boissevain independently attempted to determine the points of division between the lost books of Dio, and reached essentially the same results. Yet in several places the evidence is insufficient to constitute more than a reasonable probability.
The lexicon of Suidas, the Etymologicum Magnum, and a few other compilations of like character are also useful in affording occasional citations from Dio, often by book-number.
(2) Zonaras was private secretary to the emperor Alexis I. Comnenus in the early part of the twelfth century; later he retired to a monastery on Mt. Athos and devoted himself to literary labours. Among various works which he left is his Ἐπιτομὴ Ἱστοριῶν, a history of the world, in eighteen books, extending from the creation down to the death of Alexis in 1118. It has been satisfactorily shown that for Books VII-IX, in which Roman history is carried down from the landing of Aeneas to 146 B.C., his chief source was Dio, supplemented by Plutarch and ​a couple of quotations from Herodotus. We are justified, therefore, in recognizing as an epitome of Dio whatever remains after the exclusion of the portions that are derivable from the other two sources. After narrating the destruction of Corinth Zonaras laments that he could find no ancient authorities for the remainder of the republican period; hence it is inferred that Books XXII-XXXV had even then been lost from all the Mss. He resumes his narration with the time of Sulla, and after relying on various lives of Plutarch for a time, finally follows Dio's account once more, beginning with Book XLIV, 3; but for the period subsequent to Domitian's death he used Dio only indirectly, through the epitome of Xiphilinus. Zonaras is therefore of great importance for Books I-XXI, and to a lesser degree for Books XLIV-LXVII, where he occasionally supplements our Mss. of Dio or the epitome of Xiphilinus. There are numerous Mss. of Zonaras, five of which are cited by Boissevain; but for the present edition it has seemed sufficient merely to indicate such readings as have the support of no Ms.
For Books LXI-LXXX our chief authority is Xiphilinus, a monk of Constantinople, who made an abridgment of Books XXXVI-LXXX at the request of the emperor Michael VII. Ducas (1071-78). Even in his time Books LXX and LXXI (Boissevain's division), containing the reign of Antoninus Pius ​and the first part of that of Marcus Aurelius, had already perished. He divided his epitome into sections each containing the life of one emperor, and thus is of no authority as regards Dio's divisions; furthermore his task was very carelessly performed. The epitome is found in at least sixteen Mss.; but all the rest are derived from one or the other of two fifteenth century Mss., Vaticanus 145 and Coislinianus 320. Besides these two (abbreviated V and C), we have readings from an unknown Xiphilinus Ms. entered in L' of Dio to fill various gaps; but the scribe of L' dealt very freely with such passages.
loannes Tzetzes (twelfth century) in his farrago of historical and mythological stories now entitled Chiliads, from the arbitrary division of the work into sections of one thousand verses each, occasionally cites Dio among his various authorities. But he dealt very freely with his material, and it is often difficult to determine exactly how much of Dio underlies his version. The present text omits a few passages printed with some hesitation by Boissevain. Tzetzes also cites Dio a few times in his commentary on Lycophron's Alexandra. Other writers who are similarly of use in supplementing the epitomes are Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica in the twelfth century, famous for his commentary on Homer; loannes Antiochenus, a historian of the seventh century; loannes Damascenus, an ecclesiastical writer of the eighth century; loannes Laurentius ​Lydus, of the sixth century, who wrote of the Magistrates of the Roman Republic, and Cedrenus, a historian of the eleventh century.
The present text and division into books are based on Boissevain's edition, which has been courteously placed at the disposal of the Editors by Messrs. Weidmann of Berlin. The departures from his readings are relatively few, but are not always indicated in the critical notes, as it has seemed simpler to take the Ms. reading as the standard, and merely cite such emendations as are adopted in the text. For convenience of reference the traditional divisions of Books LXI-LXXX are given in the margin; and it is by these numbers that passages are cited.
MANUSCRIPTS
(a) There are eleven Mss. containing the larger part of Books XXXVI-LX. The two of greatest importance are: —
Of importance for parts of the text where these Mss. fail are also: —
It has been conclusively shown by Boissevain that V is a copy of L, made, however, while L was in a completer state than at present; that L' is in the main a copy of M, but with additions from L; and that P is derived from L for the earlier books and from L' for the later. The other six Mss., not here specified, are derivatives of P (in one case of P and M) or of V. It is clear, therefore, that only L and M are of value except where passages now lost in one or both appear in the derived Mss. Thus V and P are our only Mss. for XXXVI, 1-17; V takes the place of L for the greater part of L-LIV; and similarly L' serves instead of M for LII, 5, 2-20, 4; LX, 17, 7-20, 2, and LX, 22, 2-26, 2, being the sole Ms. to give the last two passages. Unfortunately M has several extensive gaps in books LV-LX which cannot be filled out from the later Mss. ​(b) The oldest Dio Ms. is now reduced to a few leaves on which are contained LXXVIII, 2, 2-LXXIX, 8, 3. This Ms. is:
(c) The Paris fragments.
