Making Time for the Past: Local History and the Polis

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M A K I N G T I M E F O R T H E PA S T

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Making Time for the Past Local History and the Polis

KATH E R IN E CL AR KE

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Katherine Clarke 2008 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–929108–3 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Chris


Preface Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new moon or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.1

This book is about time and history in the Greek world. It is about the way in which choices concerning the articulation and expression of time, especially time past, reflect the values and aspirations of both those who ‘make’ it and those who comprise their audience or readership. Time is in this sense not only constructed, but also negotiated. This study encompasses a range of contexts from the widespread awareness of time’s malleability and the perceived value of the past by the citizens of the polis to the formal analysis of time systems by scholars in the competitive environment of Hellenistic learning. It addresses the development by historians of ways to articulate the long span of historical time, and gradually homes in from the chronological strategies developed by those who wrote grand, Panhellenic or even universal narratives, to those whose stories were about, or for, the individual polis. The making or negotiation of time is of considerable interest in any historical and social context, but it carries particular resonance in the world of the Greek poleis where each community had its own calendar and ran to its own time.2 Both the articulation of time and the establishment of parameters for a ‘shared’ history have been seen individually as modes of self-expression for communities,3 so an exploration of their intersection has the potential to be especially fruitful and illuminating. By focusing on the phenomenon of city history—the creation of the past of, for, and within a relatively restricted community—we can turn the spotlight more closely on the dynamics of how 1 T. Mann, The Magic Mountain (trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter; 1924), ch. 4 §4: ‘Die Zeit hat in Wirklichkeit keine Einschnitte, es gibt kein Gewitter oder Drommetengeto¨n beim Beginn eines neuen Monats oder Jahres, und selbst bei dem eines neuen Sa¨kulums sind es nur wir Menschen, die schießen und laüten’. 2 This goes beyond the local nature of time in pre-industrial Britain, where the precise ‘time of day’ varied from place to place, until the arrival of a national rail network necessitated conformity to a commonly agreed ‘time’. In the Greek poleis the whole system of months, start of the year, and so on, varied from place to place. 3 On the former, M. Bloch, ‘The Past and the Present in the Present’, Man ns 12 (1977), 278–92 at 282, notes the claim by cultural relativists that ‘concepts of time are closely bound to social organisation and therefore vary from society to society’. On the latter, see J. Brow, ‘Notes on Community, Hegemony, and the Uses of the Past’, Anthropological Quarterly 63 (1990), 1–6 at 3, on the ‘construction of an authoritative tradition that identiWes all who accept it as members of the same political community’.

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both time and the past were ‘made’. Therefore, in the second half of this book I explore the formulation of history within a civic context, looking at the construction of the past in various media as a social activity, which both reflects and contributes towards the sense of a shared identity. But the wider validity of bringing together a study of constructed time with an examination of the writing of history hinges on the truth of Bouvier’s assertion that historiography, the telling of stories primarily about the past, is by nature an enterprise which depends on the systematic structuring of time, within which are embedded its stories.4 The fundamental importance of chronography, the study of time, for historiography, the writing of history, is neatly reflected in the career of Felix Jacoby. He wrote his inaugural dissertation at Berlin in 1900 on Apollodorus’ great work of Hellenistic scholarship on the subject of time, the Chronica, and made the chronicle which was inscribed and displayed on the Parian Marble, one of our most extensive and revealing examples of history set in a strict temporal frame, the subject of his Habilitationsschrift at Breslau in 1903. Furthermore, when he came to give his inaugural lecture in Breslau, the topic was yet another great chronographer from the Hellenistic period, Eratosthenes of Cyrene.5 Thus all of the early work carried out by this, the most intellectually ambitious researcher on ancient historiography of at least the twentieth century, was in fact focused on the ancient chronographers, and on their attempts to order, articulate, and map out time as a framework for history. It was only with this work behind him that Jacoby embarked upon his groundbreaking and unsurpassed masterpiece on the fragments of the Greek historians.6 Whatever the limitations and misconceptions in Jacoby’s vision of the evolution of Greek prose writing, set out in his classic article of 1909,7 the capaciousness of intellect and the imagination which enabled him to see through and beyond the mass of tiny fragments, made his 4 D. Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps me´teórologique chez les premiers historiens grecs’, in C. Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien (Paris, 2000), 115–41 at 119: ‘Une Histoire sans dates ressemblerait a` une Histoire hors du temps’ (‘a history without dates would be like a history outside time’). 5 On these early publications in the context of Jacoby’s whole academic career, see M. Chambers, ‘La vita e carriera di Felix Jacoby’, in C. Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti dell’opera di Felix Jacoby (Pisa, 2006), 5–29 at 9–12. Apollodorus and Eratosthenes will be discussed in ch. 2 below; the Parian marble in chs. 4 and 6. 6 As A. Mo¨ller, ‘Felix Jacoby and Ancient Greek Chronography’, in Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti dell’opera di Felix Jacoby, 259–75 at 261, notes, ‘one could even maintain that his early masterpieces conditioned his further work with the Fragmente’. ¨ ber die Entwicklung der griechischen Historiographie und den Plan einer 7 F. Jacoby, ‘U neuen Sammlung der griechischen Historikerfragmente’, Klio 9 (1909), 80–123. The plan was essentially to develop a genealogy of prose genres which stemmed from the types of literature represented by Hecataeus and Hellanicus. These yielded three overriding categories of history: genealogy and mythography, history delimited by time, and history delimited by space.

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ix

contribution to the subject extraordinary. The carrying forward of the torch of Jacoby’s unfinished collection is one of the most valuable scholarly enterprises of recent times, and will revolutionize the use that can be made of a hugely neglected body of evidence for the intellectual history of the ancient world.8 Jacoby’s collection of fragments remains a relatively untapped treasure trove partly because exploring even a fraction of its riches requires a large investment of time. The necessary groundwork for this book could simply not have been accomplished without a most generous award from the Leverhulme Trust in 2001 of a Philip Leverhulme Prize which enabled me to devote the greater part of two years to working through sizeable parts of Jacoby’s collection—the chronographic works, the histories of both the Greek poleis and the non-Greek lands, and the universal historians. For this opportunity I should like to express sincere thanks and appreciation. My colleges, St Hilda’s and Queen’s, showed the greatest generosity in allowing me to take full advantage of the award, as well as subsequently granting me two terms of sabbatical leave to bring the project closer to fruition. I should also like to thank Lisa Bligh for taking over my college duties, thereby enabling me to focus wholeheartedly on my research. The Faculty of Classics in Oxford generously released me from many chores during the tenure of my award, for which I am most grateful, and the Sackler Library, with its unsurpassed collection and its helpful and flexible staff, further enhanced my working environment. Innumerable individuals have contributed in one way or another to this project, and there is room here to name only a tiny handful. Matthew Nicholls and Sarah Cottle, doctoral and undergraduate students respectively, proved superb research assistants at various stages, and both contributed many insightful and helpful suggestions. Friends and colleagues in my immediate environs have kept me cheerful and offered encouragement at every stage, in particular Rebecca Armstrong, Emily Kearns, Susan Jones, Jenny Wormald, Angus Bowie, and Barbara Kowalzig. Further afield, I have been immensely grateful for the help, guidance, and friendship of Guido Schepens and Giuseppe Zecchini. Conversations with Irad Malkin during his stay in Oxford in 2005 proved inspirational and significantly advanced my thinking on many 8 Part IV (biography, history of literature, and antiquarian literature) is being worked on by a team including J. Bollansee, K. Brodersen, J. Engels, A. Henrichs, E. Krummen, G. A. Lehmann, H.-G. Nesselrath, J. Radicke, J. Raeymaekers, G. Schepens, and E. Schu¨trumpf; Part V (historical geography) by H.-J. Gehrke, D. Meyer, P. Funke, E. Olshausen, and F. Prontera. In addition, a full index to the existing volumes of FGrH has appeared: P. Bonneche`re, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker: Indexes of Parts I, II, and III. Indexes of Ancient Authors (Leiden, 1999) greatly enhances the utility of the earlier volumes. Furthermore, the CD Rom version of FGrH transforms the value of the whole corpus.

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themes in this book. Closer to home, Peter Derow, before his recent untimely death, and John Ma, who kindly read the last chapter, both saved me from many an epigraphic blunder; and Richard Rutherford was typically generous with the loan of books from his exhaustive collection. The combination of rigorous training and inspirational teaching offered by my undergraduate tutors, Nicholas Purcell and Michael Comber, remains an ever-present guide. The task of reading an entire typescript is a huge one, and I am immensely grateful to Chris Pelling and Fergus Millar for adding this to the already long catalogue of occasions on which their generosity, kindness, and encouragement have proved invaluable. The text has been greatly enhanced by the comments and contributions of all the above and many more besides, and all remaining errors, inaccuracies, and infelicities are my responsibility alone. The watchful eye and helpful suggestions of my copy editor and the eYciency of the whole team at the Press have greatly expedited the book’s completion.9 I am also indebted to Hilary O’Shea at Oxford University Press for her patience in waiting for this long project to reach completion and for her faith in its value. On a more personal level, I should like to thank my mother for always supporting me since childhood in my classical endeavours and for everything else that she has done and been. The addition of Scipio to the household has benefited the project in a multitude of ways. Besides his irrepressible capacity to lift the spirits, his frequent demands for energetic expeditions across the Oxfordshire countryside have punctuated every day with long periods of thinking space. These have helped to disentangle many a problem and lent a sense of valuable perspective away from the desk. Finally, my gratitude to Chris is unquantifiable. His critical yet constructive reading of the whole book forced me to scrutinize the logic at all levels and, above all, helped me to discern the significant from the trivial in both material and ideas. What his constant support, companionship, patience, love, and good humour have meant to me over the last fifteen years, I can only begin to express by dedicating the book to him. Katherine Clarke Oxford, 2007 9 On the vexations issue of transliteration of Greek names, I have tended to adopt latinized forms, except where familiarity dictates otherwise.

Contents List of Abbreviations I Introduction 1. Man is the measure of all things: counting the days 2. The multiplication of times 3. Time for everyone II Making a business of time 1. Constructing calendars 2. Chronographical works III The world outside the polis 1. Thucydides and the problem of supra-polis time 2. Inventing universal history: Ephorus’ contribution 3. Extending time across space: the Olympiadic revolution 4. Diodorus Siculus and the culmination of universal chronology 5. Strabonian strategies: between local and universal 6. Telling the time for the non-Greek world IV ‘City is history incarnate’: writing the past of the polis 1. From the city of Byzas to Constantinople 2. Tracing the history of local historiography: resurrecting Jacoby’s Atthis 3. Time for local history: pacing the past 4. Bridging the gap between local and universal V Persuasion and plausibility: history and rhetoric in the polis 1. Parameters of plausibility 2. Addressing Athens: presenting the past 3. ‘Learning from history’: models from the past 4. Escaping the ravages of time: the preservation of history 5. Marking time 6. Past, present, and persuasion in the polis

xiii 1 1 7 27 47 47 56 90 90 96 109 121 140 150 169 169 175 193 230 245 245 252 274 286 293 297

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VI Time for the polis: audiences and contexts 1. The city of the sundial 2. Valuing the past: promoting the polis 3. Local heroes: placing the historian in the polis 4. From local hero to supra-political ambassador 5. Itinerant intellectuals, Mediterranean mobility: negotiating the world of Rome 6. Returning to the polis

304 304 313 338 346

Epilogue References Subject Index Index of Passages Discussed

370 372 391 399

354 363

List of Abbreviations Blinkenberg, Lindos

C. Blinkenberg (ed.), Lindos. Fouilles et recherches, 1902–1914. Vol. II, Inscriptions. 2 vols. (Copenhagen and Berlin, 1941).

CIG

Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum I–IV (Berlin, 1828–77). Comptes rendus de l’Acade´mie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres (Paris).

CRAI Fouilles de Delphes iii.3

G. Daux and A. Salac (eds.), Fouilles de Delphes. III. E´pigraphie. 3. Depuis le tre´sor des Atheńiens jusqu’aux bases de Ge´lon (Paris, 1932–43).

FGrH

F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden, 1923– ).

IC

M. Guarducci (ed.), Inscriptiones Creticae opera et consilio Friederici Halbherr collectae. 4 vols. (Rome, 1935–50).

IG

Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin, 1873– ).

IK

Inschriften griechischer Sta¨dte aus Kleinasien (Bonn, 1972– ). Inscriptions de De´los. 7 vols. (Paris, 1926–1972).

Inscr. De´los Kaibel, Epigr. Gr.

G. Kaibel (ed.), Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta (Berlin, 1878).

McCabe, Miletos

D. McCabe and M. A. Plunkett (eds.), Miletos inscriptions. Texts and list (The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1984).

Milet

P. Herrmann (ed.), Inschriften von Milet. Teil 1 (Berlin, 1997).

OGIS

W. Dittenberger (ed.), Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, I–II (Leipzig, 1903–1905).

SEG

Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden, 1923– ).

SGDI

H. Collitz and F. Bechtel (eds.), Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften I–IV (Go¨ttingen, 1885–1910).

Syll:3

W. Dittenberger (ed.), Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3rd edn. (Leipzig, 1915–1924).


I Introduction 1. MAN I S THE ME ASURE OF ALL THINGS: C O U N T I N G T H E DAYS K ªaæ Œ Æ Æ sæ B IŁæfiø æ ŁØ: y Ø K KØÆı d Œ Æ Ææ ÆØ æÆ ØŒÆ ŒÆd ÆŒØØºÆ ŒÆd ØıæÆ; Kºı e c ªØı: N b c KŁºØ h æ H K ø d ÆŒæ æ ªŁÆØ; ¥ Æ c Æƒ zæÆØ ıÆøØ ÆæÆªØ ÆØ K e ; B b Ææa a Œ Æ Æ ƒ K ºØØ ª ÆØ æØŒ Æ ; æÆØ b KŒ H H ø ºØÆØ Œ Æ: ı ø H ±Æø æø H K a Œ Æ Æ; Kıø Œ Æ ŒÆd ØŒØø ŒÆd ÆŒØØºØø ŒÆd ØıæØø; æ ÆP ø fiB æfi æfi e ÆæÆ Pb ‹Ø æªØ æBªÆ. I put the boundary of human life at seventy years. These seventy years have 25,200 days, not counting the intercalary month, but if every other year wishes to be lengthened by a month so that the seasons fall into alignment and come out right, these intercalary months in seventy years will be thirtyWve, and the days for these months 1,050. So that all the days of a man’s life of around seventy years are 26,250; of all those days not one brings to him exactly the same as another.1

This passage from Herodotus’ Histories, in which one of the seven sages, Solon of Athens, famously visits the court of the Lydian king, Croesus, and engages in philosophical conversation concerning the nature of human happiness and the mutability of fortune, oVers a striking introduction to many themes that will be explored in this book. The complex explanation of the disparity between the length of a lifespan, when simply assuming 360 days in a year, and the length of the same seventy-year span when calculated taking into account a series of calendar modiWcations, notably intercalary months, which over the course of the seventy years add a remarkable 1,050 days to the total, points to the potentially disturbing conclusion that ‘seventy years’ is a variable length of time. Of course this makes logical nonsense in biological terms—at 1 Herodotus, Histories 1.32.2–4. The precise context for the calculation presented here is Solon’s exposition of the point that no one can be counted happy until he has Wlled out the span of his life.

