The ‘Age of Iron and Rust’ in Cassius Dio’s Roman History: Influences from Stoic Philosophy

Abstract

This paper discusses the impact of Stoic philosophy on Cassius Dio’s imperial books of his Roman History. It is demonstrated how fundamental Stoic ideas influenced Dio’s constitutional discussions and the role of the emperor as in the Agrippa-Maecenas debate in book 52, and how Dio evaluated political environments as well as political developments in the Empire with inspirations from Stoic logic. Moreover, this paper argues that the iron age in his contemporary narrative from the emperor Commodus to Caracalla is also fundamentally an iron age on the basis of Stoic values.