CASSIUS DIO’S ROMAN HISTORY: TO 31 BC
Cassius Dio (Δίων Κάσσιος), a Greek who was twice Roman consul, wrote the eighty books of his Roman History down to the year 229 in the years down to that date and after 22 years of research. The first thirty-five books survive only in small fragments. On this page is presented the Greek love content of Books I to L, covering the period down to the transformative battle of Actium in 31 BC.
The translation is by Earnest Cary and Herbert Foster in the Loeb Classical Library volumes 37 and 66, published by the Harvard University Press in 1914 and 1916. Their Latinisation of Greek names has been undone in favour of transliterated forms.
XXXI (102 ix)
On the deeds of the general C. Marius and his followers when they took over Rome by force in 87 BC:
| They took especial pains to destroy those who possessed any property, because they coveted wealth; and they outraged[1] the children[2] and wives of the victims as if they had enslaved some foreign city. | μάλιστα δὲ τούς τι ἔχοντας ἐπιθυμίᾳ χρημάτων ἔφθειρον, καὶ τούς τε παῖδας καὶ τὰς γυναῖκάς σφων ὕβριζον, ὥσπερ τινὰ ἀλλοτρίαν πόλιν ἠνδραποδισμένοι. |
XXXIII (109 x-xii)
On what happened when the soon-to-be dictator. Cornelius Sulla took over Rome by force towards the end of 82 BC:
| No safety was to be found for any one against those possessing any power who wished to commit injustice. Such calamities encompassed Rome. But why narrate the outrages offered to the living, in many cases to women, and in many to the noblest and most distinguished boys, as if they were captives taken in war? Nevertheless, these deeds, though most distressing, still by reason of their similarity to others previously experienced seemed endurable to such persons at least as were not involved in them. | [x] καὶ ἀσφάλεια οὐδεμία οὐδενὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἐν κράτει τινὶ ἀδικεῖν βουλομένους εὑρίσκετο. [xi] Ὅτι τοιαῦται συμφοραὶ τὴν Ῥώμην περιέσχον. τί γὰρ ἄν τις τὰς τῶν ζώντων ὕβρεις λέγοι, αἳ πολλαὶ μὲν περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας, πολλαὶ δὲ περὶ τοὺς παῖδας τοὺς εὐγενεστάτους καὶ ἐλλογιμωτάτους καθάπερ αἰχμαλώτους ἐγίγνοντο; οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ ἐκεῖνα, καίπερ χαλεπώτατα ὄντα, τῷ γοῦν ὁμοιοτρόπῳ τῶν ἤδη σφίσι συμβεβηκότων οἰστὰ [xii] τοῖς γε ἐκτὸς τούτων οὖσιν ἐδόκει εἶναι. |
XLIII 20 i-iv
On what the people of Rome, watching the triumphal procession of their dictator, C. Julius Caesar, and his army in 48 BC, thought about “the magnitude of [his] accomplishments”:
| This led them to admire him extremely, as did likewise the good nature with which he bore the army’s outspoken comments. For the soldiers jeered at those of their own number who had been appointed by him to the senate and at all the other failings of which he was accused, and in particular jested about his love for Kleopatra and his sojourn at the court of Nikomedes, the ruler of Bithynia, inasmuch as he had once been at his court when a lad; indeed, they even declared that the Gauls had been enslaved by Caesar, but Caesar by Nikomedes.[3] Finally, on top of all this, they all shouted out together that if you do right, you will be punished, but if wrong, you will be king. […]As for him, however, he was not displeased at their saying this, but was quite delighted that by such frankness toward him they showed their confidence that he would never be angry at it—except in so far as their abuse concerned his intercourse with Nikomedes. At this he was greatly vexed and manifestly pained; he attempted to defend himself, denying the affair upon oath, whereupon he incurred all the more ridicule.[4] | [i] τούτων τε οὖν ἕνεκα καὶ ὑπερεθαύμαζον αὐτόν, καὶ ὅτι καὶ τὴν παρρησίαν τοῦ στρατοῦ πραότατα ἤνεγκε. [ii]τούς τε γὰρ ἐς τὸ συνέδριόν σφων ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ καταλεχθέντας ἐτώθασαν, καὶ τά τε ἄλλα ὅσα ποτ᾿ εὐτελίζετο, καὶ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα τόν τε τῆς Κλεοπάτρας αὐτοῦ ἔρωτα καὶ τὴν παρὰ τῷ Νικομήδει τῷ τῆς Βιθυνίας βασιλεύσαντι διατριβήν, ὅτι μειράκιόν ποτε παρ᾿ αὐτῷ ἐγεγόνει, διεκερτόμησαν, ὥστε καὶ εἰπεῖν ὅτι Καῖσαρ μὲν Γαλάτας ἐδουλώσατο, Καίσαρα δὲ Νικομήδης. [iii] τέλος δὲ ἐφ᾿ ἅπασιν αὐτοῖς ἀθρόοι ἀναβοήσαντες εἶπον ὅτι, ἂν μὲν καλῶς ποιήσῃς, κολασθήσῃ, ἂν δὲ κακῶς, βασιλεύσεις. […iv] οὐ μέντοι καὶ ἐκεῖνος ἤχθετο ταῦτα αὐτῶν λεγόντων, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάνυ ἔχαιρεν ὅτι τοσαύτῃ πρὸς αὐτὸν παρρησίᾳ, πίστει τοῦ μὴ ἂν ὀργισθῆναί ποτε ἐπ᾿ αὐτῇ, ἐχρῶντο, πλὴν καθ᾿ ὅσον τὴν συνουσίαν τὴν πρὸς τὸν Νικομήδη διέβαλλον· ἐπὶ γὰρ τούτῳ πάνυ τε ἐδυσκόλαινε καὶ ἔνδηλος ἦν λυπούμενος, ἀπολογεῖσθαί τε ἐπεχείρει καὶ κατώμνυε, κἀκ τούτου καὶ γέλωτα προσεπωφλίσκανεν. |
The Greek love content of Cassius Dio’s next fifteen books are presented as Cassius Dio’s Roman History: 31 BC – AD 69.
[1] The translator’s “abused” has here been replaced by “outraged”. Such is the usual translation of ὕβριζον, which, where children are the object, means “raped”. In this context, it is probably intended to represent the Latin word stuprum, a more specific offence which, where freeborn Roman boys are the object, means to pedicate them with or without their consent.
[2] It should be stressed that the use of the masculine article τούς to qualify the otherwise gender-neutral παῖδας (children) means that the children in question were either all boys or a mixture of boys and girls.
[3] This alludes to what happened to Caesar when in 81 BC, as a youth of 18 or 19, he stayed at the court of the middle-aged Nikomedes IV, King of Bithynia. Suetonius in his The Twelve Caesars (Julius 2 and 49) gives a fairly detailed account of what was believed to have happened, the critical element of which is that Caesar willingly took the passive role in a Greek love affair with the King, an outrage to how Romans expected freeborn males to behave. Suetonius makes it clear this was a widely-held belief which dogged Caesar to the end of his days.
[4] Despite his account of the allegations being much lengthier, Suetonius said nothing about how Caesar reacted to them.
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