Appian of Alexandria lived in the early-to-mid
second century AD, a time when the pax Romana flourished. His Roman
History traced, through a series of ethnographic histories, the
growth of Roman power throughout Italy and the Mediterranean World.
But Appian also told the story of the civil wars which beset Rome
from the time of Tiberius Gracchus to the death of Sextus Pompeius
Magnus. The standing of his work in modern times is paradoxical.
Consigned to the third rank by nineteenth-century historiographers,
and poorly served by translators, Appian's Roman History profoundly
shapes our knowledge of Republican Rome, its empire and its internal
politics. We need to know him better. This book studies both what
Appian had to say and how he said it; and engages in a dialogue
about the value of Appian's text as a source of history, the relationship
between that history and his own times, and the impact on his narrative
of the author's own opinions - most notably that Rome enjoyed divinely-ordained
good fortune.
Some authors demonstrate that Appian's text (and even his mistakes)
can yield significant new information; others re-open the question
of Appian's use of source material in the light of recent studies
showing him to be far more than a transmitter of other people's
work.
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