Table Of ContentLoeb Classical Monographs
In Memory of James C. Loeb
The Roman World
of Dio Chrysostom
С. P. Jones
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, England
1978
Copyright © 1978 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Jones, Christopher Prestige.
The Roman world of Dio Chrysostom.
(Loeb classical monographs)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Dio Cocceianus, Chrysostomus, of Prusa—
Contemporary Greece. 2. Greece—History.
I. Title. II. Series.
PA3965.D22J6 938'.09 78-5869
ISBN 0-674-77915-0
Preface
In his own day, and throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, Dio of
Prusa enjoyed a high reputation for eloquence: the name Chrysostomus,
"Golden-Mouthed," was early bestowed on him and is still used. At
present he is comparatively neglected: eloquence is suspect, and Dio was
never loved for himself, even in his lifetime. Perhaps more than most
Greek authors of the Roman period he has suffered the ultimate indignity
of a creative writer, and become a mere "source," though one useful to
historians of Greek philosophy and of imperial history.
Yet sources have personality, to neglect which is to diminish the value
of the information derived from them. Moreover, Dio is worth examining
not only to correct an optical illusion. It is not by chance that two con-
temporaries so great and so diverse as Jacob Burckhardt and Theodor
Mommsen esteemed him highly; the first published a lecture which is
still the best general appreciation of him, the second paid him tribute in
a conspicuous paragraph of his Römische Geschichte. Both Burckhardt
and Mommsen saw Dio as a man intensely expressive of his age and,
what is not always the same, a keen observer of it; and both had the
breadth of vision to regard his age as interesting for itself, and not
merely as a dreary stage in the decline of classical culture.
Mommsen's son-in-law Wilamowitz guided his pupil Hans von Arnim
to the study of Dio, and by his edition of 1893-1896 and by his study of
1898, Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusa, Arnim did more for his author
than anybody in modern times. Yet while his edition is still unsurpassed,
the book is long out of date. On points of chronology and history it en-
countered prompt and damaging criticism from Hermann Dessau; and
Arnim's view of Dio's development, from sophist to Cynic to philosopher,
already questioned by Dessau, has not worn well with time. The very
length of Arnim's work, however, imposed authority and daunted dis-
sent; and since 1898 none of the few books on Dio has reconsidered his
relation to the times in which he lived.
vi Preface
The present book is an attempt to fulfill that need. The emphasis is
not on Dio's thought, though I have disagreed with Arnim on one es-
sential matter of doctrine, Dio's supposed Cynicism. My subject is rather
Dio and his relation to his age, especially to the theater of most of his
public activity, the Greek city. I consider his background, his education
and early career, and those civic speeches which I believe to belong to his
first period; I survey his exile under Domitian and his return under Nerva
and Trajan, the civic speeches of his last years, and the works centered
on the emperor Trajan. Finally I view his attitude toward the leading
city, Rome. Detailed questions of chronology are relegated, so far as pos-
sible, to the Appendix. This study complements and on some points
modifies my previous Plutarch and Rome (1971).
My debts are many and various. Among institutions, I am grateful to
the Canada Council, which awarded me the Leave Fellowship in 1971-
1972 on which the basic work for this book was begun; to the Institute
for Advanced Study, Princeton, where I spent that year amid ideal sur-
roundings, both personal and professional; to Harvard University and
its Widener Library, where much of the subsequent work has been done
in vacation; to the Department of the Classics there and its Chairman,
Zeph Stewart, for accepting the book in the series of the Loeb Classical
Monographs; and to my own university, Toronto, for support and en-
couragement given in countless ways. (I particularly mention the patience
and promptness of my typist, Donna Burns, and the skill of the Cartog-
raphy Office.)
Four friends read an earlier draft of this book, and by their comments
persuaded me to rewrite it entirely: Glen Bowersock, Richard Duncan-
Jones, Christian Habicht, and Fergus Millar. I cannot thank them enough
for their help, and for giving me the kind of sympathetic criticism that
looks at the picture and not only at the paint. Glen Bowersock read
a second draft, and has aided the book in many other ways. At a later
stage I was also greatly helped by the comments of Friedrich Solmsen,
who read my manuscript for the Press. To the teachers thanked in my
Plutarch I would add one from whose writings I have learned more than
I can say, Louis Robert.
