Dio's Rome, Volume 1

ccumulation of materials, a task in which ten active years (A.D. 200 to 210) were utilized. The actual labor of composition, continued for twelve years more at intervals of respite from duties of state, brought him in his narrative to the inception of the reign of his original patron, the first Severus.--All the foregoing facts are given us as Dio's own statement, in what is at present the twenty-third chapter of the seventy-second book, by that painter in miniature, Ioannes Xiphilinus.

It was now the year A.D. 223, Dio was either consul for the first time (as some assert) or had the consular office behind him, the world was richer by the loss of Elagabalus, and Alexander Severus reigned in his stead. Under this emperor the remaining books (Seventy-three to Eighty, inclusive) must have been composed, for Dio puts the finishing touches on his history in 229. Since by that time he was nearly eighty years of age and since he has written of no reign subsequent to Alexander's, we may conclude that he did no