Dio's Rome, Volume 3: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 3: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
help lamenting to see Roman soldiers acting as body-guards of their
queen? Who can help groaning when he hears Roman knights and senators
flattering her like eunuchs? Who can help weeping when he both hears and
sees Antony himself, the man twice consul, often imperator, to whom was
committed in common with me the superintendence of the public business,
who was entrusted with so many cities, so many legions,--when he sees
that this man has now abandoned all his ancestors' habits of life, has
emulated all alien and barbaric customs, that he pays no honor to us or
to the laws or to his fathers' gods, but worships that wench as if she
were some Isis or Selene, calling her children Sun and Moon, and finally
himself bearing the title of Osiris and Dionysus, in consequence of which
he has bestowed entire islands and some of the continents, as though he
were master of the whole earth and the whole sea? I am sure that this
appears marvelous and incredible to you, fellow-soldiers: therefore you
ought to be the more indignant. For if that is actually so which you do
not even believe on hearing it, and if that man in his voluptuary career
commits acts at which any one who learns of them must grieve, would you
not properly become exceedingly enraged?
[-26-] "Yet at the start I was so devoted to him that I gave him a share
of my leadership, married my sister to him, and granted him legions. Even
after this I felt so kindly, so affectionately toward him that I was
unwilling to wage war on him because of his insulting my sister, or
because he neglected the children she had borne him, or because he
preferred the Egyptian woman to her, or because he bestowed upon the
former's children practically all your possessions, or, in fine, for any
other reason. The cause is that, first of all, I did not think it proper
to assume the same attitude toward Antony as toward Cleopatra. I deemed
her by the very fact of her foreign birth to be at the outset hostile to
his career, but I believed that he, as a citizen, could be corrected.
Later I entertained the hope that if not voluntarily at least reluctantly
he might change his mind as a result of the decrees passed against her.
Consequently I did not declare war upon him. He, however, has looked
haughtily and disdainfully upon my efforts and will neither be released,
though we would fain release him, nor be pitied though we try to pity
him. He is either unreasonable or mad,--and this which I have heard I
do believe, that he has been bewitched by that accursed female,--and
therefore pays no heed to our kindness or humaneness, but being in
slavery to that woman he undertakes in her behalf both war and needless
dangers which are both against our interests and against those of his
country. What else, then, is our duty except to fight him back together
with Cleopatra? [-27-]Hence let no one call him a Roman but rather an
Egyptian, nor Antony but rather Serapio. Let no one think that he was
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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