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 IPreface · Sections 9–10

Swipe or use the arrow keys.

English Page · Branch 7 of 315

Preface · Sections 9–10

Book Mode

Ancient Greek

p. 14

δὲ πολλὰ περὶ τὴν Λιβύην καὶ τὴν Εὐρώπην ἐξετρίφθησαν. Ἀσσυρίων τε αὖ καὶ Μήδων καὶ Περσῶν, τριῶν τῶνδε μεγίστων ἡγεμονιῶν εἰς Ἀλέξανδρον τὸν Φιλίππου, συντιθεμένων οὔτ’ ἂν ὁ χρόνος ἐφίκοιτο τῶν ἐνακοσίων ἐτῶν, ὅσα ἐστὶ Ῥωμαίοις ἐς τὸν παρόντα χρόνον, τό τε μέγεθος τῆς ἀρχῆς τῆς ἐκείνων οὐδὲ ἐς ἥμισυ νομίζω τῆσδε τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἀπαντᾶν, τεκμαιρόμενος, ὅτι Ῥωμαίοις ἀπό τε δύσεων καὶ τοῦ πρὸς ἑσπέραν ὠκεανοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ Καύκασον ὄρος καὶ ποταμὸν Εὐφράτην καὶ ἐς Αἰθίοπας τοὺς ἄνω Αἰγύπτου καὶ 〈δι’〉 Ἀράβων ἐπὶ τὸν ἑῷον ὠκεανὸν ἡ ἀρχὴ διεξέρχεται, καὶ ὅρος ἐστὶν αὐτοῖς ὁ ὠκεανὸς ἀνερχομένου τε καὶ δυομένου τοῦ θεοῦ, θαλάσσης τε πάσης ἡγεμονεύουσι τῆς ἐντὸς οὔσης καὶ νήσων ἁπασῶν καὶ ἐν τῷ ὠκεανῷ Βρεττανῶν.

Μήδοις δὲ καὶ Πέρσαις ἥ τε πλείστη θάλασσα [ἢ] ὁ Παμφύλιος κόλπος ἦν καὶ μία νῆσος ἡ Κύπρος ἢ 〈εἰ〉 τί που ἄλλο σμικρὸν τῆς Ἰωνίας ἐν θαλάσσῃ· τοῦ τε Περσικοῦ κόλπου (καὶ γὰρ τοῦδε ἐκράτουν) πόσον τι καὶ τὸ τούτου πέλαγός ἐστιν; τὰ δὲ δὴ Μακεδόνων, τὰ μὲν πρὸ Φιλίππου τοῦ Ἀμύντου καὶ πάνυ σμικρὰ ἦν, καὶ ἔστιν ὧν ὑπήκουσαν· τὰ δὲ αὐτοῦ Φιλίππου πόνου μὲν καὶ ταλαιπωρίας ἔγεμεν οὐ μεμπτῆς, ἀλλὰ καὶ ταῦτα περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ τὰ πρόσχωρα μόνα ἦν.

ἐπὶ δὲ Ἀλεξάνδρου μεγέθει τε καὶ πλήθει καὶ εὐτυχίᾳ καὶ ταχυεργίᾳ διαλάμψασα ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ ὀλίγου δεῖν εἰς ἄπειρον καὶ ἀμίμητον ἐλθοῦσα διὰ τὴν βραχύτητα τοῦ χρόνου προσέοικεν ἀστραπῇ λαμπρᾷ· ἧς γε καὶ διαλυθείσης ἐς πολλὰς σατραπείας ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐξέλαμπε τὰ μέρη.

καὶ τοῖς

Appian’s Roman History, Volume I: Preface

p. 15

in the defence, while the conquest of Africa and of Europe was in many cases very exhausting. Again, the duration of the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians taken together (the three greatest empires before Alexander), does not amount to nine hundred years, which that of Rome has already reached, and the size of their empire I think was not half that of the Romans, whose boundaries extend from the setting of the sun and the Western ocean to Mount Caucasus and the river Euphrates, and through Egypt to Ethiopia and through Arabia as far as the Eastern ocean, so that their boundary is the ocean both where the sun-god rises and where he sinks, while they control the entire Mediterranean, and all its islands as well as Britain in the ocean. The greatest sea-power of the Medes and Persians included either the gulf of Pamphylia and the single island of Cyprus or perhaps some other small islets belonging to Ionia in the Mediterranean. They controlled the Persian gulf also, but how much of a sea is that?

The history of Macedonia before Philip, the son of Amyntas, was of very small account; there was a time, indeed, when the Macedonians were a subject race. The reign of Philip himself was full of toil and struggles which were not contemptible, yet even his deeds concerned only Greece and the neighboring country. The empire of Alexander was splendid in its magnitude, in its armies, in the success and rapidity of his conquests, and it wanted little of being boundless and unexampled, yet in its shortness of duration it was like a brilliant flash of lightning. Although broken into several satrapies even the parts were splendid. The kings of my own

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.