Dictionary
CASSIUS	200.00%
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CASSIUS	100.00%
Cassius Hemina. See ANNALISTS.
DION	99.98%
Dio Cassius (or Cassius Dio) Cocceianus. A Greek historian, grandson of Dio Chrysostomos, born at Nicaea, in Bithynia, 155 A.D. He came early to Rome with his father, Cassius Apronianus, a senator and high official. Here he received a careful education. In about 180 A.D. he became a member of the senate, and he was a long time in practice as an advocate. In 194 he was praetor, and afterwards consul. As proconsul he administered in succession the provinces of Africa, Dalmatia, and Pannonia. The strict order which he had maintained in Pannonia had drawn upon him the hatred of the undisciplined praetorians, who demanded his life. Alexander Severus, however, not only shielded him, but nominated him his colleague in the consulship of 229. At the same time he allowed him, for the sake of his own personal safety, to live outside Rome during his term of office. When this had expired the emperor, in consequence of his age and weak health, gave him leave to quit the public service and retire to his native city, where he ended his days. Here he completed his great work on Roman history, from the arrival of Aencas in Italy, to his own consulship in 229 A.D. This he had undertaken at the divine command, communicated to him in a dream. He spent twenty-two years upon it, ten on the preparation, and twelve on the execution. It contained 80 books, divided into decades. It gives only a sketch of the history down to Caesar, but treats the empire in detail, special care being bestowed upon the events contemporary with the writer. Of the first thirty-five books we have only fragments; book 36 (the wars with the pirates and with Mithridates) is mutilated at the beginning; books 37-54 (down to the death of Agrippa) are tolerably complete; books 55-60, which come down to Claudius, are imperfect. The rest are preserved only in fragments, and in the extracts made by Ionnes Xiphilinos, a Byzantine monk of the 12th century. These begin with book 35. The model taken by Dio for imitation was Polybius, whom he only distantly resembles. He often repels the reader by his crawling flattery, his affected dislike of the republican champions, such as Cicero, Brutus, and Cassius, and his gross superstition. But his book is a work of enormous industry, and of great importance, especially for the history of his own time. His narrative is, generally speaking, clear and vivid, and his style is careful.
ZONARAS	67.52%
A Greek historian, who lived at Constantinople as chief of the imperial bodyguard and first private secretary to the emperor under Alexius I, Comnenus. He next became a monk, and composed a history of the world down to 1118 A.D., divided into eighteen books. Its value consists in its exact quotations from lost works of earlier writers, especially from those of Dio Cassius, referring to the Empire. The history of his own time he recorded as an eye-witness.
DION	15.39%
Dio Chrysostomus, Cocceius. A Greek rhetorician and philosopher, born of a respectable family at Prusa, in Bithynia, about the middle of the 1st century A.D. He began his career by devoting himself to rhetoric. Driven from his native country by domestic intrigues, he lived for a long time in Egypt, where he obtained the favour of the future emperor Vespasian. Afterwards he lived in Rome under Domitian, until he was banished from Italy and Bithynia for his friendship with a person in high place who had incurred the suspicion of the emperor. The period of his banishment he spent, according to the command of the Delphic, oracle, in distant travels through the northern regions of the Roman empire, as far as the Borysthenes, or Dnieper, and the Getae. All this time he was studying philosophy, to which he had previously been avorse, in spite of his friendship with Apollonius of Tyana, His leaning was in the direction of Stoicism. On the accession of his friend Cocceius Nerva (from whom he took the name Cocceius), he returned to Rome, where he spent the remainder of his days, with the exception of a short stay in Prusa. He was greatly honoured both by Nerva and his successor Trajan. His contemporaries called him Chrysostomos ("Golden mouth"), from his powers as a speaker, which he often displayed in public in Rome and elsewhere. Eighty of his speeches survive. They should rather be called essays on topics of philosophy, morals, and politics. He has talent, and refinement, and healthy moral tone. In his style he imitates the best models, especially Plato and Demosthenes, and his writings are on the whole; in spite of many defects, among the best literary productions of that age.
ROSTRA	11.87%
(properly the ships' prows, from rostrum, the iron-Lund prow, lit. "beak," of a ship). The orators' platform in the Forum at Rome, so called because it was embellished wil the bronze prows of the ships of the Latin fleet captured at Antium in 338 B.C. [Livy, viii 14]. Besides these it was also decorated with other monuments of the greatness of Rome, such as the Laws of the Twelve Tables, the columna rostrata of Duilius, and numerous statues of men of mark. Originally it stood between the part of the Forum called the Comitium and the Forum proper, opposite the Curia [no. 18a in Plan s.v. FORUM]; but in 44 B.C. Caesar moved it to the north end of the Forum under the Capitol [no. 6 in same Plan; cp. Cic., Phil. ix 2], and here built up part of it by the employment of the old materials. It was not completed until after his death, by Antonius. This now platform, which was afterwards repeatedly restored, appears by the existing remains to have consisted of an erection 11 feet higher than the pavement of the Forum, about 78 feet in length, and 33 feet in depth. [Cp. Middleton's Remains of Ancient Rome, 244, 246.] The front was decorated with two rows of ships' prows. The way up to the platform was at the back. This platform also was used down to the latest times of the Empire as a place for setting up honorary statues. [The Rostra Iulia, so called to distinguish it from the other rostra, was the projecting podium of the heroon of Julius Coesar, built by Augustus, (no. 21 in plan). Affixed to this were the prows of the vessels captured at Actium: Dion Cassius, li 19 (Middleton, l.c., pp. 262-8).]