Series | Lexis Supplements
Edited book | Cassius Dio and the Principate
Chapter | Teoria politica e scrittura storiografica nei ‘libri imperiali’ della Storia Romana di Cassio Dione
Teoria politica e scrittura storiografica nei ‘libri imperiali’ della Storia Romana di Cassio Dione
Abstract
This paper investigates to what extent the emergence of the princeps shapes Dio’s narrative. The best fitting passages for investigating this topic are the so called “anectodical-biographical sections”, which cannot be utterly dismissed as pieces of imperial biography: it would be better to consider those sections as devoted to the evaluation of the emperor’s praxis of government on a very concrete (rather that moralistic) ground. These narrative proceedings betray the existence of a well-structured framework lying beneath the work’s building in terms of political thought. In fact, Dio develops a consistent perspective about the relationship he expected between the princeps and the senate, fashioned, to my mind, by the princeps civilis model. This paradigm is sustained by a very classical political theory, although remoulded: the ‘mixed constitution’ theory.
Submitted: Sept. 8, 2020 | Accepted: Oct. 13, 2020 | Published Dec. 21, 2020 | Language: it
Keywords Emperor-Senate relationships • Mixed Constitution Theory • Imperial Historiography • Civilitas Principis • Cassius Dio’s contemporary history
Copyright © 2020 Martina Bono. 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/10.30687/978-88-6969-472-1/002
