Cassius Dio the Orator: Approaches to Rhetoric in the 'Roman History', Books 1-53

This chapter surveys the speeches of Cassius Dio’s Roman History up to the Augustan Settlement in Book 53. It shows that the historian’s approach to the composition and arrangement of his speeches was highly varied. Beginning with an overview of the historian’s sources, it argues that Dio had four primary methods in the composition of his speeches, drawing to varying degrees from pre-existing written versions. Then, turning to the distribution and themes of the formal orations, this study demonstrates that we can draw a relatively sharp distinction between the historian’s use of speeches in the earlier books compared to the Middle and Late Republican narratives: a significant turning-point appears to be the Second Punic War and the figure of Scipio Africanus. However, even where the length, frequency, and range of topics discussed in Dio’s speeches increases from this point, one major historical premise of Dio’s is consistent throughout: the dangerous power of rhetoric itself. This theme, introduced from the very beginnings of the Republic in Book 3 with the speech of Brutus, exerts significant historical ramifications in the historian’s narrative of the final decades of the res publica, alongside other important historical factors and causes discussed in the speeches to be surveyed here.