Cassius Dio Cocceianus
The senator who wrote Roman history in Greek
c. AD 155 – c. AD 235
Cassius Dio was born around 155 AD in Nicaea, Bithynia, into a prominent senatorial family. He held the consulship twice and served as governor of several provinces. His Roman History, in eighty books, covered the period from the founding of Rome to his own time (229 AD).
About a third of the work survives intact (books 36–60, covering 68 BC to 47 AD), with the rest known from Byzantine epitomes. His account of the late Republic and early Empire is a valuable counterpoint to the Latin historians, written from the perspective of a Greek senator who understood imperial administration from the inside. His style is modelled on Thucydides, though less compressed, and his political judgement is generally sound if sometimes pedestrian.
A history of Rome from the foundation to AD 229, originally eighty books. Much survives only in Byzantine epitomes, but the imperial sections are amon...