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Cassius Dio: Roman History

Rome: The Senate-House. Dio will never let you forget he was a Roman senator! Since, however, our author was not Italian, but Greek, I've greyed out the modern Monument to Victor Emmanuel in the far background; nor is there any evidence that he might have been Christian, so the church of SS. Luca and Martina in the closer background is also greyed out. In fact, though, the building that remains — the Curia as we have it today — Cassius Dio never saw. The Curia Julia he knew burnt to the ground about fifty years after he died; it was replaced by the one you see. The details, and the original undoctored version of this photo, are in an article in Platner and Ashby's Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome.

The Author

For the little we know of Dio, filled out with a bit of reasonable conjecture, as well as a brief analysis and critique of the History and a somewhat longer account of the tangled manuscript situation, see Prof. Cary's Introduction.

The excerptors are less well represented online; except for Zonaras, on whom see this brief but careful article in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

The Text of Cassius Dio on LacusCurtius

The entire work is online and has been subjected to several preliminary proofreading passes; but the local link scheme, detailed proofreading, addition of links, commentary, illustrations, etc. are still in progress.

As almost always, I retyped the text rather than scanning it: not only to minimize errors prior to proofreading, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise which I heartily recommend. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if successful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

I ran a first proofreading pass immediately after entering each book, and later got sustained help from four other readers, so that the text of all the books is quite good already. I've now started final proofreading: in the table of contents below, books whose text I believe to be completely errorfree are shown on blue backgrounds.

Edition Used

Loeb Classical Library, 9 volumes, Greek texts and facing English translation: Harvard University Press, 1914 thru 1927. Translation by Earnest Cary.

Now in the public domain pursuant to the 1978 revision of the U. S. Copyright Code, since the copyright on the earlier volumes has lapsed and that on the later volumes was not renewed at the appropriate time, which would have been in various years thru 1955. (Details here on the copyright law involved.)

Section Numbering, Local Links

The Book, chapter, and section numbering is confusing. While it follows the standard system used in the Boissevain edition, Prof. Cary exercised a good deal of editorial judgment on the fragmentary texts of Dio and reassembled them in an order that suited him — leaving, however, the standard numbering in place to facilitate reference. As a result, to the casual reader it appears very disordered; for example, sections assigned by Boissevain to one Book often appear in a different Book of the Loeb edition — while keeping the original Book numbering. I in turn follow the Loeb edition, with a single exception of my own! in which I return a piece of text to its place in the Boissevain edition: I mark the spot.

For citation purposes, the Loeb edition pagination is indicated by local links in the sourcecode; except that only the principal text of Dio is so marked in the right margin. Because some pages of the printed edition contain only excerpts, e.g., by Xiphilinus or Zonaras or Tzetzes, some pages will appear even more disordered, seeming to have been skipped in this transcription: but they haven't, and the separate pagination will be found in the sourcecode.

The confusing mess that the Loeb editor superadded to an already complex text, and the technical difficulties involved in sorting it out, were in turn so depressing and took so much of my time (that seemed to me better devoted to more productive purposes) that parts of this transcription, while provided with their numbering, may not actually have local anchors installed and you therefore can't link directly to them. I suppose I'll get to them eventually; if you need some specific local link though, let me know which, and I'll slip it in.

Generally speaking, I will not field the all too many questions or comments I get on the numbering of sections or pages! unless it's clear that you've read all this.