APPIANUS

A Greek historian, of Alexandria, who lived about the middle of the 2nd century A.D. At first he pursued the calling of an advocate at Rome; in later life, on the recommendation of his friend the rhetorician Fronto, he obtained from Antoninus Pius the post of an imperial procurator in Egypt. He wrote an extensive work on the development of the Roman Empire from the earliest times down to Trajan, consisting of a number of special histories of the several periods and the several lands and peoples till the time when they fell under the Roman dominion. Of the twenty-four books of which it originally consisted, only eleven are preserved complete beside the Preface: Spain (book 6), Hannibal (7), Carthage (8), Syria (11), Mithridates (12), the Roman Civil Wars (13-17) and Illyria (23), the rest being lost altogether, or only surviving in fragments. Appian's style is plain and bald, even to dryness, and his historical point of view is purely Roman. The book is a mere compilation, and disfigured by many oversights and blunders, especially in chronology; nevertheless the use made by the writer of lost authorities lends it considerable worth, and for the history of the Civil Wars it is positively invaluable.