Dio's Rome, Volume 4: 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 4: 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
The people consequently were wont to recall these traits of his, and how
he did not get blindly enraged at those who injured him as well as how
he kept faith with even such as were unworthy of it. There was a robber
named Corocotta, who flourished in Spain, and the emperor was in the
first place so angry at him that he offered twenty-five myriads to the
man that captured him alive. Later the robber came to him of his own
accord, and he not only did him no harm but made him richer by the amount
of money mentioned. Hence the Romans missed him mightily for these
reasons as well as because by mingling monarchy with democracy he
preserved their freedom for them and secured orderliness and security, so
that their lives, free from the audacities of democracy, free from the
wantonness of tyrannies, were cast in a liberty of moderation and under a
monarchy without terrors; they were subjects of royalty, yet not slaves,
and democratic citizens without discord. [-44-] If any of them remembered
his former deeds in the course of the civil wars, they laid them to the
pressure of circumstances, and they thought it fair to look for his real
disposition, which had given him undisputed authority. This offered, in
truth, a mighty contrast. Any one who goes carefully into each of his
separate actions will find this true. In regard to the mass of them I
must record curtly that he stopped all factional disputes, transformed
the government in a way to give it power, and strengthened it greatly.
Therefore if any deed of violence is encountered,--as is often bound to
happen when the face of a situation shifts unexpectedly,--one might more
justly blame the circumstances themselves than him.
Not the smallest factor in his glory was the length of his reign. The
majority of those that had lived under a democracy and the more powerful
had time to die. Those who were left, knowing nothing of that form of
government and having been reared entirely or mostly under existing
conditions, were not only not displeased with them,--they had become so
familiar,--but took delight in them, for they saw that these were better
and more free from terror than others of which they heard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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