The atmosphere of Dio’s Roman History is serious to a degree.  Its author never loses sight of the fact that by his labor he is conferring a substantial benefit upon mankind, and he follows, moreover, a particular historical theory, popular at the time, which allows little chance for sportiveness or wit.  Just as the early French drama could concern itself only with personages of noble or royal rank, so Dio’s ideal compels him for the most part to restrict himself to the large transactions of governments or rulers and to diminish the consideration that idiosyncrasies of private life or points of antiquarian interest might otherwise seem to claim.  The name of this ideal is “Dignity” ([Greek:  onkos] is the Greek), a principle of construction which is opposed to a narration adorned with details.  However much it may have been overworked at times, its influence was certainly healthful, for it demanded that the material be handled in organic masses to prevent the reader from being lost in a confused mass of minutiae.  Racy gossip and old wives’ tales are to be replaced by philosophic reflection and pictures of temperament.  Instead of mere lists of anecdotes there must be a careful survey of political relations.  Names, numbers, and exact dates may often be dispensed with.  Still, amid all this, there is enough humor of situation in the gigantic tale and enough latitude of speech on the part of the acting personages to prevent monotony and to render intellectual scintillations of the compiler comparatively unnecessary.  Occasionally, for the sake of sharper focus on the portrait of some leader, Dio will introduce this or that trivial incident and may perhaps feel called upon immediately, under the strictness of his self-imposed regime, to apologize or justify himself.

The style of the original is rendered somewhat difficult by a conscious imitation of the involved sentence-unit found in Thukydides (though reminiscences of Herodotos and Demosthenes also abound) but gives an effect of solidity that is symmetrical with both the method and the man.  Moreover, one may assert of it what Matthew Arnold declared could not be said regarding Homer’s style, that it rises and falls with the matter it treats, so that at every climax we may be sure of finding the charm of vividness and at many intermediate points the merit of grace.  It is a long course that our historian, pressed by official cares, has to cover, and he accomplishes his difficult task with creditable zeal:  finally, when his Thousand Years of Rome is done, he compares himself to a warrior helped by a protecting deity from the scene of conflict.  Surely it must have been one of the major battles of his energetic life to wrest from the formless void this orderly record of actions and events embroidered with discussion of the motives for those actions and the causes of such events.