Cassius Dio Research Articles

Cassius Dio (53 .27 .2–3), the Pantheon and the ‘Former Caesar’(ὁ πρότερός Καῖσαρ)


 
 
 
 Agrippa’s Pantheon remains the subject of lively debates. A much-discussed passage is found in Cassius Dio’s Roman History (53.27.2-3), which is most often treated as a stand-alone, self-explanatory whole. However, in order to be comprehensible, each text needs a broader range of reference points in order for meaning to be extracted. In this paper, I analyze part of that contextual spectrum (including Dio’s attitude to the so-called imperial cult and the roles played in his narrative by the cults of both Augustus and Caesar), and I argue that we should view his account of the Pantheon with considerable caution. That account contains three different narrative threads: one based on the annalist tradition, but also one which drew on the author’s own experiences, and one that constituted a literary and rhetorical overlay aimed at real- izing the general objectives of the Roman History. In this account, the ‘former Caesar’ has been placed in between twice over: between the author’s historical knowledge and his present circumstances, and between the realms of gods and humans. That imprecise nature of this expression was no accident. I believe the expression was not so much a reference to a specific statue as a figure of speech emphasizing the differ- ence, fundamental from Dio’s perspective, between the incumbent emperor and his deceased predecessor.
 
 
 

Livy, Cassius Dio, and Prodigies in the Early Roman Empire

SummaryScholars who study Roman prodigies and expiations have mostly ignored Cassius Dio’s imperial prodigy lists. This paper argues that these lists should be considered valid. If we accept them, we have a wealth of evidence for the continuation of prodigy reports and expiations in the early Roman Empire.

NERO'S EXPERIMENTS WITH THE WATER-ORGAN

AbstractThis article examines a pair of anecdotes in the works of Suetonius and Cassius Dio, describing Nero's passionate late-career interest in the instrument known as the hydraulis or water-organ. The first half of the article contextualizes the water-organ episode in light of both the history of the instrument's reputation and the wider characterization of Nero in the literary sources. The rest of the article uses the episode to shed light on Nero's self-representation as princeps, focussing on the significance of the water-organ as both a musical instrument and a technological marvel. On the one hand, the organ's popularity with Roman audiences of the Early Imperial period made it a politically strategic choice for a music-loving emperor with strong populist leanings. On the other hand, the association of the organ with the intellectual world of Hellenistic Alexandria appealed to a certain group of Roman elites (including Nero himself), who shared a keen interest in technological innovation and technical knowledge more broadly. In the end, however, Nero's experiments with the water-organ were cleverly trivialized by hostile writers and redeployed as an illustration of the emperor's most appalling vices.

Late Roman Law and the Quranic Punishments for Adultery

Late Roman Law and the Quranic Punishments for Adultery

Herodian's Septimius Severus: Literary Portrait and Historiography


 
 
 In this article I offer a comprehensive examination of Herodian’s narrative of the emperor Septimius Severus, with a focus on his literary programme and historical methodology. First, I corroborate the view of recent scholarship as regards Herodian’s complex characterization of Septimius Severus by offering new insights into Herodian’s technique of progressively shaping the emperor’s portrait with great richness and complexity. Second, I show that Herodian goes to some trouble to rework his source material, mainly Cassius Dio’s History, in order to favour a more positive reading of Severus, which best suits his themes and interests. Third, I argue that Herodian constantly employs intratextuality in order to develop substantial structural, thematic, and verbal associations and comparisons between Severus and other historical agents and thus draw the reader to perceive his history in a dovetailed and comparative manner. Thus, I propose that Herodian’s portrait of Severus is his own innovation, and that it should be tailored to his overall narrative method of providing a cohesive, unified, and intelligible re-configuration of the fragmented and chaotic post-Marcus world. I show that Severus’ portrait has been shaped by Herodian’s universalising view of imperial history, and that it is used to provide a sense of continuation and repetition among separate reigns by establishing thematic oppositions (mainly between activity and cowardice, and between tyrannical and enlightened behaviour), which recur as a unifying factor for his work as a whole.
 
 

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

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.

