Biography
Appian of Alexandria was a Greek-speaking Roman historian of the second century AD. His history arranged Rome’s wars by peoples and regions, while the five books of the Civil Wars followed the internal conflicts from the Gracchi to the rise of Augustus.
Major Works
Read the Original
These links lead to public-domain English translations or established digital classical libraries.
Reliability and Caution
Appian wrote long after the Republic and sometimes compresses chronology or combines traditions. Nevertheless, his organisation of the civil conflicts preserves a continuous narrative and details not found in the surviving works of other historians.
How Livarva Uses This Source
Livarva uses Appian especially for the Social War, Sulla’s march on Rome, the proscriptions, the civil wars and the political sequence that links one crisis to the next.