Appian

Life

Appian of Alexandria wrote an autobiography, but it is almost completely lost, and consequently we hardly know anything about the historian from Alexandria. We have to distill information about his life from his own writings and a letter by Cornelius Fronto, a famous littérateur living in Rome in the mid-second century, and the tutor of the future emperor Marcus Aurelius.

In spite of this lack of information, it is certain that Appian was born in c.95 in Alexandria, the capital of Roman Egypt, and belonged to the wealthy upper class. After all, his parents were Roman citizens and could pay for their son's formal education. He became a barrister and boasted in the introduction to his Roman History "that he pleaded cases in Rome before the emperors".^note[Appian, Roman History, Preface 15.]

This must have happened after c.120, because Appian states in one of his surviving fragments that he managed to escape from a band of Jewish looters who pursued him in the marshes of the Nile.^note[Appian, Roman History, fragment of Book 24.] This piece of information can only be dated to 116-117, when the Jews of the Cyrenaica and Egypt revolted, believing that one Lukuas was the Messiah (more...). As Appian was still in Egypt by the end of the reign of Trajan, he must have moved to Rome at a later date, and the emperors whom he claims to have addressed must therefore have been either Hadrian and Antoninus Pius or Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.

The Roman History was finished before 165, because Appian mentions the river Euphrates as the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire,^note[Appian, Roman History, Preface 2.] which was no longer true after the campaigns of Lucius Verus. Perhaps we can be a bit more precise. Appian mentions that during the reign of Hadrian, parts of Italy were ruled by a proconsul.^note[Appian, Roman History 13.38.] He adds that this policy was reversed by Antoninus Pius, but is unaware of its reintroduction by Marcus Aurelius in 162. This suggests that the Roman History was completed during the reign of Antoninus Pius. This does not exclude the possibility that Appian pleaded cases before Marcus Aurelius, who was co-emperor with Antoninus Pius after 147.

Fronto's letter, a request on behalf of Appian to give him the rank of procurator, can be dated during the coregency, i.e., between 147 and 161. It is interesting that he applied for this office, because it means that he belonged to the equestrian class, the "second class" of Roman citizens (after the senatorial order). We know that Appian actually won his office, but it is not certain whether it was merely a honorific or a real job.

This is all we know about Appian of Alexandria: born as a member of a wealthy family in c.95, working as a barrister in Rome after 120, becoming procurator after 147, he published a Roman History that appeared before 162.

The Roman History

Chronology versus Topography

The most remarkable aspect of this work, as Appian announces in his Preface, is its division.^note[Appian, Roman History, Preface 13.] For example, Book 4 describes the wars against the Gauls from the very beginning, the sack of Rome in 387/386 BCE, to Caesar's conquest of Gaul, more than three centuries later. Although this organization is sometimes confusing (e.g., when Appian ignores Caesar's creation of a power base in Gaul in his account of the civil war against Pompey), the advantage of his system clearly outweighs these minor irritations. Appian offers much more topographical clarity and gives us a better look on the strategic choices made by commanders. His account of the Mithridatic Wars is a case in point.

Moreover, Appian is not faced with the problem that historians who strictly adhered to the chronological sequence of events had to cope with: if an enemy of Rome has a specific custom, they had to explain it twice or leave it unexplained.

Finally, it should be noted that this way of arranging the subject matter prevents the story from becoming too much centered on Rome. This might have been fine with earlier historians (e.g., to Livy), but in the second century, the provinces of the Roman empire were almost equals of Italy, and a Rome-centered narrative was no longer acceptable.

Although Appian uses a geographical division of his subject matter, the people whose subjection he describes are mentioned in chronological order. He places the various people who fought against Rome in the order in which they first made contact. Only Books 13-17 do not fit in this scheme: Romans fighting against Romans. These books are the first ones of the second half of the project, and this is no coincidence. In the first twelve books, Rome has conquered the world; now it, has to fight its most formidable opponent - itself.

Sources

Like his younger colleague Cassius Dio, Appian rarely mentions his sources, and probably for the same reason: he does not follow one single source, but has checked more than one older text. His contemporary Arrian of Nicomedia did the same in his book on Alexander the Great: where his two main sources agreed, he accepted their story as the truth,^note[Arrian, Anabasis, Preface.] mentioning divergences only when they seemed important. Ancient historians did not often check the sources of their sources (which meant a visit to an inaccessible archive, if there was an archive at all), but there is one instance where we can see Appian paraphrasing an original document (Mark Antony's funeral speech of Julius Caesar; text) and there are no doubt other instances, which we do not recognize.

Appian was aware that foundation legends were often invented. He had read a lot - his Greek contains latinisms that betray that he was well-acquainted with what the Greeks of his age disdainfully called "the other language" - and was capable of establishing the reliability of his information and reading between the lines. The old theory that Greek and Roman historians used to work with one source, which they retold in their own words and in which they inserted information from other sources, may be true for authors like Livy, but not for Appian. His practice was probably the same as that of Cassius Dio, who was to write another Roman History two generations later: he read extensively, made notes, had an independent mind, and told his own story.

