Author Description

Dio Chrysostom (c. A.D. 45-115) is one of the most important writers, thinkers, and politicians from the flourishing world of the Greeks under Rome. His many surviving essays and speeches offer historians, philosophers, and students of literature an impressive range of high-quality writing, original reflection on ethics and social affairs, and intelligent, complex appraisal of the Roman Empire at the height of its power. This volume contains eleven new assessments of the key areas of Dio's life and works by an international team of experts. For the first time, studies of Dio's thoughts on civic life under the Roman Empire are placed alongside studies of the sophisticated literary techniques that enabled him to expound his political and social message and of the philosophical sources that gave him the moral authority to do so. A common theme throughout is the interrelation of writing and power against the background of Dio's firm commitment to Hellenism in the changed circumstances of Roman rule.