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 12–13

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Facing Pages · Branch 18 of 315

Book I · Fragments 12–13

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Ancient Greek

p. 38

ὅτι Ταρκύνιος Σαβίνους κατὰ Ῥωμαίων ἠρέθιζε. Κλαύδιος δέ, ἀνὴρ Σαβῖνος ἐκ Ῥηγίλλου πόλεως δυνατός, οὐκ εἴα τοὺς Σαβίνους παρασπονδεῖν, ἕως κρινόμενος ἐπὶ τῷδε ἔφυγεν ἐς Ῥώμην μετὰ συγγενῶν καὶ φίλων καὶ δούλων πεντακισχιλίων. οἷς πᾶσι Ῥωμαῖοι χώραν ἐς οἰκίας ἔδοσαν καὶ γῆν ἐς γεωργίαν, καὶ πολίτας ἔθεντο. τὸν δὲ Κλαύδιον καὶ ἐς τὸ βουλευτήριον κατέλεξαν, ἀποδεικνύμενον ἔργα λαμπρὰ κατὰ τῶν Σαβίνων· καὶ φυλὴν ἐπώνυμον αὐτοῦ κατέστησαν.

Λατῖνοι ἔνσπονδοι Ῥωμαίοις ὄντες ἐστράτευον ἐπʼ αὐτούς οἱ δὲ Λατῖνοι ἐγκλήματα εἰς Ῥωμαίους ἐποιοῦντο τήν τε πάρεσιν αὐτῶν τὴν ἐπὶ σφᾶς ὄντας ἐνσπόνδους καὶ συγγενεῖς.

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book I

p. 39

Tarquinius incited the Sabines against the Roman people. Claudius, an influential Sabine of the town of Regillus, opposed any violation of the treaty, and being condemned for this action, he took refuge in Rome with his relatives, friends, and slaves, to the number of five thousand. To all these the Romans gave a place of habitation, and land to cultivate, and the right of citizenship. Claudius, on account of his brilliant exploits against the Sabines, was chosen a member of the Senate, and the Claudian gens received its name from him.

The Latins, although allied to the Romans by treaty, nevertheless made war against them. They accused the Romans of despising them, although they were allied to them, and of the same blood.

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.