The Augustan Succession: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio's Roman History Books 55-56 (9 B.C.-A.D. 14) (American Classical Studies)

449 Pages·2004·1.99 MB·English

by  Peter Michael Swan

An Historical Commentary on
Cassius Dio’s Roman History
general editor: peter michael swan
Volume 7.2
Books 55–56
b.c. a.d.
(9 – 14)
Peter Michael Swan
AMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
american classical studies
volume47
Series Editor
Donald J. Mastronarde
Studies in Classical History and Society
Meyer Reinhold
Sextus Empiricus
The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism
Luciano Floridi
The Augustan Succession
An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman History
Books 55–56 (9 b.c.–a.d. 14)
Peter Michael Swan
The Augustan Succession:
An Historical Commentary
on Cassius Dio’s Roman History
Books 55–56 (9 b.c.–a.d. 14)
Peter Michael Swan
1
2004
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swan, Peter Michael, 1931–
The Augustan succession : an historical commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman history,
Books 55–56 (9 b.c.–a.d. 14 ) / Peter Michael Swan.
p. cm.—(American classical studies ; vol. 47)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-516774-0
1. Cassius Dio Cocceianus. Roman history. Book 55–56 2. Rome—History—Augustus,
30b.c.–14a.d. I. Title. II. Series.
DG279.S93 2004
937'.07—dc21 2003050672
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To Margaret
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Series Preface
It was in the nature of the cosmopolitan age of the Severan emperors that Cassius
Dio, a Greek from Nicaea in Bithynia, should twice be consul in Rome; equally
so that he should write, in Atticizing Greek yet mainly in the form of Roman an-
nals and from the perspective of a Roman senator, a history of Rome from its
beginnings down to a.d. 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 age “of rust and iron,” which ushered in a century of momentous
change in the ancient world—and in human history. It is also an indispensable
source of our knowledge of preceding periods of Roman history and a major docu-
ment of Greco-Roman historiography.
Although some books of Dio have found commentators over the past century,
for a commentary addressing the whole History one must resort to the admirable
edition of Herrmann Samuel Reimar (1694–1768), published 1750–1752 in
Hamburg.1 (The commentary on 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.)2 Even in Reimar’s commentary
a good deal is by the hands of predecessors. He took over notes of Fulvio Orsini
(Ursinus) (1582), Joannes Löwenklau (Leunclavius) (1592), and Henri de Valois
(Valesius) (1634) on the fragments of Books 1–35.3 Most of the notes on Books
36–60, the best-preserved part of the History, treating 69 b.c. to a.d. 46, are by
Reimar’s father-in-law, Johann Albrecht Fabricius (1688–1736), author of the
monumentalBibliotheca Graeca, and were completed by 1726.4 For Books 61–
80 we have Reimar himself as our chief guide.
1. Cassii Dionis Cocceiani Historiae Romanae Quae Supersunt (2 vols., splendidly printed). It is not as an
editor of Dio, however, that Reimar is best known today, but as a rationalist critic of the Scriptures. On Reimar
and the theological storm provoked by his Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, with-
held during his lifetime but published in excerpt after his death by Lessing, see C.H. Talbert, ed., Reimarus: Frag-
ments (Philadelphia, 1970), 1–27.
2. On Sturz see Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 37.56–59. The edition of Dio by E. Gros and V. Boissée
with French translation (Paris, 1840–1875) is liberally annotated as far as Book 42, but sparsely thereafter.
3. Reimar did not interleave the different sets of reliquiae so as to reproduce the original order of Dio’s ac-
count in Books 1–35. The first to do so was Gros. This configuration of Reimar’s edition is related to his skepti-
cism, later shown to be excessive, about using Books 7–9 of Zonaras’ Epitome in reconstructing Books 1–21 of
Dio’sHistory (to 146 b.c.).
4. See Reimar vol. 1, preface sec. 21.
viii Series Preface
It has been the plan of a team of scholars, organized under the title of An His-
torical Commentary on Cassius Dio, to renew Reimar’s work by preparing a com-
mentary on the entire Dio, including, where his text is lost, the Byzantine epitomes
and excerpts. It would be better, clearly, if a single commentator could do the
whole. But such a desideratum is not likely to be realized, given the size and com-
