Series | Lexis Supplements
Edited book | Cassius Dio and the Principate
Chapter | Cassius Dio’s Ideal Government and the Imperial Senate
Cassius Dio’s Ideal Government and the Imperial Senate
Abstract
This chapter argues that Dio envisioned a surprisingly minimalist role for the Senate in his ideal government: magistrates and advisors were drawn from the senators, but the emperor should hold absolute power and the Senate should not constitute an important forum of genuine deliberation or advice. Instead, in Dio’s ideal government, the consilium was the key forum of debate informing imperial policy. Dio’s ideal government, and the place of the Senate therein, is distinctive as it broke with a long tradition of senatorial writing which idealised a system of government where the Senate played a central role. This nuances the widespread view of Dio as a ‘senatorial historian’.
Submitted: Sept. 10, 2020 | Accepted: Oct. 13, 2020 | Published Dec. 21, 2020 | Language: en
Keywords Cassius Dio • Ideal Government • Augustus • Consilium • Senate
Copyright © 2020 Mads Lindholmer. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-472-1/003