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Introduction

the end of a life, one has lived through a certain and inXexible number of days.2 But what the passage makes quite clear is that time as a lived, experienced entity—what one might perhaps term ‘natural’ time, the number of times the sun has risen and set from one moment to another, such as the birth and death of an individual—is to be distinguished from time as a constructed, organized, calculable entity, which can be measured in diVerent ways. It is partly a question of the level of detail and accuracy—seventy years is a standard ‘round’ number used to express the length of a human lifespan. ‘Threescore years and ten’ is a formula very familiar from the Psalms,3 and one might claim to have lived seventy years without much regard for whether or not one had fulWlled precisely the requisite number of days. Here in Herodotus, we might say that we are simply witnessing an increasing level of speciWcity—seventy years needs to be more closely deWned, Wrst in broad terms and then with the further reWnement brought by the intercalary months. It is not clear that Herodotus is suggesting that one should ever leave the calculation on the rather slapdash basis of a 360-day year, and whether there are any circumstances in which 25,200 days would be an adequate deWnition of seventy years.4 If so, then the span of seventy years becomes an even more malleable concept whose notional length is determined by the requirements of the context. We might also note that, in spite of the comment above that experienced time and measured time are separable entities, in fact natural and constructed time are intertwined. The lifespan of a human being is clearly a natural measure of time, and we shall see on many occasions the way in which ‘human’ lives and generations were used in historiographical contexts as a measure of time. But here the natural time of a human lifespan is being converted into the artiWcial currency of the calendar in its most carefully constructed and manipulated form. Furthermore, the context within which this extraordinary calculation takes place deserves some attention. One of the major themes of this book will be the relationship between the construction and use of temporal frameworks and the writing of history. Although this passage does not concern the conWguration of historical time except on the smallest scale, in so far as it deals with the measurement and component units of the history of a single 2 We need not concern ourselves here with the confusions that might occur in the modern world as a result of travel across time zones, which allows a person to live the same day twice, as it were, and thus to extend the length of apparently standard years. 3 See Psalms 90:10: ‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut oV, and we Xy away.’ 4 The use of the verb KŁºø, which produces the rather jarring translation ‘if every other year wishes to be lengthened’, does suggest that the years can take on a life and will of their own with regard to their length and calculation, and that precision is demanded rather than optional.

Man is the measure of all things

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human being, it is nevertheless interesting to Wnd it here in the historical text of Herodotus. In fact, the chronological angle could be said to mirror perfectly the way in which the ‘Solon meets Croesus’ episode has been seen as expressing in miniature some of the underlying messages of the whole work. Most obviously it picks up on 1.5,5 concerning the mutability of fortune and the impossibility of assessing a man’s happiness until the end of his life, just as the historian cannot make assumptions about the outcome of events and the relative successes and failures of diVerent claimants on power and importance until the entire story has been told. The importance of the individual in history is a much-discussed Herodotean theme,6 and here we might argue that the interest in mapping out the chronology of a man’s life is emblematic of Herodotus’ interest in the time of history itself, turning a lifespan into a microcosm for the time of the historical dureé. Moreover, we might want to take into account the fact that the interest in, and calculation of, time is not here carried out in the historian’s own voice, but is put into the mouth of Solon as part of his conversation with Croesus over the nature of happiness in human life.7 The notorious near impossibility of such a conversation having taken place might suggest that we should see this as very much a piece of Herodotean invention, designed to display one aspect of his expertise in historia, rather ironically showing oV an astonishing facility for chronological accuracy in a chronologically impossible scenario.8 The 5 Here Herodotus Wrst sets out this principle as an explanation for why his history must include not only great cities, but small ones too: a ªaæ e ºÆØ ªºÆ q; a ººa ÆP H ØŒæa ªª; a b K KF q ªºÆ; æ æ q ØŒæ: c IŁæø t KØ PÆØ PÆa K Tı fiH ıÆ KØÆØ I æø ›ø (‘for as for those which were great in the past, most of them have become small; and those which were great in my day were insigniWcant before. Therefore, realizing that human happiness does not stay in the same place, I shall recount both large and small indiscriminately’). 6 See especially J. Gould, Herodotus (London, 1989), 42. 7 The question of whether Herodotus uses Solon as a mouthpiece for his own views is one of the points discussed by C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Educating Croesus: Talking and Learning in Herodotus’ Lydian Logos’, Classical Antiquity 25.1 (2006), 141–77. Pelling notes various correspondences between Herodotus and Solon: Herodotus’ attempt to educate the reader on the subject of mutability of fortune in the preface and the attempt made by Solon to Croesus, their parallel status as travellers; but he notes the lack of straightforward identity between the two voices. In ‘Speech and Narrative in the Histories’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge, 2006), 103–21, Pelling further explores the complexity of the interaction between Solon and Croesus and the strain this places on the deWnition of wisdom (105–6). See also R. Friedman, ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, in Dewald and Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus, 165–77 at 167, for the parallels between Solon’s and Herodotus’ own authorial personae and the association of travel with wisdom; S. O. Shapiro, ‘Herodotus and Solon’, Classical Antiquity 15 (1996), 348–64, carefully incorporates into her discussion of the two voices the fact that Herodotus’ views on Solon may be expressed indirectly as well as explicitly, and concludes that Herodotus largely endorses Solon’s views. 8 On this and other chronological problems in Herodotus, see P. J. Rhodes, ‘Herodotean Chronology Revisited’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, 2003), 58–72 at 64.

4

Introduction

question of whether Herodotus himself was really interested in chronological issues has been the subject of some discussion, to which we shall return.9 But, regardless of whether Herodotus is claiming chronological expertise for himself, it is surely signiWcant that he decides to use as his mouthpiece one of the seven sages.10 The connection between travel and wisdom is brought out by Dougherty in relation to this episode, and it could be seen to foreshadow rather neatly one of the themes to which we shall return (in chapter 6), namely the phenomenon of itinerant intellectuals, including local historians, who derived at least part of their authority within the polis from their reputation as wise men.11 On the other hand, one proposition which I shall pursue in this book is that the awareness of, and interest in, manipulating time was by no means conWned to the authors of chronographical works and calendars, but was of much wider concern in the Greek poleis. In some ways, the use of one of the wisest men ever to have lived as the mouthpiece for Herodotus’ calculations acts as a counterexample to the idea that the organization of time was of as much interest to the man in the street as to the sage. But, in any case, the tone of this part of Solon’s speech is strikingly at odds with the rather general anecdotes about fortunate people within which it is embedded.12 The level of calendar detail appears quite gratuitous in relation to the needs of the passage,13 namely to establish that one cannot assess a 9 See, for example, the assertion by Rhodes, ibid. 66, that ‘Herodotus is not writing a systematic history of Greece or of any Greek state, and he does not have a systematic chronology’. This is less debatable than his suggestion on 68 that Herodotus was not really interested in the chronographical enterprise. 10 It is clearly as sage rather than as social reformer that Solon appears in this book of Herodotus. We may compare the sudden introduction of another sage, Thales of Miletus, later in the book in the context of war between Lydia and Media, which was stopped by the omen of a solar eclipse. Thales, we are informed, had foretold the eclipse to the Ionians, setting as his limiting date the year in which the eclipse took place (1.74). Again scientiWc accuracy is brought to bear on the historical narrative, although here too the transition and integration are hardly seamless. Diodorus Siculus includes the Solon-Croesus encounter at 9.2, and, even more strikingly than Herodotus, places this in the context of a whole panoply of sage men such as Chilon, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Bias of Priene. See D. Fehling, Herodotus and His ‘Sources’: Citation, Invention, and Narrative Art (trans. by J. G. Howie, Leeds, 1989), 195 at n. 16, for the preponderance of appearances by one or other of the seven sages in this part of Herodotus’ text. 11 See C. Dougherty, The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey (Oxford, 2001). 12 On this change in register, see D. Boedeker, ‘Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus’, in Derow and Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World, 17–36 at 25: ‘Solon’s arithmetic nevertheless comes as a jolt after the little vignettes of Tellos and the Argive brothers; it abruptly changes the tone of the passage, shifting from laudatory narrative to the language of the accounting oYce.’ The generalizing passages in Herodotus, which tend to contain gnomic or proverbial statements, have been analysed by S. O. Shapiro, ‘Proverbial Wisdom in Herodotus’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 130 (2000), 89–118. 13 But see the fascinating suggestion made by C. Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Historia et historiographie grecque: ‘‘le temps des hommes’’ ’, in Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien

Man is the measure of all things

5

man’s happiness until he has Wlled out his lifespan.14 Although this display of deftness with the mechanics of the calendar enhances Solon’s credibility as a wise man, it would be hard to argue that it is entirely comfortable where it sits in the text, making it diYcult to assess in terms of the relationship between chronography and historiography. The primary focus of this book will be the construction of a particular aspect of time, the past, and within a particular context, the polis. It thus sets out to be a study of local historiography. However, there are several diVerent backdrops which need to be sketched before we embark on the local historiography of the Greek poleis and the way in which their past was constructed for them and to their satisfaction. I shall start (in chapter 1) by discussing some of the ways in which time may be articulated and calibrated, and the diVerences and complementary nature of naturally determined and culturally constructed time. I shall then examine some of the evidence that time as a malleable and constructed concept was familiar within the everyday life of the Greek polis, through the plays of Aristophanes and publicly displayed inscriptions, and I shall consider the connections between time as mapped out on a recurring annual cycle through the calendar and time which spans the past of a place. Moving on from here, chapters 2 and 3 oVer diVerent types of foil to this relationship between time and the polis. In chapter 2 I look at two forms of evidence for the manipulation of time as a task not for the polis as a whole, but for the professionals—chronographical works and works on the calendar, both of which survive only in fragmentary form.15 Both historical time and the annual cycle of the calendar attracted considerable scholarly attention from the Hellenistic period onwards, and I shall consider the way in which complex chronological systems were not only used and understood but actually created. I then move in chapter 3 to the expression of time in

(Paris, 2000), 89–114 at 107, that Herodotus is deliberately alluding to the work of Solon himself here, in particular his elegy on the ages of life, which Philo of Alexandria cites (fr. 27 West). ‘La vie humaine y est diviseé en dix pe´riodes de sept ans au cours desquelles s’ope`rent le de´veloppement, la maturite´ et le dećlin.’ This would enhance the resonance of the choice of Solon as the mouthpiece. 14 The underlying logic must be that even a single day is enough to bring a man down, a piece of wisdom which is a commonplace in tragedy. On this, see A. Kerkhecker, Studien zu Herkunft und Bedeutung des ‘eines Tages’ im griechischen Drama (MA thesis, Tu¨bingen, 1989). As Kerkhecker notes (14), ‘In der Trago¨die werden die katastrophalen Ereignisse in der Fiktion auf einem Tag konzentriert, den ‘‘dramatischen Tag’’.’ The topos must go back to Hector’s fateful day in the Iliad. 15 P. A. Brunt, ‘On Historical Fragments and Epitomes’, Classical Quarterly 30 (1980), 477–94, has not been superseded for a cautious, though not paralysing, approach to the problems of fragmentary texts.

6

Introduction

historiography other than that of the polis in order to highlight any distinctive features of works which construct a past for individual cities. In particular I examine the synthetic temporal frameworks and strategies which were developed by universal historians, in the light of the fact that diVerent poleis had diVerent calendars and diVerent histories. I also look at the way in which time is conWgured by Greek authors writing about the non-Greek world. Although this material is highly fragmentary, it is nevertheless possible to discern certain trends and recurring themes in the treatment of time, which throw into relief the works which purport to tell the past of Greek city states. Chapter 4 focuses on the fragmentary remains of the Greek city histories. After exploring the debates concerning the relationship between universal or ‘great’ historiography and local historiography, it moves on to examine how the conWguration and presentation of time can contribute to these discussions, not least through the use of local and Panhellenic chronological systems. Although much attention has focused on Athens, not least because of the survival of evidence and the existence of Jacoby’s Atthis, the ideas of which have been fundamental in directing the study of local historiography, it is possible by considering the fragments of local histories from elsewhere in the Greek world, to see Atthidography as being quite in line with the attempts of other cities to formulate and present their pasts. That said, the special nature of Athens, at least in terms of evidence, is exploited in chapter 5, where I consider the presentation of the Athenian past in another medium, that of public oratory. The display of the past, or of a certain type of past, to the polis at large brings us back in the Wnal chapter to a point raised in chapter 1, that is the everyday nature of such activity. In chapter 6 I focus on the polis, and consider the value it placed on the past, its stake in the proper telling of history, and its diplomatic use of particular episodes. Here epigraphic evidence, such as the Lindos Chronicle and the Parian Marble, comes again to the fore, oVering publicly displayed history, which may tell us something about shared opinions and values. Inscriptions also oVer an insight into one of the key Wgures in all of this, the historian. I move Wnally to the striking evidence for the public honouring of local historians, often itinerant rather than native, and consider issues of status, historiographical authority, and the possible implications of a semi-professional system of local historiography for the posited direct and close relationship between the polis and the telling of its past. Thus this book takes as its main focus the manipulation of ‘constructed’ time in contexts which concern wider audiences—the composition and performance of local historiography, the delivery of public speeches, the presentation of a past which is broadly speaking shared by the polis as a whole—while keeping in

The multiplication of times

7

mind the expertise of chronographers and historians which underpinned such activity.16

2. THE MULTIPLICATION OF TIMES This is a book about time and its conWguration, not primarily in the abstract as an academic or philosophical activity, but as a phenomenon which was highly prized by the polis for its practical application, both in setting out the festival and magisterial year and in articulating a memorable, commonly agreed, high-status past which could be deployed in inter-polis diplomatic contexts, as well as for internal consumption by the citizens. Therefore, although I shall look in the next chapter at what one might term the more scholarly interest in both the calendar and historical time, here I shall set the groundwork for the rest of the book by thinking brieXy about time as a constructed concept, reXective of the society to which it ‘belongs’, and which, by common consent, conWgures it in diVerent ways to articulate and measure out life and its activities. Both the ‘recurring time’ of diVerent natural cycles, such as the day, the month, or the year,17 and the ‘progressive time’ of an individual life, or of the shared history of a community, or of larger bodies such as a political or economic confederation or a culturally homogeneous unit, or indeed of the whole known world, were and still are articulated in a variety of ways depending on context, circumstance, purpose, audience, and so on. I shall Wrst introduce some ideas on a notion which will be important throughout this book, that time as a culturally determined concept reXects society, and can be used to create or reinforce communal identity.18 I shall 16 The construction of time in order to fulWl the wishes of a particular constituency is neatly brought out by L. Nixon, ‘Chronologies of Desire and the Uses of Monuments: EXatunpinar to Çatalhoÿu¨k and beyond’, in D. Shankland (ed.), Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia: The Life and Times of F. W. Hasluck, 1878–1920 (Istanbul, 2004), ii. 429–52, who states (429) that chronologies of desire are ‘always linked with an intention to control people’s views of time’, and involve selection of episodes for commemoration or oblivion. 17 It is worth noting that the week is not conventionally seen as a ‘natural’ unit of time, but see A. Aveni, Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures (London and New York, 2000), 100, for the possibility that the week is self-determined by a seven-day biorhythm which manifests itself in small variations in blood pressure and heart-beat, as well as, remarkably, peaks in the positive or negative response to organ transplant. On the other hand, many cultures have not adopted a seven-day week, notably the Romans. 18 Aveni, Empires of Time, 10, sums up excellently why time makes a useful tool for studying cultures other than our own: ‘Because time is a universal concept, its study serves as an excellent way of attempting to get inside the heads of these other people to see what makes them tick’.

