Appian

“ The mastery of Asia is not to be compared, as to labor and bravery, with that of the smallest of the countries of Europe, on account of the effeminacy and cowardice of the Asiatic peoples, as will be shown in the progress of this history. Such of the Asiatic nations as the Romans hold, they subdued in a few battles, though even the Macedonians joined in the defense, while the conquest of Africa and of Europe was in many cases very exhausting. ”

“ PREFACE Intending to write the history of the Romans, I have deemed it best to begin with the boundaries of the nations under their sway. They are as follows: In the Ocean, the major part of those who inhabit the British Isles. Then entering the Mediterranean by the Pillars of Hercules and circumnavigating the same we find under their rule all the islands and the mainlands washed by that sea. ”

“ It was the habit of ancient historians to put speeches into the mouths of their leading actors in order to present the ideas that moved peoples or political parties or factions, and sometimes to deliver the author's moral lectures to mankind. ”

“ On the landward side the boundaries are a part of Mauritania lying against western Ethiopia and the remainder of Africa (having a very warm climate, or much infested with wild beasts) extending to eastern Ethiopia. These are the Roman boundaries in Africa. Those of Asia are the river Euphrates, Mount Caucasus, the kingdom of Greater Armenia, the Colchians who dwell along the Euxine sea, and the remainder of that coast. In Europe the two rivers, Rhine and Danube, for the most part bound the Roman empire. Of these the Rhine empties into the Northern ocean and the Danube into the Euxine. ”

“ Appian was a narrator of events rather than a philosophic historian. His style is destitute of ornament, but in the rhetorical passages, which are numerous, it is animated, forcible and at times eloquent. Occasionally he rises to the dignity of the best writers of the ancient world. The introduction to the history of the Civil Wars is an example of this kind. ”

“ With the last nation, the Samnites, who dwelt on the Adriatic, the Romans struggled eighty years under the greatest difficulties, but finally they subjugated them and the neighbors who were allied with them, and also the Greeks who had settled in Italy. This, by way of distinction from the former, will be called the Samnite Roman history. ”

“ Along the Euxine are other nations called by the common name Pontic, subject to the Roman rule. The Syrians and Cilicians border on the Mediterranean, the Armenians and Cappadocians extend to the Pontic nations and to the interior as far as Greater Armenia, which is not subject to the Romans in the way of tribute, but its people appoint their own kings. Descending from Cilicia and Cappadocia to Ionia we find the great peninsula bounded on the right by the Euxine, the Propontis, the Hellespont, and the Aegean, and on the left by the Pamphylian or Egyptian sea, for it is called by both names. ”

“ From the advent of the emperors to the present time is nearly two hundred years more, in the course of which the city has been greatly embellished, its revenue much increased, and in the long reign of peace and security everything has moved toward a lasting prosperity. ”

“ He inclines to the opinion that they were Latin chiefly if not exclusively, and that for the republican era they were the official annalists whom he describes as "high born amateurs in whose hands historiography was placed," and says that "whenever they turned their leisure to give information to a public, ignorant and incompetent for criticism, to these amateurs, lying, particularly in a patriotic cause, was permitted even more than to the rhetorician." ”

“ Appian was neither better nor worse in this respect than the average historian of his time. Professor Schwartz says truly that Appian's account of the struggle between Antony and the Senate in book iii. of the Civil Wars is not history but "historical novel writing," but he adds that "with all its disfigurations and inventions the great lines are worked out correctly and keenly, the inventions contributing in part to that very end." This criticism may be safely applied to a large part of Appian's writings. ”