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 VIII · Sections 5–6

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English Page · Branch 197 of 315

Book VIII · Sections 5–6

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Ancient Greek

p. 410

πόλεσιν ἐφεδρεύοντες τὴν ἀγορὰν αὐτῶν ἀφῃροῦντο τὴν ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης, ἀσπόρου δὲ καὶ τῆς γῆς ὡς ἐν πολέμῳ γενομένης, Λιβύων μὲν διὰ τὸν λιμὸν ἐκράτουν, ἐμπόρους δʼ, ὅσοι παρέπλεον, ἐλῄστευον ἐξ ἀπορίας· τοὺς δὲ Ῥωμαίων καὶ κτείνοντες ἔβαλλον ἐς τὸ πέλαγος, ἵνα λανθάνοιεν. καὶ διέλαθον ἐπὶ πολύ. γνωσθέντος δὲ τοῦ γιγνομένου, ποινὴν αἰτούμενοι διωθοῦντο, μέχρι Ῥωμαίων ἐπιστρατεύειν αὐτοῖς ψηφισαμένων Σαρδὼ ποινὴν ἔδωκαν. καὶ τόδε ταῖς προτέραις συνθήκαις ἐνεγράφη.

οὐ πολὺ δὲ ὕστερον οἱ Καρχηδόνιοι στρατεύουσιν ἐς Ἰβηρίαν, καὶ αὐτὴν κατὰ μέρος ὑπήγοντο, μέχρι Ζακανθαίων ἐπὶ Ῥωμαίους καταφυγόντων Καρχηδονίοις ὅρος ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ γίγνεται, μὴ διαβαίνειν τὸν Ἴβηρα ποταμόν. καὶ τάσδε αὖ τὰς σπονδὰς ἔλυσαν Καρχηδόνιοι, περάσαντες Ἀννίβου σφῶν ἡγουμένου. διαβάντες δέ, ὁ μὲν Ἀννίβας διαστρατηγεῖν ἑτέροις τὰ ἐν Ἰβηρία καταλιπὼν ἐς τὴν Ἰταλίαν ἐσέβαλε· στρατηγοὶ δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἐν Ἰβηρίᾳ, Πόπλιός τε Κορνήλιος Σκιπίων καὶ Γναῖος Κορνήλιος Σκιπίων, ἀλλήλοιν ἀδελφώ, λαμπρὰ ἔργα ἀποδεικνυμένω θνήσκετον ἄμφω πρὸς τῶν πολεμίων. καὶ οἱ μετʼ αὐτοὺς στρατηγοὶ κακῶς ἔπραττον, μέχρι Σκιπίων ὁ Ποπλίου Σκιπίωνος τοῦδε τοῦ περὶ Ἰβηρίαν ἀναιρεθέντος υἱὸς ἐπιπλεύσας, καὶ δόξαν ἅπασιν ἐμβαλὼν ὡς ἥκοι κατὰ θεὸν καὶ δαιμονίῳ χρῷτο

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book VIII

p. 411

the land was untilled in consequence of the war they overcame the Africans by the famine, but were driven to supply their own wants by piracy, even taking some Roman ships, killing the crews, and throwing them overboard to conceal the crime. This escaped notice for a long time. When the facts became known and the Carthaginians were called to account they put off the day of reckoning until the Romans voted to make war against them, when they surrendered Sardinia by way of compensation. And this clause was added to the former treaty of peace.

Not long afterwards the Carthaginians invaded Spain and were gradually subduing it, when the Saguntines appealed to Rome and a boundary was fixed to the Carthaginian advance by agreement that they should not cross the river Ebro. The Carthaginians, under the lead of Hannibal, violated this treaty by crossing the stream, and having done so Hannibal marched against Italy, leaving the command in Spain in the hands of others. The Roman generals in Spain, Publius Cornelius Scipio and Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, two brothers, after having performed some brilliant exploits were both slain by the enemy. The generals who succeeded them fared badly until Scipio, the son of the Publius Scipio who was killed in Spain, set sail thither, and making all believe that he was come by a divine mission and

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.