The Roman Antiquities is a twenty-book history of Rome composed in Attic Greek by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek rhetorician and historian who resided in Rome during the Augustan era. Begun after Dionysius came to Rome in 30 BCE and published from 7 BCE, the work runs from the city's mythical origins, tracing its foundation to Greek colonists, through to the eve of the First Punic War in 264 BCE. Its structure combines an annalistic year-by-year chronicle with extended rhetorical set-pieces, including elaborate speeches and extensive digressions on Roman customs, laws, and political institutions.
The complete text has not survived antiquity. The first eleven books, which cover the period from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy to the year 441 BCE, remain largely intact. Books twelve to twenty are lost, with their content known only through fragments and excerpts preserved in later Byzantine epitomes and historical collections. Dionysius wrote for Greek readers. He argues that the Romans were Greek in origin, and in his preface he presents the work as a correction of Greek historians who belittled Rome and ascribed its rise to fortune rather than to the conduct of its people and its ancestral institutions.
The transmission of the text relied on medieval manuscripts, the oldest of which for the first ten books dates to the tenth century. The first printed edition appeared in 1546.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities: summary and contents (PDF)
Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities: summary and contents (Markdown)
Contents
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Αʹ Book I
Dionysius opens the Roman Antiquities with a preface on his choice of subject, his years in Rome and his sources, then traces the peoples who held the site before Rome: the Aborigines, the Pelasgians, Evander's Arcadians and Heracles. Aeneas's wanderings, with the rival accounts of where he settled and died, lead to Alba Longa and the founding by Romulus and Remus, and the book closes on his claim that the Romans have lived as Greeks from the start.
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Βʹ Book II
Romulus's city and its institutions fill Book 2: the site by the Tiber, the division into patricians and plebeians, patronage, the senate and the curiae, and the rape of the Sabine women. Dionysius sets Piso's version of Tarpeia's treachery against Fabius's, narrates the war with Titus Tatius and Romulus's end, and gives the reign of Numa Pompilius and his religious laws, closing with Numa's death after a reign of forty-three years and his burial on the Janiculum.
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Γʹ Book III
Tullus Hostilius is chosen king at the start of Book 3, and his war with Alba brings the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii, the razing of Alba and the transfer of its people to Rome, and the punishment of the Alban leader Mettius Fufetius, torn apart between two teams of horses. The reigns of Ancus Marcius and Tarquinius Priscus follow, ending with Tarquinius struck down by assassins posing as countrymen quarrelling over goats.
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Δʹ Book IV
Servius Tullius, born to a captive woman of Corniculum, is the first subject of Book 4: his rise, his reforms of the classes and centuries, and his murder, after which his daughter Tullia hails her husband Tarquinius as king. The reign of Tarquinius Superbus follows, with the taking of Gabii and the rape of Lucretia, and the book ends as the camp at Ardea refuses him and he flees to Gabii.
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Εʹ Book V
The first consuls, Brutus and Collatinus, bind the people by oath never to restore a king, and Book 5 follows the young Republic through the conspiracy to bring back the Tarquins, the war with Porsenna, and Valerius Publicola's campaigns against the Sabines, including a night attack betrayed by a deserter. It closes with the appointment of the first dictator and a reflection on why that office later became hated.
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Ϛʹ Book VI
A decree letting Roman and Latin wives choose between husband and home city opens Book 6, which goes on to the battle at Lake Regillus and the burden of debt that drives the plebeians to secede. In the senate Menenius Agrippa argues for reconciliation, the tribunate is created, and the book ends with Menenius buried at public expense, the people giving their contributions to his children, and a new census.
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Ζʹ Book VII
Famine follows the secession in Book 7, and Rome sends for grain to Etruria, Campania and Sicily, where Dionysius corrects Roman historians who named Dionysius of Syracuse rather than Gelon as tyrant. The centre of the book is the conflict over Marcius Coriolanus, with speeches in the senate for the people's right to try him; it ends with a long account of the procession and games of the Roman festival, held again because a slave had been flogged ahead of the procession.
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Ηʹ Book VIII
Exiled, Marcius Coriolanus goes by night to Antium and offers his services to the Volscians, and Book 8 follows his campaign against Rome, the embassies that plead with him, his withdrawal at his mother's entreaty and his death. The second half turns to Spurius Cassius's land law and his condemnation, and to the wars with the Aequi, the Volscians and Veii that occupy the following consuls.