8

Introduction

then consider some of the commonly used ways of calibrating it. From there, I shall start to focus on how time was articulated in Greek poleis. Much of this book is devoted to exploring the way in which Greek poleis presented the longer span of historical time, and in my discussion of both ‘great’ and local historiography various approaches to historical time will come to the fore. Therefore, while acknowledging the inseparability of the long and the short dureés, in so far as the recurring time of the calendar telescopes and repeats selected highlights of the linear time of history,19 I shall mention only brieXy in this chapter the various means of articulating historical time, and devote a little more attention here to the recurring time encapsulated by the calendar. The complexity of ancient Greek calendars is, of course, a well-worn scholarly Weld, and there is no need to do more than summarize what has already been set out by others. From the point of view of this book, of greater interest is the fact that there were several diVerent calendars in operation in a single polis, neatly illustrating that diVerent circumstances and occasions called for diVerent ways of organizing time. Furthermore, the development by each polis of its own calendars drives home the fact that time and its arrangement can be seen as intimately connected with the self-image of the community, and leads to the Wnal section of this chapter in which I shall argue for a high general awareness in the Greek polis of time as a concept that is manipulated and constructed by human intervention, and in which the polis as a whole enjoys a stake.20 The awareness of time as a concept, and as one which is deliberately constructed, is most obviously connected to the relationship between diVerent ‘time zones’, especially that between past and present or present and future. Since the future is unknown, the past-present relationship is much more resonant in terms of self-deWnition and, as we shall see, much attention has been devoted to examining the importance for a community of agreeing a common version of the shared past. It is only a matter of degree which distinguishes the past which happened yesterday from the past which happened one hundred years ago, and it is impossible to divorce a discussion of 19 On this, see below in this chapter. 20 Just as poleis could forge their own identity through their distinctive organization of time, so too could the adoption of the whole or part of the calendar of another polis be used to express a relationship with that community. See I. Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, in I. Malkin (ed.), Mediterranean Paradigms and Classical Antiquity (London, 2005), 56–74 at 69, for the adoption by colonies of the same theophoric month names as those of the mother city, with e.g. Samos and Perinthos having at least seven months in common. But F. M. Dunn, ‘The Uses of Time in Fifth-century Athens’, The Ancient World 29 (1998), 37–52, argues that the polis sometimes sacriWced potential advances in chronology and time management to the preservation of its own identity and ideals.


9

the way in which societies self-reXectively construct time present from their thoughts about the past. On the other hand, the explicit construction of history in narrative form, be it expressed in a chronologically continuous or broken stream, and in whatever medium, is a rather diVerent phenomenon from an awareness of time as a feature of the world around us,21 and so I shall start with the latter before allowing the apparently inevitable shift to conceptualizing time as a way of linking past and present. Describing time as a ‘feature’ of the world immediately opens up one of the most perplexing aspects of the debate held by philosophers about time, that is whether it ‘exists’ in its own right or whether it is an inseparable ‘aspect’ of the matter of the world; even whether it is ‘real’ or ‘unreal’.22 Such discussions seem prone to lead to extraordinary forms of argument, such as the suggestion that time is ‘unreal’ because positions in time are deWned not only by priority and posteriority, but also by past, present, and future,23 which change in respect of a particular event, thereby undermining the reality of time through the incompatibility of the three qualities.24 The philosophical problem rests on the idea that, without a past, present, future series, there would be no possibility of change, but the past, present, future series is itself unreal, and therefore, as an essential deWner of time, it renders time itself unreal.25 Perhaps more interesting is the suggestion that space and time are not single entities, but that there may be a plurality of times and spaces. As 21 On this distinction, see D. Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps me´teórologique chez les premiers historiens grecs’, in Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps, 115–41 at 116: ‘les linguistes de l’eńonciation et les theóriciens de la narration insistent ainsi sur la nećessite´ de distinguer entre le temps ‘‘reél’’. . . et la reproduction ou la reconstruction de ce temps ‘‘reél’’ dans le discours.’ 22 One of the key problems must be, as Aveni, Empires of Time, 29, notes, that we never sense time directly. ‘There is no single organism to monitor time the way the eye detects light, the ear responds to sound, or the tongue to taste. Nevertheless, all living organisms sense time by responding to phenomena that change.’ But the development of the mechanical clock, ever present and ever ticking as time goes by, has led easily to the impression that time (rather than the movement of the hands through space) has been made manifest. 23 The explicit expression of this series comes as early as the Iliad where at 1.70 the prophet, Chalcas, is described as knowing past, present, and future: K Æ K Æ æ K Æ. 24 See J. M. E. McTaggart, ‘The Unreality of Time’, in R. le Poidevin and M. MacBeath (eds.), The Philosophy of Time (Oxford, 1993; article Wrst published 1908), 23–34. 25 For example, the status of both types of temporal series is assumed in this argument to be the same, but in fact the past, present, future series is, unlike the series of relativity, dependent on perception from a particular standpoint. The former, therefore, does not belong to time per se, but to a subject, whereas priority or posteriority remains the same from all viewpoints. Furthermore, problems which arise out of the apparent contradiction inherent in the fact that moments of the future will be the past for certain events, at the same time as being present or future for others (33), seem to be the result of confusion, since it is not that the moment in time itself is past, present, and future all at once, but rather the past, present, or future quality relates to individual events within time.

10

Introduction

Quinton has observed, although a temporal thing occupies some time, and is temporally connected to something else, this does not mean that it has to be connected, or able to be connected, to everything temporal. The assumption made by those who would organize time and space is, however, that they form unities. ‘Cartographers and chronologists piece these facts together in a single system of spatial and temporal positions.’26 The major challenge to the unity of time and space comes in relation to dreams, stories, and other imaginative experiences, whose events ‘cannot be located in the framework of public or historical time’,27 with the result that we might want to conclude that there is a plurality of experiential spaces and times over and above the space and time of the shared world. However, whereas physical space and time are vast, systematic, and public, experiential space and time are small, fragmentary, and private. Furthermore, it has been suggested that space and time operate rather diVerently in so far as real space is amenable to plurality, whereas real time is not, so that any event that an individual remembers must be able to be Wtted into a single time sequence of his or her experience.28 The attempt to create single time frames which accommodate diverse events is characteristic of both recurring cycles, such as annual calendars, and the progressive time of history. The fact that we shall see in both universal and local historiography, as in everyday life, a multiplicity of chronological systems in play does not necessitate a belief in multiple times, although the debate remains open as to whether or not time is capable of plurality.29 Philosophical arguments concerning the nature, reality, or multiplicity of time are entertaining to ponder, but they need not detain us too long in the context of this book, since we need simply to highlight the interestingly problematic nature of time, its passing, its eVects, and its articulation, rather than trying to solve the philosophical conundrums which concern qualities, relations, and so on. As becomes clear from anthropological discussion, the question of how time reXects and matters to society is more helpfully focused on diVerences in the organization of time, rather than on its conception. As Bloch has noted, glib claims are often made by cultural relativists that 26 A. Quinton, ‘Spaces and Times’, Philosophy 37 (1962), 130–47 at 131. 27 Quinton, ibid. 132. 28 Quinton, ibid. 146. 29 See, in particular, the interesting work of French scholars on this point and on ancient temporality in general. Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Introduction. Temporalisations: fondements, descriptions, usages’, in Constructions du temps, 11–27 at 15, notes that ‘les Grecs ne pensaient pas le temps des hommes comme ils pensaient celui des dieux’. This assertion of temporal plurality clearly picks up on the classic article by P. Vidal-Naquet, ‘Temps des dieux, temps des hommes’, Re´vue de l’histoire des religions 157 (1960), 55–80. See also P. Veyne, Les Grecs ont-ils cru a` leurs mythes? Essai sur l’imagination constituante (Paris, 1983), 29: ‘Le temps et l’espace de la mythologie e´taient secre`tement he´te´roge`nes aux noˆtres’.


11

‘concepts of time are closely bound to social organisation and therefore vary from society to society’, and that ‘the notion of time, which we feel is selfevident, can be experienced in other cultures in totally diVerent ways, not as linear but perhaps as static or as cyclic.’30 In fact, as he points out, it is not the conceptions of time which vary, since these essentially reduce to two types— linear durational time and cyclical static time, as we have already seen—but rather the ways of dividing time up, many of which tend to operate concurrently, as we shall see. There is some danger of believing that anthropology and its subject matter hold the monopoly over discussions of community, society, and identity. But Brow, albeit in an anthropological journal, has observed that it is not only in ‘traditional’ societies that ‘culturally constructed versions of the past are authorized to shape a people’s sense of identity’, but rather that a sense of belonging to any society, including modern industrial societies, ‘is nourished by being cultivated in the fertile soil of the past’.31 Many aspects of Brow’s anthropological analysis ring true for the ancient material. His assertion that we should expect to Wnd ‘the construction of an authoritative tradition that identiWes all who accept it as members of the same political community’,32 could be directly describing the way in which orators who addressed the polis both bought into and helped to mould a commonly shared narrative of the past, as we shall see in chapter 5. Price has oVered an eloquent expression of the importance of time past in generating and fostering a sense of shared identity in the context of Greek cities: ‘The development of mythologies, that is, a shared sense of the past, is one of the key ways that this [articulation of local identities] was achieved in the ancient world.’33 The notion of commemoration is important in creating a sense of both continuous development and recurrence. It has been suggested that Western ideas of memory are closely tied to the notion of linearity, with a stress on sequence, and the idea that one can retrace events by following a line back through time.34 But the further suggestion that ‘transformed into strictly historiographic instructions on how to read the past, the purpose of cultural memory in the European classical tradition was to recall through reason the 30 M. Bloch, ‘The Past and the Present in the Present’, Man ns 12 (1977), 278–92 at 282. 31 See J. Brow, ‘Notes on Community, Hegemony, and the Uses of the Past’, Anthropological Quarterly 63 (1990), 1–6 at 1 and 3. The sense of belonging is even greater if it involves some element of common origin through a kinship claim, which is transmitted into a claim to substantial identity in the present (3). 32 Brow, ibid. 3. 33 S. Price, ‘Local Mythologies in the Greek East’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford, 2005), 115–24 at 115. 34 M. Rowlands, ‘The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture’, in R. Bradley (ed.), Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society (World Archaeology 25.2; London, 1993), 141–51 at 149.

12

Introduction

exemplary nature of the past in order to instruct the present’,35 in fact introduces an element of repetition with the idea that good or paradigmatic examples from the past were there to be followed again in the present and future, thereby yet further reinforcing their deWning role for the community in question. On this reading, the shared memory of a community allows it to link itself by a continuous thread back through time to its origins, but also to contribute to the extension of the sequence whereby the deWnitional paradigms are repeated and reinforced.36 History is thus generated by the agreement of particular routes through time past, linking particular exemplary moments. The creation of mythologies and the construction of histories can, of course, be expressed in both verbal and non-verbal forms. Although this book will focus heavily on the verbal representation of certain forms of history, it is worth noting that material evidence too can be analysed in similar ways and using the same terminology. In Price’s words on the creation of local histories, ‘the sculpture and the coins can be seen as ‘‘memory theatres’’ in which communities represented to themselves and others images of their past and hence their identities.’37 The way in which time is constructed by artistic representation of the past has also been interestingly discussed by Csapo and Miller: ‘All art shapes time, through narrative (or its absence), through the ordering of narrated events, through the choice and treatment of its subjects, in the medium and circumstances of performance, or in the manner it interpolates the historical consciousness of its consumers.’38 It would be diYcult to Wnd a more apposite formulation of the subject of this book. Relying on the premise that time is culturally speciWc and reXective of the society which moulds it, Csapo and Miller examine Greek art for signs of a shift from aristocratic to democratic temporality in Athens of the Wfth century bc. In essence, this means a shift from legitimation through 35 Rowlands, ibid. 143. 36 An alternative, though not mutually exclusive, view of ancient historiography, and one not without support in the sources, is to see its business as to commemorate not paradigmatic elements, but precisely those events and features which might be most in danger of oblivion. See A. Momigliano, ‘Time in Ancient Historiography’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford, 1977), 179–204 ¼ History and Theory. Beiheft 6 (1966), 1–23 at 191 for this view. Momigliano sees one of the major diVerences between Jewish and Greek historiography as lying in the duty of the Jews to remember the past and to give an authoritative version of what others too were supposed to know, as opposed to the Greek wish to record what might otherwise have been forgotten (195). 37 Price, ‘Local Mythologies’, 115. See also Nixon, ‘Chronologies of Desire’, 429, for the assertion that ‘monuments constitute the locus of public memory and public forgetting’. 38 E. Csapo and M. Miller, ‘Democracy, Empire, and Art: Toward a Politics of Time and Narrative’, in D. Boedeker and K. A. RaaXaub (eds.), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in FifthCentury Athens (Cambridge, MA and London, 1998), 87–125 at 87.


13

the constant recreation of the ancestral paradigms and myths of origin,39 to a more rational, linear time which privileges the present and the particular over the timeless and the universal, and places time under human control. Csapo and Miller’s account of the move towards sequential narrative in art and historiography might at Wrst appear to be an assertion of one temporal conception over another, the eVacement of static, cyclical time by linearity. We might question both the focus on conception over organization as the culturally variable and malleable feature of time, and the notion that static, recurring time was taken over by linearity. In fact, Csapo and Miller are quick to note that recurring, archetypal visions of the past were by no means eradicated, but were rather transformed in the service of the democratic polis, with new paradigms being provided by the recent history of the Persian wars, and new founder Wgures discovered in the tyrannicides.40 We shall come back to look in more detail at the kind of past which Athens created for itself in historiography and in oratory, but for now the salient point is the way in which time is conWgured and articulated through the creation of diVerent histories commemorating signiWcant events of the past for the present. The coexistence of diVerent types of time raises the question of how these diVerent types might be expressed and calibrated.41 Here the matter of scale becomes relevant. It has been argued that not only earth history, but also human history underwent something of a revolution in terms of its scope in the wake of evolution theory, which rendered the biblical time frame gravely inadequate, and by the late nineteenth century had given birth to a new discipline of anthropology. The proposition that human history and the entire ethnological process could no longer be Wtted into the short span between Babel and the present day rendered obsolete the genealogical family tree of Genesis.42 While anthropology took on the huge time span now required in order to accommodate the history of mankind, history remained focused on ‘the built-up body of detailed chronologies and synchronisms forming an event-Wlled grid of time’.43 39 Csapo and Miller, ibid. 98, see Pindar’s complex chronological layering and temporal condensations and transgressions, which break free from the Xow of time and merge the moment of the patron’s glory with the permanent supernatural order, as evocative of aristocratic time. 40 Csapo and Miller, ibid. 119. 41 For a thoughtful and helpful treatment of the notion of and problems associated with periodization and diVerent forms of temporal conWguration, see P. J. CorWeld, ‘Naming the Age: History, Historians, and Time’ (London, 1996). 42 See T. R. Trautmann, ‘The Revolution in Ethnological Time’, Man ns 27 (1992), 379–97 at 386. Furthermore, biblical ethnology had already come under threat from the longer histories of the Egyptians and Babylonians, recorded by Manetho and Berossos. It is interesting, though, that the Old Testament had tried to accommodate the whole of time by making its start point, with the invention of day and night, integral to the Creation story. 43 Trautmann, ibid. 389.

14

Introduction

The problem may have appeared to be a new one, but in fact, as we shall see in chapter 3, already in the ancient world ‘historians’ were concerned about the chronological scope of their task, and relied on a range of temporal systems in order to deal with diVerent periods of the past. The issue concerned historical and mythical time rather than the millions of years needed now to understand the development of human life.44 But the diVerence is one of degree rather than kind, and the attempts by Greek authors to create and articulate narratives which could stretch the story back to the beginning of the cosmos diVer only in expression and not in conception from more modern strategies. As Koselleck notes, it was not until Augustine that the deWnition of history emerged as ‘the ordo temporum in which all events were established and according to which they were arranged’.45 But the notion that temporality and temporal patterns underpinned human experience was Wrmly embedded in Greek thought and practice. It was a natural consequence that producing meaningful narratives to commemorate past events would entail Wnding formal systems for expressing these temporal patterns. Augustine’s idea that temporality is part of the divine order implies that it determines the nature of events, whereas Csapo and Miller’s analysis of Athenian art sees time as the moulded product of artistic representations of events, bringing us back from a diVerent angle to the diYcult philosophical issue of whether time is the framework within which events occur or whether it is shaped by the events themselves. The possibility that temporality might be a pre-existing feature of the world gives rise to the question of natural time, which is articulated by the rhythms of the day, the lunar cycle, the seasons, and the year. Such time has sometimes been associated with ‘primitive’ societies, including, in the eyes of some, that of the Greeks!46 It is clear that the widespread availability of technologies such as artiWcial electric light and of industrial advances in agriculture has greatly diminished the relationship, at least in the developed world, between everyday life, war, and politics and the cycles of nature.47 However, even such technologies as air conditioning, central heating, and electric light have had a 44 The human genus is generally considered to stretch back around two million years, although the history of homo sapiens is much shorter, at only 200,000 years. 45 R. Koselleck, ‘History, Histories, and Formal Time Structures’, in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Wrst published 1979; trans. with introduction by K. Tribe, New York, 1985), 93–104 at 93, where he refers to Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 2.28.44. The passage propounds that, although human institutions make up the subject of history, history itself is a divine creation, and is nothing but the ordo temporum. 46 See E. R. Leach, ‘Primitive Time-Reckoning’, in C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall (eds.), A History of Technology. Vol. I From Early Times to Fall of Ancient Empires (Oxford, 1955), 110–27 at 112: ‘Even the Babylonian and Greek astronomers, who eventually developed notions of time similar to our own, started with a vague cyclical time-distance scale.’ 47 See Koselleck, ‘History, Histories, and Formal Time Structures’, 96.


