Reading Cassius Dio (fifty years after Fergus Milar: reports and prospects) – DIONEIA

Writing this monograph implies leading collective and comprehensive exploratory surveys which in turn require devising new tools and planning regular teamwork sessions.
Completing the editorial work - especially of the fragmented parts of the work – is one of the main requirements as it will provide the gist of the project.
To that effect, it is necessary to produce a new edition of the abridged versions of the Roman History by Byzantine authors Xiphilinus and Zonaras who are the main and sometimes unique witnesses of the works lost in direct tradition.
In addition, since Cassius Dio wrote his history of Rome in Greek, a close lexical study, especially in the political and institutional fields is paramount and necessitates devising common methodology. Similarly, given the growing amount of publications on the author, it appears indispensable to set up a database that will allow to reference and rate them and will be used by the team as a common tool.
Finally, to stimulate teamwork and multidisciplinary exchanges, workshops will be scheduled on a regular basis so as to feed exploratory surveys. During these sessions, DIONEIA members will provide updates of their research and discuss the chosen themes with other team members. Within the frame of Study Days, other national or international scholars may also be invited to cast further light on questions that may have surfaced during prior collective sessions.

The initial stage of the project consisted in setting up the working tools. The bibliographical database was created and fed with some 900 entries. A method designed to study Cassius Dio’s institutional, political and juridical lexicon was devised and the editorial work produced a number of results - Books 38, 39 and 40 of the Roman History were published in CUF (Coudry-Lachenaud, 2011); the edition of Book 47 was submitted to revisers (Bertrand-Fromentin, May 2013); M. Bellissime’s thesis was completed (Books 51-52) and is due to be presented in July 2013 ; 25 studies related to Cassius Dio’s RH, including the Italian commentary of Books 21-30 by G. Urso (in print) have been referenced. All these items will make up the foundations of the future critical edition of Books 1-35 in CUF and of Chapter 2.2 of the monograph.
We also worked on Exploratory Survey #2 (Sources and models = tasks 4.2 and 4.3) during the course of two sessions (June and October 2012), with significant advances such as the reappraisal of the respective influences of Livy and Tacitus and of the amount of work Dio produced to rewrite his History from his aggregate sources.
Exploratory Survey #1 (Tradition and reception of the Roman History text = task 3) has also begun and involves confronting Xiphilinus and Zonaras’ working methods and examining in depth some of Zonaras’ prefaces including certain passages that could be literal quotations of Dio’s lost preface. The next workshop (June 2013) will be devoted to questions concerning the construction and shaping of his narrative.
A Study Day (Sept. 2013), with French and foreign guest scholars will allow to complete the exploration of Dio’s sources with communications about his non-literary sources; his conception of history and his vision of Rome’s institutional evolution will also be discussed.

Although the project is still in its first stage, it is already fruitful enough to pave the way to new research. Master and Doctorate seminars of pilot committee members are the privileged venues for these breakthroughs which will in turn allow to feed the ANR project.
They focus primarily on the confrontation between Dio’s work and the works of other “Greek Historians of Rome” from the republican to the imperial period.
For instance, Valérie Fromentin’s seminar is centered on institutional realities. M. Coltelloni-Trannoy focuses on the writing methods that characterize these historians – particularly, the thauma theme and geographical and ethnographic elements – with a view to publishing a synthesis of this research.
An HDR project (E. Bertrand) is under way that will focus on Dio’s Empire and Imperialism.
M.Bellissime’s thesis (Books 51-52) will be presented in July 2013 (dir. V. Fromentin).

Setting up and feeding the bibliographical database is set up and fed; publication of Books 38, 39 and 40 of the Roman History by CUF (Coudry-Lachenaud, 2011) ; edition of Book 47 is submitted to revisers (Bertrand-Fromentin, May 2013); completion and presentation of M. Bellissime’s thesis (Books 52-52), July 2013 ; publication of 25 studies related to Cassius Dio’s RH, including the Italian commentary of Books 21-30 by G. Urso (in print).

The Dioneia Project aims to elaborate and to publish a handbook on Cassius Dio (ca 160-230 AD), whose Roman History (80 books, written in Greek) covers almost a millenium, from the foundation of the Urbs till the reign of Severus Alexander. The publication is planned for 2015 at Ausonius Editions (Pessac, France), probably with the Classical Press of Wales (Swansea, UK) as a partner.
This book will be designed on the pattern of the Companions published these last years by Brill or Cambridge University Press (http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=26345, cco.cambridge.org/public_home). Brill's Companion to Thucydides (Leiden, 2006) in particular might be considered as a model.
As for contents, an international team of scholars will offer some 40 essays dealing with every aspect of the historian and his oeuvre, and arranged in a few large, thematic chapters.
Such a handbook should attain two objectives. First, it should provide an up-to-date state of scholarship concerning the big issues in Dionean studies as determined by the groundbreaking work of Fergus Millar some 50 years ago (A Study of Cassius Dio, Oxford, 1964). Second, the book should go further and suggest new, exploratory paths. Indeed, some points, however legitimate and interesting, have been deliberately overlooked or have failed to attract the attention of researchers up to now.
The Dioneia Project will be run by a multidisciplinary team of French and Italian experts in Ancient history and philology. It should be noted that most of these scholars are taking part in another, closely related project, i.e. the critical edition (with French translation and commentary) of Dio’s Roman History which is being published in the “Collection des Universités de France”, Belles Lettres (generally known as “Budé”).