Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus arrived in Rome sometime after the civil wars ended, carrying a scholar's ambition and a Greek's outsider eye. He would spend twenty-two years in that city, studying Latin, gathering materials, and teaching rhetoric to students who came to him from Rome's distinguished circles. What he produced in that time was a history of Rome so sweeping it ran to twenty books, tracing the city from its mythical origins all the way to the outbreak of the First Punic War in 264 BC. Only the first nine books survive intact. The rest exist as fragments, pulled from medieval Byzantine compilations and a manuscript unearthed centuries later in Milan. Who was this man, and why did a Greek scholar dedicate his life to writing Rome's story? What did he believe history was actually for? And what did he do with the founding myth of Romulus and Remus that no writer before him had attempted at such length?
Dionysius was born around 60 BC in Halicarnassus, a city on the southwestern coast of what is now Turkey, already famous as the birthplace of the historian Herodotus. His full name, as recorded in Greek, was Dionysios Alexándrou Halikarnasseús, meaning Dionysius, son of Alexander, of Halicarnassus. He flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus, a period when Rome was consolidating power over the Mediterranean world and when Greek intellectuals found both opportunity and tension in that new order.
In Rome, Dionysius gave lessons in rhetoric and moved among many distinguished men. His Latin studies were not casual: twenty-two years of preparation before his history appeared suggests a scholar who wanted to read primary sources in their original tongue and judge Roman institutions on their own terms. The date of his death is unknown, though he was still alive after 7 BC. In the 19th century, scholars commonly believed he was an ancestor of a later figure, Aelius Dionysius of Halicarnassus, though this remains an inference rather than a documented fact.
Dionysius opened his Roman Antiquities with a pointed admission: the Greek people, he wrote in the preamble to Book I, lacked basic information about Roman history, and he intended to fix that deficiency. The title he gave the work was Rhōmaikē Archaiologia, and it traced Rome's story from the mythical period through the start of the First Punic War across twenty books.
He is the first major historian of early Roman history whose work now survives, and several later ancient historians who wrote about the same period almost certainly used him as a source. The works of Appian, Plutarch, and Livy all describe similar people and events of early Rome. Livy and Dionysius together remain the only connected, detailed accounts of early Roman history that have come down to us.
His underlying argument was political and philosophical at once. Because his prime objective was to reconcile the Greeks to Roman rule, Dionysius focused on the good qualities of Rome's conquerors. He also argued, drawing on sources ancient even in his own time, that the Romans were genuine descendants of the older Greeks. History, in his formulation, is philosophy teaching by examples. That phrase captures his method: he was not merely recording events but constructing an argument through narrative.
The first nine books survive intact, covering Roman history from the mythical beginnings down to 462 BC. The remaining eleven books exist only as fragments preserved in the excerpts of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, and in an epitome discovered by Angelo Mai in a Milan manuscript. Book XI is the most substantial of these fragments, running to around fifty pages in a 2015 Aeterna Press edition, while the books that follow offer only twelve to fourteen pages each.
Book I covers the mythic early history of Italy down to 753 BC, including the history of Aeneas and his descendants and Dionysius's telling of the Romulus and Remus myth, ending with the death of Remus. Book II covers the first two kings of the Roman monarchy, Romulus and Numa Pompilius, from 753 to 673 BC. It includes the Sabine War, which Dionysius describes as involving numerous categories of officer, thousands of infantry, and cavalry combatants. He notes this is highly unlikely, calling it a common anachronism found in ancient historians.
Books III through V carry the story through the end of the monarchy, the overthrow of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, and the start of the Roman Republic. Books VI through IX move into the early Republic, covering the first Plebeian secession, the career of Coriolanus in Books VII and VIII, and concluding with the first two years of the decemvirate and the creation of the first Roman law tables.
The fragmentary later books push the narrative through the Samnite Wars, the Gauls' sack of Rome in 390 BC (Book XIV), and into the conflicts between Rome and Pyrrhus of Epirus. Book XIX describes how the city of Tarentum, threatened by Roman expansion into southern Italy, asked Pyrrhus to protect them. Book XX covers the Roman-Pyrrhic War and Pyrrhus's second invasion of Italy.
Dionysius's first two books present a unified account of the supposed Greek origin of Rome, merging a variety of sources into a firm narrative. Scholars have noted that this success came at the expense of concealing what archaeology reveals about primitive Roman actuality.