15

limited eVect on the impact of the seasons on human behaviour and patterns; those who work nightshifts continue to suVer; natural time maintains a strong hold over even the most artiWcially enhanced lives.48 In a Greek context, as we shall see, the natural cycles played an important part in articulating daily life and providing a terminology through which time could be described. The calendars of each polis were organized according to a sequence of lunar cycles within each annual pattern, while the seasons determined the rhythm of military campaigns and formed the major framework for Thucydides’ historiographical venture.49 Momigliano has analysed the characterization of Greek time as predominantly cyclical as opposed to the time of the Judaeo-Christian tradition which is linear and teleological.50 As he notes, the dichotomy is of course too stark, since the whole idea of annual festivals such as Jewish Passover, or the Christian celebration of various episodes in the life and death of Christ, requires the idea of a cycle, no less than in the Greek polis. Furthermore, the association of cyclical time with Greek historiography rather than with everyday life is open to challenge.51 And within the context of the life of the polis, the notion of repetition and cycles was Wrmly embedded. Another natural and recurring form of temporal patterning is that of the human life. This book started with Solon’s calculation of the span of a man’s life, which one might see as a microcosm of history as a whole.52 The biographical image for history is dismissed by Momigliano as inappropriate 48 See the aptly named C. Callender and R. Edley, Introducing Time (Royston, 2004), 7, however, for the way in which some creatures adhere to temporal cycles which appear to have no explanation in the natural world, such as the seventeen-year hibernation of some cicadas. 49 W. Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical (Wrst published 1977; trans. by J. RaVan, Oxford, 1985) 226, notes, ‘it is remarkable how little the [sc. Greek] calendar takes account of the natural rhythm of the agricultural year: there is no month of sowing or harvest and no grape-gathering month; the names are taken from the artiWcial festivals of the polis.’ However, see E. JeVreys, ‘The Labours of the Twelve Months in Twelfth-century Byzantium’, in E. StaVord and J. Herrin (eds.), PersoniWcation in the Greek World (Aldershot, 2005), 309–23 at 309, for the way in which the personiWcation of months in late antiquity were depicted ‘with attributes that represent the civic and agricultural pursuits deemed typical of that month’: January as a consul, May garlanded with roses, August drenched in sweat. 50 See Momigliano, ‘Time in Ancient Historiography’. 51 As Momigliano, ibid. 187–9, notes, Herodotus seems to have believed in chains of events rather than cycles, Thucydides complicates the notion of historical repetition at every opportunity (over the plague and over stasis in Corcyra), and Polybius probably drew his theory of cyclical government from a political philosopher. 52 An interesting example is oVered in Plutarch’s Life of Theseus—Theseus in old age comes to be plagued by demagogues (35.3: ŒÆ ÆªøªE ) and Spartan invasions (in response to Theseus’ theft of Helen at 31.2), just as the city of his creation would be in its later life. On the links between Theseus and the world of late Wfth-century Athens, see C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Making Myth look like History: Plutarch’s Theseus-Romulus’ in Plutarch and History : Eighteen Studies (London, 2002), 171–95 at 181–4.

16

Introduction

to ancient historiography: ‘No ancient historian, as far as I can remember, ever wrote the history of a state in terms of births and rebirths. Isolated metaphors do not make historical interpretations.’ The Wrst part of this claim is disputable,53 and the patterning of time in terms of human lives is by no means absent from the sources. This can be on a small scale—Aristophanes plays in the Clouds with the ‘periodization’ of a human life by suggesting that certain stages could be repeated in place of others. The notion of old age as a second childhood Wts neatly into a discussion about role reversal of parents and children, which underpins much of the humour in the play, but it also jokes about the possibility of turning the clock back or perhaps, rather diVerently, reversing the Xow of time.54 Diodorus Siculus (10.9.5) neatly draws together the idea of the ages of mankind—child, lad, young man, and old man—with a temporal pattern according to seasons where he brings these two forms of natural time into analogy with each other. First and most famously, the analogy was drawn between human time and that of the natural world by Homer (Iliad 6.145–9) who described the generations of man being like leaves on a tree, which fall in autumn and are replaced in spring. Articulating time with reference not to chronological punctuation marks but to the phases or stages which intervene is unsurprisingly common. The Hesiodic scheme of metal ages is but one version of this form of periodization, and is strongly expressive of a linear sense of time.55 Incidentally, it is interesting that some diVerent phases of the scheme are introduced by characters who appear regularly in the fragments of Greek local historiography. Thus, the age of bronze begins with the Ogygian Xood, and that of the heroes with the Deucalian Xood. As we shall see in chapter 4, both Ogygus and Deucalion are found regularly in the local histories, but out of context. It would be interesting to consider both whether they were deemed there too to be acting as chronological punctuation marks, ushering in a new age, and whether the appearance of such Panhellenic Wgures is indicative of a less parochial conception of local history than we might imagine. 53 See, for example, Dicaearchus, Life of Greece (´ ¯ºº) or Theopompus’ decision to entitle his universal history the Philippica as though history could be encapsulated by the aVairs of one man. Although not using the terminology of birth and rebirth, Strabo’s potted histories of individual places in the Roman empire trace the cycle of foundation, development, decline, sometimes destruction, in an almost biographical mould. 54 Aristophanes, Clouds 1417. The proverb that old people were children for a second time (d ÆE ƒ ªæ ) turns up several times in extant literature, such as Aeschylus, Agamemnon 74–82 and Eumenides 38, Plato, Laws 646a. 55 See Hesiod, Works and Days, 109–201. It is noteworthy that this work encapsulates both progressive and recurring concepts of time so elegantly, the linearity of the sequence of ages being complemented by the cyclical time of the annual round of agricultural tasks. For the diVerent concepts of time underlying the Theogony and the Works and Days, see DarboPeschanski, ‘Historia et historiographie grecque: ‘‘le temps des hommes’’ ’, 92–106.


17

But dividing up time according to a sequence of periods was prone to a biological metaphor also. The organic view of historical development through phases was most eloquently expressed by Florus with his metaphor of the stages of life, applied to the history of Rome: ‘If anyone were to look at the Roman people as he would an individual and review its entire life, how it began and grew up, how it arrived at the so-called fruition of youth, how after that it, as it were, grew old, he will discover its four stages and progressions.’56 Makdisi has analysed the relationship between the annual commemoration of an individual life in the form of the diary and the Islamic historiographical tradition. As he notes,57 the same word, ta’rikh, is used to denote both diary and history, and essentially refers to the ‘Wxed beginning of the month’. The diary of Ibn Banna’ included this Wxing of the new month even when there was nothing to record for that day, suggesting that not only the content of each span of time was important, but also the temporal structuring itself.58 The ta’rikh, as a form of writing which included both the aVairs of an individual and those of the world at large, in both an annual cycle and an annalistic record, blurred the boundaries between the individual life and the span of history, and between recurring and linear time.59 In the words of Sakhawi: ‘As a technical term, ta’rikh is the indication of time that serves accurately to establish circumstances such as the dates of birth of hadith transmitters and of religious leaders, the dates of death . . . Important events and occurrences that happen to take place are added to this [including wars and battles and conquests] . . . It may also be extended to minor matters such as the construction of mosques, schools, bridges . . . earthquakes, conXagrations . . . In sum, the term ta’rikh signiWes a branch of learning that is concerned with research regarding the occurrences which take place in time, in the intention to establish their character and their place 56 Florus 1.1.4. After his summary of the four stages of the ‘life’ of the Roman empire, Florus goes on to outline them in more detail and identify a period of Roman history with each stage— infantia, adulescentia, iuventus, senectus (1.1.5–8). 57 G. Makdisi, ‘The Diary in Islamic Historiography: Some Notes’, History and Theory 25 (1986), 173–85 at 176. 58 In this respect, it is interesting to compare historians such as Diodorus Siculus and Livy, both of whom continue to record the accession of new magistrates who provide the annalistic framework of the account, even if nothing else. The passing of time thus becomes a historical event in its own right. Tacitus interestingly reconverts the existence of annual magistracies into a purely temporal marker by placing the new consuls for each year in the ablative absolute, thereby removing them from the syntax of the main clause, just as they have been removed from the mainstream of history by the Principate. 59 We shall see later in this chapter in more detail the way in which the annual cycle of the calendar not only provides ways of expressing more precisely when within a year a particular event happens, but also encapsulates the whole of time past in a selective and telescoped way through the annual commemoration of certain signiWcant moments.

18

Introduction

in time. In fact, it is concerned with everything that was (and is) in the world.’60 More common than mapping out history in terms of a single human life is articulating time past in terms of a sequence of connected and overlapping lives, or rather of generations. We shall see the generation, usually assumed to be thirty years,61 used commonly as a standard chronological measure in both universal and local historiographical texts, particularly in connection with the distant mythical period, when other forms of temporal patterning, such as by annual magistracies, were not available.62 The use of the generation and of genealogical tables oVers a basic link between humanity and the progress of time, and seems to be almost universal, according to anthropologists.63 The concept appears in both Homer and Hesiod and in the lyric poets.64 It is not, therefore, surprising that the Wrst attempts to establish a chronology that could be used in Greek historiography involved lists of rulers, based on a standard generational length.65 The use of generations to calculate the extent of a dynasty brings us to the role of rulers and dynasties as chronological measures. It is worth noting that, unless they are connected with a genealogy containing named individuals, rulers and dynasties provide not only a method of periodization, but also a terminology for dating, whereas generations are used as a measure of extent only. The idea of both dividing up time and naming each segment according to the dominant monarch is easily familiar to anyone who learned British history as a sequence of ‘ages’ associated with an individual—the Victorian

60 See Makdisi, ‘The Diary in Islamic Historiography’, 179. 61 The scholia to Homer’s references to generations, as at Iliad 1.249–52 and Odyssey 3.245, make plain that the ancients considered a generation to be a period of up to thirty years, the time span needed for the completion of the cycle of birth and reproduction (from an undeniably male perspective). In fact, the length of a ‘standard’ generation seems to have been variable, from thirty, to thirty-three, to forty years. See R. Ball, ‘Generation Dating in Herodotos’, Classical Quarterly 29 (1979), 276–81, for the argument that Herodotus’ use of generations was less systematic than some have thought, and that particularly the notion of ‘three generations to 100 years’ seems to be an Egyptian borrowing. 62 D. W. Prakken, Studies in Greek Genealogical Chronology (Lancaster, 1943), 4, implies that genealogical chronology was used whenever it could be, but that ‘it was not easily applied to the sections [sc. of Ephorus] on contemporary events’, but I would place the order of preferences the other way round, or perhaps simply acknowledge that diVerent chronological systems better suit diVerent periods and narratives. Prakken’s book oVers a thorough survey of the use of generational chronology in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Ephorus. 63 Prakken, ibid. 2. 64 Prakken, ibid. 5–17, discusses all of these. 65 Hecataeus’ Spartan king list from Heracles to his own time stands at the forefront, but his decision to assume a forty-year generation is striking. See F. Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik: Eine Sammlung der Fragmente (New York, 1973; Wrst published 1902), 43–4, for the idea of forty years old as the point of intellectual acme.


19

Age, the Edwardian Age, the Thatcher years, and so on.66 It is no diVerent in the case of whole ruling dynasties such as Tudors and Stuarts. The use of dynastic ‘eras’ to map out time and describe periods within it is well attested for the ancient world too. Particularly from the Hellenistic period onwards, some cities preferred eras to eponyms, and used them to make political points in a public and widespread way. Just as we shall see particular events commemorated in the annual cycle of calendars, another way of commemorating positive moments in history was to build them into one’s time reckoning. Under the Roman Principate, cities which wished to express loyalty to Rome might choose to date their history in terms of the Augustan era.67 Also regularly commemorated in the selection of eras was the liberation of cities.68 Kushnir-Stein has examined the Palestinian coins minted in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and noted the way in which the system of dating changed over time and according to circumstance.69 In the third century bc, regnal dating was used in the Ptolemaic mints at Ptolemais, Gaza, and Joppe. Under Seleucid control, both royal coinage, dated now by the Seleucid era of 312 bc, and city coinage, often mentioning Seleucid dynastic names, appeared.70 Finally, at the end of the second century bc, individual city eras appeared on coins, with an Ascalon coin of year 6 and Gaza coins of year 13/14 exemplifying the trend. The fact that ‘the introduction of the eras of autonomy was accompanied by the adoption of an individual calendar by each city’,71 provides a neat illustration of the way in which the organization of time was, and is, integral to the identity and self-assertion of a community. In the case of Palestinian coinage, the introduction of new eras to commemorate the changing status of the cities and their relationship to ruling dynasties continued long into the Roman imperial period. ‘Thus it appears that all city eras of Palestine marked turning points in their histories of their cities.’72 The notion of the era seems to have served them well in articulating time.73 66 The practice is, of course, by no means conWned to history lessons. Architecture, fashion, and furniture are but a few examples of the Welds in which the designation ‘Victorian’ or ‘Georgian’ would be a natural temporal indicator. 67 See B. H. McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods from Alexander the Great down to the Reign of Constantine (323 b.c.–a.d. 337) (Ann Arbor, 2002), 172 and 175, for examples of Augustan time. Paphlagonia counted from the twelfth consulship of Augustus; Samos and Philadelphia dated their inscriptions to Augustus’ victory ( B ˚ÆÆæ Œ). 68 E. J. Bickermann, Chronology of the Ancient World 2 (Ithaca, NY, 1980), 72–3, discusses the ‘freedom eras’ of cities such as Tyre. 69 A. Kushnir-Stein, ‘City Eras on Palestinian Coinage’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford, 2005), 157–61. 70 Gaza was thus Seleuceia and Ptolemais appeared as Antioch. 71 Kushnir-Stein, ibid. 157. 72 Kushnir-Stein, ibid. 159. 73 An era need not reXect the political status of a city. Olympiads, Pythiads, Isthmiads, and Nemiads—eras associated with festival games—all appeared as forms of dating in inscriptions. See McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 176.

