From his earlier status as a useful repository of information that modern historians frequently used for references to support arguments and their reconstruction of Roman history, in recent years Cassius Dio has moved up in the world, into the circle of ancient historians who are recognised as competent, independent and even sophisticated witnesses for the themes and periods they describe. From 2014 to the present numerous edited volumes, monographs and journal articles have seen the light of day, and each in their own way has added to our understanding of this author whose 80 books on the history of Rome covers the longest stretch of time that has come down to us from the ancient world.
Davenport and Mallan's volume adds new layers to our understanding of Dio's work and aims, to the modern perception of the text and to Dio the historian, now considered a man of letters with special interest in human behaviour. The editors introduce the volume with measured appetisers from each chapter. An interesting feature is the promising definition of the term ‘Political Culture’ that the editors, along with Lucian Pye, describe as ‘[the] product of both the collective history of a political system and the life histories of the individuals who currently make up the system’. Unfortunately, while the editors and a few of the contributors address this definition of ‘Political Culture’ in their contributions, most of the chapters do not really integrate the term or the thoughts laid out in the introduction, and some of the potential for coherence is lost.
The book is divided into four sections. Section 1, ‘Imperial and Political Narratives’, numbers four chapters. A.M. Kemezis opens with a study of the many ways in which Dio expressed his forthright opinions about the emperors whose reigns he covered. Davenport focuses on news, rumours and the political culture in Dio's monarchical Rome; he explains the way in which rumours have an explanatory function and how in sociological terms they work as unofficial and unverified information to explain arbitrary situations, where the level of information is scarce. Davenport reads the rumours from a historiographical perspective, analysing the famous passage where Dio ponders the trend in Augustan Rome to keep the decision-making process behind closed doors (Dio 53.19).
C. Letta produces an English version of his work on Dio's sources, both literary and documentary. Letta touches upon the question of Dio's dependence on earlier historians and other writers. This discussion would have benefited from more substantial consideration of what dependence means when we talk about historians’ use of earlier sources and of how close Dio's text needs be to an earlier writer before we conclude that the prior text had an impact on the way in which our historian understood and described events.
R. Ash rounds off Section 1 by examining Dio's use of marvels as a feature in his narrative and how, when using extraordinary events, the author finds a balance between pleasure or entertainment on the one hand and utility and authority on the other. Ash discusses problems related to the way in which those epitomising Dio's text might have been particularly interested in exceptional stories; this may skew the prominence of the marvels and force us to reconsider the practice and ambitions of the epitomisers. Ash concludes that many of the marvels have a moral or political purpose, but also how they run as a thread through the entire narrative to characterise the nature of political culture under different emperors.
Section 2, ‘Emperors and Biographies’, starts off with C.T. Kuhn's analysis of Tiberius’ funeral speech for Augustus at the end of Book 56 and particularly discusses the ties between the speech and the Res Gestae, to see how close Dio's reconstruction is to the Augustan narrative. The choice of Res Gestae is attractive, since we have the text – it would have been useful too to consider whether Dio engaged with the emperor's autobiography, which, we must assume, he would have read as well.
Mallan demonstrates that Dio's narrative of Tiberius’ reign orbits around the interesting question of how that emperor, characterised as tyrannical by Dio and most other ancient historians, managed to stay in power for as long as he did. S. Malik discusses Dio's thoughts on Nero and how he abused Greece; Malik concludes that he denies Nero's philhellenism. Instead, the emperor misunderstands the Greeks and his effort to embrace them does more harm than good. Davenport concludes the section with a second chapter, on imperial leadership from Trajan to Pertinax. Although this is an interesting range, the years from Pertinax’ death to after the civil war between Severus and Albinus would have offered a contrast to the otherwise reasonably harmonious Antonine Rome.
M. Hellström opens Section 3, ‘Political Groups and Political Culture’, with a discussion of Dio's account of the role of the ‘people’ in the imperial narrative, and whether Dio was sceptical or at least ambivalent towards the masses. The take is interesting, and it is convincing that the people are described in a less negative light than is often assumed. Comparison with the role of the people in the republic would have allowed Hellström the opportunity to discuss the contrasts between irresponsible and violent Republican masses and the more obedient, pacified group in the Imperial period; this would open up the question of the effect on society and political culture of the Augustan principate. As the chapter stands, one gets the impression that Dio was not as ill-disposed to the people or at least not as reluctant towards the people as often assumed. But he was sceptical towards the people and the political role they assumed in republican Rome. The problems and instability the people caused diminished when they lost the opportunity to vote and decide the outcome of the political process. A pacified more likeable people was one of the signs that monarchy was a step forward in Roman constitutional development.
In his focus on Dio's coverage of Caracalla's universal grant of citizenship, M. Lavan examines the paradox of how Dio censures Caracalla's grant of citizenship in Book 78[77], while (so it seems) he has Maecenas advocate for universal citizenship in the dialogue with Agrippa. Lavan points at how, in his view, the explanation is to be found in what is referred to as the economy of honour: that citizenship is a marker of subjection, worth and honour.
B. Saylor Rodgers examines the moral vocabulary Dio uses to describe the emperors and their associates to demonstrate how the historian employs moral language not only to separate the few good emperors from the many poor but also to guide readers towards the same conclusion. In the last chapter in Section 3, Mallan, in his second chapter in the volume, follows a similar path when he analyses the self-portrait of Dio in the turbulent late second to early third century and his sketches of contemporaries, their vices and virtues.
In the last section, ‘Reception and Reflection’, A. Simpson surveys modern scholarship on the Byzantine epitome tradition and the choices made by Xiphilinus and Zonaras. C. Pelling sums up both the volume and the field of Dio scholarship with suggestions for where more or new work has the potential to improve our knowledge further. These include more studies of the way in which Dio worked as a historian, such as how he organised his work in practice – this question and more focus on style and Dio's eloquence would enhance our understanding of the text and man behind it. Another question Pelling poses is about breaks in Dio's narrative. For instance, in what way did Dio understand the transition from republic to the principate or the changes that occurred in political culture between the Antonine era and Severan Rome? Is Octavian's attempt to give the principate a republican coat of paint, in Dio's eyes, something most elites saw through already at the beginning of the second century? How significant were the breaks between the principate of Augustus and the reign of Caligula and Nero? Was it a matter of style of personality or of government?
Collectively, the chapters offer new readings and new of ways of reading Dio's imperial books. The focus on marvels and rumours by Ash and Davenport, Mallan's analyses of Dio's portraits of Tiberius, himself and his contemporaries and Saylor Rodgers's chapter on the emperors’ associates are particularly rewarding. Careful attention is paid to the complexity of the way in which Dio's text has come down to us and how we are to navigate (Ash and Simpson) when we use the part of the Roman History that did not come down to us in the manuscript tradition. Simpson's survey is particularly useful to readers less familiar with the preservation of Dio's text.
As indicated by Pelling in the epilogue, more studies on Cassius Dio and the Roman History are in press or have recently been published. The discussion continues, and this book is a welcome addition to that debate. Its focus on the imperial period allows the authors to benefit from each other's work, and the editors have done a fine job in supplying useful cross-references, making the book even more useful to students and scholars alike.
