The three principal surviving Imperial Greek historians of Rome – Appian, Herodian, and Cassius Dio, look, at first blush, quite similar in their procedures. Comparison of Dio to the other two, and to what we know about Greco-Roman historiography, extant and attested, confirms that what he is doing is quite unusual. Investigation of how Dio himself views other historians – above all, two distinctive, but flawed, Republican figures, Cicero and Sallust – gives us a sharper sense of what Dio himself sees as important in historiography, and how he himself wishes to be seen.