20

Introduction

As we have already seen, eras were very often associated with particular rulers or dynasties, being simply the sum of the sequence. Whereas some rulers, Seleucus I or Queen Victoria, reigned for many years with the result that their eras covered a long time span, other forms of organizing time according to political power are conWned to a shorter and predetermined length of time, commonly a year. The year comprises both a labelled and countable unit,74 by which historical time can be indicated and measured, and a period which contains a highly signiWcant natural cycle, that of the seasons, and consequently has become a signiWcant unit also in political terms.75 It should, however, be noted immediately that the solar year of the seasons is not identical with the lunar year. Greek distinguishes linguistically between the two, and we shall see that the diVerent types of year gave rise to concurrent calendars.76 The identiWcation of years by annually elected magistrates is an essential feature of the organization of time in the ancient world, both for the Greek poleis and for Rome. In Athens the eponymous magistrate was the chief archon, starting his year of oYce on 1 Hecatombaion, but each polis had its own magistrates by whom to mark out time. The archons of Delos from 326 to 168 bc are known from the inventory lists of temples, some lists of stephanophoroi are extant (from Miletus, Priene, and Heraclea), and there are fragmentary lists of eponyms from Boeotia, Achaea, Delphi, Aetolia, and Thessaly.77 The notion of eponymous dating might seem unwieldy to a modern readership which is embedded in a system of years numbered from a Wxed starting point. Although we use an extreme form of dating by eras based around a event now two millennia old, it is noteworthy that our own system of numbered years was not devised until the sixth century ad,78 and was not transformed into a bc and ad system until 1627 by the astronomer Petavius. The successful translation of the eponymous dating of Greek poleis into Julian dates which are meaningful to us depends on the coexistence of a list of magistrates. The question of when the oYce of archon became eponymous 74 It is worth noting, though, that numbers and names fulWl diVerent functions—the number locates the year within an era, the name identiWes the eponymous magistrate. 75 Bickermann, Chronology of the Ancient World, 63, sums up the dual nature of the year as follows: ‘Absolute chronology borrows the concept of ‘‘year’’ from the calendar, but the chronological year is a historical unit, that is, a link in a series of years, whether they be numbered or otherwise individualized. This labelling distinguishes the chronographical year from the calendar unit.’ 76 McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 150, notes the diVerence between the natural year (KØÆı ) and the civil year, which started on the Wrst day of the Wrst month of the magisterial year ( ). 77 See McLean, ibid. 157, for the use in Egypt and Pergamon of the king as eponymous magistrate, counting from the year of his accession. 78 At the time of the cleric, Dionysius Exiguus.


21

has been the subject of some discussion. Although the Athenian archon list, going back to the sixth or seventh century, was not set up until c.425 bc, the inscribed list of victors in dithyrambic and dramatic contests held at the City Dionysia dates the earliest victors to the archonship of Menon (473/2), and probably went further back still.79 It was not until 421 that archon dates were regularly used in the prescripts of inscribed Athenian decrees, but it seems that archons were used regularly for dating long before the list of archons was published on stone, and that therefore the archonship should be seen as the eponymous oYce from earlier than the published list.80 The archon was not only the eponymous oYcial in Athens, but was also the designated regulator of the lunar, or festival, calendar. We shall come back to this role, but Wrst it is worth noting that Athens, like many Greek poleis, ran several calendars concurrently, which complicated his task.81 It is true that we too have many diVerent ways of organizing and describing time which are simultaneously in force. We might correctly describe our place in space in a multitude of ways—designating ourselves as being in a continent, a country, a county, a town or village, a street, and a particular building, all accurately, but with diVering degrees of speciWcity depending on context and audience. In the same way, we might identify our millennium, century, decade, year, season, month, week, day, time of day, or hour and minute, all truthfully, though diVerently expressed.82 Furthermore, we are accustomed to time systems which are internal to a particular sequence of events and meaningful only to a restricted group of people. Like the ‘war years’ used by Thucydides, we speak of ‘the third day of the holiday’, or ‘the sixth week of the university term’. We do, however, rely on a single civil calendar for identifying each day within the year.83 But in Athens, three continuous calendars were in operation

79 On this see J. P. Sickinger, Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens (Chapel Hill and London, 1999), 42. The inscription, IG ii2 2318, dates to the mid fourth century. 80 See, for example, the list of Athenian regulations concerning Miletus from 460/59 bc, which twice names the archonship of Euthynus (IG i3 21). 81 As too did, for example, the Egyptians, who employed a lunar and a solar calendar, with the same names, as well as the Seleucid calendar. From Ptolemy Philadelphus, state documents were double-dated according both to the Ptolemaic and the Egyptian solar calendars. In the end, Macedonian month names came into usage, with no relation to the moon whatsoever. See McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 167–8. 82 For the multiplicity of ways in which time may be organized and expressed in both the ancient and the modern world, Aveni, Empires of Time, oVers a most stimulating and wideranging treatment, which is sensitive to both continuity and change across time and across cultures. 83 Religious elements in the calendar, traditionally Christian in Britain, do still have an impact on, for example, the organization of the school year, but they oVer only islands of a fragmented festival calendar and not a coherent and continuous system for organizing the time of the whole year.

22

Introduction

at once—the lunar regulatory calendar,84 the festival calendar, which used the same month names but was often out of phase with the lunar calendar, and the prytany calendar.85 Although the archonship was the oYce which gave its name to the year, the prytany calendar was used by the boule and the ecclesia to administer business and to date oYcial documents, with days within each of the ten prytanies being numbered sequentially and often supplemented by calendar date. The start of the prytany year coincided with the Wrst day of the lunar calendar year, namely 1 Hecatombaion, only from 407/6 onwards,86 and even then there is some controversy over precisely what pattern of prytany lengths followed.87 Alongside the ten prytanies ran the lunar months which were the basis of the festival calendar. To complicate matters, diVerent cities had diVerent names for their months, not surprisingly since they were often linked to the local festivals.88 Even individual poleis did not always keep the same months over time. Athens started its festival year with Hecatombaion, but by the Wrst century ad the year started with Boedromion. Within each month, the days were divided into three decades. Once the Wrst day had been designated that of the ‘new moon’ (ıÆ), the rest of the Wrst decade was numbered the second, third, fourth, and so on, of the ‘month as it became established’ (ƒ Æı ). The middle decade was simply numbered the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and so on, and marked the period of the full moon. The last decade, somewhat confusingly, if not illogically, was numbered backwards, 84 As W. K. Pritchett, Ancient Athenian Calendars on Stone (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), 313, notes, the regulatory calendar, or the calendar kata theon (‘according to the god’), served as a base mark for the degree of the archon’s tampering in the festival calendar. Dates kata theon appear for the Wrst time in the second century bc. 85 B. D. Meritt, The Athenian Year (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961) makes a serious attempt to grapple with the problems of temporal organization in Athens, and the diYculties entailed by its use of three calendars concurrently, but is pilloried by Pritchett in Ancient Athenian Calendars on Stone. The clearest exposition is still A. E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity (Munich, 1972), 57–64; 64–138 then moves systematically around the Greek poleis examining the evidence for their calendars one by one. 86 See F. M. Dunn, ‘The Council’s Solar Calendar’, American Journal of Philology 120 (1999), 369–80, for the argument that the council adopted a solar, rather than lunar, calendar brieXy in the late Wfth century. 87 The Aristotelian Atheniaion Politeia 43 claims that the prytanies followed regularly, with six of 36 days and six of 35. P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981), 519, expresses scepticism about the Athenaion Politeia’s reliability on this matter. ‘A.P.’s placing of the longer prytanies at the beginning of the year is merely an illustration and was not followed every year.’ By contrast, see W. K. Pritchett and O. Neugebauer, The Calendars of Athens (Cambridge, MA, 1947), 3, for the view that Aristotle’s statement about the number of days in a prytany provides the only authoritative basis for working out the calendar of a given year (in his time). 88 As Burkert, Greek Religion, 225, comments, ‘there are virtually as many calendars as there are cities and tribes’.


23

as it led to the end of the month. So, the 21st of the month was called the tenth, the 22nd the ninth, and so on, of the ‘month as it waned’ (e Ł or ºª or Æıı or IØ ). The Wnal day was called both old and new to signify the transition from one lunar cycle to the next.89 This scheme is, broadly speaking, the one most commonly attested in the evidence, but there were variations. Sometimes the counting of days recommenced with the second decade; sometimes the third decade was designated ‘the after-20s’ ( NŒÆ) and it could be counted either forwards or backwards. The months formed the framework for an elaborate calendar of dedications to the gods, which has been the subject of much study. We shall see later in this chapter how the festival calendar, as indeed other forms of dating and temporal organization, were part of everyday life for the citizens of the polis, not only through their practical experience, but also through the public display of inscriptions which incorporated the lunar months in their dating systems, set out the festival calendar, or explicitly discussed the problems of keeping the festival calendar roughly in line with the solar year. There are two obvious ways in which to analyse this calendar, by time and by deity. The latter is adopted by Erika Simon in her much-cited work on the Attic festivals, on the grounds that the Athenian months are not meaningful to us.90 Thus she gathers up all the festivals for which there is evidence, according to the god in whose name the festival was performed, starting with Zeus. This system has obvious disadvantages. The main festival for Zeus took place in the last month of the Attic year, Scirophorion. Furthermore, the organization by deity gives no sense of the Athenian experience, as the festival calendar progressed through the year. But her study nevertheless throws out some interesting points about the relationship between dedications to the gods and the organization of time for the polis. The parallels between Attic festivals and those elsewhere show both a degree of uniformity across the Greek poleis and the fact that each city had its own way of worshipping the gods and thus organizing its time.91 Just as the Attic 89 For the general pattern, see R. Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Classical World (London, 2005), 43. The whole system is attributed by Plutarch, Life of Solon 25.3, to that eponymous lawgiver. As so often, Aristophanes reXects quite how aware the Athenian audience might have been of such issues of calendar reform. In Clouds, Strepsiades and Pheidippides discuss the collection of debts in one ‘old’ and one ‘new’ day, according to Solon’s law (1177–201). 90 E. Simon, Festivals of Attica: An Archaeological Commentary (Madison, 1983), 4. 91 As so often, the medieval festival calendar in England oVers a helpful parallel closer to home. DiVerent parishes would commemorate their own local saints in an annual cycle of festivals, which punctuated the year. The relics of St Beornwald were held in his own parish of Bampton in Oxfordshire, but would be visited by the chaplain of the daughter church on certain

24

Introduction

lunar year started in midsummer with the month of Hecatombaion, which was the month of the Panathenaea, so too did other poleis start the year with the month of the most important festival, in Delphi the month of Apellaios for Apollo. In spite of Apollo’s obvious link to Delphi, his importance also to the patterning and designation of Athenian time is clear.92 Indeed, the fact that two festivals in his honour, the Thargelia and Pyanepsia, were sometimes celebrated under the name of Helios and the Horai, strongly supports the notion of Apollo in Athens as a god of temporal organization. The local variations on the festival calendar are occasionally more revealing than the Attic versions. For example, the women’s festivals for Demeter of the Thesmophoria and the Stenia were held in the second week of Pyanepsion, but in Boeotia and elsewhere this month was far more resonantly called Demetrios. Sometimes the local nature of the festival calendar operated on a much smaller scale. The villages of Attica tended to hold their Dionysia in midwinter, in the second half of the month Poseideon, but each chose its own date.93 Another aspect of the festival calendar which emerges from a god-by-god approach is the non-annual nature of some of the celebrations. Although it was essentially a calendar of sacriWces and festivals which ran each year, it was only every four years that a new peplos was woven for Athena to be presented at the Great Panathenaea.94 Simon’s claim that the Athenians did not think in annual terms—‘they thought rather in greater dimensions of time, namely in the cycle of four years (the halved ªÆ KØÆı ), in which they had their main festivals, like the Panathenaea or the Olympic games’95—is somewhat exaggerated, but it is certainly true that there were diVerent scales of temporal patterning embedded in the festival calendar, and not only a yearly one. A diVerent approach to the festival calendar has been taken by Mikalson. Rather than examining the festivals by deity, he chose to gather all the evidence for what happened on each day of each month.96 Apart from oVering feast days through the year—St Beornwald’s day (21st December), Christmas, Palm Sunday, Easter, Rogation Days, Pentecost, and the Nativity of St John the Baptist (to whom the main church was dedicated). See J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Oxford, 1998/1994), 76–7: ‘What we seem to have here is an aYrmation of the integrity of the ancient parish by means of a cycle of feasts and processions, attended by the subordinate clergy and initiated by the festival of the local saint himself.’ 92 See Simon, Festivals of Attica, 73: ‘Apollo and his sister Artemis had more inXuence on the names of Attic months than any other gods, and their festivals were deeply rooted in the Athenian calendar.’ 93 Simon, ibid. 101. 94 Furthermore, the Parthenon frieze depicted not the annual procession, but the four-yearly Great Panathenaea. 95 Simon, ibid. 42. 96 We shall see evidence for ancient interest in this kind of chronography in the next chapter with Philochorus’ On Days.


25

a stronger sense of what the patterning of time through the year might have been like for an Athenian citizen, which months were most dominated by religious festivals, how spread out they were, and so on, this approach also gives some sense of a smaller cycle, that is the monthly repetition of sacriWces and festivals. The pattern which he discovers is of a system of monthly festivals, which dominate the Wrst decade of each month.97 Mikalson’s attempt in setting out what happened on each day of the year is to bring together what he sees as having become two separate Welds of study, that is religious history and civic life as witnessed in the extant epigraphy: ‘A year calendar including all the known festivals and meetings is the single bridge which can span the gulf now existing between these two disciplines’, so that we can, for example, understand whether a legislative assembly could meet on a festival day.98 Trying to bring together the diVerent forms of temporal articulation, which, after all, were simply ways of dividing up roughly the same block of time for diVerent purposes, was an aim in the ancient world too, as well as a cause of vexation. We shall see in the next section some evidence for the manipulation of the festival calendar in order to avoid too much divergence from the solar calendar. Much of the evidence for intercalating months comes from Athens, but other poleis too adopted the same practice. In Delphi, for example, the sixth month Poitropios was followed by a second Poitropios in certain years; in Aetolia, the intercalary month followed Dios and was called Dios embolios. Athens intercalated a month known as Poseideon beta or ‘the later Poseideon’ (—Øg or —Øg o æ).99 Pritchett concludes that ‘manipulation of the calendar was common in the Greek city-states’,100 but this view has been subject to more recent criticism.101 The advantage 97 J. D. Mikalson, The Sacred and Civilian Calendar of the Athenian Year (New Jersey, 1975), 14–24: Month 1 contains Noumenia; 2 Agathos Daimon; 3 Athena’s birthday; 4 Heracles, Hermes, Aphrodite, Eros; 6 Artemis’ birthday; 7 Apollo’s birthday; 8 Poseidon and Theseus. 98 Mikalson, ibid. 1 and 3. 99 McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 160–1. But the epigraphic evidence suggests that Poseideon was not the only month, which was repeated. See IG i3 78.53–4, discussed below p. 41. 100 Pritchett, Ancient Athenian Calendars on Stone, 345. Pritchett and Neugebauer, The Calendars of Athens, gather the evidence for calendar manipulation by other Greek poleis also. See 20–1 on an early third-century decree containing a law of the Euboean cities, which regulates the intercalation of the civil calendars in order to facilitate the performance of the Dionysiac artists (IG 12 (9) 207). 101 See A. G. Woodhead, ‘The Calendar of the Year 304/3 bc in Athens’, Hesperia 58 (1989), 297–301, for the point that we should not assume the existence of intercalation too readily. He takes the case of the year 304/3 bc, known not to be an intercalary year in Athens, and argues convincingly on the basis of a story in Plutarch, Life of Demetrius 26, that a decree from that year, published by A. P. Matthaiou, ‘ ` ØŒe łØÆ F 304/3 :.’, Horos 4 (1986), 19–23, in which æı appears, more probably refers to the renaming of a month, rather than to intercalation.

