Table Of ContentAMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
MONOGRAPH SERIES
Ludwig Koenen, Editor
NUMBER 34
FROM REPUBLIC TO PRINCIPATE:
AN HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON
CASSIUS Bl&S ROMAN HISTORY
BOOKS 49-52 (36-29 B.C.)
By Meyer Reinhold
FROM REPUBLIC TO E M i C i P^
AN fflSTORICAL COMMENTARY
ON
CASSIUS DIO'S ROMAN HISTORY
BOOKS 49-52 (36-29 B.C.)
By Meyer Reinhold
Scholars Press,
Atlanta, Georgia
AN HIS im
CASSIUS QI045
General Editors: P.M. Swan and J.W-
i
V^LUÄÎJI E 6
BOOKS 49-52
(36-29 B.C.)
By Meyer Reinhold
••Trstt:
FROM REPUBLIC TO FRTNCTPATE:
AN HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON
CASSIUS DIO'S ROMAN HISTORY
BOOKS 49-52 (36-29 B.C.)
By Meyer Reinhold
© 1988
American Philological Association
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Reinhold, Meyer, 1909-
From republic to principate
(Dio Project ; vol. 6) (Philological monographs of the American Philological
Association ; no. 34) .
Includes bibliographies
1. Cassius Dio Cocceianus. Historia romana. 2. Rome—History—Civil War,
43-31 B.C.—Historiography. 3. Rome—History—Augustus, 30 B.C.—Ï4 A.D.—
Historiography. \ ^
I. American Philological Association. 4II. Title. III. Series. IV. Series :
Philological monographs ; no. 34.
DG207.C373R45 1987 937'. 06 87-9498
ISBN 1-55540-112-0
ISBN 1-55540-246-1 (pbl() \
FROM REPUBLIC TO PRWCIPATE:
AN HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON
CASSIUS DIO'S ROMAN HISTORY
BOOKS 49-52 (36-29 B.C.)
By Meyer Reinhold
© 1988
American Philological Association
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Reinhold, Meyer, 1909-
From republic to principate
(Dio Project"; vol. 6) (Philological monographs of the American Philological
Association ; no. 34)
Includes bibliographies
1. Cassius Dio Cocceianus. Historia romana. 2. Rome—History—Civil War,
43-31 B.C.—Historiography. 3. Rome—History—Augustus, 30 B.C.—14 A.D.—
Historiography. \ . ^
I. American Philological Association. 4II. Title. III. Series. IV. Series :
Philological monographs ; no. 34.
DG207.C373R45 1987 937'.06 87-9498
ISBN 1-55-540-112-0
ISBN 1-55540-246-1 (pbl()
To the memory of Sir Moses I. Finley
meorum prime sodalium
CONTENTS
Series Preface .......ijç
Preface to Volume 6 « xiii
Bibliography and Abbreviations ...... .j.....;....>.....,.,......,..xv
Dio's Life and Career ........>..;.»...*•........,...,.,... 1
Introduction to Books 49-52 5
Dio's Sources for Books 49-52 6
Dio's Methods and Style............... . ....................9
On the Date of Composition of Books 49-52....................y............i..,ll
Dio and Augustus....................^.^.............i:.^..V...w....^....^...v..;....12
i
Dkrahd me Third Century... i..............:. 14
Commentary
Book 49 ...............: 17
Book 50 ... ......83
Book 51 J"..: ; U... ... . ..117
v
Book 52 i... H. 165
Appendixes 215
1. "Human Nature" in Dio ., 215
2. Duration of the Operations Against Sextus
Pompey in 36 B.C. ..............217
3. The Date in 37 B.C. of the Capture of Jerusalem ..„ 218
4. Ventidius' Command in the East (49.19.1-22.1) ...219
5. Ventidius' Triumphal Oration ....r. 22ft
rt
6. On the Marriage of Antony and Cleopatra 22Ö
7. The Propaganda War of 32-31 B.C „ ...222
CONTENTS
VI H
8. The Officia] Termination ofthe Triumvirate.............. ,,........,.224
9. Tfie^Actian Era '••. *•••.' -22*5
10. The Actian Games - - 226
11. Roman Attitudes Towards Egyptians.. I....227
12. TbeBoute of Alexandria (51.17.2-3) 228
13. The Tribunician Power of Augustus (51.19.6-7) 229
14. The "Vote of Athena" (51.19.7) 230
15. The Beginning of Augustus' Rule. 231
16. On the Praenomen"Imperator" (52.41.3-4)., ......231
17 The Economic Burden of Athletes' Pensions (52.30.4-6) , 233
Notes to the Appendixes • 234
Maps „.... .N. 241
L The War Against Sextos Pompey, 36 B.C 241
2. The Eastern Frontier, 39-29 B.C , 242
3. * Octavian's Illyrian Campaigns, 35-33 B.C ...........243
;
4. The Theatre of Actium, 31 B.C. 244
5. Crassus'Campaigns in the Balkans 245
Indexes... 247
1. Disputed Readings 247
2. Discussions of Selected Passages From Other Sources 247
3. Greek Words^.. 248
4. Persons, Placesfcand Institutions 248
SERIES PREFACE
It was in the nature of the cosmopolitan age of the Severan emperors that
Cassius Dio Cocceianus, a Greek from Nicaea in Bithynia, should twice be
consul in Rome; equally so that he should write, in Atticizing Greek yet in the
form of Roman annals and from the perspective of a Roman senator, a history of
Rome from its mythical beginnings down to A.Q. 229, the year of his
retirement. The eighty-Book Roman History, though sadly reduced in the wreck
of ancient literature, casts a vivid light on Dio's own 4ge "of jrust and iron,"
which ushered in a century of momentous change in the ancient world and the
history of mankind. It is also an indispensable source of dur knowledge of
preceding periods of Roman history and a major document of iGraeco-Roman
historiography.
