The Intellectual Climate of Cassius Dio

Cassius Dio (c. 160–c. 230) is a familiar name to Roman historians, but still an enigmatic one. His text has shaped our understanding of his own period and earlier eras, but basic questions remain about his Greek and Roman cultural identities and his literary and intellectual influences. Contributors to this volume read Dio against different backgrounds including the politics of the Severan court, the cultural milieu of the Second Sophistic and Roman traditions of historiography and political theory. Dio emerges as not just a recounter of events, but a representative of his times in all their complexity.

Adam Kemezis, Ph.D. (2006) is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Classics and Religion at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Greek Narratives of the Roman Empire under the Severans: Cassius Dio, Philostratus and Herodian (Cambridge, 2014) and a number of articles on Dio and other authors and topics in Imperial Roman historiography and literature.
Colin Bailey, Ph.D. (2006) is Associate Professor of Classics at MacEwan University. He has published papers on Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch of Chaeronea, and Roman Republican history. His research interests focus on early imperial Greek literature and interactions between Greece and Rome.
Beatrice Poletti, Ph.D. (2018) is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Classics at Queen’s University. She has written several papers on Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Augustan historiography and religion. Her interests include historiography of Rome, Augustan literature, and Roman religion.