Cassius Dio’s Ideal Government and the Imperial Senate

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_chapter_4551
dc.contributor.author	Lindholmer Mads
dc.title	Cassius Dio’s Ideal Government and the Imperial Senate
dc.type	Chapter
dc.language.iso	en
dc.description.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’.
dc.relation.ispartof	Lexis Supplements
dc.relation.ispartof	Lexis Studies in Greek and Latin Literature
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.issued	2020-12-21
dc.dateAccepted	2020-10-13
dc.dateSubmitted	2020-09-10
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-473-8/cassius-dios-ideal-government-and-the-imperial-sen/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/978-88-6969-472-1/003
dc.identifier.issn	2210-8866
dc.identifier.eissn	2724-3362
dc.identifier.isbn	978-88-6969-473-8
dc.identifier.eisbn	978-88-6969-472-1
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
item.fulltext	with fulltext
item.grantfulltext	open
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Augustus
dc.subject	Augustus
dc.subject	Cassius Dio
dc.subject	Cassius Dio
dc.subject	Consilium
dc.subject	Consilium
dc.subject	Ideal Government
dc.subject	Ideal Government
dc.subject	Senate
dc.subject	Senate

Chapter
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Cassius Dio’s Ideal Government and the Imperial Senate

Mads Lindholmer University of St. Andrews, UK

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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’.

Published

Dec. 21, 2020

Accepted

Oct. 13, 2020

Submitted

Sept. 10, 2020

Language

ISBN (PRINT)

978-88-6969-473-8

ISBN (EBOOK)

978-88-6969-472-1

Keywords: Cassius Dio • Ideal Government • Senate • Augustus • Consilium

permalink: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-472-1/003

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.

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