The article deals with the conceptuality of Cassius Dio’ representation of the Roman Empire as a universal polis , in which there is only one real city ( astu ), Rome, dominating over all other territories as its hora , a rural area (LII.19.6). As a result of the study, the following conclusions have been made: 1) E. Bertrand's version of Dio’s postulation of the civilizing mission of Rome as a "cosmopolis" is based on a specific interpretation of Greek terms that contradicts the context; 2) the reasoning of Dio on this topic has a number of conceptual similarities with The Roman Oration of Aelius Aristides and is inherently an ideological construct, dating back, probably, to the era of the Antonines; 3) against the background of Aelius Aristides’ beliefs, specificity of Dio’s concept is especially detectable; it is manifested primarily in the contingency of the idea of "the only polis " with the centralization of Roman power, which correlates with the traditional senatorial view of the principles of interaction between the capital and the periphery of the Empire.
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