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 IV · Fragments XI–XIII

Swipe or use the arrow keys.

Facing Pages · Branch 53 of 315

Book IV · Fragments XI–XIII

Book Mode

Ancient Greek

p. 114

ἀνθρώπων τὰς μὲν γυναῖκας καὶ τὰ παιδία ἠνδραποδίζετο, τοὺς δὲ ἐν ἥβῃ πάντας ἔκτεινεν ὁμαλῶς, καὶ τὴν χώραν ἐλυμαίνετο ποικίλως καὶ ἄοικον ἐς τὸ λοιπὸν ἐποίει. Βριτόμαριν δὲ μόνον ἦγεν αἰχμάλωτον ἐπὶ λύμῃ. ὕστερον δὲ Σένονες οὐκ ἔχοντες ἔτι πατρίδας ἐς ἃς διαφύγωσι, συνέπεσον ἐς χεῖρας ὑπὸ τόλμης τῷ Δομετίῳ, καὶ ἡττώμενοι σφᾶς αὐτοὺς ὑπʼ ὀργῆς διεχρῶντο μανικῶς. καὶ δίκη μὲν ἥδε παρανομίας ἐς πρέσβεις ἐγένετο Σένοσιν.

ὅτι οἱ Σαλύων δυνάσται, τοῦ ἔθνους ἡττηθέντος ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίων, ἐς Ἀλλόβριγας κατέφυγον. καὶ αὐτοὺς ἐξαιτοῦντες οἱ Ῥωμαῖοι στρατεύουσιν ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἀλλόβριγας οὐκ ἐκδιδόντας, ἡγουμένου σφῶν Γναίου Δομετίου. ᾧ παροδεύοντι τὴν τῶν Σαλύων ἐντυγχάνει πρεσβευτὴς Βιτοίτου βασιλέως τῶν Ἀλλοβρίγων, ἐσκευασμένος τε πολυτελῶς, καὶ δορυφόροι παρείποντο αὐτῷ κεκοσμημένοι καὶ κύνες· δορυφοροῦνται γὰρ δὴ καὶ πρὸς κυνῶν οἱ τῇδε βάρβαροι. μουσικός τε ἀνὴρ εἵπετο, βαρβάρῳ μουσικῇ τὸν βασιλέα Βιτοῖτον, εἶτʼ Ἀλλόβριγας, εἶτα τὸν πρεσβευτὴν αὐτὸν ἔς τε γένος καὶ ἀνδρείαν καὶ περιουσίαν ὑμνῶν· οὗ δὴ καὶ μάλιστα ἕνεκα αὐτοὺς οἱ τῶν πρεσβευτῶν ἐπιφανεῖς ἐπάγονται. ἀλλʼ ὁ μὲν συγγνώμην αἰτῶν τοῖς Σαλύων δυνάσταις ἀπέτυχεν.

ὅτι τῶν Τευτόνων μοῖρα λῃστεύουσα

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book IV

p. 115

He reduced the women and children to slavery, killed all the adult males without exception, devastated the country in every possible way, and made it uninhabitable for anybody else. He carried off Britomaris alone as a prisoner for torture. A little later the Senones (who were serving as mercenaries), having no longer any homes to return to, fell boldly upon the consul Domitius, and being defeated by him killed themselves in despair. Such punishment was meted out to the Senones for their crime against the ambassadors.

The chiefs of the Salyi, a nation vanquished by the Romans, took refuge with the Allobroges. When the Romans asked for their surrender and it was refused, they made war on the Allobroges, under the leadership of Cnaeus Domitius. When he was passing through the territory of the Salyi, an ambassador of Bituitus, king of the Allobroges, met him, arrayed magnificently and followed by attendants likewise arrayed, and also by dogs; for the barbarians of this region use dogs also as body-guards. A musician was in the train who sang in barbarous fashion the praises of King Bituitus, and then of the Allobroges, and then of the ambassador himself, celebrating his birth, his bravery, and his wealth; for which reason chiefly their illustrious ambassadors usually take such persons along with them. But this one, although he begged pardon for the chiefs of the Salyi, accomplished nothing.

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.