Book: Dio\'s Rome, Volume 1 (of 6)

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DIO'S ROME

An
Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of
Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and
Alexander Severus:
And
Now Presented in English Form

by

HERBERT BALDWIN FOSTER,

A.B. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins),
Acting Professor of Greek in Lehigh University

FIRST VOLUME

_Gleanings from the Lost Books_

I. The Epitome of Books 1-21 arranged by Ioannes Zonaras, Soldier and
Secretary, in the Monastery of Mt. Athos, about 1130 A.D.

II. Fragments of Books 22-35.







Troy New York
Pafraets Book Company
1905
Copyright 1905
Pafraets Book Company
Troy New York




_To

My Friend Teacher and Inspirer

Mr. Gildersleeve of Baltimore

Who Has Won to the Age of Greek Lore even as to the Youth of Greek
Life

I Offer a Redundant Tribute_




VOLUME CONTENTS


PAGE

Concerning the Translation vii

Concerning the Original 1

(a) The Writing 3

(b) The Writer 33

A Select List of Dissertations on Dio 43

Magazine Articles and Notes on Dio (1884-1904) 49

Plan of the Entire Work (as Conjectured by A. von Gutschmid) 61

An Epitome of the Lost Books 1-21 (by Ioannes Zonaras) 67

Fragments of Books 22-35 (from various sources) 329

Fragment LXXIII 331

Fragment LXXIV 332

Fragment LXXV 332

Fragment LXXVI 333

Fragment LXXVII 333

Fragment LXXVIII 334

Fragment LXXIX 335

Fragment LXXX 335

Fragment LXXXI 336

Fragment LXXXII 337

Fragment LXXXIII 339

Fragment LXXXIV 340

Fragment LXXXV 341

Fragment LXXXVI 342

Fragment LXXXVII 342

Fragment LXXXVIII 345

Fragment LXXXIX 345

Fragment XC 346

Fragment XCI 346

Fragment XCII 347

Fragment XCIII 349

Fragment XCIV 349

Fragment XCV 350

Fragment XCVI 352

Fragment XCVII 353

Fragment XCVIII 353

Fragment XCIX 354

Fragment C 354

Fragment CI 357

Fragment CII 359

Fragment CIII 359

Fragment CIV 360

Fragment CV 361

Fragment CVI 366

Fragment CVII 366

Fragment CVIII 368




CONCERNING THE TRANSLATION


Cassius Dio, one of the three original sources for Roman history to be
found in Greek literature, has been accessible these many years to the
reader of German, of French, and even of Italian, but never before has
he been clothed complete in English dress. In the Harvard College
Library is deposited the fruit of a slight effort in that direction, a
diminutive volume dated two centuries back, the title page of which
(agog with queer italics) reads as follows:


THE

HISTORY

OF

DION CASSIUS

ABBRIDG'D BY XIPHILIN

CONTAINING

The most considerable Passages under the _Roman_ emperors from the
time of _Pompey_ the Great, to the Reign of _Alexander Severus_.

* * * * *

In Two Volumes

* * * * *

Done from the _Greek_, by Mr. Manning

* * * * *

Tametsi haudquaquam par gloria sequatur Scriptorem, & Authorem rerum,
tamen in primis arduum videtur res gestas scribere. Salust.

* * * * *

_London_: Printed for _A._ and _J. Churchill_, in _Paternoster Row_,
1704.


Four hundred and seven small pages, over and above the Epistle
Dedicatory, are contained in Volume One. Really, however, this is not
the true Dio at all, but merely his shadow, seized and distorted to
satisfy the ideas of his epitomizer, the monk Xiphilinus, who was
separated from him by a thousand years in the flesh and another
thousand in the spirit. Of the little specimens here and there
translated for this man's or that man's convenience no mention need
here be made. Hence, practically speaking, Dio now for the first time
emerges in his impressive stature before the English-speaking public
after there has elapsed since his own day a period twice as long as
then constituted the extent of that history which was his theme.