Adam Mickiewicz o senacie i zgromadzeniach ludowych w starożytnym Rzymie

Adam Mickiewicz is considered to be the most outstanding Polish Romantic poet, as well as one of the most excellent poets of Europe. Due to their timeless value, his works become a source of inspiration for generations of readers. Interestingly, in Mickiewicz’s works we can find numerous references to legal issues, including those concerning the composition, functioning, and significance of the senate and popular assemblies in ancient Rome. An analysis of individual parts of the poet’s works allows us to conclude that he was quite familiar with the issues related to the social history and political organization of ancient Rome. His knowledge of the subject primarily comes from the works of ancient writers (Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch, Suetonius, Aulus Gellius, and Cassius Dio), with which he became acquainted during his studies at the Vilnius University. Mickiewicz also read publications dealing extensively with the history of ancient Rome by such authors as Edward Gibbon, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, and Jules Michelet. It should be emphasized that the poet used expert Latin legal terminology when addressing various issues concerning the Roman senate and popular assemblies. The references to Roman law present in Mickiewicz’s works are yet another testimony to the fact that it is an important component of Europe’s cultural heritage. Having at least elementary knowledge in this area should therefore be desirable for the largest possible group of people, which needs not be limited only to lawyers. Poland’s greatest poet is a good example of this.

The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire: The Rhetorical Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend by T. J. Keeline

Reviewed by: The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire: The Rhetorical Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend by T. J. Keeline Martin T. Dinter T. J. Keeline, The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire: The Rhetorical Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 388 pp. ISBN: 9781108426237 Cultural memory is a strange beast indeed. While there is no doubt that Cicero sculpted his own image during his lifetime, he could hardly have foreseen that as soon as the first century AD he would be defined by his style—i.e., that the style would become the man. The incorporation of Cicero into Roman cultural memory is thus highly selective. Without explicitly buying into the framework of cultural memory studies, Keeline, in the revised version of his 2014 Harvard dissertation, illuminates this process in seven chapters by focusing on Cicero’s early reception. The first four chapters on the reception of Cicero in Roman education are followed by three more specialized sections on Cicero in the works of Seneca the Younger, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger. Reception indeed serves as the overarching framework for this monograph, even though Keeline shies away from deconstructing its tenets. We cannot fathom whether or not Roman schoolboys “enjoyed” reading Cicero as much as today’s students, but Keeline employs Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, the commentaries of Asconius, and the Scholia Bobiensia to illustrate how young Romans would have encountered Cicero’s speech Pro Milone in the classroom. The rhetorically focused pedagogical approach—namely, the narrowing of Cicero’s persona and personality in a pedagogical context to a model of eloquence (which strips him of his historical and psychological complexity)—that emerges from this analysis usefully exemplifies the process Keeline expounds in the second chapter. The third chapter highlights the prominence of Cicero’s death in Roman declamation. It proposes that the narrative that Cicero was murdered by Popilius, a former client whom he had previously defended against the charge of parricide, is but an added color of the rhetorician schools. This nevertheless fits neatly with Octavian’s desire to downplay his own role in the proscriptions and shift the blame onto Mark Anthony. Cicero thus does not serve as advocate of Republican freedom but rather as advocate of freedom from Mark Anthony. In addition, the style and content of these declamations left behind traces in the accounts of Cicero’s death by Valerius Maximus and many of the historiographers such as Florus, Velleius Paterculus, and later authors such as Cassius Dio and Appian. In contrast, the chronologically fairly early accounts by Livy and Asinius Pollio still offer a morally more complicated image of both Cicero and the events surrounding his death. In the fourth chapter, Keeline ingeniously examines a group of pseudepigraphic texts that have distilled Cicero to the essence consumed in declamation schools: the Invective against Cicero (Ps.-Sallust) contrasts neatly with the Invective against Sallust (Ps.-Cicero), the Speech delivered the day before Cicero went into exile and the Letter to Octavian (Ps.-Cicero), and a pair of Ps.-Brutus’ letters to Cicero and Atticus (transmitted as Cic. Ad Brut. 1.16 and 1.17). Stylistically faithful, these texts concentrate on major life events such as Cicero’s consulship, his exile, and his speeches against Mark Anthony. [End Page 90] In addition, they provide an inventory of the tropes that formed around Cicero s life and character and subsequently found their way into the historiographical tradition. The book’s second part delves into the oeuvres, of Seneca the Younger (chapter 5), Tacitus (chapter 6), and Pliny the Younger (chapter 7) and analyses how each of them comes to terms with the über-father Cicero. Seneca the Younger adopts neither Cicero’s style nor his philosophy or educational theories. Even in his edifying letters to Lucilius, he only utilises Cicero’s correspondence with Atticus as a foil against which he constructs his own philosophical achievements. While Seneca the Elder engages frequently and substantially with Cicero, in his son’s works Cicero is conspicuous by absence. Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus is steeped in Cicero as Keeline demonstrates by analysing the speeches by Aper...

