Cassius Dio and His Roman History

Chapter 19 In the Shadow of Civil War: Cassius Dio and His Roman History

Jesper M. Madsen

1 Cassius Dio and His World

With his 80-book history of Rome from the time of Romulus to the year 229 CE when he left the political scene in Rome, Cassius Dio is one of the most pro- ductive Roman historians to come down to us. He wrote in Greek and was one of several authors of Greek background who became an integrated member of Rome’s political establishment.1 Born sometime in the middle of the second century CE, probably in the mid-160s, Dio grew up in western Asia Minor at a time when Greek intellectuals were highly appreciated by emperors such as Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.2 Elites in Greece and Asia Minor were fre- quently connected to and involved with the Roman administration, and the number of senators of Greek descent rose to about one half of the non-Italian members of the Senate by the mid second century.3 With firm ties to their cultural heritage, many Greeks – including members of the intellectual elite, and Dio – started to see themselves as an important part of the political establishment in Rome and recognized how Greek culture in its many forms was not only welcomed but also fully integrated into the Roman world.4

1 Of other Greek intellectuals from the same period one can mention the historian Flavius Arrianus from Nicomedia in Bithynia who served as senator, consul and as one of Hadrian’s trusted legates. Another example is Appian, the historian from Alexandria in Egypt. In the middle second century, Appian served as a procurator in the imperial administration. A third example is the moral philosopher Plutarch from Chaeronea, who in the late early second century wrote a number of parallel biographies of notable Greeks and Romans. The last Greek intellectual here to be mentioned is Aelius Aristides from western Asia Minor, who in the mid-second century wrote the panegyrical text To Rome, where he celebrated the Romans for the ability to unite the best men across the empire. 2 Bowersock 1969, 50; Swain 1996, 70–71; Madsen 2014, 33–36, 37–38. The date of Dio’s death is uncertain but it is the general opinion among scholars that he died some time in the 230s. 3 Eck 2000, 219. 4 Madsen 2014, 36. On how the Greek elite did not see itself as Roman or as part of a unified Greco-Roman elite see Bowie 1970; Woolf 1994, 126–127; Swain 1996, 70; König 2014.

For all we know, Dio had already enjoyed a traditional Greek education, when as an adolescent he followed his father Cassius Apronianus to Rome during the latter’s admission to the Senate.5 There is every reason to assume that Dio was introduced to the kind of education that a member of the Greek elite would offer his son. He will have read titles from the Greek literary canon and studied the Trojan war, heard the epic songs about the cunning Odysseus, studied rhetoric and different schools of philosophy, and he clearly read and thought carefully about the works of Greek historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon.6 As we shall see in what follows, it was particu- larly Thucydides’ “realism” and his thought on human nature, especially during times of war and civil strife, that inspired Dio’s approach to history.7 But reach- ing Rome as a teenager, Dio would also have been introduced to the thoughts and writing of different Latin authors, which he claimed he read when he was gathering material for his work on Roman history (1.1.2):

Ἀνέγνων μὲν πάντα ὡς εἰπεῖν τὰ περὶ αὐτῶν τισι γεγραμμένα, συνέγραψα δὲ οὐ πάντα ἀλλ᾿ ὅσα ἐξέκρινα.

Although I have read pretty nearly everything about them that has been written by anybody, I have not included it all in my history, but only what I have seen fit to select.8

When exactly Dio entered the Senate is difficult to say, but he was appointed praetor during the reign of Pertinax (an office that he held around 194) and by the time he left Rome in 229, after having served his second term as consul with Alexander Severus as his colleague, he had enjoyed a remarkable career as the

5 Millar 1964, 5–8. For discussion of the role played by a Greek cultural upbringing in introduc- ing students to various aspects of paideia including literacy, grammar, music, and geometry, see Whitmarsh 2005, 13. 6 Millar 1964, 14–15. 7 A key passage is 3.81–85, where Thucydides focuses on greed (3.81) and envy (3.84) as the parts of human nature that are mostly responsible for hostility among fellow citizens; see also Rhodes 1994, 129–137. On Thucydides’ study of human nature, see Price, 2001, 12. Thucydides’ views of human nature influenced many later Greek and Roman writers (Reinhold 1985, 22–23, 27, 30–31). For Dio’s own relationship to these views, see, e.g., Millar 1964, 6; Rich 1990, 11 (the latter noting Dio’s cynicism derived from Thucydides). Thucydidean intertextuality is treated by Pelling 2010, 115. See Kalyvas (2006, 330–332) generally on the nature of civil war. Lange 2019b & 2019c discusses how Dio’s approach to civil war fits the model of civil war sug- gested by Kalyvas. 8 All translations of Cassius Dio’s Roman History are from Cary’s translation in the Loeb Classical Library.