The present version, begun while I was serving as Acting Professor of
Greek at St. Stephen's College, Annandale, N.Y., has been carried
forward during such intervals of leisure as I could snatch from an
overflowing schedule at the University of South Dakota. It has been my
companion on many journeys and six states have witnessed its progress
toward completion. In spite of the time consumed it seems in
retrospect not far short of presumptuous to have tried in three or
four years to put into acceptable English what Dio spent twelve in
writing down. Yet the task was not quite the same, for half of this
historian's books have been caught up and whirled away in the cyclone
of time; and who knows whether they still possess any resting-place
above or beneath the earth?

The text originally chosen as the basis for the translation was that
of Melber, the idea of the translator being that the Teubner edition
would be the most convenient and readily obtainable standard of
reference for any one who wished to compare the Greek and the English.
Hence the numbering of the Fragments is that of Melber (subdivisions
are distinguished by a notation simpler than that of the original
"sections"). Since no Teubner volumes beyond the second proved to be
forthcoming, the rest of the work followed the stereotyped Tauchnitz
edition, which also enjoys a large circulation. This text, however,
contained so many cases of corruption and clumsiness that it seemed
best to work over carefully nearly all of the latter portion of the
English and to embody as many as possible of the improvements of
Boissevain. Incidentally Boissevain's interior arrangement of all the
later books was adopted, though it was deemed preferable (for mere
readiness of reference) to adhere to the old external division of
books established by Leunclavius. (Boissevain's changes are, however,
indicated.) The Tauchnitz text with all its inaccuracies endeavors to
present a coherent and readable narrative, and this is something which
the exactitude of Boissevain does not at all times permit. In the
translation I have striven to follow a conservative course, and at
some points a straightforward narrative interlarded with brackets will
give evidence of its origin in Tauchnitz, whereas at others loose,
disjointed paragraphs betray the hand of Boissevain who would not
willingly let Xiphilinus and Dio ride in the same compartment. My main
desire through it all has been not so much to attain a logical unity
of form as to present a history which shall look well and read well in
English. For this reason also I have banished most of the Fragments
(which must have only a comparatively limited interest) to the last
volume and have replaced them in my first by portions of Zonaras
(taken from Melber) which have their origin in Dio and are at the same
time clear, comprehensible, and connected.

Should any person object that even so my text does not offer eye and
ear a pellucid field for smooth advance, I must reply that the
original is likewise very far from being a serene and joyous highway;
and it has not appeared to me necessary or desirable to improve upon
the form of Dio's record further than the difference in the genius of
the two languages demanded. I am reminded here of what Francisque
Reynard says regarding the difficulties of Boccaccio, and because of a
similarity in the situation I venture to quote from the preface of his
(French) version of the Decameron:

"Dans son admiration exclusive des anciens, Boccace a pris pour modele
Ciceron et sa longue periode academique, dans laquelle les incidences
se greffent sur les incidences, poursuivant l'idee jusqu'au bout, et
ne la laissant que lorsqu'elle est epuisee, comme le souffle ou
l'attention de celui qui lit.... Aussi le plus souvent sa phraseologie
est-elle fort complexe, et pour suivre le fil de l'idee premiere,
faut-il apporter une attention soutenue. Ce qui est deja une
difficulte de lecture dans le texte italien, devient un obstacle
tres serieux quand on a a traduire ces interminables phrases en
francais moderne, prototype de precision, de clarte, de logique
grammaticale.... Je sais bien qu'il y a un moyen commode de
l'eluder...: c'est de couper les phrases et d'en faire, d'une seule,
deux, trois, quatre, autant qu'il est besoin. Mais a ce jeu on change
notablement la physionomie de l'original, et c'est ce que je ne puis
admettre."

As is Boccaccio to Cicero, so is Cassius Dio, _mutatis mutandis_, to
Thukydides; and of course the imitator improves upon the model.
Imagine a man who out-Paters Pater when Pater shall be but a memory,
and you begin to secure a vision of the style of this Roman senator,
who accentuates every peculiarity of the tragic historian's packed
periods; and whereas his great predecessor made sentences so long as
to cause mediaeval scholars heartily to wish him in the Barathron,
books and all, comes forward six hundred years later marshaling phrase
upon phrase, clause upon clause, till a modern is forced to exclaim:
"What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?" Now I have
dealt with these complexes in different ways; and sometimes I have
cleft and hacked and wrenched them out of all semblance of their
original shape, and sometimes I have hauled them almost entire, like a
cable, tangled with particles, out of the sea-bed of departed days.

