The Intellectual Climate of Cassius Dio: Greek and Roman Pasts(14 Historiography of Rome and Its Empire)

Cassius Dio (c. 160–c. 230) is a familiar name to Roman historians, but still an enigmatic one. His text has shaped our understanding of his own period and earlier eras, but basic questions remain about his Greek and Roman cultural identities and his literary and intellectual influences. Contributors to this volume read Dio against different backgrounds including the politics of the Severan court, the cultural milieu of the Second Sophistic and Roman traditions of historiography and political theory. Dio emerges as not just a recounter of events, but a representative of his times in all their complexity.

About the Author :
Adam Kemezis, Ph.D. (2006) is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Classics and Religion at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Greek Narratives of the Roman Empire under the Severans: Cassius Dio, Philostratus and Herodian (Cambridge, 2014) and a number of articles on Dio and other authors and topics in Imperial Roman historiography and literature.
Colin Bailey, Ph.D. (2006) is Associate Professor of Classics at MacEwan University. He has published papers on Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch of Chaeronea, and Roman Republican history. His research interests focus on early imperial Greek literature and interactions between Greece and Rome.
Beatrice Poletti, Ph.D. (2018) is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Classics at Queen’s University. She has written several papers on Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Augustan historiography and religion. Her interests include historiography of Rome, Augustan literature, and Roman religion.

Review :
"The volumes under discussion are invaluable contributions to the scholarship on Dio’s intellectual landscape, narrative technique, and theory of empire. The Intellectual Climate of Cassius Dio makes an irresistible case for reading the Roman History intertextually and interculturally."- Leanne Jansen, Department of Classics, Groningen University, in: "Literary Technique in the Roman History", Mnemosyne 78 (2025)
"Through the diverse cases studied, the volume's authors propose to show the originality and the coherence of Dio's project by setting it against literary tradition. Neither do they refrain from outlining the shadowy side or the preconceptions of an author who is also a public figure mindful of his career and reputation. The authors offer thorough case studies and thereby contribute to a better understanding of some specific themes (...) The aim to cast new light on an author currently enjoying many recent publications was ambitious and is partly successful, notably in Parts 3 and 4 more clearly dedicated to Dio's literary choices and his position as a writer; the chapters by Jones, Kemezis and Asirvatham are novel on this score and deserve special mention within the context of this volume, which brings to a useful conclusion a programme whose outcomes will have increased the knowledge of Cassius Dio's Roman History significantly." - Estrelle Bertrand, in: The Classical Review 75.1