Cassius Dio and the Sacred

Abstract I would like to focus my paper on several words belonging to the sphere of the “Sacred” as translated from Latin into Greek by Cassius Dio. Actually, the Severian historian has to translate, that is, to explain to Greek-speaking or -thinking readers terms like sacer, sacrosanctus (especially for the tribunician power), and augustus (particularly in connection with the name of the first emperor). We shall see that Cassius Dio knows very well the exact meaning of each and every one of these Latin words, but often distances himself from traditional Roman beliefs.

Portraying Cicero in Literature, Culture, and Politics, from Ancient to Modern Times ed. by Francesca Romana Berno and Giuseppe La Bua

Reviewed by: Portraying Cicero in Literature, Culture, and Politics, from Ancient to Modern Times ed. by Francesca Romana Berno and Giuseppe La Bua James E. G. Zetzel Portraying Cicero in Literature, Culture, and Politics, from Ancient to Modern Times. Edited by Francesca Romana Berno and Giuseppe La Bua. Berlin: De Gruyter. 2022. Pp. xxi, 486. Collective volumes based on conferences tend to unevenness, and this one, from a 2019 conference on the portrayal and reception of Cicero, is no exception. Informative and enjoyable lectures do not easily become substantive articles, and the theme of this volume is so broad that there is little coherence. The variety of portrayals is interesting but fragmented: medieval manuscript portraits of Cicero have little to do with his image in modern detective fiction, and discussions of stylistic imitation are a long way from the use of Cicero as a role model by John Adams or Robespierre. Several of the papers, moreover, are essentially anecdotal, simply providing illustrations of some aspect of Ciceronian reception without any real argument to connect them. That is true of Rita Degl'Innocenti Pierini on representations of Cicero's exile, of Giuseppe La Bua on the meanings of nobilitas, and of Andrew Sillett's random collection of apparent echoes of the opening phrase of In Catilinam 1. Kathryn Stutz's paper on Cicero in detective fiction is largely an annotated list, and her odd reference to "our modern valorization of truth and virtue in our legal heroes" (226) suggests a lack of awareness of the tradition of California noir (from Hammett to Chandler to Ross Macdonald) to which Steven Saylor's Roman Blood (which Stutz discusses) so clearly belongs. The discussion of Cicero's textual "voice" by Leanne Jansen, Christoph Pieper, and Bram van der Velden contains a useful treatment of the differences between imitations of Cicero in Latin pseudo-Ciceroniana and in Cassius Dio's Greek versions of Ciceronian speeches, but the technique of imitation that they make much of is nothing more than the age-old method of learning stylistics through prose composition. But even if the volume is rather less than the sum of its parts, many of the papers contain something worthwhile, and a few of them provide rather more than that. The volume opens with Robert Kaster's clear and precise comparison between Cicero's language while in exile about his departure from Rome and his later accounts of the same events. Alfredo Casamento uses a passage of the Brutus to examine the role of the audience in shaping the ideal orator, and Alejandro Díaz Fernández usefully compares Cicero's self-portrait as ideal governor in letters from Cilicia to his earlier advice to Quintus as governor of Asia and to his images of Scaevola Pontifex as ideal governor. Díaz Fernández ultimately shies away from saying that Cicero actually tried to embody his ideal of good provincial governance and instead settles for the tired concept of self-fashioning, but while Cicero indeed wanted to appear a good governor, he was even more concerned to be one. Among the papers dealing with later aspects of Cicero's reception, Thomas Keeline offers an intelligent and engaging analysis of a set of late antique epitaphs for Cicero found in the Symposium XII Sapientum in the Anthologia Latina. Fabio Gatti provides [End Page 381] a careful presentation of the Quaestura of Sebastiano Corradi, showing how Corradi used dialogue to refute criticisms of Cicero and to make him suitably proto-Christian to fit Counter-Reformation tastes. Cristina Martín Puente presents a lovely collection of manuscript portraits of Cicero, but her text is mostly description and has relatively little about iconography. Joanna Kenty well shows how John Adams both emulated Cicero as a public figure and saw himself to be like Cicero in experiencing the ingratitude of his country; she might also have mentioned the extraordinary letters between Adams and Jefferson comparing Cicero to Plato. The three papers in the last section of the volume make valuable contributions to intellectual history. Much more ambitious than Kenty's version of Adams is Igor...

Christopher Burden-Strevens, Cassius Dio’s Speeches and the Collapse of the Roman Republic. The Roman History. Books 3–56. (Historiography of Rome and Its Empire, Vol. 7.) Leiden, Brill 2020

Article Christopher Burden-Strevens, Cassius Dio’s Speeches and the Collapse of the Roman Republic. The Roman History. Books 3–56. (Historiography of Rome and Its Empire, Vol. 7.) Leiden, Brill 2020 was published on August 1, 2021 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 313, issue 1).