Dionysius wrote extensively on the Romulus and Remus myth, sometimes attributing direct quotations to its figures. The myth spans the first two volumes of his Roman Antiquities, beginning at Book I chapter 73 and concluding at Book II chapter 56.
He identifies the twins' mother as a vestal named Ilia Silvia, sometimes called Rea, descended from Aeneas of Troy and the daughter of King Latinus of the Original Latin tribes. This genealogy ties Rome simultaneously to Trojans and to Latins. Dionysius lays out different accounts of her pregnancy and the twins' conception without choosing among them.
Citing Fabius, Cincius, Porcius Cato, and Piso, he recounts the most common version: the twins are to be tossed into the Tiber, are left at the site of the ficus Ruminalis, and are rescued by a she-wolf who nurses them in front of her lair, the Lupercal, before Faustulus adopts them. Dionysius also records an alternate, non-fantastical version in which Numitor switches the twins at birth with two other infants. The twins are delivered by their grandfather to Faustulus and his wife Laurentia, described as a former prostitute. Plutarch's explanation, preserved in this context, is that lupa, the Latin word for wolf, was also a common term for members of her profession, and that this linguistic coincidence gave rise to the she-wolf legend.
The twins receive their education in the city of Gabii before eventually winning control of the area where Rome would be founded. The fatal dispute between them turned on which hill Rome should occupy: Romulus favored the Palatine Hill, Remus favored what later became known as Remoria, possibly the Aventine Hill. Their grandfather advised them to defer the decision to the gods through bird omens. Remus saw nine vultures first and claimed the gods' favor; Romulus saw a greater number and made the same claim. Fighting broke out between their followers, Remus was killed, and Romulus buried him at Remoria, giving the site its name.
After the foundation of the city, Romulus assembled the people and gave them a choice of government: monarchy, democracy, or oligarchy. His address praised bravery in war and moderation at home, and he explicitly denied any personal need to remain in power. The people chose to remain a kingdom and asked him to stay as king. Before accepting, he sought divine approval, prayed, witnessed what he interpreted as an auspicious lightning bolt, and declared that no king should take the throne without receiving approval from the gods.
Dionysius then provided a detailed account of the Romulus constitution, most probably based on the work of Terentius Varro. Romulus divided Rome into three tribes, each with a Tribune in charge. Each tribe was divided into ten curiae, and each curia into smaller units. The kingdom's land was distributed among them, and Dionysius alone among surviving authorities insists this distribution was made in equal lots. The Patrician class was separated from the Plebeian class. Each curia was responsible for providing soldiers in time of war.
A system of patronage called clientela was established, along with a senate that Dionysius attributed to Greek influence, and a personal bodyguard of three hundred of the strongest and fittest among the nobles. This bodyguard, the celeres, took their name either from their quickness or, according to Valerius Antias, from their commander.
The marriage laws drew particular praise from Dionysius. By declaring that wives would share equally in the possessions and conduct of their husbands, Romulus promoted virtue in the one and deterred mistreatment by the other. Wives could inherit upon their husband's death. Adultery by a wife was treated as a serious crime, though drunkenness could be a mitigating factor in determining the appropriate punishment. Because of these laws, Dionysius claimed that not a single Roman couple divorced over the following five centuries. Native-born free Romans were limited to two forms of employment: farming and the army. All other occupations were filled by slaves or non-Roman labor.
Beyond his history, Dionysius produced a body of rhetorical treatises that show he had thoroughly studied the best Attic models. His literary style was atticistic, deliberately imitating Classical Attic Greek at its peak. His collected rhetorical works include The Art of Rhetoric, described as a collection of essays on rhetorical theory that is incomplete and almost certainly not entirely his own work; The Arrangement of Words, which concerns how words combine across different styles of oratory; and On Imitation, a fragmentary work on the best models in different kinds of literature and how to emulate them.
His Commentaries on the Attic Orators covers Lysias, Isaeus, Isocrates, and, by way of supplement, Dinarchus. Two further treatises address Demosthenes and Thucydides specifically: On the Admirable Style of Demosthenes and On the Character of Thucydides. These last two works were supplemented by letters to Gn. Pompeius and Ammaeus.
