Fonti scritte non letterarie nella Storia Romana di Cassio Dione

Abstract

Non literary written sources in Cassius Dio’s Roman History.
Developing a thesis already sketched in a previous article of 2003, thisarticle aims to demonstrate that Dio systematically used documentarysources (acta senatus, acta urbis and inscriptions on display) not onlyin writing his contemporary history, but also for his account of remoterevents, from Caesar’s time on. The author specifi cally analyses: 1)some inaccurate news, based only on SC, which were never enacted;2) verbatim quotations from offi cial documents (SC, decreta, offi cialletters); 3) very detailed news on SC; 4) quotations from, and probablereferences to, the acta urbis; 5) quotations and references to inscriptionsand coins. Particular attention is devoted to Augustus’ βιβλία τέσσαρα read in the curia after his death (56, 33), where Dio could have foundthe news on emperor’s mandata (56, 33,3-6), the list of the provinces(53, 12,4-9) and the list of the legions (55, 23,2-7).
cesare.letta@unipi.it