Politics, Justice, and Reform in Dio's Euboicus

summary:

This paper uses a close reading of Dio's Euboicus to reflect on the understandings of law, justice, and politics among Greek intellectuals in the high empire more generally. The Euboicus can be read as a satire concerning urban political autonomy in an empire; these rituals of political autonomy and judgment, Dio argues, were ultimately empty. Accordingly, in the second part of the speech, Dio presents a vision of social reform in which he envisions the possibility of a world without legal politics.