Freedom from Democracy: Cassius Dio’s Polemical Tale of the Horror of Late Republican Politics

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Like most commentators in imperial Rome, Cassius Dio believed monarchy to be the only form of constitution able to limit man’s natural urge to surpass his peers. What makes Dio polemical is not the notion that competition between senators would result in rivalry, internal strife, and civil war. It is the way in which his narrative demonstrates that almost every senator in the Late Republic was engaged in politics in order to maximize his own gains, except for Augustus, who had the interests of the Roman people at heart when he punished his father’s murderers and reestablished Rome’s monarchical constitution.