EDITIONS
The more important editions of Dio are the following: —
| 1548 | R. Stephanus. Editio princeps. Books XXXVI-LX. Based on a single Ms., P. |
| 1551 | R. Stephanus. Editio princeps of Xiphilinus. |
| 1592 | Leunclavius. Included Excerpta Ursiniana. |
| 1750-52 | Reimar. 2 vols. Based on new Mss., L and V. Notes of Reimar and various other scholars; historical notes especially valuable. Good life of Dio. |
| 1824-25 | Sturz. 8 vols. Based on Reimar's edition. For the text L was again collated, also L'. Additional notes of Reimar and Reiske. In 1843 a ninth volume was added containing the Excerpts de Sententiis. |
| 1849 | Bekker. Superiority of L and M clearly recognized. Valuable for Bekker's emendations. |
| 1890-94 | Melber. Latest Teubner edition. Only 2 vols, published. Zonaras (books VII-IX) first printed in connection with early fragments of Dio. Promptly superseded by the following. |
| 1895-1901 | Boissevain. 3 vols. (Weidmann). A masterly edition, complete, accurate, conservative. Based on new collations of the Mss., usually his own. Fragments of Books I-XXXV assigned to their respective books for first time in an edition and new division of Books LXI-LXXX. Valuable prefaces and appendices containing accurate description of all Mss., complete text of Xiphilinus, critical discussion of Excerpts and similar collections, |
BIBLIOGRAPHY
P. MEYER: De Maecenatis oratione a Dione ficta. (1891)
J. BERGMANS: Die Quellen der Vita Tiberii des Cassius Dio. (1903)
H. JAEGER: De Cassii Dionis librorum 57. et 58. fontibus. (1910)
R. FERWER: Die politischen Anschauungen des Cassius Dio. (1878)
E. LITSCH: De Cassio Dione imitatore Thucydidis. (1893)
In addition to the symbols already given for the Mss. and collections of excerpts the following abbreviations are employed in the critical apparatus: —
Bk. = Bekker.
Bs. = Boissevain.
Dind. = Dindorf.
v. Herw. = von Herwerden.
Leuncl. = Leunclavius.
Patr. = Petrus Patricius.
Rk. = Reiske.
St. = Sturz.
Urs. = Ursinus.
Val. = Valesius.
Xiph. = Xiphilinus.
Xyl. = Xylander.
Zon. = Zonaras.
* ↑ Books LXIX, 1, 3; LXXII, 7, 2; XLIX, 36, 4.
* ↑ See Prosopographia Imperii Romani, i. pp. 313 f.
* ↑ LXXII, 7, 2.
* ↑ LXXIII, 12, 2.
* ↑ LXXII, 23.
* ↑ A brief list of these he later inserted in his history (LXXIV, 3).
* ↑ Later incorporated in his larger work, as he tells us.
* ↑ LXXVI, 2, 1.
* ↑ LXXVI, 16, 4.
* ↑ LXXVII, 17-18; LXXVIII, 8, 4.
* ↑ LXXIX, 7, 4.
* ↑ XLIX, 36, 4; LXXX, 1,3.
* ↑ LXXX, 5.
* ↑ LXXII, 23, 5.
* ↑ Frg. 1, 2; cf. LIII, 19, 6.
* ↑ LXXII, 23, 5.
* ↑ LIII, 19; LXXI, 36, 4; LXXII, 4, 2.
* ↑ It must be admitted, however, that the introductory words of Book LII read much more like the transition to a new period.
* ↑ LXXII, 18, 3.
* ↑ The most important exception is afforded by his account of the battle of Actium.
* ↑ It is probable that his immediate source was Livy's version, to which he doubtless owed some of his variations from Caesar's account.
* ↑ Compare his own statements in Frg. 1, 2 and Book LIII, 19, 6.
* ↑ The Excerpta PlanwIea, a collection made by the monk Maximus Planudes (1260-1310) and published by Mai, have been shown by Boissevain and others to have no place among the fragments of Dio. A unique exception is the fragment at the beginning of Book XXI (Vol. ii, p. 370).
* ↑ There are so few fragments from Books XXX-XXXV that Boissevain attempts no division within these limits. Between Books XI and XII the proper point of division is particularly uncertain; the present translator here differs from Boissevain.