26

Introduction

oVered by a formal calendar system was continuity. As Gell comments, ‘just as a map replaces the discontinuous, patchy space of practical paths by the homogeneous space of geometry, so a calendar substitutes a linear, homogeneous, continuous time for practical time, which is made up of incommensurable islands of duration, each with its own rhythm’.102 But when the diVerent continuous systems comprising lunar months and a solar year did not match up, the organization of time was still a problem. It was the archon’s job to try to Wnd a solution. Not only did he give the year its name, but he was also in charge of the festival calendar. Anthropological studies show that complete convergence between the calendar keeper of a community and the ‘Big Man’ is rather unusual. Among the Simbo of the Solomon Islands, the calendar is controlled by the bangara, who is responsible for the insertion of intercalary months and making the calendar tally with nut production.103 But on the whole, calendar expertise seems to be spread among the tribal elite, and requires the consensus of the community at large.104 Even if the archon took responsibility for arranging the year’s calendar, as we shall see in the next section, the time according to which the polis ran its aVairs was a public matter, of interest and concern to all citizens, and therefore must have gained at least the tacit agreement of the community at large. In any case, the process was ultimately imprecise, and it has been suggested that modern scholars, living as they do in a world dominated by the tyranny of the clock, have demanded a precision in ancient calendar manipulation which was not required by the current circumstances. ‘Equations’ between the diVerent calendars were not regular and perfect. ‘They point to a Xuid system, in which the synchronisms of the two with regard to each other, and, in addition, of both vis-a`-vis the solar year, were always running into trouble.’105 On the other hand, as we shall see when considering the evidence for everyday awareness of time as a malleable concept, the way in which it was mapped out did matter to the polis enough for it to be the subject of jokes in the theatre and of expensive inscriptions set up in public.106 Burkert has claimed that 102 A. Gell, The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images (Oxford and Providence, 1992), 296. 103 Gell, ibid. 306–7. 104 See Gell, ibid. 301–3, for the way in which the Mursi of Ethiopia rely on calendrical experts to tell them which bergu (or month) they are in, but the Wnal arbitration lies with communally agreed village opinion. 105 A. G. Woodhead, The Study of Greek Inscriptions (Cambridge, 1959), 116. 106 This evidence seems to me to carry some weight against the arguments of F. M. Dunn, ‘Tampering with the Calendar’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 123 (1999), 213–31, which are directly targeted at Pritchett. Dunn argues that Pritchett has over-interpreted the evidence and painted an unfair picture of ‘wilful manipulation’ by unscrupulous archons. In fact, the scholarly dispute is more a matter of emphasis and tone rather than one of substance, since both agree that calendar adjustments were made.

Time for everyone

27

‘the calendar of a city or tribe is always at the same time a fundamental document for the locally deWned religion’,107 but we could go further and join Sourvinou-Inwood in seeing the arrangement of time encapsulated in the religious calendar as fundamental for the identity of the whole polis.108

3. TIME F OR EVE RYONE We have seen various ways in which time might be seen as a constructed concept, and prone to diVerent types of organization. Just as there is still now a multiplicity of ways in which the annual cycle can be conWgured and a range of ways in which the past can be periodized and articulated, so too was this the case in the poleis of Greece. The fact that cities had their own complex calendars—sometimes several at once—and a long and signiWcant history makes it unsurprising that scholars in the ancient world would turn their attention to the study of the formal chronological systems and of the calendar problems which were developed. These treatises hold a clear interest in their own right as pieces of intellectual history, and will be discussed in the next chapter. However, the purpose of this work is to consider time not primarily as an abstract concept, but rather as a more broadly constructed and socially reXective phenomenon. The emerging complexity of conceptions of time, not just in our world, but also in that of the Greeks, suggests that their complex calendars and strong interest in the value of time past might lead us to see a close connection between these and the life of the polis. Furthermore Ricoeur, followed by Bouvier, has articulated the way in which formal temporal systems act as bridges between the real time of the world and the representational time of narrative,109 not least historical narrative, using the notion of ‘tiered time’: ‘Et comme mode`le de ‘‘tiers temps’’, le philosophe cite le calendrier, l’eńume´ration des geńe´rations successives, les archives, les documents: autant d’outils qui permettent a l’historien d’e´tablir une connexion entre le temps reél et le temps discursif.’110 Thus the chronological strategies of 107 See Burkert, Greek Religion, 225. 108 C. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘What is Polis Religion?’, in O. Murray and S. Price (eds.), The Greek City from Homer to Alexander (Oxford, 1990), 295–322 at 322, claims that ‘the Greek polis articulated, and was articulated by, religion’. 109 In the words of P. Ricoeur, Temps et rećit III: Le temps raconte´ (Paris, 1985), 189: ‘Ces instruments de penseé ont ceci de remarquable qu’ils jouent le roˆle de connecteurs entre le temps veću et le temps universel.’ 110 Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps me´teórologique’, 116: ‘As an example of ‘‘tiered time’’, the philosopher cites the calendar, the listing of successive generations, archives, documents: no less tools which enable the historian to establish a connection between real time and the time of discourse.’

28

Introduction

historians, on which this book will focus, not only oVer a framework within which to tell a linear, but structured, story; they also anchor the representational narrative in the real, lived-in, temporal world of events, thus bringing together the life of the polis and the constructed world of the historical narrative. I shall consider ‘time in action’ in diVerent contexts in the following chapters, but should like to focus here on establishing an important precondition for the direction in which this study will move; namely that the world of time as an abstract, constructed phenomenon, which could be manipulated at will, periodized, or formed into calendars, was a world familiar to a broad cross section of the inhabitants of the Greek poleis, and not just to a rariWed intellectual elite, in spite of Herodotus’ association of the ability to calculate time with the pinnacles of wisdom. One might argue that it was necessary only for the authors of speeches, histories, plays, works of art or coins, to understand the Xexibility of time and its constructions, while the audiences could remain blissfully unaware. However, if we are, as I shall attempt, to argue for time (and particularly the past) as one of the matrices through which whole communities deWned themselves, then it would be helpful to establish that they could be doing so with some degree of self-conscious awareness. I shall therefore present some evidence for the notion that one need not have fallen among the number of the seven sages or have been a professional chronographer or calendar maker in order to have had an interest in and an understanding of the constructed nature of Greek time. We shall see in the course of this book that the preoccupations of chronographers were by no means exclusive to them, but were shared by historians who needed chronological frameworks within which to compose the past of one or more poleis, as well as by their audiences and readers. In the same way it would be misleading to assume that the scholarly Wgures who analysed the festival calendar of the city were engaged in an activity that was removed from the everyday life of the citizens. We have already seen that, at the most basic level, the festivals structured the public life of the polis. As Parker says, in discussing the sixth-century attempt to codify the festival calendar more systematically,111 ‘the state festival-programme was part of the publicly deWned conditions of life for an Athenian no less than were the laws on inheritance or adultery.’ As we shall see, general awareness not only of the festival calendar but also of its proneness to manipulation seems to have been high. Here, then, I shall consider some of the media through which we can gain insight into the everyday assumptions and conceptual presuppositions of the potential audiences of historiography, oratory, and so on. In spite of the 111 See R. Parker, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford, 1996; paperback 1997), 51.

Time for everyone

29

caveats one might issue about the complex relationship between the representation of life on the comic stage and the reality of the polis, Aristophanes’ plays nevertheless oVer a valuable glimpse into the thought world of the theatregoer in Wfth-century Athens. Of course, these productions cover a wide spectrum of human experience, but included in that is the sense of constructed time. In addition, the epigraphy of the Greek world allows us to gain insights in at least two ways. First, inscriptions may oVer a sense of which temporal frameworks were part of the regularly encountered world of the citizen of a polis, and at what level of complexity. One obvious problem is that levels of literacy and the formulaic and oYcial nature of inscribed monuments mean that we cannot safely assume that the language and concepts found there necessarily represent those of the average citizen,112 although this in itself does not mean that the ideology or self-image of the polis is not nevertheless encapsulated therein. Second, the very subject matter of some inscriptions explicitly concerns the calibration and manipulation of socially constructed time. Here we are on safer ground in adducing the inscriptions to illustrate the degree to which temporal conceptualization and exploitation might have impinged upon the life of the polis as a whole, rather than being the preserve of an intellectual elite of chronographers. An initial illustration of the ‘popularity’ of temporal calibration at a microcosmic level is oVered by the clepsydra. It is worth observing immediately that this device did not ‘tell the time’, but simply measured out equal allocations to litigants in the Athenian courts. But multiple references, both casual and more pointed, to this process in Aristophanes’ plays suggests at least that the notion of measuring out time was commonly understood and thus could be exploited for comic potential. The embodiment of the whole legal system within this time-measuring device is neatly brought out in the Wasps, where Procleon is described as one who sleeps only around the water clock, code for the fact that he is addicted to participating in trials.113 In the Acharnians, being ‘in the water clock area’ (æd ŒºłæÆ) is synonymous with being in the law courts.114 Commentators on these plays have been quick 112 See W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA, 1989) for a cautious view of the extent of literacy, even in the democratic city of Athens, where public accountability was at a high premium, although he stresses other forms of dissemination of information, such as heralds (78–9). R. Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1992), 86, reduces the importance of the literacy issue to some degree by stressing the compatibility of the ‘symbolic’ accountability of the public written record with actually using the contents of an inscription for practical purposes. See her interesting comments (84–5) concerning the emphasis placed on the physical presence of the stone, as though the object in fact is, rather than records, a decree. 113 See Aristophanes, Wasps 92–3; later, at 857–8, the presence of a water clock is seen as a prerequisite for holding a trial. 114 See Aristophanes, Acharnians 693. The scholiast glosses the phrase as K fiH ØŒÆ æfiø.

30

Introduction

to point to descriptions of the clepsydra in fragments of other works.115 There are many self-referential mentions of the process of measuring out time in this way in the speeches of the Attic orators, who were subject to its constraints,116 but the only extensive description is to be found in the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, where the water clock is clearly seen as an instrument of the courts:117 There are water clocks with tubes as outlets: water is poured into these, and speeches in trials must keep to the time thus measured. There is an allowance of ten measures in suits for more than 5,000 drachmae, and three measures for the second speech; seven measures and two measures respectively for suits up to 5,000 drachmae; Wve measures and two measures for suits up to 2,000 drachmae; six measures for adjudications, when there is no second speech. The man appointed by lot to take charge of the water clock closes the tube whenever the secretary is about to read out a law or testimony or the like. However, when a trial is being timed by the measured-out day, he does not stop the tube for the secretary, but there is simply an equal allowance of water for the plaintiV and for the defendant.118 115 W. J. M. Starkie (ed.), The Wasps of Aristophanes (Amsterdam, 1968), ad loc., provides a range of descriptions. He also notes that a glass clepsydra is mentioned by Baton of Sinope 2.13. 116 We shall return to these passages in which the orator makes his relationship to and use of the clepsydra part of his persona in ch. 5. 117 Ath. Pol. 67.2–3: Nd b ŒºłæÆØ ÆPº½Œı ı½ÆØ ØŒæ; N L e oøæ KªıØ; æe n E ºªØ a ŒÆ: ÆØ < b > Œı ÆE bæ ÆŒØØºÆ; ŒÆd æı fiH ½ı æfiø º ªfiø; ı b ÆE æØ ÆŒØØºø ŒÆd ı; ½ ı b Æ½E K½ e ½A ŒÆd ı; ı b ÆE ØÆØŒÆÆØ; < Æx > ½o æ º ª PŒ ½ Ø P½: › K½ oøæ ½Nº½g KØºÆØ e Æ½PºŒ; ‹ Æ łØÆ j j Ææ½ ıæÆ j º › ªæÆÆ f IÆªØ½ªŒØ ººfi: ‹ Æ b fi q ½æe ØÆ æ½ c æÆ › ½Iª; b PŒ KØºÆ½Ø ÆP ; Iººa ÆØ e ½Y oøæ fiH ŒÆ½ ªæF Ø ŒÆd fiH Iºª½ıfiø. 118 The text carries on as follows in fragmentary form: ØÆ ½æE ÆØ b æe a æÆ½ F —ØH ½ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ææ . . . ÆØ æH ½ÆØ . . . . . . . . . . . . ::ØÆ ½. . . ÆØ Æ ŒºØ ½. . . . . . . . . I . . . ½. . .ÆØ ƒ Ø½ŒÆ½ Æd . . . . . . . . . . . . º . . . ½::N n ŒÆ Ø º½. . . . . . . . . :: ½:: ªaæ ı ½. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : ½. . .æ KøŁE f ½. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ::ºØ:: oøæ ºÆÆ½ . . . . . . . . . . . . :: N½; › b æ E ½ØŒıØ; › b æ E½ ªı½Ø: K b E ½. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ::Æ ½. . . KEº fiH ØÆł½ØfiH . . . . . . . . . ::fiø Ø½ÆØæE ÆØ ½ ½æÆ Kd E ½. . . . . . . . . . . . :: Iªø½ ‹Ø æ Ø ½e j ŁÆ j ıªc j I ØÆ j ıØ æ ½ø . . . . . . :Ø ½‹ Ø æc ÆŁE j I EÆØ. Translation is speculative, but the following is attempted by P. J. Rhodes in the Penguin translation (1984): This day is measured out according to the length of days in Posideon, since this allowance can be applied to the days of the other months. Eleven jars are used, and are distributed in Wxed proportions: the juror in charge of the clock sets aside three jars for the voting, and the opposing litigants take equal shares of the remainder. Previously plaintiVs used to be eager to compress the defence into a very small share of the time, so that the defendants had to make do with whatever water was left; but now there are two separate containers, one for the plaintiVs and one for the defendants.

Time for everyone

31

The discovery of a clepsydra in the Athenian agora—an open earthenware bowl nine inches high with a clay spout at the bottom, which emptied in six minutes—suggests that either several measures could be allowed in succession in the courts, or they were available in diVerent sizes.119 Rhodes suggests that by the time of the Athenaion Politeia, the clepsydra may have been developed and reWned beyond this level.120 At least, that text’s detailed description of the procedure by which it was used would be compatible with this view. The production of a comedy by Eubulus in the early fourth century in which the eponymous protagonist was nicknamed Clepsydra because she allowed her lovers to remain only until the water clock ran out further attests to the familiarity of the object, which gave rise to its comic potential. MacDowell takes this to imply that clepsydrai were being used in private houses by the fourth century.121 However, the context of the fragment and the nature of the comic context itself should both counsel caution. Our knowledge of the play comes from its mention in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae, in which it features in a list of plays which took their names from prostitutes.122 As with so many other pieces of information about, and ‘fragments’ of, ancient literature taken from Athenaeus, we have no guarantee as to the authenticity of this parade of learning through citation. The note in Athenaeus that it was Asclepiades, son of Areus, who recorded in his History of Demetrius of Phaleron the explanation of Clepsydra’s nickname attempts to add verisimilitude through detail, but the reference nevertheless rings with a rather hollow and implausible tone.123 More compellingly still, the asserted comic context itself should make us question the value of this piece of evidence for domestic water clocks. While many aspects of comedy neutrally provide background to the play, and therefore allow us to make assertions In earlier times the juror in charge used to take out some of the water as an allowance for the second vote. The full measure of the day is used for those public suits where there is an additional penalty of imprisonment, death, exile, loss of civic rights or conWscation of property, or an assessment has to be made of what the oVender should pay or suVer. 119 See S. Young, ‘An Athenian Clepsydra’, Hesperia 8 (1939), 274–84, for this discovery. 120 See Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, ad loc. 121 See D. M. MacDowell (ed.), Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford, 1971), ad 92–3. 122 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.567c–d. For the frequent citation of comic fragments in the jovial setting of the Deipnosophistae, see J. Wilkins, ‘ Dialogue and Comedy: The Structure of the Deipnosophistae’, in D. Braund and J. Wilkins (eds.), Athenaeus and his World: Reading Greek Culture in the Roman Empire (Exeter, 2000), 23–37. 123 The fact that Athenaeus does not cite Eubulus himself on the matter in fact reduces rather than enhances the value of the explanation, since it indicates that Athenaeus took the story and its explanation at second hand from Asclepiades. On the other hand, this might still carry a certain scholarly cache´, if Asclepiades were ‘the expert author’ from whom the learned would seek such matters. See C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Fun with Fragments: Athenaeus and the Historians’, in Braund and Wilkins, (eds.), Athenaeus and his World, 171–90 at 186–7, for the idea that the original source might not be considered any more valuable than the expert citer.

