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 IBook I · Fragment 1

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Facing Pages · Branch 13 of 315

Book I · Fragment 1

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Ancient Greek

p. 28

ἄρχεται τῆς ἱστορίας ἀπὸ Αἰνείου τοῦ Ἀγχίσου τοῦ Κάπυος, ὃς ἐν τῷ Τρωικῷ ἤκμαζε πολέμῳ, μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἅλωσιν τῆς Τροίας ἔφυγε, καὶ μετὰ μακρὰν πλάνην κατέπλει ἔς τινα τῆς Ἰταλίας αἰγιαλόν, Λώρεντον ἐπικαλούμενον, ἔνθα καὶ στρατόπεδον αὐτοῦ δείκνυται, καὶ τὴν ἀκτὴν ἀπʼ ἐκείνου Τροίαν καλοῦσιν. ἦρχε τότε Ἀβοριγίνων τῶν τῇδε Ἰταλῶν Φαῦνος ὁ τοῦ Ἄρεως, ὃς καὶ ζεύγνυσιν Αἰνείᾳ τὴν θυγατέρα αὑτοῦ Λαουινίαν, καὶ γῆν δίδωσιν ἐκ περιόδου σταδίων τετρακοσίων. ὁ δὲ πόλιν ἔκτισε καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς γυναικὸς Λαουίνιον ἐπωνόμασε. τρίτῳ δὲ ἔτει τοῦ Φαύνου τελευτήσαντος ἐκδέχεται τὴν ἀρχὴν ὁ Αἰνείας κατὰ τὸ κῆδος, καὶ τοὺς Ἀβοριγίνας ἀπὸ τοῦ κηδεστοῦ Λατίνου Φαύνου Λατίνους ἐπωνόμασε. τρίτῳ δὲ ἔτει πάλιν διὰ Λαουινίαν τὴν γυναῖκα ὑπὸ Ῥουτούλων τῶν Τυρρηνῶν, προμνηστευθεῖσαν αὐτῶν τῷ βασιλεῖ, ἀναιρεῖται πολέμου νόμῳ ὁ Αἰνείας, καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν διεδέξατο Εὐρυλέων, Ἀσκάνιος μετονομασθείς, ὃς ἐγεννήθη τῷ

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book I

p. 29

AENEAS, the son of Anchises, the son of Capys, flourished in the Trojan war. After the capture of Troy he fled, and after long wandering arrived at that part of the Italian coast called Laurentum, where his camping-place is shown to this day, and that shore is called, after him, the Trojan beach. The Aborigines of this part of Italy were then ruled by Faunus, the son of Mars, who gave to Aeneas his daughter Lavinia in marriage, and also a tract of land four hundred stades in circuit. Here Aeneas built a town, which he named after his wife, Lavinium. Three years later, at the death of Faunus, Aeneas succeeded to the kingdom by virtue of his marriage relationship, and he called the Aborigines Latins, from his father-in-law, Latinus Faunus. Three years later still, Aeneas was killed by the Rutuli, a Tuscan tribe, in a war begun on account of his wife Lavinia, who had been previously betrothed to their king. He was succeeded in the government by Euryleon, otherwise called Ascanius,

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.