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 V · Fragment II

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Book V · Fragment II

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Ancient Greek

p. 128

ὕπατον, αἰχμάλωτον ὄντα σφῶν, δεησόμενον τῆς πατρίδος ἐπὶ τοῖσδε συνθέσθαι. ὁ δὲ ἧκε μὲν ὡς αἰχμάλωτος ἐσταλμένος φοινικικῶς, ὑπολειφθεὶς δὲ τῶν πρέσβεων ἐν τῷ βουλευτηρίῳ τετρῦσθαι τὰ Καρχηδονίων ἐδήλου, καὶ παρῄνεσεν ἢ πολεμεῖν ἐγκρατῶς ἢ ἐπὶ πλείοσι συνθέσθαι. καὶ τόνδε μὲν ἐς Καρχηδόνα ἑκόντα ἐπανελθόντα ἔκτειναν οἱ Καρχηδόνιοι, κέντρα σιδήρεα σανίσιν ἐνηρμοσμένα πάντοθεν ἑστῶτι περιθέντες, ἵνα μηδαμόσε δύναιτο ἐπικλίνεσθαι, αὐτοὶ δὲ τὴν εἰρήνην ἐπὶ πλείοσι συνέθεντο.

καὶ ἦν ἐφʼ οἷς συνέθεντο, τὰ μὲν αἰχμάλωτα Ῥωμαίων καὶ τοὺς αὐτομόλους, ὅσοι παρὰ Καρχηδονίοις εἰσί, Ῥωμαίοις εὐθὺς ἀποδοῦναι, καὶ Σικελίας Ῥωμαίοις ἀποστῆναι καὶ τῶν βραχυτέρων νήσων ὅσαι περὶ Σικελίαν, Συρακοσίοις δὲ ἢ Ἱέρωνι τῷ Συρακουσῶν τυράννῳ πολέμου Καρχηδονίους μὴ κατάρχειν, μηδὲ ἐκ τῆς Ἰταλίας ξενολογεῖν, ποινὴν δὲ τοῦ πολέμου Ῥωμαίοις ἐνεγκεῖν τάλαντα Εὐβοϊκὰ δισχίλια ἐν ἔτεσιν εἴκοσι, τὸ μέρος ἑκάστου ἔτους ἐς Ῥώμην ἀναφέροντας. ἔχει δὲ τὸ Εὐβοϊκὸν τάλαντον Ἀλεξανδρείους δραχμὰς ἑπτακισχιλίας. ὁ μὲν δὴ πρῶτος περὶ Σικελίας Ῥωμαίοις καὶ Καρχηδονίοις πόλεμος, ἔτεσιν εἴκοσι καὶ τέσσαρσιν αὐτοῖς γενόμενος, ἐς τοῦτο ἐτελεύτα. καὶ ἀπώλοντο νῆες ἐν αὐτῷ Ῥωμαίων ἑπτακόσιαι, Καρχηδονίων δὲ πεντακόσιαι. Σικελίας δὲ οὕτω τοῦ πλέονος Ῥωμαῖοι κατέσχον, ὅσου Καρχηδόνιοι κατεῖχον· φόρους τε

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Book V

p. 129

Regulus, the consul, who was their prisoner, to urge his countrymen to agree to the terms. When he came into the senate-chamber, clad as a prisoner in Punic garments, and the Carthaginian ambassadors had retired, he exposed to the Senate the desperate state of Carthaginian affairs, and advised that either the war should be prosecuted vigorously, or that more satisfactory conditions of peace should be insisted on. For this reason, after he had returned voluntarily to Carthage, the Carthaginians put him to death by enclosing him in a standing posture in a box the planks of which were stuck full of iron spikes so that he could not possibly lie down. Nevertheless peace was made on conditions more satisfactory to the Romans.

The conditions were these: All Roman prisoners and deserters held by the Carthaginians were to be delivered up; Sicily and the small neighboring islands to be surrendered to the Romans; the Carthaginians not to initiate any war against Syracuse or its ruler, Hiero, nor to recruit mercenaries in any part of Italy; the Carthaginians to pay the Romans a war indemnity of 2000 Euboïc talents in twenty years, in yearly instalments payable at Rome. The Euboïc talent is equal to 7000 Alexandrine drachmas. So ended the first war between the Romans and the Carthaginians for the possession of Sicily, having lasted twenty-four years, in which the Romans lost 700 ships and the Carthaginians 500. In this way the chief part of Sicily (all of it that had been held by the Carthaginians) passed into the possession of the Romans. The latter levied tribute on the

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.