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 · Fragments 5–6

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Facing Pages · Branch 16 of 315

Book I · Fragments 5–6

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Ancient Greek

p. 34

τὸν πόλεμον τὸν πρὸς Ῥωμύλον Τατίου αἱ Ῥωμαίων γυναῖκες καὶ Σαβίνων θυγατέρες διῄ τησαν, αὐταὶ τῷ χάρακι τῶν γονέων προσελθοῦσαι, χεῖράς τε προτείνουσαι, καὶ βρέφη τὰ ἤδη σφίσιν ἐκ τῶν ἀνδρῶν γενόμενα ἐπιδεικνύουσαι, καὶ τοῖς ἀνδράσι μαρτυροῦσαι μηδὲν ὑβριστικὸν ἐς αὐτὰς ἁμαρτεῖν. ἐδέοντό τε λαβεῖν τινὰ οἶκτον τοὺς Σαβίνους σφῶν τε αὐτῶν καὶ κηδεστῶν καὶ ἐκγόνων καὶ θυγατέρων, καὶ φείσασθαι συγγενοῦς καὶ μιαροῦ πολέμου, ἢ πρώτας ἀνελεῖν αἳ τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχουσι τοῦ πολέμου. οἱ δὲ τῶν τε παρόντων ἀπορίᾳ καὶ οἴκτῳ τῶν γυναικῶν, συγγιγνώσκοντες ἤδη μὴ καθʼ ὕβριν εἰργάσθαι ταῦτα Ρωμαίους ἀλλʼ ὑπὸ χρείας, ἐς τὰς διαλλαγὰς ἐνεδίδουν. καὶ συνελθόντες Ῥωμύλος τε καὶ Τάτιος ἐς τὴν ἐξ ἐκείνου ἱερὰν γενομένην ὁδὸν ἐπὶ τοῖσδε συνέβησαν, βασιλεύειν μὲν ἄμφω, Τάτιόν τε καὶ Ῥωμύλον, Σαβίνους δὲ τοὺς τότε τῷ Τατίῳ συστρατεύσαντας, καὶ εἴ τινες ἄλλοι τῶν Σαβίνων ἐθέλοιεν, ἐς τὸ Ῥωμαίων μετοικίζεσθαι ἐπʼ ἴσῃ καὶ ὁμοίᾳ.

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book I

p. 35

When Tatius waged war against Romulus, the wives of the Romans, who were daughters of the Sabines, made peace between them. Advancing to the camp of the parents they held out their hands to them and showed the infant children already born to them and their husbands, and testified that their husbands had done them no wrong. They prayed that the Sabines would take pity on themselves, their sons-in-law, their grandchildren, and their daughters, and either put an end to this wretched war between relatives, or first kill them in whose behalf it was begun. The parents, moved partly by their own difficulties and partly by pity for the women, and perceiving that what the Romans had done was not from lust but necessity, entered into negotiations with them. For this purpose Romulus and Tatius met in the street which was named from this event Via Sacra and agreed upon these conditions: that both Romulus and Tatius should be kings, and that the Sabines who were then serving in the army under Tatius, and any others who might choose to come, should be allowed to settle in Rome on the same terms and under the same laws as the Romans themselves.

The general, learning this fact from one of his

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.