This principle of inconsistency which I have pursued in varying the
rendering of long sentences, periodic or loose, according to external
modifying conditions, may be observed also in certain other features
of the book. For I have felt obliged to allow inconsistency of letter
in the hope of approaching a consistency of spirit. I suppose that the
ideal plan to follow in a translation would be to let a given English
word represent a given Greek word, so that "beautiful" should occur as
many times in the English version as [Greek: kalos] in the original,
and "strength" as many times as [Greek: rhome]. Such a scheme,
however, is not feasible in a passage of any length, and its
impossibility simply goes to show what a makeshift translation is and
always has been, after all. Therefore single Greek words will be found
reproduced by various English terms, but with that color which seems
best adapted to the context.

Again, in spelling I have chosen a method not unknown to recent
historians, which consists in anglicising familiar proper names that
are household words, like Antony, Catiline, etc., but keeping the
classical Latin form for persons less well known, as Antonius the
grandfather of Mark Antony. To the names of gods I have given a Latin
dress unless a particular god happened to be named by a Greek on Greek
soil. Similarly in geographical or topographical designations the
translator of Dio must needs confront a more difficult situation than
did Dio himself. Greek reduces _all_ names to its own basis. In
English one must often select from the Latin form, Greek form, Native
form, or Anglicised form. Since Dio lived in Italy and was to all
intents and purposes a Roman I decided to make the Latin form the
standard, and admit rarely the Anglicised form, less often the Greek,
and least often the Native. As to the minutiae of spelling I need
scarcely say that I have been tremendously aided by Boissevain's
exhaustive studies, briefly summarized in his notes. This painstaking
care, for which he feels almost obliged to apologize, will lend a
permanent lustre to his invaluable work.

That many errors must have crept into an undertaking of this magnitude
I have only too vivid forebodings, and this in spite of no
inconsiderable efforts of mine to avoid them: herein I can but beg the
clemency of my readers and judges and hope that such faults may be
found to be mostly of a minor character. And perhaps I can do no
better than to make common cause at once with Mr. Francis Manning
whose book I recently mentioned; for, in his Epistle Dedicatory "To
The | Right Honourable | CHARLES | Earl of Orrery", he voices as well
as possible the feelings with which I write on the dedication page the
name of Professor Gildersleeve:

"Your Lordship will forgive me for detaining you thus long with
relation to the Work I have made bold to present you with in our own
Tongue. How well it is perform'd, I must leave entirely to my Readers.
I assume nothing to myself but an endeavour to make my Author speak
intelligible _English_. I shall only add what my Subject leads me to,
and what for my Reader's sake I ought to mention: That as there are
but few Authors that can present any Book to your Lordship in most
other Languages, and on most of the Learned Subjects, but might wish
they had been assisted by your Lordship's Skill and Knowledge therein,
as well as Patronage and Protection; so the Translator of this _Greek_
Historian in particular must lament, that notwithstanding all his
Industry and Pains, he is faln infinitely short of that great
Judgment, Nicety and Criticism in the _Greek_ Language, which your
Lordship has in your Writings made appear to the World."

* * * * *

Dio has long served as a source to writers treating topics of greater
or less length in Roman history. He is now presented entire to the
casual reader: his veracious narrative must ever continue to interest
the historical student, who may correct him by others or others by
him, the ecclesiastic, to whom is here offered so graphic a picture of
the conditions surrounding early Christianity, and the literary man,
who finds the limpid stream of Hellenic diction far from its source
grow turbid and turgid in turning the mill wheels for this dealer in
[Greek: onkos]. Dio's faults are patent, but his excellencies,
fortunately, are patent, too; and the world may rejoice that in an age
of lust and bloodshed this serious-minded magistrate bethought him to
record with religious exactness what he believed to be the truth
respecting the Kingdom, the Republic, and the Empire of Rome even to
his own day.

