Scanned text contains errors.
464 GREEK LITERATURE.
edition of the entire works of Arrian is by DUbner and C. Miiller, in Didot's Bibliotheca Gr&ca, Paris, 1846, 8vo.
XIII. appianus ('A-a-THcWs),1 a native of Alexandrea, lived at Rome during the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius, as we gather from various passages in his work. We have hardly any particulars of his life, for his autobiography, to which he refers at the end of the preface to his history, is now lost. In the same passage he mentions that he was a man of considerable distinction at Alexandrea, and afterward removed to Rome, where he was engaged in pleading causes in the courts of the emperors. He further states that the emperors considered him worthy to be intrusted with the management of their affairs, which Schweighaeuser and others interpret to mean that he was appointed to the office of procurator or praefectus of Egypt. There is, however, no reason for this supposition. We know, from a letter of Fronto, that it was the office of procurator which he held ; but whether he had the management of the emperor's finances at Rome, or went to some province in this capacity, is quite uncertain.
Appian wrote a Roman history ('P&ytaiW, or 'Pa/uu/c^ 'Iffropta), in twenty-four books, on a plan different from that of most historians. He did not treat the history of the Roman empire as a whole, in chronological order, following the series of events ; but he gave a separate account of the affairs of each country, from the time that it became connected with the Romans till it was finally incorporated in the Roman empire. The first foreign people with whom the Romans came in contact were the Gauls; and consequently his history, according to his plan, would have begun with that people. But, in order to make the work a complete history of Rome, he devoted the first three books to an account of the early times, and of the various nations of Italy which Rome subdued. The subjects of the different books were : 1. The kingly period. 2. Italy. 3. The Samnites. 4. The Gauls or Celts. 5. Sicily and the other islands. 6. Spain. 7. Hannibal's wars. 8. Libya, Carthage, and Numidia. 9. Macedonia. 10. Greece, and the Greek states in Asia Minor. 11. Syria and. Parthia. 12. The war with Mithradates. 13-21. The civil wars (yEfjL(f>v\ia), in nine books, from those of Marius and Sulla to the battle of Actium. The last four books, also, had the title of ra Alyvimaffd. 22. 'EfcaTwraeria, comprising the history of a hundred years, from the battle of Actium to the beginning of Vespasian's reign. 23. The wars with II-lyria. 24. Those with Arabia.
We possess only eleven of these complete, namely, the sixth, seventh, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and twenty-third. There are also fragments of several of the others. The Parthian history, which has come down to us as part of the eleventh book, has been proved by Schweighaeuser to be no work of Appian, but merely a compilation from Plutarch's lives of Antony and Cras-sus, probably made in the Middle Ages. Appian's work is a mere compilation. In the early times he.chiefly followed Dionysius, as far as the latter went, and his work makes up, to a considerable extent, for the
J Smith, Diet. Biogr., s. v.
