The Fall of the Roman Republic

"Cassius Dio is the last great historian of Rome. The Empire is falling apart by then, because he’s writing in the first part of the 3rd century. What’s coming up is what is known to historians as ‘the Crisis of the Third Century.’ There is going to be this rapid turnover of emperors, and the coins are going to be devalued. The Empire isn’t expanding and has come under new pressures, both in the east and from north of the Alps. So Cassius Dio is writing at a time when things are ending. I think he sensed that, and what he wanted to do was to write the definitive history. He doesn’t just begin with Romulus and Remus, he begins with the legend of Aeneas, and comes up into his own time, which are the best bits of his book. He spent something like 30 years working on it. I think he did ten years of research before he even put pen to papyrus. He served under multiple emperors. He had close contact with Caracalla as well as Elagabalus and gives us insights into those emperors and their rule. In his history, everything starts to fly apart. Again, I would dispute how much of what he says about some of these people—like Caracalla or Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, who comes in the 180s—is true, because, once again, we’re going into the realm of people who seem manifestly and undeniably insane, being in charge of the empire. Incidentally, Cassius Dio was the great source for Ridley Scott’s screenwriters for Gladiator. It’s that uncritical approach which makes Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Commodus, such a bad guy, so obsessed with being a gladiator etc. Cassius Dio was Greek. He was from what is now Turkey and was then the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire. He ends up as a senator in Rome and is deeply biased against imperial rule. Like Tacitus a century earlier, he feels that the emperors had infringed on senatorial privileges and in some cases—like Commodus and Caracalla—were threatening to kill them. So I don’t think he’s the most unbiased source. He’s writing very critically of the emperors who have just died, when I think maybe there’s an interest in blackening their names. But once again, it makes for a great read. He writes about times that he has lived through, and then all of the history of Rome behind that. I can’t think of anyone who’s ever done a project like that. He’s taken 2000 years of history and brought it up to the present. He’s an interesting character. He was a senator and hated emperors like Caracalla, but he was not a Republican. Someone like Tacitus, in his heart of hearts, was a Republican; Cassius Dio wasn’t. He believed in an emperor. I guess we’d call him a monarchist. He’s frustrated because he’s seen the greatness that Rome can achieve under people like Hadrian or Augustus. But he’s also seen the depths that can be plumbed, whether it’s by the later Julio-Claudians or people like Caracalla and Commodus. There’s lots of really good stuff. I think Mary Beard’s SPQR is a great book. I read it quite a few years ago, and I was tempted to go back and look at it. But I thought that if I did, I’d be too influenced by it. I wanted to tell a story that isn’t overlapping with hers. Likewise with Tom Holland . As I was writing my book, I didn’t want to take on their stories by osmosis. So I thought, ‘I’ll go back to the original sources and then supplement them with academic articles from JSTOR on the minutiae of Roman history.’ It was a labor of love, and I was so sad when I came to the end of writing it. I just loved living in ancient Rome with all the rituals and the social history—which I did include. It’s not just about the emperors: it’s about women, about Roman houses, about slaves. I was very sorry to put it aside and move on."