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 III · Fragments IV–VI

Swipe or use the arrow keys.

Ancient Greek Page · Branch 34 of 315

Book III · Fragments IV–VI

Book Mode

Ancient Greek

p. 74

καὶ τροφήν, ἄχρι τῆς Ῥώμης φέρεσθαι. δύναται δʼ, ἐμοὶ δοκεῖν, τὸ εἶδος τῆς ἀφέσεως, ὃ καλοῦσιν οἱ τῇδε ζυγόν, ὀνειδίζειν ὡς δοριαλώτοις.

ἀπαγγελθείσης δὲ τῆς συμφορᾶς ἐς τὴν πόλιν οἰμωγὴ καὶ θρῆνος ἦν ὡς ἐπὶ πένθει, καὶ αἱ γυναῖκες ἐκόπτοντο τοὺς αἰσχρῶς περισεσωσμένους ὡς ἀποφανόντας, ἥ τε βουλὴ τὴν ἐπιπόρφυρον ἐσθῆτα ἀπέθετο, καὶ θυσίαι καὶ γάμοι, καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιουτότροπα, ἐπέσχετο ἐπὶ τὸ ἔτος ὅλον, ἕως τὴν συμφορὰν ἀνέλαβον. τῶν δὲ ἀφειμένων οἱ μὲν ἐς τοὺς ἀγροὺς διέφευγον ὑπὸ αἰδοῦς, οἱ δὲ νυκτὸς ἐς τὴν πόλιν ἐσῄεσαν· οἱ δὲ ἄρχοντες ἡμέρας μὲν ἐσῆλθον ὑπʼ ἀνάγκης, καὶ τὰ σημεῖα τῆς ἀρχῆς ἐπέκειτο αὐτοῖς, ἔπρασσον δὲ οὐδέν.

Δεντάτῳ κατὰ ζῆλον ἀρετῆς εἵπετο νεων λογάδων πλῆθος ὀκτακοσίων, ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ ἔργα ἕτοιμοι. καὶ βαρὺς ἦν τῇ βουλῇ παρὰ τὰς ἐκκλησίας.

ὅτι Κελτῶν Σενόνων πολὺ πλῆθος Τυρρηνοῖς συνεμάχουν κατὰ Ῥωμαίων. Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ ἐς τὰς Σενόνων πόλεις ἐπρέσβευον, καὶ ἐνεκάλουν ὅτι ὄντες ἔνσπονδοι μισθοφοροῦσι κατὰ Ῥωμαίων. τούσδε τοὺς πρέσβεις Βριτόμαρις μετὰ τῶν κηρυκείων καὶ τῆς ἱερᾶς στολῆς κατέτεμεν ἐς πολλὰ

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book III

p. 75

provisions sufficient to bring them to Rome. This method of dismissing prisoners, which they call sending under the yoke, seems to me to serve only to insult the vanquished.

When the news of this calamity reached the city there was wailing and lamentation like a public mourning. The women mourned for those who had been saved in this ignominous way as for the dead. The senators discarded their purple-striped tunics. Feasts, marriages, and everything of that kind were prohibited for a whole year, until the calamity was retrieved. Some of the returning soldiers took refuge in the fields for shame, others stole into the city by night. The consuls entered by day according to law, and they wore their usual insignia, but they exercised no further authority.

On account of admiration for his bravery a multitude of chosen youths numbering eight hundred were in the habit of following Dentatus, ready for anything. This was an embarrassment to the Senate at their meetings.

Once a great number of the Senones, a Celtic tribe, aided the Etruscans in war against the Romans. The latter sent ambassadors to the towns of the Senones and complained that, while they were under treaty stipulations, they were furnishing mercenaries to fight against the Romans. Although they bore the caduceus, and wore the garments of their office, Britomaris cut them in pieces 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.