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Appian of Alexandria

Appian of Alexandria

c. 95 CE–c. 165 CE · Alexandria

Appian of Alexandria (c. 95 - c. 165 CE) was a Greek historian of the Roman Empire who, after a public career, settled in Rome. He wrote a "Roman History" organized region by region, describing how Rome conquered each people in turn. His most important surviving books cover the Roman civil wars of the late Republic, and they are a key source for that turbulent era, including the rise of figures like Marius, Sulla, and Caesar.

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Stop 1 of 295–120Born

AlexandriaEgypt

What they did here

Born in Alexandria; historian of Rome.

About Alexandria

Alexandria is the main Mediterranean port of northern Egypt and the country's second city. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, it became the capital of the Ptolemies, whose Museum and Great Library made it the leading centre of Hellenistic learning. It also held one of the largest Jewish communities of antiquity, where the Greek Bible translation known as the Septuagint was produced and Philo wrote. Church tradition traces its patriarchate to Mark the Evangelist, and its catechetical school was led by Clement and Origen. Arab forces under Amr ibn al-As took the city in 641, and it remained a commercial and scholarly hub of the Islamic world; the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari was born there.

In Alexandria at the same time

Plutarch, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, Dionysius Periegetes, Claudius Ptolemaeus, Harpocration, Achilles Tatius

Across the traditions, in Alexandria at the same time

See other sages who lived in Alexandria→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Appian of Alexandria’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Appian of Alexandria’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(15)