An Age of Iron and Rust: Cassius Dio and the History of His Time

Cassius Dio described his own age as one of “iron and rust.” This study, which is the first of its kind in English, examines the decline and decay that Cassius Dio diagnosed in this period (180-229 CE) through an analysis of the author’s historiographic method and narrative construction. It shows that the final books were a crucial part of Dio’s work, and it explains how Dio approached a period that he considered unworthy of history in view of his larger historiographic project.

Andrew G. Scott (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Villanova University (Villanova, PA, USA). He is the author of Emperors and Usurpers: an historical commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman history, books 79(78)-80(80) (OUP 2018), as well as numerous articles and chapters on Greek and Roman historiography.

"Andrew Scott’s monograph more than achieves the goals of the series of which it is a part, The Historiography of Rome and Its Empire (Brill), as articulated by the editors Carsten Lange and Jesper Madsen in its preface: Cassius Dio should be counted among historians ‘worth exploring not just as sources, but for their own concerns and reinterpretations of their material, as well as their place within the tradition’. Scott takes up Lange and Madsen’s cause, setting his sights on Dio’s so-called contemporary books, or, those sections concerning the period in which he himself lived and served as a senator. [...] As a result of Scott’s insightful new book, we have a better understanding not only of Dio, but also of life in the early third century CE in general, as we encounter the options available to an intellectual who was grappling with a changing world and seeking to interpret it—and correct it—in words. As Scott argues, making sense, for Dio, meant sometimes writing nonsense, and at other times, writing about it." Joe Allen, Histos 18 (2024) i-iv.

"Andrew G. Scott’s present work on Dio follows upon his 2018 commentary on the final books of Dio’s history. In An Age of Iron and Rust, Scott homes in on Dio’s career and how the senator-historian writes the history of his own time [...] Scott makes a persuasive argument about Dio’s final books fitting into a comprehensive historiographic project, and some of the most intriguing claims come from how the themes of shifting governmental systems around the emperor and of senatorial culture fit into this scheme. [...] this book is a valuable addition to studies on Dio Cassius and should prove highly useful to scholars of the historian, as well as those interested in the Severan period and its literary production more broadly." Chris Bingley in BMCR 2024.07.06