Speeches and the Late Republic in Cassius Dio (on C. Burden-Strevens, Cassius Dio’s Speeches and the Collapse of the Roman Republic: The Roman History, Books 3–56)

Speeches and the Late Republic in Cassius Dio (on C. Burden-Strevens, Cassius Dio’s Speeches and the Collapse of the Roman Republic: The Roman History, Books 3–56)

The Time of Composition of Cassius Dio’s “Roman History”: a Reconsideration

SummaryThe question of Cassius Dio’s time of writing is characterised by scant evidence and a lack of consensus. This article will present a highly significant correction to our understanding of the most important passage for this question, as well as two passages that have not generally been taken into consideration. The article will argue that Dio finished his main work in the late 210s and thereby support a so-called ‘early dating’. This is central for the current re-evaluation of Dio since it gives a clearer picture of the background against which Dio conceived his work and his many sophisticated interpretations.

Cassius Dio's figures for the demographic consequences of the Bar Kokhba War: Exaggeration or reliable account?

AbstractScholars have long doubted the historical accuracy of Cassius Dio's account of the consequences of the Bar Kokhba War (Roman History 69.14). According to this text, considered the most reliable literary source for the Second Jewish Revolt, the war encompassed all of Judea: the Romans destroyed 985 villages and 50 fortresses, and killed 580,000 rebels. This article reassesses Cassius Dio's figures by drawing on new evidence from excavations and surveys in Judea, Transjordan, and the Galilee. Three research methods are combined: an ethno-archaeological comparison with the settlement picture in the Ottoman Period, comparison with similar settlement studies in the Galilee, and an evaluation of settled sites from the Middle Roman Period (70–136 CE). The study demonstrates the potential contribution of the archaeological record to this issue and supports the view of Cassius Dio's demographic data as a reliable account, which he based on contemporaneous documentation.

CHARIOT RACING AS THE ENTERTAINMENT FORM OF ANCIENT ROME EVENTS IN THE CULTURAL STUDIES DIMENSION

The purpose of the article is the introduction into the cultural discourse of analytically processed and summarized information on the genesis and evolution of chariot racing as the form of entertainment events in ancient Rome, their functional features, specific features of mass events of Antiquity in the context of entertainment culture of Rome. The methodological basis consisted of the methods of critical analysis of cultural, historical, and literary sources, specific and historical analysis, and interdisciplinary synthesis, induction, and deduction. The problematic and chronological, system and structural, comparative, descriptive methods and methods of social and phenomenological analysis were applied from specific and scientific methods. Scientific novelty. The article analyzes the genesis and evolution of chariot racing as a form of events in the context of entertainment culture in ancient Rome. Based on the ancient literary reflection, through the prism of works of culturologists, philosophers, historians, poets, writers of the ancient Rome Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, annals of Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Cassius Dio, ethic works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, letters of Gaius Pliny the Younger, poetry pages of Publius Ovidius Naso, epigrams of Marcus Valerius Martialis and others. The author revealed the essence and content of chariot racing as an entertainment form of events in ancient Rome, statistics, and specific features of entertainment events and instruments of ruling the Roman emperors. The author describes the moral aspects of chariot racing in the context of the entertainment culture of antiquity. Conclusions. The place of entertainment culture of Antiquity in the system of cultural knowledge and cultural tradition of their social universe is revealed. The transformations of chariot racing as a social and humanitarian experience of ancient society, the political instrument of government in Rome are explored. The role of entertainment of Antiquity for modern cultural practices is established.

Ideali universalistici o fiscalismo imperiale? Decima hereditatium e constitutio Antoniniana de civitate

Was the constitutio Antoniniana enacted to establish a cosmopolis or to solve a dramatic financial liquidity problem? The joint examination of two texts – one by Cassius Dio, the other by the Ulpian’s Institutes – suggests that Caracalla decided to speed things up by granting citizeship to all the inhabitants of the Empire to increase tax revenues. However, the need to finance the aerarium militare and to pay, in this way, the praemia to the veterans, does not exclude the possibility that Caracalla cultivated, at the same time, the project of establishing, in the entire ecumene, a single civitas. In any case, contestually to the issuing of constitutio de civitate, Caracalla subverted the political line followed, for more than a century, by his predecessors. Not only did he avoid granting to the new Aurelii, that is the new citizens, the so-called cognationis iura, but he also restricted the scope of this provision to those who had already been counted among the cives for a long time, by subjecting as many people as possible to the payment of the inheritance tax (decima hereditatium).

