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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 (al-Iskandariyya) is the great Mediterranean port-city of northern Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and a leading centre of learning in antiquity. After the Muslim conquest of Egypt (642) it remained a major commercial and scholarly hub; the Shadhili Sufi Ibn Ata Allah al-Iskandari (d. 1309) took his nisba from the city, and the modernist reformer Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) was active in Egypt's intellectual life there and in Cairo.

In Alexandria at the same time

Aretaeus of Cappadocia, Dionysius Periegetes, Claudius Ptolemaeus, Harpocration, Achilles Tatius, Apollonius Dyscolus

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)