Right at the beginning of the Iberian Wars, Appian shows that he is master of his subject. When ancient historians introduced a faraway country, they would usually describe the first settlers of the country. Even serious historians like Thucydides and Tacitus digressed upon those antiquities when they introduced wars against the Sicilians and Jews.^note[Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 6.1-5; Tacitus, Histories 5.2-5.] Appian is more businesslike: "What nations occupied it first, and who came after them, it is not very important for me to inquire, in writing merely Roman history".^note[Appian, Roman History, Iberian Wars 2.]

Causality

Most ancient authors believed that if something happened, there was always an individual who was responsible. In other words, historical causality was reduced to persons. This is called methological individualism. The social sciences have shown that more abstract entities like unemployment can be a cause as well. Appian appears to be the only ancient writer who was aware of this: he recognized the social causes of the Roman civil wars.^note[Appian, Roman History, Civil Wars 1.1-10.]

The Rise of a Superpower

And the story was that of the growth of an Empire that had achieved "a size and duration that was unique in history", as Appian explains in his preface.^note[Appian, Roman History, Preface 8.] he fundamental cause of the triumph of Rome was, in his view, that it had been divinely ordained that the Mediterranean world would unite under one ruler. About the precise nature of this providential process, Appian is unclear: he uses expressions like "the divine", "fate", "the god", or "heaven". But the result was clear, and it was not a bad thing that in his own age humankind was ruled by one single government.

To this grand theme, Appian subordinates all other information. No legendary tales, therefore, no constitutional niceties, and no attempts to date events precisely. Where Thucydides goes to great lengths to establish the moment at which the Archidamian War began,^note[Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.1.] Appian thinks it is sufficient to date the beginning of Roman involvement in, for example, Catalonia to "about the 140th Olympiad" and the outbreak of the First Celtiberian War to "about the 150th Olympiad": in other words, to 220-216 and 180-176 BC, where modern historians would have preferred to read 218 and 181 BCE.^note[Appian, Roman History, Iberian Wars 4 and 42.]

His audience must have been interested in Appian's account. Although the Greek-speaking elites of the eastern half of the Mediterranean had long considered the Romans as culturally inferior, things had began to change. Appian's colleague Arrian had made a career as a civil servant, culminating in a consulship in 129 or 130, and once speaks about "we" when he describes the Romans. People like these had accepted Roman superiority, had benefited from it, and were interested in the rise of Rome. But many of them must have found it difficult to learn Latin. It was for them that the History of the Roman Empire was written.

The savage master

It is not known how Appian treated Octavian's war against Mark Antony and Cleopatra; nor do we know how he dealt with the rule of Augustus. However, it seems that Appian regarded the crisis of the Civil Wars as some kind of purification that created a Rome that was worthy of world rule. The competitiveness among the senators had created an empire of a size "that was unique in history",^note[Appian, Roman History, Preface 8.] but if it wished for a duration equally unique, Rome had to learn a thing or two. Appian's theme is that which the Athenian playwright Aeschylus had introduced in his Prometheus: why should the all-powerful also be just?

The taming of the savage master of the Mediterranean world is Appian's second theme. Rome had become the ruler of the world, and Appian accepted this because Rome had come to deserve its power. But Alexandria remained Appian's fatherland, and he would never see the world from a Roman point of view. He changed a traditionally Rome-centered history into a story that was told from the periphery. Although Appian had pleaded cases before the emperors in Rome, he remained a man from the province.

Summary

Appian is a far better historian than classicists have been willing to accept. He identified good sources and used them with due criticism (e.g., using the Commentaries on the Illyrian wars by the emperor Augustus, and complaining about their incompleteness). It must be stressed that he is the only ancient author who recognized the social causes of the Roman civil wars, for which Appian remains one of the most important sources. He is also a fine writer, who can vividly describe events, and knows how to evoke the smaller and larger tragedies that are history. He includes nice digressions, has an eye for the better anecdote, and does not ignore the interesting detail. Never has the stylistic device of repetition been used more effectively than by Appian in his shocking account of the persecution of the enemies of the Second Triumvirate, which belongs to the finest that was ever written in Greek. In other words, Appian falls short of no meaningful standard, except that of the hyperprofessionalized study of history of our own age.

Literature

There is an excellent Penguin edition of the Civil Wars, translated and introduced by John Carter.

• K. Broderson, "Appian und sein Werk", in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.34.1 (1993) 339-363
• Emilio Gabba, Appiano e la storia delle Guerre Civili, 1956 Firenze
• Alain Gowing, The Triumviral Narratives of Appian and Cassius Dio, 1992 Ann Arbor
• Martin Hose, Erneuerung und Vergangenheit. Die Historiker im Imperium Romanum von Florus bis Cassius Dio (1994 Stuttgart)
• I. Hahn & G. Nemeth, "Appian und Rom", in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.34.1 (1993) 364-402