Lexis Supplementi | Supplements 2 Studi di Letteratura Greca e Latina | Lexis Studies in Greek and Latin Literature 2 e-ISSN 2724-3362 | ISSN 2210-8866 ISBN [ebook] 978-88-6969-472-1 | ISBN [print] 978-88-6969-473-8 Peer review | Open access 115 Submitted 2020-09-08 | Accepted 2020-10-13 | Published © 2020 Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution alone DOI 10.30687/978-88-6969-472-1/005 Cassius Dio and the Principate edited by Christopher Burden-Strevens, Jesper Majbom Madsen, Antonio Pistellato Edizioni Ca’Foscari Edizioni Ca’Foscari Δημοκρατεῖσθαι or μοναρχεῖσθαι, That is the Question: Cassius Dio and the Senatorial Principate Antonio Pistellato Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia Abstract Cassius Dio’s account of Caligula’s principate pivots on the divide between Caligula’s ‘democratic’ debut and his later decline into despotism. As Dio reports, the murder of the emperor in 41 CE polarised the Senate on the question of whether to abol- ish the Principate or to confirm it. It is likely that Dio’s interest in such a crucial passage depends on his own experience of the end of Commodus and the accession of Pertinax in 192-193 CE. The underpinning of his political thought is Stoic: when the relationship between the princeps and the Senate collapses, the solution is not so much ‘republican- ism’ as a ‘republican spirit’, to be intended as a fruitful cooperation between the two. Keywords Cassius Dio. Roman History. Caligula and Claudius. Commodus and Per- tinax. Cicero. Stoicism. Summary 1 Viewing Caligula and Claudius from the Severan Perspective. – 2 Dio’s Factual Models: Commodus and Pertinax. – 3 Conclusion: Stoicism in Action. As has been convincingly shown in recent years, Cassius Dio’s Roman Histo- ry deserves special attention in many respects – and this is true even when what we have is not exactly Dio’s text, but rather Dio’s text epitomized, par- ticularly when the epitomator’s scissors do not change the substance of Dio’s