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 VII · Sections 55–56

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English Page · Branch 188 of 315

Book VII · Sections 55–56

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Ancient Greek

p. 390

Κράσσος μὲν ἀντεστρατοπέδευσεν Ἀννιβᾳ περὶ Ἰαπυγίαν, Σκιπίων δὲ τὸν δῆμον ἐδίδασκεν οὔ ποτε Καρχηδονίους οὐδʼ Ἀννίβαν ἀποστήσεσθαι σφίσιν ἐνοχλοῦντας ἀμφὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, εἰ μὴ Ῥωμαίων στρατὸς ἐς Λιβύην διέλθοι καὶ κίνδυνον αὐτοῖς ἐπιστήσειεν οἰκεῖον. λιπαρήσας τε πάνυ καρτερῶς, καὶ πείσας ὀκνοῦντας, ᾑρέθη στρατηγὸς αὐτὸς ἐς Λιβύην, καὶ διέπλευσεν εὐθὺς ἐς Σικελίαν. ἔνθα στρατὸν ἀγείρας τε καὶ γυμνάσας ἐπέπλευσε Λοκροῖς ἄφνω τοῖς ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ, φρουρουμένοις ὑπὸ Ἀννίβου· καὶ τὴν φρουρὰν κατασφάξας τε, καὶ παραδοὺς Πλημινίῳ τὴν πόλιν, αὐτὸς ἐς Λιβύην διέπλευσεν. Πλημίνιος δὲ οὐδεμίαν ὕβριν ἢ ἀσέλγειαν ἢ ὠμότητα ἐς τοὺς Λοκροὺς ἐκλιπών, ἐσύλησε λήγων καὶ τὸ τῆς Φερσεφόνης ἱερόν. καὶ τόνδε μὲν Ῥωμαῖοι μετὰ τῶν συναμαρτόντων αὐτῷ φίλων διέφθειραν ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ, καὶ τὰς περιουσίας αὐτῶν ἔδοσαν Λοκροῖς ἐς τὸν θησαυρὸν τῆς θεοῦ φέρειν· ὅσα τε ἄλλα ἐδύναντο τῶν ἀπολωλότων ἀνευρόντες, τὸ λεῖπον ἐκ τοῦ κοινοῦ σφῶν ταμιείου τῇ θεῷ προσέθεσαν.

τοῦ δὲ αὐτοῦ χρόνου Κωνσεντίαν τε, μεγάλην πόλιν Βρεττίων, καὶ ἄλλας ἓξ ἐπʼ αὐτῇ περιέσπασεν ἀπὸ Ἀννίβου Κράσσος. καὶ γιγνομένων ἐν Ῥώμῃ σημείων ἐκ Διὸς φοβερῶν, οἱ μὲν τὰ Σιβύλλεια ἐπισκεπτόμενοι δέκα ἄνδρες ἔφασαν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ τι ἐς Πεσινοῦντα τῆς Φρυγίας, ἔνθα σέβουσιν οἱ Φρύγες θεῶν μητέρα, πεσεῖσθαι τῶνδε τῶν ἡμερῶν, καὶ δεῖν αὐτὸ ἐς τὴν Ῥώμην

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book VII

p. 391

but Scipio advised the people that they would never drive Hannibal and the Carthaginians out of Italy except by sending a Roman army into Africa and so bringing danger to their own doors. By persisting strenuously and persuading those who hesitated he was himself chosen general for Africa and sailed forthwith to Sicily. Having collected and drilled an army there he sailed suddenly to Locri in Italy which was garrisoned by Hannibal. Having slain the garrison and put the town under the command of Pleminius he embarked for Africa. Pleminius visited upon the Locrians every kind of outrage, licentiousness, and cruelty, and ended by robbing the temple of Proserpina. For this the Romans put him and his companions in wrong-doing to death in prison, and gave the property they left to the Locrians to be deposited in the treasury of the goddess. All the rest of the plunder that they could find they restored to the goddess, and what they could not find they made good out of their own public treasury.

During the same time Crassus detached Consentia, a large town of Bruttium, and six others, from Hannibal. As certain direful prodigies sent by Jupiter had appeared in Rome, the decemviri, having consulted the Sibylline books, said that something would soon fall from heaven at Pessinus in Phrygia (where the mother of the gods is worshipped by the Phrygians), which ought to be brought to Rome.

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.