‘Ritorno alla monarchia’, tra Cesare e Augusto: le origini del principato in Cassio Dione

Abstract

For Cassius Dio, there was no continuity between Republic and Principate. The Republic ended between 43 (institution of the triumvirate) and 42 BC (battle of Philippi); the ‘monarchy’ was established between 29 (Octavianus Imperator) and 27 (speech to the senators in January). The founder of the imperial monarchy, however, was not Augustus, but Caesar: his dictatorship was already a means to exert the same monarchic power of his adoptive son. In its inner complexity, such a representation of the transition from the Republic to the Principate is consistent with the way Dio reconstructed the origins of the Republic, in the first (lost) books of his Roman History.