DIONEIA

The Dioneia Project aims to elaborate and to publish a handbook on Cassius Dio (ca 160-230 AD), whose Roman History (80 books, written in Greek) covers almost a millenium, from the foundation of the Urbs till the reign of Severus Alexander. The publication is planned for 2015 at Ausonius Editions (Pessac, France), probably with the Classical Press of Wales (Swansea, UK) as a partner. This book will be designed on the pattern of the Companions published these last years by Brill or Cambridge University Press (http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=26345, http://cco.cambridge.org/public_home). Brill's Companion to Thucydides (Leiden, 2006) in particular might be considered as a model. As for contents, an international team of scholars will offer some 40 essays dealing with every aspect of the historian and his oeuvre, and arranged in a few large, thematic chapters. Such a handbook should attain two objectives. First, it should provide an up-to-date state of scholarship concerning the big issues in Dionean studies as determined by the groundbreaking work of Fergus Millar some 50 years ago (A Study of Cassius Dio, Oxford, 1964). Second, the book should go further and suggest new, exploratory paths. Indeed, some points, however legitimate and interesting, have been deliberately overlooked or have failed to attract the attention of researchers up to now. The Dioneia Project will be run by a multidisciplinary team of French and Italian experts in Ancient history and philology. It should be noted that most of these scholars are taking part in another, closely related project, i.e. the critical edition (with French translation and commentary) of Dio’s Roman History which is being published in the “Collection des Universités de France”, Belles Lettres (generally known as “Budé”).