I desire in conclusion to express especial gratitude and appreciation
for assistance and suggestions to Professor C.W.E. Miller of Johns
Hopkins University, Professors J.H. Wright and A.A. Howard of Harvard
University, and to Mr. A.T. Robinson of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Likewise I must acknowledge my obligations, in the
elucidation of particularly vexed and corrupt passages, to the
illuminative comments of Sturz, or Wagner, or Gros, or Boissee, or all
combined. Additional thanks are due to many others who have helped or
shall yet help to make Dio in English a success.

HERBERT BALDWIN FOSTER.

BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA,
June, 1905.




CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL.




A.--THE WRITING.


Cassius Dio Cocceianus, Roman senator and praetor, when about forty
years of age delivered himself of a pamphlet describing the dreams and
omens that had led the general Septimius Severus to hope for the
imperial office which he actually secured. One evening there came to
the author a note of thanks from the prince; and the temporary
satisfaction of the recipient was continued in his dreams, wherein his
guiding angel seemed to urge him to write a detailed account of the
reign of the unworthy Commodus (Book Seventy-two), just ended. Once
again did Dio glow beneath the imperial felicitations and those of the
public. Inoculated with the bacillus of publication and animated by a
strong desire for immortality,--a wish happily realized,--he undertook
the prodigious task of giving to the world a complete account of Roman
events from the beginning to so late a date as Fortune might
vouchsafe. Forthwith he began the accumulation of materials, a task in
which ten active years (A.D. 200 to 210) were utilized. The actual
labor of composition, continued for twelve years more at intervals of
respite from duties of state, brought him in his narrative to the
inception of the reign of his original patron, the first Severus.--All
the foregoing facts are given us as Dio's own statement, in what is at
present the twenty-third chapter of the seventy-second book, by that
painter in miniature, Ioannes Xiphilinus.

It was now the year A.D. 223, Dio was either consul for the first time
(as some assert) or had the consular office behind him, the world was
richer by the loss of Elagabalus, and Alexander Severus reigned in his
stead. Under this emperor the remaining books (Seventy-three to
Eighty, inclusive) must have been composed, for Dio puts the finishing
touches on his history in 229. Since by that time he was nearly eighty
years of age and since he has written of no reign subsequent to
Alexander's, we may conclude that he did not survive his master, who
died in 235. The sum total of his efforts, then, as he left it,
consisted of eighty books, covering a period from 1064 B.C. to 229
A.D. At present there are extant of that number complete only Books
Thirty-six to Sixty inclusive, treating the events of the years 68
B.C. to 47 A.D. The last twenty books, Sixty-one to Eighty, appear in
fairly reliable excerpts and epitomes, but for the first thirty-five
books we are dependent upon the merest scraps and fragments. How and
by what steps this great work disintegrated, and in what form it has
been preserved to modern times, this it is to be our next business to
trace.

It seems that Dio's work had no immediate influence, but "Time brings
roses", and in the Byzantine age we find that he had come to be
regarded as the canonical example of the way in which Roman History
should be written. Before this desirable result, however, had been
brought to pass, Books Twenty-two to Thirty-five inclusive had
disappeared. These gave the events of the years from the destruction
of Carthage and Corinth (in the middle of the second century B.C.) to
the activity of Lucullus in 69. A like fate befell Books Seventy and
Seventy-one at an early date. The first twenty-one books and the last
forty-five (save the two above noted) seem to have been extant in
their original forms at least as late as the twelfth century. Which
end of the already syncopated composition was the first to go the way
of all flesh (and parchment, too,) it would not be an easy matter to
determine. It is regarded by most scholars as certain that Ioannes
Zonaras, who lived in the twelfth century, had the first twenty-one
and the last forty-five for his epitomes. Hultsch, to be sure,
advances the opinion[1] that Books One to Twenty-one had by that time
fallen into a condensed form, the only one accessible; but the
majority of scholars are against him. After Zonaras's day both One to
Twenty-one and Sixty-one to Eighty suffer the corruption of moth and
of worm.

[Footnote 1: Iahni Annales, vol. 141, p. 290 sqq.]