plexity 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 colors of some three dozen
states.
We have undertaken our commentary, which is addressed to students of his-
tory and historiography, in the belief that systematic study of Dio’s usage and re-
liability as an historian can reveal something that inquiries into discrete passages
or books cannot, and can also contribute to the elaboration of critical approaches
to the History sensitive to the different sources and methods employed by Dio from
segment to segment and period to period in his work. Historians, Dio’s largest
audience, still lacking the sharper critical tools now available to students of
Polybius, Livy, and Tacitus, are prone—though markedly less so than was the case
a generation ago—to adopt an attitude of undifferentiated skepticism toward his
testimony. The commentary can also perform the helpful service of collating schol-
arly discussions of the thousands of testimonia with which Dio’s History provides
us, often uniquely—discussions often published under titles that bear no refer-
ence to Dio. Three volumes of the commentary have now been published: Meyer
Reinhold’s From Republic to Principate on Books 49–52 (36–29 b.c.) (1988),
Charles Leslie Murison’s Rebellion and Reconstruction: Galba to Domitian on
Books 64–67 (a.d. 68–96) (1999), and the current volume, Peter Michael Swan’s
The Augustan Succession on Books 55–56 (9 b.c.–a.d. 14). Projected volumes will
appear as each is completed rather than seriatim.
We have not been tempted to prepare a new text of the Roman History. Like
Polybius, Dio came to the West cruelly dismembered, only Books 36–54 surviv-
ing intact (or virtually so). But he has been well served by his patron goddess Tyche
(cf. 72.23.4) in the sortition for modern editors, from the King’s Printer Robertus
Stephanus (Estienne) (1503–1559), author of the editio princeps (Paris, 1548),
through Reimar, to Ursul Philip Boissevain (1855–1930), whose masterly edition
(Berlin, 1895–1901) continues to hold the field.
Peter Michael Swan
General Editor
Preface to Volume 7.2
The Augustan Succession is an historical and historiographic commentary on Books
55–56 of Cassius Dio’s Roman History. These books treat the years 9 b.c.–a.d. 14,
the latter half of the reign of Augustus, for which they are the fullest surviving
historical source. Their principal, if far from sole, theme is Augustus’ endeavor to
set the stage for the first imperial succession and so to consummate his project of
curbing the forces that had wrecked the Republic and of fashioning the durable
monarchic state that Dio advocated as a model for his own times. But they also
contain many and various annalistic notices that preserve precious evidence on
Roman legislative, institutional, administrative, topographic, and external history.
My aims as a commentator have been, first, to establish what Dio says, giving
due attention to textual problems, especially wherever our single independent
manuscript breaks off and leaves the History to be reconstituted from Byzantine
epitomes and excerpts; second, to explain his sense, probing, in particular, texts
that reflect his formation, experiences, and views; and third, to assess his histori-
cal reliability in light of his sources and methods and of the parallel evidence of
literature, inscriptions, and archaeology. I have tried to write a work that will serve
both students and scholars and be convenient to use. Each Greek lemma is trans-
lated, as are many Greek and Latin quotations from other authors and from docu-
ments. The introduction treats Dio’s personality, thought, and historical modus
operandi.
Despite the harvest of Augustan scholarship over the past two centuries, neither
Book 55 nor Book 56 has had a fresh commentary since Reimar’s Dio edition of
1750–1752—though John Rich’s fine commentary on Books 53–55.9 (28–5 b.c.)
takes in the first quarter of Book 55. With this gap now closed, a continuous se-
quence of recent commentaries on Dio is available in English, covering well over a
century of his imperial narrative. These are, besides Rich’s and my own, those of
Reinhold on Books 49–52 (36–29 b.c.), Jonathan Edmondson on Books 57–63
(a.d. 14–68) (major selections), and Murison on Books 64–67 (a.d.68–96).
This book has been a long time in the making, and I have incurred many debts
that it is a pleasure to register here. Members of the Dio commentary project have
offered advice, criticism, and technical help unstintingly, among others, Ann
Sutherland Dusing, John W. Humphrey, M. James Moscovich, C. Leslie Murison,
and the late Meyer Reinhold. My colleagues in the University of Saskatchewan