The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Pencil annotation on endpaper, minimal staining on edge, otherwise very good and clean. Includes review of the book. / Bleistiftanmerkung auf Vorsatz, minimale Anschmutzung auf Schnitt, sonst sehr gut und sauber. Beiliegend Rezension zum Buch. - Preface: In his own day, and throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, Dio of Prusa enjoyed a high reputation for eloquence: the name Chrysostomus, "Golden-Mouthed," was early bestowed on him and is still used. At present he is comparatively neglected: eloquence is suspect, and Dio was never loved for himself, even in his lifetime. Perhaps more than most Greek authors of the Roman period he has suffered the ultimate indignity of a creative writer, and become a mere "source," though one useful to historians of Greek philosophy and of imperial history. Yet sources have personality, to neglect which is to diminish the value of the information derived from them. Moreover, Dio is worth examining not only to correct an optical illusion. It is not by chance that two contemporaries so great and so diverse as Jacob Burckhardt and Theodor Mommsen esteemed him highly; the first published a lecture which is still the best general appreciation of him, the second paid him tribute in a conspicuous paragraph of his R�mische Geschichte. Both Burckhardt and Mommsen saw Dio as a man intensely expressive of his age and, what is not always the same, a keen observer of it; and both had the breadth of vision to regard his age as interesting for itself, and not merely as a dreary stage in the decline of classical culture. Mommsen's son-in-law Wilamowitz guided his pupil Hans von Arnim to the study of Dio, and by his edition of 1893-1896 and by his study of 1898, Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusa, Arnim did more for his author than anybody in modern times. Yet while his edition is still unsurpassed, the book is long out of date. On points of chronology and history it encountered prompt and damaging criticism from Hermann Dessau; and Arnim's view of Dio's development, from sophist to Cynic to philosopher, already questioned by Dessau, has not worn well with time. The very length of Arnim's work, however, imposed authority and daunted dissent; and since 1898 none of the few books on Dio has reconsidered his relation to the times in which he lived. The present book is an attempt to fulfill that need. The emphasis is not on Dio's thought, though I have disagreed with Arnim on one essential matter of doctrine, Dio's supposed Cynicism. My subject is rather Dio and his relation to his age, especially to the theater of most of his public activity, the Greek city. I consider his background, his education and early career, and those civic speeches which I believe to belong to his first period; I survey his exile under Domitian and his return under Nerva and Trajan, the civic speeches of his last years, and the works centered on the emperor Trajan. Finally I view his attitude toward the leading city, Rome. Detailed questions of chronology are relegated, so far as possible, to the Appendix. This study complements and on some points modifies my previous Plutarch and Rome (1971). ISBN 9780674779150