Appian’s Roman History, Volume I

Name: Appian’s Roman History, Volume I
Author: Appian of Alexandria

Ancient Greek with Horace White’s English translation

Appian’s Roman History, Volume IPreface · Section 15

Swipe or use the arrow keys.

Facing Pages · Branch 12 of 315

Preface · Section 15

Book Mode

Ancient Greek

p. 24

αὐτῶν συγγράφοντα.

τίς δὲ ὢν ταῦτα συνέγραψα, πολλοὶ μὲν ἴσασι καὶ αὐτὸς προέφηνα, σαφέστερον δ’ εἰπεῖν, Ἀππιανὸς Ἀλεξανδρεύς, ἐς τὰ πρῶτα ἥκων ἐν τῇ πατρίδι καὶ δίκαις ἐν Ῥώμῃ συναγορεύσας ἐπὶ τῶν βασιλέων, μέχρι με σφῶν ἐπιτροπεύειν ἠξίωσαν. καὶ εἴ τῳ σπουδὴ καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ μαθεῖν, ἔστι μοι καὶ περὶ τούτου συγγραφή.

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Preface

p. 25

Who I am, who have written these things, many indeed know, and I have already indicated. To speak more plainly I am Appian of Alexandria, having reached the highest place in my native country, and having been, in Rome, a pleader of causes before the emperors, until they deemed me worthy of being made their procurator. And if any one has a great desire to learn more [about my affairs] there is a special treatise of mine on that subject.

About This Reading Edition

Appian’s Roman History asked readers of the Roman Empire to reckon with how conquest, ambition, and civil conflict created their world; its questions about political power, cultural encounter, civic division, and the human cost of expansion remain urgent today. This approximately page-aligned parallel-text edition pairs the Ancient Greek text with Horace White’s English translation, following the 1912 facing leaves while omitting translator’s notes, figures, fragment attributions, marginalia, and unnumbered appendices.

Historical Text and Translation

Appian, a Greek-speaking Roman historian from Alexandria, wrote in the second century CE and arranged Rome’s expansion by the peoples and regions it conquered rather than as one continuous chronology—a strikingly original design. Much of his twenty-four-book work is lost, making the surviving books and fragments especially valuable.

About Horace White

Horace White was an American journalist, editor, and financial writer rather than a university professor. He led the Chicago Tribune and later the New York Evening Post, yet his Greek scholarship produced the fluent two-volume Appian translation of 1899 that became the English text of the original Loeb edition in 1912.

Rights

Appian’s ancient work, Ludwig Mendelssohn’s 1879 Greek edition, Horace White’s 1899/1912 English translation, and the Eulogikon Greek Preface are in the public domain in the United States. The Perseus digital transcriptions are reused under CC BY-SA 4.0; their attribution and share-alike terms continue to apply.