Cassius Dio (Dión ὁ Kássios)

CASSIUS DIO (Dión ὁ Kássios). - Historian, b. at Nicaea ca. 155 A.D., d. there at nearly eighty years of age between 230 and 240. He began his political career at Rome. He was proconsul of Africa and twice consul.

He wrote in Greek, in 80 books, a History of Rome ('Ρωμαινὴ Ἰστορία') from Aeneas to 229 A.D. Only

25 survive (from XXXVI to LX), covering the period from 68 B.C. to 47 A.D., plus various fragments, the most important of which is the one containing books LXXVIII-LXXIX, covering the period from 216 to 219. The narrative follows an annalistic arrangement; it is ample and diligent, but it does not offer a new reinterpretation of the history of Rome; he is especially interested in the civil order of the city and shows little sensitivity to spiritual phenomena. Christianity is absent from his panorama, even though the author happened to live in the time of Marcus Aurelius and of the Severans, to whose era books LXXVIII and LXXIX refer.

Two notices, however, are reported therein: the condemnation of the consul Flavius Clemens and of his wife Flavia Domitilla, respectively to death and to relegation on the island of Pandataria, as guilty of impiety toward the gods (that is, of Christianity); and that of Acilius Glabrio (Hist. Rom., LXVII, 14). Nor should the episode of the Thundering Legion be forgotten, preserved in the Excerpta of Xiphilinus (71, 8) and also narrated by Tertullian (Ad Scap., 4) and by Eusebius (Hist. eccl., V, 5, 2-6).

Compendia of his work were made by the Byzantine historians, especially by Xiphilinus (11th cent.) and by Zonaras (14th cent.), for whom, as for the other chroniclers of Byzantium, D. C. is the foremost text for the history of Rome.

Nicola Turchi