El discurso de César en Vesontio de la Historia Romana de Casio Dión: aspectos literarios y culturales

Julius Caesar’s Speech at Vesontio in Dio’s Roman historywas usually analysed from a legal perspective and under the rigor of the Quellenforschung. These approaches undervalued the Thucydidean reminiscences, which became mere rhetorical traits without special signification. In this paper is proposed a re-examination of the Thucydidean imitation, in order to interpret it in the literary processes of Imperial literature. This perspective undermines the negative interpretation of Caesar that recently was attributed to Cassius Dio, and the speech makes sense in the global design of the character in the Roman history

Kolapijani / Colapiani

After conquering the Iapodean center Metulum in 35 BC, Octavian (soon to be Emperor Augustus) set forth towards Segesta with his legions “through the land of the Paeonians not yet conquered by the Romans” (App. Illyr. IV, 22). Appian’s Paeonians were actually the Pannonians, and this paper aims to show that this community was also known as the Colapiani. The land of the Pannonians was located between Octavian’s two main strategic goals (Metulum and Segesta) and it’s reasonable to assume that Octavian wanted to put this land under Roman control as well. According to Appian, Octavian first hoped for a peaceful surrender, but the land of the Pannonians, in the end, had to be conquered by means of armed conflict. The territory of the Pannonians (Appian’s Paeonians) is outlined by ancient written sources and yet insufficient archaeological explorations. Octavian’s legions could have reached Segesta from Metulum following two directions: the valleys of the Mrežnica and Kupa rivers (northern direction 125 km long) or the valley of the Glina river (eastern direction 100 km long). This other direction is more probable because it’s shorter and suitable for army march. The rivers Mrežnica, Korana, and Glina belong to the basin of the Kupa river which revealed evidence of the Colapiani whose name literally means “those who live by the Kupa river.” The majority of historical resources that directly or indirectly mention Octavian’s military campaign in 35 BC (Tibullus, Ovid, Livy, Strabo) are contemporaries with the war and reflect a contemporary perception of the ethnic situation in the Pannonian Interfluve, an area between the Drava and Sava rivers. Florus and Appian are about 150 years younger, but the first authored the summary of Livy’s History, whereas the latter mostly rewrote from Octavian’s memoirs. All of these sources mention the Pannonians and the Segestani, the inhabitants of the Pannonian center of Segesta. Cassius Dio also mentions the Pannonians, but from the perspective of his own time (2nd/3rd century) when that term stands for “the inhabitants of the Roman province of Pannonia.” Pliny the Elder and Claudius Ptolemy are the only ones mentioning the Colapiani in the context of the already organized Roman province. The Colapiani were also mentioned on several Roman inscriptions in an entirely Roman context (as members of Roman auxiliary units). This paper aims to establish whether the Pannonian name referred to the entire Interfluve ever since the first known mention of the Pannonians by Polybius in the 2nd century BC (Polyb. frg. 64) or it extended from the western part after Octavian’s conquest. The author believes that the name Colapiani, attested in an entirely Roman context (members of one of civitates peregrinae), was locally used even before the Roman conquest and that was taken over by Rome from the indigenous population, and author’s question is how to interpret the relationship between the Pannonians and the Colapiani. One possibility is that the Pannonians mentioned by historical sources refers to some sort of military and political alliance in the Interfluve, and that the Colapiani (probably the leading community in the western part of the Interfluve) are one of these communities. It is possible that this community was named Pannonians, but that the name Colapiani was descriptive in the already mentioned context – “those by the Kupa river.”

DOMITIAN’S DACIAN WAR

Domitian, who was one of the most vilified Roman emperors, had suffered damnatio memoriae by the senate after his assassination in 96. The condemnation of senate sympathizer authors such as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio overshadowed many of Domitian’s accomplishments, including the Dacian campaign. Despite initial setbacks in 86 and 87, Domitian managed to push the invading Dacians into the Dacian territory and even approached to the Dacian capital in 88. However, the Saturninus revolt and instability in the Chatti and Pannonia in 89 prevented Domitian focusing on the Dacia region. The peace treaty which stopped the Dacian incursions, without annexing the Dacian territory is consistent with Domitian’s non-expansionist imperial policy. This peace treaty stabilized a hostile area and turned Dacia a client kingdom. After dealing with various threats, in his final years, he strengthened the auxiliary forces in Dacia, stabilizing the Dacian frontier. Domitian’s these new endeavors opened the way of the area’s total subjugation by Trajan in 106.

The Last Books of Cassius Dio (on A. G. Scott, Emperors and Usurpers: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman History Books 79(78)–80(80) (A.D. 217–229))

The Last Books of Cassius Dio (on A. G. Scott, Emperors and Usurpers: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman History Books 79(78)–80(80) (A.D. 217–229))