rom 1064 B.C. to 229
A.D. At present there are extant of that number complete only Books
Thirty-six to Sixty inclusive, treating the events of the years 68
B.C. to 47 A.D. The last twenty books, Sixty-one to Eighty, appear in
fairly reliable excerpts and epitomes, but for the first thirty-five
books we are dependent upon the merest scraps and fragments. How and
by what steps this great work disintegrated, and in what form it has
been preserved to modern times, this it is to be our next business to
trace.

It seems that Dio's work had no immediate influence, but "Time brings
roses", and in the Byzantine age we find that he had come to be
regarded as the canonical example of the way in which Roman History
should be written. Before this desirable result, however, had been
brought to pass, Books Twenty-two to Thirty-five inclusive had
disappeared. These gave the events of the years from the destruction
of Carthage and Corinth (in the middle of the second century B.C.) to
the activity of Lucullus in 69. A like fate befell Books Seventy and
Seventy-one at an early date. The first twenty-one books and the last
forty-five (save the two above noted) seem to have been extant in
their original forms at least as late as the twelfth century. Which
end of the already syncopated composition was the first to go the way
of all flesh (and parchment, too,) it would not be an easy matter to
determine. It is regarded by most scholars as certain that Ioannes
Zonaras, who lived in the twelfth century, had the first twenty-one
and the last forty-five for his epitomes. Hultsch, to be sure,
advances the opinion[1] that Books One to Twenty-one had by that time
fallen into a condensed form, the only one accessible; but the
majority of scholars are against him. After Zonaras's day both One to
Twenty-one and Sixty-one to Eighty suffer the corruption of moth and
of worm.

[Footnote 1: Iahni Annales, vol. 141, p. 290 sqq.]

The world has, then, in this twentieth century, those entire books of
Dio which have already been mentioned,--Thirty-six to Sixty,--and
something more. Let us first consider, accordingly, the condition in
which this intact remnant has come down to the immediate present, and
afterward the sources on which we have to depend for a knowledge of
the lost portion.

There are eleven manuscripts for this torso of Roman History, taking
their names from the library of final deposit, but they are not all,
by any means, of equal value. F