32

Introduction

about the nature of the world which was familiar to the audience, in this case the use of the water clock actually constitutes the comic underpinning of the play. The use of a clepsydra in a domestic context could be precisely designed to strike a note of comic incongruity, which reveals that this was not a commonplace, any more than was a women’s assembly or an eVective antiwar sex strike. In any case, neither MacDowell’s suggestion that this is the earliest reference to the clepsydra outside the law courts nor Rhodes’s pointing to the fact that Empedocles actually gave the earliest extant description,124 denies the continuing strong association of the clepsydra with the law courts, as the passage from the Athenaion Politeia shows. Allen’s suggestion that the clepsydra stood in close relation to the development of democracy at Athens remains attractive.125 The free speech which underpinned the principle whereby citizens spoke for themselves in the courts was intimately connected to democratic ideology,126 and the law courts themselves were essentially bound up with the idea of democracy through the possibility of justice for all (encapsulated in the notion of NÆ) and administered by all (through the practice of jury pay). The clepsydra, the instrument which ensured fair access to the attention of the court, could thus naturally be associated with democratic equality.127 But for our purposes, it is interesting to note that in the Athenaion Politeia, the system of allocating particular measures of time by the clepsydra stands alongside a rather diVerent system for temporal calibration which concerns the measuring out of the day into divisions which can be allocated to diVerent speakers.128 The tension between the natural time span of the day, which clearly varies from month to month, and the sense of justice brought by 124 See Empedocles 31 b 100 (D-K). 125 D. Allen, ‘A Schedule of Boundaries: an Exploration, Launched from the Water-clock, of Athenian Time’, Greece & Rome 43 (1996), 157–68. 126 For the notion that the law courts protected the rights of the ordinary citizen and were a ‘common possession’ of the members of the democracy, and the pressure on this ideology in practice, see J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton, NJ, 1989), especially 217–19. 127 The association becomes even stronger when one recalls that it was Ephialtes’ democratic reforms of the 460s which had enhanced the demands on the Heliaia, and thus necessitated a more time-eYcient running of these courts, underpinned by democratic equality. 128 But it is striking that the Athenians, at any rate, seem not to have exploited the possibilities oVered by technologies such as the water clock in order to develop a systematic means of articulating the time within each day. The famous aside in Herodotus (2.109) that the Greeks learned from the Babylonians ‘the twelve parts of the day’ corresponds to no evidence for a systematic system of hours, indicated by the sundial, until the third century. Dunn, ‘The Uses of Time in Fifth-century Athens’, 39, argues that this fact provides evidence for a wider phenomenon whereby Athens persistently failed to realize its opportunities to regulate and manage time.

Time for everyone

33

artiWcially constructed equal measures of time here extends beyond the time of the individual trial, as measured out by the clepsydra, to the equality between trials conducted at diVerent times of year, ensured by the assumption throughout the year of the length of days in the month of Poseideon. The fact that it was the orator’s job to maximize the time he spent presenting arguments—hence the oft-repeated instruction to ‘stop the clock’ whenever a piece of evidence or a witness was produced—brings home the fact that the legal system, at least, was self-conscious about the constructed and manipulated nature of time for justice. Beyond the comic potential to be found in the allocation of time by the water clock in judicial and other contexts, there is clear evidence that the calendar itself as a phenomenon was signiWcant and meaningful to the Aristophanic audience. In Wealth, Hermes is said to have received cakes as oVerings on the fourth (K æØ) of the month. At a most basic level, this indicates that the audience could be assumed to know what this meant, that is to have a sense of the orderly division of the annual cycle into months, days, and so on, which is not surprising given the evidence for calendars being displayed in Greek poleis, as discussed later in this chapter. Furthermore, it shows that these divisions were part of a religious system, whereby gods were associated (whether by date of birth or by some other memorable event) with particular days of the year, thus articulating a religious calendar, which was punctuated by festivals and particular rites in their honour.129 The festival calendar could itself, of course, be subdivided—in Thesmophoriazusae, a meeting is to be held ‘on the middle (that is, second) day of the Thesmophoria’ ( fiB fi H ¨æø).130 These references to the everyday workings of the calendar may seem too obvious to mention, but it is worth noting at Wrst that the world of formal time management, which would vex archons and intrigue scholarly chronographers (as we shall see in chapter 2), was not entirely detached from that of the man in the street, although actually devising and simply referring to calendar systems clearly require very diVerent levels of expertise. The exposure of the average citizen to the various dating systems which the chronographers would discuss in the abstract, and the historiographers would use to pin down events, has already been hinted at in discussion of the multiple dating systems in play within a single polis, and was greatly enhanced by the epigraphic habit of Greek poleis, which naturally dated their decrees in terms 129 Aristophanes, Wealth 1125–6. Cf. A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Wealth (Warminster, 2001), ad loc., on the fourth of the month as Hermes’ birthday: cf. Hom. Hymn Herm. 19. Mikalson, The Sacred and Civilian Calendar of the Athenian Year, 16–18, notes that the fourth of every month in Athens was shared by Hermes with Heracles and Aphrodite. 130 Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 375–6.

34

Introduction

of a combination of local magistracies, month names, and so on.131 One example is a marble stele from Athens, dealing with the expenditure of the treasurers of Athena in 408/7–407/6 or the following year, and using the dating ‘on the three-and-twentieth day of the prytany, the sixteenth of Scirophorion’, a neat instance of the democratic magisterial time being combined with the festival calendar of days and months.132 Sickinger notes the signiWcance of a Wfth-century decree from Athens, which begins with the heading, ‘in the archonship of Alcaeus, on the nineteenth day of the prytany’, followed by a prescript of the usual kind, as another early example of more than one element in dating.133 The fundamental importance of the calendar to the polis as a whole is lavishly attested by the large number of extant inscriptions, publicly displayed, which set out the calendar of festivals, revealing the predictable fact that such matters were by no means a subject of interest only for later writers of an antiquarian inclination. They punctuated and articulated the life of the citizen, and did so in a way which encapsulated the shared past of that city, commemorating the key events of the mythological and historical past in an annually repeated cycle of communal activity.134 In a sense, then, the festival calendar operated on at least two temporal scales, oVering a synchronic history—it punctuated the time span of each year, articulating the annual cycle, but it also operated as a form of local historiography spanning the past of the city across the wider time of its history.135 One could see the calendar as 131 McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 147–78, sets out clearly the various dating systems used in the Greek poleis in epigraphic contexts. As he points out, several systems were often combined, with, for example, dating by prytany being supplemented by a calendar date. 132 See IG i2 304b–c (I3 377). 133 Sickinger, Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens, 89. The two systems duplicate each other in terms of placing the event in time, but it should be noted that they do provide diVerent information in terms of context within the life of the polis. I owe this point to Chris Burnand. 134 But see Simon, Festivals of Attica, 81–2, for the way in which the commemoration of a historical event might be moved from its true date in order to make it coincide with the appropriate patron deity’s festivals. Salamis was, therefore, celebrated on 16 Mounychion, even though the battle was seven months earlier in Boedromion: ‘because Artemis Mounychia had helped the Athenians against the Persian Xeet, the commemoration was made a part of her festival.’ Similarly, Marathon was celebrated several weeks after the date of the battle at a festival of Artemis on 6 Boedromion. 135 As Parker, Athenian Religion, 273, notes, particularly during the third century bc, festivals became explicitly described as a commemoration ( Æ) of recent events. However, even in the archaic period there were political festivals such as that for Aphrodite Pandemos or the Synoecia, and see R. G. Osborne, ‘Competitive Festivals and the Polis: A Context for Dramatic Festivals at Athens’, in P. J. Rhodes (ed.), Athenian Democracy (Edinburgh, 2004), 207–24 at 212, for the way in which games were introduced into festivals to commemorate recent events in the life of the polis. The games at the Aianteia may have been introduced after the victory at Salamis, those at the Theseia were instituted after the return of Theseus’ bones from Scyros in the 470s.

Time for everyone

35

the encapsulation of the longue dureé of history in a form which articulated the day-to-day life of the polis. The relationship between the small-scale time of the calendar and the largescale time of history is worthy of some attention, since it provides a bridge between the conWguration of time past and time present in ways which were relevant to more than just a scholarly audience. Furthermore, most modern scholarly attention which has been devoted to studying time in the Greek world has been relentlessly focused on the calendar, and I should like to bring that valuable work into a closer relationship with the diVerent temporal concerns on which this book will concentrate, namely the construction of the historical past, particularly as expressed to, by, on behalf of, and in complicity with the polis. Grafton and Swerdlow have, in a fascinating article,136 examined this relationship and made some insightful observations. They point out that the establishment of a calendar, particularly one with ominous days marked in, acts as a guide to present and future behaviour, whereas the concern to establish chronology by years, placing events in lists of eponymous magistrates or regnal years, establishes a framework for history to which past migrations, foundations, battles may be attached. As we have already seen, the relationship between these types of temporal conWguration is more complex than a straight dichotomy, since the annual calendar could encompass events which commemorated elements from the whole historical past. We are, of course, familiar with this commemoration of signiWcant events in the articulation of the annual cycle through our own calendar with its religious festivals, such as Easter, Christmas, and innumerable saints’ days, built in. The degree to which the celebration of Christian feasts dominates everyday life in Britain, through the timing of school and public holidays, has only recently come under challenge as antithetical to the multicultural nature of British society. Both magisterial and festival calendars can clearly be taken as reXective of society in so far as their articulation requires conscious decisions and adherence from the community at large. The small-scale chronological concern with days has a long history, stretching back to Hesiod’s Works and Days, but is clearly alive in some of the works we shall consider in chapter 2, such as Philochorus’ On Days, and is incorporated by later writers into their accounts of events as far back as the mythic period.137 136 A. T. Grafton and N. M. Swerdlow, ‘Calendar Dates and Ominous Days in Ancient Historiography’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), 14–42. 137 We shall see in chapter 4 the implausible precision with which local historians dated events such as the fall of Troy to not only particular years, but particular dates within the year, making use of both the historical frame and the smaller time of the calendar. Grafton and Swerdlow, ‘Calendar dates’, 17, point to the way in which Plutarch in his Life of Theseus claims

36

Introduction

The idea of ominous days illustrates the notion of combining the long and the short dureé, drawing into an annual cycle events from the span of past time, and hints at two possibilities: either that the calendar harnesses the past in ways which will direct the course of the future, since a day on which a negative event has occurred may become ill-omened through association, or that the occurrence of a bad event on a particular day in the past reveals the inherent unluckiness of that day. The idea that particular days in the calendar could not just locate negative events in time, but could actually cause them suggests that the arrangement of time, however artiWcial, was in fact reXective of a natural and underlying temporal order.138 And the fact that particular dates in the calendar might be responsible for causing bad or good events made it likely that there would be synchronism across years as well as across space.139 As Grafton and Swerdlow observe, the notion that the calendar represented some natural underpinning truth rather than being merely a human and arbitrary creation, seems to have led to the synchronization of diVerent calendars. ‘These ‘‘calendars’’ or perhaps lists of dates . . . summed up, one might guess in the order of the Attic calendar, the separate historical ‘‘calendars’’ of a number of Greek and barbarian nations, containing the dates of their festivals and major dated historical events, just as the Olympiad chronography that took shape in the same period set out in a single orderly sequence of years the separate histories of these same nations. In this way a distinct cyclical chronology of calendrical dates grew up alongside the linear chronography of years.’140 We could hardly wish for a more eloquent expression for the relationship between the calendars which articulated the dayto-day lives of citizens and the historical frameworks within which they constructed their pasts. The body of extant inscriptions which displayed the calendar of sacriWces to particular gods in each polis spans a wide geographical range, allowing us to assert that the construction of festival calendars was common across the poleis of Greece, and hence that such calendars were local in detail,141 but universal that Theseus sailed to Crete on 6 Mounychion and returned to Athens on 8 Pyanepsion—an interesting juxtaposition of ‘historical’ calendar dates and mythical content. The claim that one could pinpoint the foundation of Rome down to the time of day was ridiculed by Cicero, De Div. 2.98–9, but taken seriously by others. 138 Grafton and Swerdlow, ‘Calendar dates’, 25, cite Aelian, Varia Historia 2.25 which notes the good things caused by 6 Thargelion—the birth of Socrates, the defeat of the Persians at Marathon, the Athenian successes at Plataea and Mycale, the defeat of Darius by Alexander. 139 That is, with noteworthy events tending to occur on the same day in the calendar albeit in diVerent years; a diVerent form of synchronism from that which linked events taking place in diVerent locations, but at the same point in time. See ch. 3 for the latter. 140 Grafton and Swerdlow, ‘Calendar dates’, 27. 141 See earlier in this chapter for the diVerent calendar details, such as month names, which were used in diVerent poleis.

Time for everyone

37

in conception. Just as we shall see when examining the historiography of the Greek poleis, and considering the way in which the telling of the longer time frame, the history of the place, was both locally Xavoured and universally comprehensible in form and structures, so too do the microcosmic orderers of time, namely the calendars which map out the pattern of the individual year, conform to a broadly common structure, listing the sacriWces which are to be performed in each month in chronological order through the year. It is fortunate that one extraordinarily early such calendar from Corinth survives. This is a fragment of porous limestone found in 1898, inscribed on two adjacent faces in boustrophedon letters, and showing the name of a Corinthian month, ‘Phoinik[aios]’, together with a reference to four pigs, undoubtedly to be sacriWced on the speciWed date in that month.142 In 1970 an inscribed fragment of the same text was found in dumped Wlling from the early sixth century. Robinson conjectured that both fragments came from the wall blocks of an older temple and belonged to a sizeable sacriWcial calendar: ‘The text, presumably a calendar of sacriWces, must have extended over (part of) two wall surfaces of the building,’ (231), which could best be dated to around 600 bc. Other and more extensive examples abound. Parker discusses the elusive ‘Solonian’ calendar of sacriWces with due scepticism concerning its authorship, but with cautious conWdence in the sixth-century dating of this as the Wrst known such written festival calendar (although we know it only from a late Wfth-century revised version).143 Surprisingly, the Wrst attempt at a gathered published text of the Athenian festival calendar has only recently been made, although fragments have clearly been appearing for well over Wfty years. The surviving version is a product of the revision of Athenian law, which took place in two stages between 410/9 and 405/4, and again in the period 403/2 to 400/399, conWrming the rightness of Parker’s scepticism.144 By bringing the pieces together and interpreting them in the context of other partially extant calendars, Lambert has begun to make sense of a previously 142 For the publication, see H. S. Robinson, ‘Excavations at Corinth: Temple Hill, 1968–1972’, Hesperia 45 (1976), 203–39. 143 Parker, Athenian Religion, 43–6. The attribution to Solon, famed for his publication of written laws and concern for the principle of accountability, is perhaps not surprising. See F. de Polignac, ‘Changer de lieu, changer de temps, changer la cite´’, in Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps, 143–54 at 148, for the interesting suggestion that Solon’s published law code might be seen as another form of boundary, this time temporal rather than spatial. The notion that the written code was unchangeable, ‘e´tablissait la` aussi une ‘‘borne’’ temporelle dans la chaıˆne de la transmission’ and created ‘une re´fe´rence temporelle prećise qui geńe`re un tout autre rapport entre la tradition et son devenir.’ 144 S. D. Lambert, ‘The SacriWcial Calendar of Athens’, Annual of the British School at Athens 97 (2002), 353–99.