The concept now called Dionysian imitatio is the literary method Dionysius formulated: a rhetorical practice of emulating, adapting, reworking, and enriching a source text by an earlier author. It shows marked similarities with Quintilian's view of imitation, and both may derive from a common earlier source. Where Aristotle's mimesis, formulated in the 4th century BC, was concerned only with imitation of nature and not imitation of other authors, Dionysius's concept shifted that entirely toward authors as models. Latin orators and rhetoricians adopted his method and discarded Aristotle's. His view of paideia, the necessity of grounding education in true knowledge of classical sources, endured for centuries as something integral to the identity of the Greek elite.
It is widely accepted that Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews was influenced by Dionysius's Roman Antiquities, though in recent years several scholars have contested this view. Along with Livy, Dionysius became one of the primary sources for later writers on the Roman foundation myth, including Plutarch.
The editorial history of his works stretches from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Friedrich Sylburg, who lived from 1536 to 1596, edited the collected works in a parallel Greek and Latin edition published in Frankfurt in 1586. Johann Jakob Reiske produced a complete edition between 1774 and 1777. The Archaeologia was edited by A. Kiessling between 1860 and 1870 and continued by other hands into 1925. Hermann Usener and Ludwig Radermacher edited his rhetorical works in the Teubner series between 1899 and 1929.
The first English translation appeared in 1758, prepared by Edward Spelman. Earnest Cary's English translation for the Harvard University Press Loeb Classical Library appeared in seven volumes between 1937 and 1950. Stephen Usher translated his critical essays for the same press, with the first volume appearing in 1974 and the second in 1985. A French edition of the Roman Antiquities by V. Fromentin and J. H. Sautel began publication in 1998 in the Collection Budé. The letter to Gn. Pompeius, included in Usener and Radermacher's second volume, preserves one of the clearest windows into how Dionysius understood the relationship between rhetoric and historical writing.
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Common questions
Who was Dionysius of Halicarnassus?
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric born around 60 BC in Halicarnassus. He moved to Rome after the civil wars ended, spent twenty-two years studying Latin and preparing his history, and flourished during the reign of Emperor Augustus.
What is the Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus?
Roman Antiquities, known in Greek as Rhōmaikē Archaiologia, is a history of Rome in twenty books covering events from the mythical period to the outbreak of the First Punic War in 264 BC. Only the first nine books survive intact; the remaining books exist as fragments preserved in Byzantine compilations and a Milan manuscript.
How did Dionysius of Halicarnassus describe the Romulus and Remus myth?
Dionysius wrote about Romulus and Remus across Book I chapter 73 through Book II chapter 56 of his Roman Antiquities. He identified their mother as a vestal named Ilia Silvia, recorded multiple versions of their survival including both the she-wolf story and a non-fantastical alternate account, and described how a dispute over whether to build Rome on the Palatine Hill or Remoria led to the death of Remus.
What was Dionysian imitatio?
Dionysian imitatio was Dionysius's formulation of a rhetorical practice involving emulating, adapting, reworking, and enriching a source text by an earlier author. It differed from Aristotle's mimesis, which addressed only imitation of nature, and was adopted by Latin orators and rhetoricians who discarded the Aristotelian approach.
How long did Dionysius of Halicarnassus spend in Rome preparing his history?
Dionysius spent twenty-two years in Rome studying Latin, researching literature, and preparing materials for his Roman Antiquities. During that time he also taught rhetoric and moved in the company of many distinguished men.
What other works did Dionysius of Halicarnassus write besides the Roman Antiquities?
Dionysius wrote several rhetorical treatises including The Art of Rhetoric, The Arrangement of Words, On Imitation, Commentaries on the Attic Orators covering Lysias, Isaeus, Isocrates, and Dinarchus, On the Admirable Style of Demosthenes, and On the Character of Thucydides. He also wrote letters to Gn. Pompeius and Ammaeus.
All sources
7 references cited across the entry
- 1BookEncyclopedia of Ancient GreeceT. Hidber — Routledge — 31 Oct 2013
- 2BookA Dictionary of Classical AntiquitiesJ. E. Sandys — 1894
- 3BookDictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and MythologyLeonhard Schmitz — 1867
- 4BookThe Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of HalicarnassusUniversity of Chicago — March 29, 2018
- 5BookDionysius and the History of Archaic RomeE. Gabba — 1991
- 6BookThe Historians of Greece and RomeS. Usher — 1969