"Cassius Dio—Pepaideumenos and Politician on Kingship" (original) (raw)
2016, Cassius Dio—Greek Intellectual and Roman Politician. (Brill’s Historiography of Rome and its Empire, 1). Lange, C.H. & Madsen, J.M. (eds.) Leiden: Brill.
[Draft. See Lange & Madsen 2016 for published version or write me for a copy.] Cassius Dio’s stance that democracy does not work and that monarchy is the only realistic form of government (e.g., Cass. Dio 44.2.1) might help explain his historiographic tendency to focus on powerful individuals. Yet, if we consider his situation among the sophistic milieu of the second and third centuries CE, there are perhaps other reasons for his inclination toward this political philosophy and the attending historiographical approach. Dio measures the excellence of principes sometimes in terms of virtue, fortune, or military prowess, but consistently in terms of paideia. He thereby provides a type of kingship theory across his History in which successful emperors embrace sophisticated education. It must be noted who the bearers and teachers of this paideia are—a select group of intellectual senators—that is, members of the elite like Dio himself. Cassius Dio’s attitudes on kingship, then, can be viewed as a self-serving extension of his position as pepaideumenos and politician.
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