Although selected books of Dio have found commentators in this century,1
for a commentary addressing the whole History one must resort to the admirable
edition of Hermann Samuel Reimar (1694-1768), published 1750-1752 in
Hamburg.2 (The^commentary ore Dio to which F. W. Sturz devoted Volumes 5-
6 of his edition [Leipzig, 1824-1825] is essentially a reprint of Reimar,
supplemented by Sturz with his own and other scholars' notes.3) Even in
Reimar's commentary a good deal is by the hands of predecessors. He took over
notes of Fulvio Orsini (Ursinus) (1582), Joannes Leunclavius (1592), and Henri
de Valois (Valesius) (1634) on the fragments of Books 1-35,4 Most of the notes
i ! i - .
1 E.g., H.T.F. Duckworth on Book 53 (Toronto, 191J6), J.Wi Humphrey on Book
59 (Diss. British Columbia, 1976).
2 Caùsii Dionis Cocceiani Historiae Romanae Quae \upersunt (2 vols., splendidly
printeaK^Jt is not as an editor of Dio, however, that Reimar is best known today,
but as a rationalistic critic of the scriptures. On Reimar and the theological storm
provoked by his Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes,
withheld during his lifetime but published in excerpt after His death by Lessing,
see CH. Talbert, ed., Reimarus: Fragments (Philadelphia, 1970), 1-27.
3 On Sturz see Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 37.56-59. The edition of Dip by
E. Gros and V. Boissée with French translation (Paris, .1840-1875) is liberally
annotated as far as Book 42, sparsely thereafter. - -^~
4 Reimar did not interleave the different gets of fragments so as to reproduce the
„original order of Dio's account in Books 1-35. The first to do so was Gros
(above, n3). This shortcoming of Reimar's edition is related to his" scepticism,
SERIES PREFACE
X
on Books 36-60, the best preserved part of the History, treating 69 B.C. to A.D.
46, are by his father-in-law, Johann Albrecht Fabricius (1688-1736), author of
the monumental Bibliotheca Graeca, and were completed by 1726.5 For Books
61-80 we have Reimar himself as chief guide.
Two and a half centuries after Reimar's edition, the Roman History stands
conspicuously in need of a fresh commentary. It is the plan of a team of
scholars, organized under the title of thé Dio Project, to renew Reimar's work by
preparing a commentary on the entire Dio, including, where the original fails,
the Byzantine excerpts and epitomes. It would be better, clearly, if a single
commentator could be commissioned to do the whole. But such a desideratum ft
not likely to be realized, given the size and complexity of the corpus and the
scope of Dio's theme: a millennium of the history of Rome and a territory that
on the modern map bears the colours of three dozen states.
The new commentary, which is addressed to sfudents of history\jnd
historiography, is undertaken in the belief that systematic study of Dio's usage
and reliability as an historian can reveal something that enquiries into isolated
passages or books cannot, and can also contribute to the elaboration of critical
approaches to the History sensitive to the various sources, methods, and rules of
evidence employed by Dio from segment to segment and period to period in his
work. The historians, Dio's largest audience, still lacking the sharper critical
tools now available to students of Polybius, Livy, and Tacitus, are prone to take
refuge in an undifferentiated scepticism towards his testimony. The commentary
can also perform the helpful service of collating scholarly discussions of the
thousands of testimonia with which Dio's History provides us, sometimes
uniquely—discussions often published under titles that bear no reference to Dio.
In pursuit of these aims we have excellent models: Gomme/Andrewes and Dover
on Thucydides and Walbank on Polybius, to give the briefest of lists. How far
short we are likely to fall of such a standard, we are painfully aware.
We have not been tempted to prepare a new text. Like Polybius, Dio came
to the West cruelly dismembered, only Books 36 to 54 surviving intact (or
virtually so). But he has been well served by his patron goddess Tyche (cf.
72.23.4) in the sortition of modern editors, from the King's PrintewRobertus
Stephanus (Estienne) (1503-1559), author of the 'editio princeps (Paris, 1548),
later shown to be - excessive, about using Books 7-9 of Zonaras' Epitome in
reconstructing Books 1.-21 of Dio's History (to 146 B.C.).
5 See Reimar vol. 1, preface §21.
