sub-climaces and one grand climax:  and the interest is apt to flag through being obliged to divide itself among many districts.  The same results, both good and bad, are observable in Thukydides, whom Dio follows in constructive theory as well as style.  It has already been said that our historian sacrifices sharpness of dates to the Onkos, depending, doubtless, on his chronological arrangements to make good the loss.  Usually it does so, but occasionally confusion arises.  Whether because he noticed this or not, he begins at the opening of the fifty-first book to be accurate in his dates, generally stating the exact day.  Rarely, Dio lets his interest run away with him and mixes the two economies.

If we read the pages closely, we find that by Dio’s own statement his work falls properly into three parts.  The first consists of the first fifty-one books, from the landing of AEneas to the establishment of the empire by Octavianus.  Up to that time, Dio says (in LIII, 19), political action had been taken openly, after discussion in the senate and before the people.  Everybody knew the facts, and in case any authors distorted them, the public records were open for any one to consult.  After that time, however, the rulers commonly kept their acts and discussions secret; and their censored accounts, when made public, were naturally looked upon by the man in the street with doubt and suspicion.  Hence, from this point, says the historian, a radical difference must inevitably be found in the character of his account.

The second portion, opening with Book Fifty-two, ends at the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 B.C.).  In LXXI, 36, 4 Dio admits that the old splendor ended with Marcus and was not renewed.  His history, he says, makes here a sheer descent ([Greek:  katapiptei]) from the golden to the iron age.  It fades, as it were, into the light of common day in a double sense:  for the events succeeding this reign Dio himself was able to observe as an intelligent eyewitness.

The third section, then, extends from the beginning of Book Seventy-two to the end of the work.  Here Dio breaks away oftener than before from his servility to the Dignity of History, only to display a far more contemptible servility to his imperial masters.  According to his own account he stood by and passively allowed atrocities to be multiplied about him, nor does he venture to express any forceful indignation at the performance of such deeds.  Had he protested, the world’s knowledge of Rome’s degenerate tyrants would undoubtedly have been less complete than it now is; and Dio was quite enough of an egotist to believe that his own life and work were of paramount importance.  If we compare him unfavorably with Epictetus, we must remember that the latter was obscure enough to be ignored.

In both the second and the third parts, that is to say throughout the entire imperial period, Dio is conceded to have committed an error in his point of view by making the relations of the emperor to the senate the leading idea in his narrative and subordinating other events to that relation.  Senator as he was, he naturally magnified its importance, and in an impartial estimate of his account one must allow for personal bias.