The world has, then, in this twentieth century, those entire books of
Dio which have already been mentioned,--Thirty-six to Sixty,--and
something more. Let us first consider, accordingly, the condition in
which this intact remnant has come down to the immediate present, and
afterward the sources on which we have to depend for a knowledge of
the lost portion.

There are eleven manuscripts for this torso of Roman History, taking
their names from the library of final deposit, but they are not all,
by any means, of equal value. First come Mediceus A (referred to in
this book as Ma), Vaticanus A, Parisinus A, and Venetus A (Va) of the
first class; then Mediceus B of the second class; finally, Parisinus
B, Escorialensis, Turinensis, Vaticanus B, and Venetus B, with the
mongrel Vesontinus, which occupies a position in this group best
designated, perhaps, as 2-1/2.

Vaticanus A has been copied from Mediceus A, and Parisinus A from
Vaticanus A, so that they are practically one with their archetype.
Venetus A is of equal age and authority with Mediceus A. One can not
now get back of these two codices. There is none of remoter date for
Dio save the parchment Cod. Vat. 1288, containing most of Books
Seventy-eight and Seventy-nine,--a portion of the work for the moment
not under discussion. Coming to the second class, Mediceus B is a
joint product of copying from the two principal MSS. just mentioned.
In the third class, Parisinus B is a copy of Mediceus B with a little
at the opening taken from Mediceus A. This was the version selected as
a guide by Robert Estienne in the first important edition of Dio ever
published (A.D. 1548). All the rest, Escorialensis, Turinensis,
Vaticanus B, and Venetus B are mere offshoots of Parisinus B. The
Vesontinus codex is derived partly from Venetus A and partly from some
manuscript of the third class.

The parchment manuscript to which allusion was made above is only some
three centuries later than the time of Dio himself. It covers the
ground from Book 78, 2, 2, to 79, 8, 3 inclusive (ordinary division).
It belonged to Orsini, and after his death (A.D. 1600) became the
property of the Vatican Library. It is square in shape and consists of
thirteen leaves, each containing three columns of uncials. In spite
of its age it is fairly overflowing with errors of every sort, many of
which have been emended by an unknown corrector who also wrote in
uncials; this same corrector would appear to have added the last leaf.
And there are a few additions in minuscules by a still later hand. The
leaves are very thin and in some places the ink has completely faded,
showing only the impression of the pen. For specimen illustrations of
this codex see Silvestre (Paleographie Universelle II, plate 7),
Tischendorf (cod. Sinait. plate 20) and Boissevain's Cassius Dio (Vol.
III).

The dates of these codices (centuries indicated by Arabic numerals)
are about as follows:

I. Mediceus A-Ma- (11)
I. Venetus A-Va- (11)
I. Vaticanus A (15)
I. Parisinus A (17)
II. Mediceus B (15)
III. Parisinus B (15)
III. Venetus B (15)
III. Vaticanus B (15)
I. and III. Vesontinus (15)
III. Turinensis (16)
III. Escorialensis (?)
I. Codex Vaticanus graecus No. 1288 (5-6).

Mediceus A contains practically Books Thirty-six to Fifty-four, and
Venetus A Books Forty-one to Sixty (two "decades"). As they are both
the oldest copies extant and the sources of all the others, modern
editors would confine themselves to them exclusively but for the fact
that in each some gaps are found. In Mediceus A, for instance, two
quaternions (sixteen leaves) are lacking at the start, Leaf 7 is gone
from the third quaternion, Leaves 1 and 8 from the fourth; from the
thirty-first (now Quaternion 29) Leaf 1 has been cut, from the
thirty-third and last Leaf 5 has disappeared. Likewise in Venetus A
there are some gaps, especially near the end, in Book Sixty, where
three leaves are missing. Hence (without stopping to take up gaps and
breaks in detail) it may be said that the general plan pursued at the
present day is to adopt a reading drawn for each book from the
following sources respectively:

Book 36. Mediceus A, with lacuna of chapters
3-19 incl., supplied by the
mutual corrections of Vaticanus
A and Parisinus B.

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