Series | Lexis Supplements
Edited book | Cassius Dio and the Principate
Chapter | The ‘Age of Iron and Rust’ in Cassius Dio’s Roman History: Influences from Stoic Philosophy
The ‘Age of Iron and Rust’ in Cassius Dio’s Roman History: Influences from Stoic Philosophy
Abstract
This paper discusses the impact of Stoic philosophy on Cassius Dio’s imperial books of his Roman History. It is demonstrated how fundamental Stoic ideas influenced Dio’s constitutional discussions and the role of the emperor as in the Agrippa-Maecenas debate in book 52, and how Dio evaluated political environments as well as political developments in the Empire with inspirations from Stoic logic. Moreover, this paper argues that the iron age in his contemporary narrative from the emperor Commodus to Caracalla is also fundamentally an iron age on the basis of Stoic values.
Submitted: Sept. 8, 2020 | Accepted: Oct. 13, 2020 | Published Dec. 21, 2020 | Language: en
Keywords Political structure • Ideal emperor • Stoicism • Iron age • Virtue
Copyright © 2020 Christopher Noe. 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/10.30687/978-88-6969-472-1/006
