Dio's Roman history, with an English translation by Earnest Cary, PH.D., on the basis of the version of Herbert Baldwin Foster, PH.D. In nine volumes

I bought this book as one of materials for history at Hadrian's reign, which objective was totally satisfied.

As it is, I've been reading Dio piecemeal, having read his account of Augustus' reign in the Penguin edition and now his books on the reigns of the emperors from Claudius to Hadrian. Fact is, the latter are not Dio's original work, but an epitome composed by two Byzantines, Zonaras & Xiphilinius, one thousand years after original composition (and, at the time, Dio's books on the reign of Antoninus Pius had already been lost). I'm aware of the fact that many historians complain about the absence of Dio's originals, but, in my humble opinion, this is something that must be taken with a grain of salt. Judging from the passages for which we have the original text, Dio was hopellessly verbose, had a very bad taste for the most turgid rhetoric, and, as I 've said elsewhere, he has a tendency to narrate real events (viz. the Battle of Actium) as if he were composing an script for a Xena episode, but without neither the sense of humour nor Lucy Lawless at his disposal. Therefore the fact that I suspect that the Byzantine digest is best, as it seems to convey all that had actual importance in the original and to spare us the tedious flowery Late Antique rethorics and the hackwork that Dio's invented speechs are (yes, I know that every Ancient historian did the same, but what I'm complaining about is not the reality of the speeches, but about their intrinsic intellectual value, and, sorry, Dio is no Thucydides). Be as it is, the Digest has preserved an anecdote that is the best in the whole volume, of the quite deaf emperor Claudius listening to complaints against his governor of Bythinia, and, being told by one of his freedmen that the delegation was offering stormy applause to said governor, decided that "then he is going to be their procurator for two more years!".