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Θʹ Book IX
Opening in the year of Xerxes' invasion of Greece, Book 9 follows Rome's wars with Veii and the Etruscans, the destruction of the Fabii at the Cremera, and campaigns against the Aequi and Volsci, alongside the tribunes' agitation over land and the trials of former consuls. The book ends with Lucretius and Veturius returning in triumph, one in a chariot and one on foot, and Dionysius explains the two kinds of triumph.
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Ιʹ Book X
The tribunes' demand that Rome's law be written down and equal for all drives Book 10, as Dionysius explains that justice had rested with the kings and then the consuls. The book covers Appius Herdonius's seizure of the Capitol, the dictatorship of Cincinnatus, the doubling of the tribunes to ten, and the decemvirs and their laws, including the added ban on marriage between patricians and plebeians, and ends as the decemvirs keep office into a further year without any decree.
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ΙΑʹ Book XI
How the Romans brought down the decemvirs is the subject of Book 11, introduced by Dionysius's case for writing political history in full detail. Appius Claudius's client claims Verginia as the daughter of his slave woman, and the case leads to the overthrow of the decemvirate; the book then turns to the military tribunes with consular power, and ends with the consuls' proposal to revive the census, neglected for seventeen years.
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ΙΒʹ Book XII
Spurius Maelius, a wealthy knight who buys grain in Etruria during a famine and sells it cheaply or gives it away, falls under suspicion of aiming at tyranny in the first of the surviving excerpts of Book 12. Other extracts tell how Cossus killed Tolumnius, king of Veii, describe a drought and an epidemic of scab, and close at Veii, where Camillus falls after his petition to the gods and takes it as a sign that the gods have kept his misfortune slight.
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ΙΓʹ Book XIII
Camillus has the schoolmaster of Falerii, who led his pupils into the Roman camp, stripped and flogged at the start of the excerpts of Book 13. Others tell of his vow to the Hera of Veii, a plague, and the fine that drove him into exile. The Gauls fill the rest: the envoy Quintus Fabius who kills a Gallic chief, the taking of the city all but the Capitol, Hera's sacred geese, the ransom gold, and Camillus falling on the disordered Gauls.
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ΙΔʹ Book XIV
The land of the Celts, its rivers and the origins of its name, are described where Book 14 begins. Camillus then addresses his troops before battle with the Gauls, contrasting Roman armour and weapons with Gallic, and the last extract tells how the consul Marcius lifted the siege of Privernum after an envoy answered that his people would be loyal friends if free and never if enslaved.
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ΙΕʹ Book XV
What survives of Book 15 begins with Marcus Valerius fighting a Gallic champion while a raven strikes the Gaul's face from his helmet, earning him the name Corvinus. Manlius's address to the army after the mutiny in Campania, the Roman embassy to Naples over its harm to the Campanians, and the conference with the Samnites follow, ending with Rome voting war and sending both consuls into Samnium.
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ΙϚʹ Book XVI
Lightning strikes the army as it marches against the Samnites at the start of the surviving Book 16, prompting a reflection on lightning as a sign of reversal; then come the surrender at the Caudine Forks to Pontius and his own passage under the yoke later. Further passages tell of the military tribune Laetorius Mergus, who tried to force himself on a young soldier, the law that freed Romans bound for debt, and the cause of earthquakes at Rome.
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ΙΖʹ καὶ ΙΗʹ Books XVII and XVIII
The excerpts of Books 17 and 18, printed together, tell how the Samnite war was renewed after the Lucanians, attacked by the Samnites, sent hostages and won Rome's alliance. Most of what survives concerns the consul Postumius, who sets his soldiers to clear his own estate, orders the proconsul Fabius out of Samnium, dismisses his army and celebrates a triumph neither senate nor people allowed, and is condemned by every tribe.
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ΙΘʹ Book XIX
Book 19 survives as excerpts on the Greek cities of southern Italy and on Pyrrhus. Croton and Sybaris are named, Sparta's Partheniae found Tarentum where the oracle's goat dips its beard in the sea, and Artimedes of Chalcis settles at Rhegium. The longest extract has Pyrrhus answering the Roman envoys about the prisoners, tempting Fabricius in private with wealth, and, admiring his reply, releasing the prisoners without ransom.
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Κʹ Book XX
Pyrrhus's phalanx, allies and elephants are drawn up against the Roman legions at Ausculum at the start of what survives of Book 20. Later extracts tell how Decius, who had seized Rhegium, was blinded and handed to Fabricius and the ringleaders of his garrison flogged and beheaded in Rome, how Pyrrhus quoted Hector's lines to Ajax as if the Romans had spoken them to him, and how the consuls crushed a band of poor rebels led by a Samnite.