Difference in Dio Cassius & Herodian View of Commodus' Life

Difference in Dio Cassius & Herodian View of Commodus' Life

Introduction

The focus of this paper is to compare and contrast two surviving accounts concerning the last few months of the Emperor Commodus's life in late 192 CE and his murder on New Year's Day, 193. Both accounts were written (in Greek) during the first few decades of the 200's. Dio Cassius (lived ca. 150-235) was a Roman senator of Bithynian origin who served as suffect consul in 205, under the emperor Septimius Severus. Herodian (lived ca. 170-240), who originated in Syria, mentions at one point in his work that he witnessed events in Rome during his service in the imperial system, but perhaps he was a minor government employee rather than a senator. This paper seeks to analyze how these two accounts differ with respect to the presented facts and style and manner of their presentation.

Discussion

Alston (2004) proposes in one of his reviews about Commodus that how our literary sources have presented Commodus to us is sufficiently unusual that the line between shameful gossip and respectable historical fact is not obvious. He puts forward that the sources for Commodus are much less complete and, rather, more hostile. Under an absolute monarchy, very few historians have sufficient life experience to comprehend how such a system could create characters like Commodus, and still less realize the life experience under their rule.

The accounts of Cassius Dio and Herodian are only two surviving primary literary sources regarding Commodus survive, therefore limited information is known concerning the life of emperor. Furthermore, to say the least, these sources' quality is somewhat suspicious for historical purposes. Cassius Dio, who penned an 80-volume Roman History, was a senator under Commodus from a quite biased approach taking the metaphysical war of emperor with the senate into consideration. Herodian seems to have been an insignificant Roman civil servant whose approach looked for to keep Greek-speaking audiences amused in style of story-telling. Framing these sources in a modern context would be of like a private medical insurance corporation's CEO accounting a history of the United States after the creation of public health insurance had been overseen by President Obama for all U.S. citizens (characterizing view of Cassius Dio), and an Iraqi-born lawyer writing a story in his native language, after he had lived and worked for several years in the U.S., ...