Toronto C. P. Jones
February 1978
Contents
1. Prusa 1
2. Education and Youth 8
3. Riot at Prusa 19
4. Rhodes 26
5. Alexandria 36
6. Exile and Return 45
7. Ideal Communities 56
8. Apamea 65
9. Tarsus 71
10. Concord 83
11. Local Politics 95
12. Benefactions 104
13. Trajan 115
14. Rome 124
Chronology 133
Bibliography 143
Abbreviations 155
Notes 159
Index 197
ί
Prusa
Dio was born about the middle of the first century A.D. at Prusa, now
Bursa in northwestern Turkey. Bithynia, the region in which Prusa lay,
took its name from a Thracian tribe which had crossed over from Europe
and settled this corner of Asia Minor several centuries before. From
Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire, and until Bithynia was
incorporated in the Roman one, it was ruled by kings who were of native
stock but influenced by Greek institutions and culture. In the early second
century B.C. one of these, Prusias I, founded Prusa in a part of his kingdom
that he had only recently detached from the neighboring region of Mysia.1
It was said that the Carthaginian Hannibal, then an exile at Prusias'
court, had influenced his choice of site, and the tale was justified by the
reality. The new city occupied a terrace on the northwestern flank of
Mount Olympus, the highest mountain of Bithynia and its most marked
geographical feature.2 The slopes behind Prusa gave it an endless supply
of timber, which in Dio's time it exported to other cities. Before it lay a
broad and fertile valley watered by streams from the mountain. There
were also thermal springs, which were exploited under the name of the
"Royal Spa" throughout later antiquity.3 These fostered a local school of
medicine, and the first Prusan to attain wider fame was a doctor called
Asclepiades who attended the great of Rome in the early first century B.C. :
another Prusan doctor of the same name was a contemporary of Dio and,
like him, received benefits from the emperor Trajan.4
1
2 The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom
Prusa also had handicaps. It lacked a navigable river and access to the
sea through its own territory and had to depend on the port of its neighbor
Apamea, which was about a day's journey away and not always well-
disposed. The city's springs had a noted and more generally accessible
rival in those of the modern Yalova, and were finally eclipsed by them.5
Despite its fertile soil, like all ancient cities it remained prey to a dearth
of the most essential commodity, grain. Thus, for all its endowments,
Prusa was not in the first rank of Bithynian cities, "none too large nor of
very ancient foundation," as Dio reminded his compatriots.6
Similarly, Prusa's situation gave it a good but not preeminent place in
the road system of the region.7 It could not rival the two chief cities,
Nicomedia and Nicaea, both of which lay at the start of major routes into
the interior. Prusa's advantage lay in its position on the lines of commu-
nication between these two cities and those of the northwestern Aegean,
since the great natural obstacle of Olympus deflects these routes around
its shoulder. In addition, traffic moving from the great port of Cyzicus on
the Propontis into the interior passed through the territory of Prusa. At
the same time, the city was connected by easy roads with other cities of
the vicinity, notably Apamea and Prusias on Sea, also called Cius, another
foundation of Prusias I.
The history of Prusa before Dio's time is obscure. A fragmentary decree
of the council and people survives from soon after the foundation and
honors a royal governor.8 When the last king of Bithynia died in 74 B.C.,
leaving his kingdom to Rome, it was immediately seized by the ruler of
the neighboring Pontus, Mithradates VI. In the ensuing war Prusa and its
neighbors were recaptured by Rome, no doubt with the usual conse-
quences.9 After the final defeat of Mithradates, Pompey combined Pontus
and Bithynia into a single administrative region or "province." The new
province was thus born from the accidents of war, with little regard for
geographical or ethnic demarcations, or even for the convenience of the
governor.10 Nevertheless, this awkward conglomeration survived until
the reforms of Diocletian. So also the law drawn up by Pompey to regulate
the governance of the constituent cities, the lex Pompeia, remained valid
until well after Dio.11
Little is known of the province, and nothing of Prusa, between the
settlement of Pompey and the end of the Roman civil wars. The wealth of
Bithynia soon made it the cynosure of Roman businessmen, and the
corporation farming the Bithynian tribute became large and influential.12