38

Introduction

shady, but fundamental, document of Athenian religion and polis life. There are other early sacriWcial calendars from around the Greek world, although some of these are too fragmentary to contextualize and interpret.145 Whatever the nature of the ‘Solonian’ festival calendar, it seems to have inspired the creation of a whole series of ‘deme’ calendars. The relationship between the calendar of Athens and those of the Attic demes is generally considered to be complementary, with opportunities for everyone to attend both local and centralized versions of major festivals.146 The oldest extant deme calendar,147 from Thorikos, neatly exempliWes the way in which communities across the Greek world not only organized, but also publicized, their festival year, listing the oVerings that were to be made to the various gods in each of the twelve months. Other deme calendars survive from the fourth century—one involving cultic relations with Oenoe, listing sacriWces to Artemis, Athene, Zeus, and Apollo in a particular month.148 Another much more extensive document from the early fourth century, stretching over Wve columns on a marble stele, lists the cults of the deme of Erchia month by month.149 This inscription lists 145 See Parker, Athenian Religion, 44, for these problems. He observes that calendars were seen as part of the legal codiWcation accepted by the polis, which set out the religious year and were unusually, perhaps even problematically, coherent by contrast with the generally ad hoc rather than codifying nature of early nomothete activity (51). One early sacriWcial list for Eleusis (from the start of the Wfth century) displays the same features as these calendar texts, listing sacriWces to be made to particular deities, but it lacks any indication of when these rituals were to be performed. See F. Sokolowski, Lois sacreés des cite´s grecques (Paris, 1962), no. 4. 146 S. Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge, 1999), 29, noting that no deme festivals were timed to coincide with the date of the Panathenaea, leaving everyone free to attend the festival in Athens itself. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘What is Polis Religion?’, 313–15, notes the sacriWces at Thorikos to Athena and Aglauros for the festival of the Plynteria, but celebrated on a diVerent day from in Athens itself. 147 IG i3 256 (cf. SEG 33.147). The date is, in fact, the subject of some dispute. G. Daux, ‘Le Calendrier de Thorikos’, L’Antiquite´ classique 52 (1983), 150–74 at 152, maintained that ‘la forme des lettres et l’orthographe concordent en faveur du IVeme sie`cle avant, premie`re moitie´. 385 a` 370?’ D. M. Lewis, ‘A New Athenian Decree’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 60 (1985), 108, also used the palaeography and the orthography, together with the archaic dative plurals in –Ø to date the inscription to c.430, in which he was followed by M. Jameson, ‘SacriWce and Animal Husbandry in Classical Greece’, in C. R. Whittaker (ed.), Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1988), 115 n. 7. Since then, scholarly support has oscillated between the two dates. V. J. Rosivach, The System of Public SacriWces in FourthCentury Athens (Atlanta, 1994), 22, dates the Thorikos calendar to 430, but E. Lupu, Greek Sacred Laws: A Collection of New Documents (NGSL) (Leiden, 2005), 115–49, who oVers a new edition of the text, reverts to Daux’s arguments, explaining the Wfth-century datives as deliberate archaizing, and choosing to place the calendar with those from Erchia and the Tetrapolis in the aftermath of state calendar reforms of 410–399 bc. R. Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005), 65 n. 58, sums up the state of play and adds support to the date of c.430 bc. 148 See Sokolowski, Lois sacreés des cite´s grecques, no. 16. The inscription starts e . . . but lacks the name of the month in question. 149 Sokolowski, ibid., no. 18.

Time for everyone

39

sacriWces not only by month, but more speciWcally by the date within the month. So, for example, the entry of the second column for the month of Boedromion is as follows: ‘On the fourth day of the beginning of Boedromion to the King, in Erchia, a white female lamb, burned whole, seven drachmae; on the fourth day of the waning of the month, in the village (pagos) of Erchia, a sheep to Achelous, twelve drachmae.’150 The Wve columns all give slightly diVerent versions of the sacriWcial calendar, not all including every month, and not all containing the same details for those months. The inscription shows, if nothing else, that in this deme the articulation of the ritual year was an event in itself. To set alongside this combination of speciWcity and variation in the Erchia inscription, Parker makes the important point that the ‘Solonian’ calendar and other early month-by-month calendars recognized moveable feasts: ‘On this view the role of the published calendars was to establish a sequence for festivals, and not, except within broad limits, an absolute dating.’151 But it remains the case that the broad structuring of the year was set out and made public. As we shall see in the realm of local historiography when dealing with the longer time frame of history, the same interest in establishing a relative order alongside the wish to secure a precise and absolute placement in time is apparent. Another set of Attic fourth-century sacriWcial calendars of a similar format to that concerning Erchia is to be found on both sides of a block of pentelic marble, and outlines the religious calendar for Marathon, Tricorynthus, and the Tetrapolis. The year is here organized into three-monthly groupings, which are then enumerated month by month. So, for example, in column A, we deal Wrst with the fourth quarter of the year, containing the months Mounichion, Thargelion, and Scirophorion: æ æØ: !ıØØH: :: —æÆŒ æøØ Œæ ˜‘‘ ¨ÆæªºØH: :: Ææa e æª r ˜‘‘ #ŒØææØH: :: K IªæAØ ŒæØ ˜‘‘ Œ º. ‘In the fourth period of three months: In Mounichion 150 ´½æØHj æØ ƒj Æ; ´ÆjºØ; ¯ æØA; Ijc ºıŒ; ›º jŒÆı ; jºØ; ˆ ‘‘ j æØ Łj ; K —j½ªøØ ¯æØAØj; %ºøØ j r ˜ ‘‘. 151 See Parker, Athenian Religion, 48, although this Xexibility seems to sit unhappily alongside the permanence of an inscribed calendar.

40

Introduction a ram [sc. is sacriWced] to the accomplisher—at the cost of 12 drachmae In Thargelion a sheep by the tower—at the cost of 12 drachmae In Scirophorion a ram in the market-place—at the cost of 12 drachmae etc.

A fragment of the revised Athenian calendar of sacriWces which was set up in the city during the last years of the Wfth century gives some insight into another aspect of these documents which deserves attention. This lists the sacriWces to be made to particular gods on two days in the month of Hecatombaion,152 and it is clear that a large part of the work of the public notaries (IÆªæÆE), set up as a commission by the restored democracy in 410, was concerned with the detailed publication of the sacred calendar in the Royal Stoa in the agora. The civic nature of the enterprise to establish the sacriWcial year reinforces the notion that organizing time in terms of the annual cycle of the festival calendar, which attracted the attention of antiquarians and local historians, was by no means of merely academic interest, but was a signiWcant and important part of the life of the polis.153 This explains why it was worth the trouble of recording the ritual calendar in writing at all. As is clear from a glance at the Erchia or the Tetrapolis calendars, there was an important Wnancial aspect to these documents. As Sokolowski says, ‘il me semble qu’on doit voir dans notre texte [sc. the Erchia inscription] plutoˆt des comptes qu’un calendrier cultuel’.154 This Wnancial aspect is seen by Parker too as crucial from the earliest times: ‘A prime function of the sixth-century code was surely to deWne what monies of the Athenian people were to be expended on what gods.’155 By setting up an inscribed record of the sacriWces to be held throughout the year, the city was not only mapping out time in an interesting way, but also marking its devotion and Wnancial commitment to particular deities. Perhaps it was for this reason that, in an Athenian religion which was extremely lacking in oYcial documents, ‘the only books of public cult . . . are the calendars inscribed for all to view (though few to read) on wood or stone.’156 It is possible to go beyond noting the assumed knowledge of the system of a formal calendar made up of months containing named days, many of which were signiWcant in terms of festivals in honour of particular deities or 152 See Sokolowski, Lois sacreés des cite´s grecques, no. 10. 153 It might be signiWcant in this regard that Solon is said to have transformed the Genesia, an aristocratic festival of the ancestors, into a festival for the whole polis. Thus the celebration of the past of individual families became the shared property of the entire community. It is interesting that this democratization of the past was expressed through the annual cycle of the festival calendar. 154 Sokolowski, Lois sacreés des cite´s grecques, 42: ‘It seems to me that we should see in this text a set of accounts rather than a cult calendar.’ 155 Parker, Athenian Religion, 53. 156 Parker, ibid. 55.

Time for everyone

41

commemorating important events in the past of the polis. In apparent contradiction to the notion of Wxing the calendar in stone, epigraphic evidence also provides many examples of the oYcial manipulation of the calendar, revealing that time was clearly seen not simply as a naturally determined feature of the world, but as an artiWce of man, which could be self-consciously constructed speciWcally to suit the collective needs of the polis. A third-century decree notes the stopping of the calendar at 9 Elaphebolion for Wve days, presumably to complete preparations for the City Dionysia.157 Commentators on the passage in Aristophanes’ Peace, discussed below, which makes comedy out of this type of manipulation, have posited a corresponding suppression of some calendar days later in the year, possibly making the Wnal months noticeably shorter than usual.158 An Athenian decree from the late Wfth century, regulating the oVerings of Wrst fruits at Eleusis, again indicates the possibility of manipulating the calendar with a view to facilitating the festival programme. It states that ‘there shall be intercalation of the month Hecatombaion by the new archon’.159 Hecatombaion was probably chosen here to give longer notice to those willing to oVer Wrst fruits at Eleusis, the date for which ritual probably fell in the month of Boedromion (the Attic month) during the Eleusinia. The inscription is of further interest for its proof that the assembly could direct the archon on the matter of the calendar, reinforcing the argument that the manipulation of time was an issue for the polis as a whole.160 Two centuries later and in an entirely diVerent part of the Greek world, the manipulation of the calendar was no less current an issue. The so-called Canopus decree,161 a trilingual inscription (in Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Egyptian demotic) from 237 bc preserving the resolutions passed by the assembly of Egyptian priests meeting at Canopus, not only exempliWes the simultaneous use of multiple dating systems, stating its date as ‘the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy. . . on the seventh of the month Apellaios, the seventeenth of

157 See SEG 14.65.3–4: ¯ ºÆºØH½ ½K Ø ƒ Æı æ Ø KºøØ; ½ ½Ø ŒÆd NŒ½ E B æı ½ÆÆ. 158 See A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Peace (Warminster, 1985) and S. D. Olson (ed.), Aristophanes Peace (Oxford, 1998) ad Aristophanes, Peace 411 V. 159 See IG i3 78.53–4: ÐÆ b Kºº ¯ ŒÆ ÆØØÐÆ e ¼æ Æ. Dating options are 425/4 or c.422 or c.416/5 bc. F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949), 65, notes that the proponent of the amendment, Lampon, was acting as a citizen member of assembly, not as an exegete or in any expert capacity. 160 See Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks, 26, for the sending out of sacred heralds to announce the precise beginning of festivals, as a practical means of overcoming the vagaries of the calendar. Presumably intercalations and other calendar manipulation could be publicized in a similar way. 161 OGIS 56. See R. S. Bagnall and P. Derow (eds.), The Hellenistic Period: Historical Sources in Translation (Oxford, 2003; new edition), no. 164. As L. E. Ross, Sun, Moon, and Sothis: A Study of

42

Introduction

the Egyptian [month] Tybi’,162 but it also provides a spectacular illustration of the way in which the festival calendar was deliberately manipulated. In this case, the change which is being commemorated, or perhaps rather celebrated, is the introduction of a new, more accurate, calendar system involving ‘leap years’. In order to avoid public feasts held in the winter ever being held in the summer, since the star shifted by one day every four years, or vice versa, in future times ‘as has happened in the past and as would be happening now, if the arrangement of the year remained of 360 days plus the Wve days later brought into usage’, there was to be a one-day feast of the Benefactor Gods added every four years to the Wve additional days before the new year, ‘in order that all may know that the former defect in the arrangement of the seasons and the year and in the beliefs about the whole ordering of the heavens has come to be corrected and made good by the Benefactor Gods.’ This oVers a striking illustration of how the very arrangement and regulation of the festival calendar, here involving the interpolation of an extra day every four years in order to prevent the festivals from creeping ever forward out of their appropriate seasons, was itself commemorated in the festival calendar with a feast to celebrate the now correct organization of time. It might be seen to illuminate the interesting relationship between natural time and man-made time, since the festival calendar is clearly a human invention, and one which man is eager to control, but at the same time that manipulation is here determined by the wish to maintain the festivals in the correct natural season. Or perhaps more accurately it illustrates man’s attempt to grapple with the fact that the number of days in a solar year is not an integer, and therefore necessitates a system of ‘leap’ years.163 The calendar could thus be suspended, or rather stretched, so as to ensure that festivals happened at the ‘right’ time—neither in an inappropriate season nor before the necessary preparations had been made. Notoriously in 419 bc, the Argives stopped the clock, as it were, so that the festival month of the Carneia would not begin until they had Wnished their invasion of Epidaurus.164 An interesting case, which links the notion of calendar manipulation with the possibility of crystallizing a commonly accepted view of the past in an Calendars and Calendar Reforms in Ancient Egypt (DeerWeld Beach, 1999), 130, notes, since the decree seems to have been published widely and several versions are partially extant, it is more accurate to speak of ‘exemplars’ of the decree, rather than implying that we have a single stone. 162 The combination of a Macedonian and an Egyptian date is noteworthy. As Ross, ibid. 146, comments, the two dates do not match up, paralleling casual treatment of Macedonian dating on the Rosetta stone, which might suggest that the Wnal preparation of the stele was left to Egyptians. 163 It was precisely this Egyptian system of ‘leap years’ every fourth year that Julius Caesar adopted in his far-reaching calendar reforms. See Suetonius, Divus Iulius 40. 164 Thucydides 5.54.3: %æªEØ IÆøæ ø ÆP H F æe F ˚Ææı e KºŁ æØ Ł ; ŒÆd ¼ª c æÆ Æ Æ e æ ; KÆº K

Time for everyone

43

annual cycle, is alluded to in two passages of Plutarch referring to the excision of a date from the Athenian calendar.165 The second of Boedromion was removed from the calendar, so that the Athenians would not have to commemorate what happened on that date in the mythical past, this being the day on which Poseidon and Athena fought over supremacy in Attica.166 The day was not just an ill-omened one, in which case it would have remained part of the calendar, nor was it subtly extracted from the middle of the month at a turning point in the counting, so that the lunar and civic calendars could be synchronized. This was a case of deliberate and ostentatious excision with a view to erasing a piece of Athenian history, according to a process which Loraux describes as ‘non-commemoration’, in a way which would remain consciously noticed through the obvious jump from the Wrst to the third of the month. Thus the calendar could not only be used to express the history that the polis wanted to remember, but also manipulated to encompass and preserve the history from which the polis wanted consciously to dissociate itself, rather than to forget.167 We have already seen that Aristophanes’ plays provide evidence that the notion of manipulating time fell comfortably enough within the parameters of common understanding that it could be exploited for its comic potential. Time could be played with and consciously used, and the audience in the Wfth-century theatre could be expected to take this in their stride. Two Aristophanic comedies make particular comic mileage out of the dissonance between ‘natural’ time, as observed by the gods and the natural world, and ‘man-made’ time, in the form of the festival calendar, perfectly illustrating both ends of the spectrum from time as a naturally occurring, unchangeable feature of the world, to time as an artiWcial creation, which can be manipulated c ¯ØÆıæÆ ŒÆd Kfi ı ‘When they [sc. the Spartans] had retreated, the Argives marched forward on the fourth day from the end of the month before the Carneia. And declaring every day throughout the whole period the fourth day from the end of the month, they attacked Epidaurus and devastated it.’ A. W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, and K. J. Dover, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides Vol. IV (Oxford, 1970) oVer some parallels for the manipulation of time in the context of warfare. 165 See the excellent discussion by N. Loraux, ‘On a Day Banned from the Athenian Calendar’, in The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens (trans. C. Pache, with J. Fort; New York, 2006; Wrst published 1997), 171–90. Loraux notes that the second of Boedromion was still being used in oYcial decrees at the end of the Wfth century, and suggests that the excision was probably carried out in the Hellenistic period (174). 166 See Plutarch, On Brotherly Love 489b and Table Talk 741a. 167 A far more extreme example of the eradication of history through the politically motivated manipulation of the calendar is the introduction of an entirely new ‘Republican’ calendar, based on the decimal system, in the wake of the French Revolution. But French revolutionary time lasted only fourteen years. I look forward to reading H. I. Flower, The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture (Chapel Hill, 2006), which promises to oVer new insights into the mentality of erasure, but was not published in time to be taken into account here.

44

Introduction

by man. And this, it is clear, is a dissonance that could be expected to amuse the audience at large. In Peace Trygaeus reveals to Hermes that the calendar is being deliberately distorted by the sun and moon, through cutting it short and removing days, in order that the festivals of the other gods might be diminished and their own worship enhanced.168 The problem to which the scene refers must be, as both Sommerstein and Olson note in their commentaries, the irregularities (or perhaps rather opportunities) in the Athenian calendar, discussed above, which were caused by the archon ordering the calendar to be stopped at a particular date so that a festival could be postponed and still held on its correct date.169 As Olson points out, the gods could be expected to know when the correct day ‘really’ was, and were thus irritated not to receive sacriWces precisely then, but only when the man-made calendar allowed— an interesting play on the disparity between ‘natural time’, to which the gods adhere, and ‘artiWcial time’ constructed by man, or, put rather diVerently, an insight into the problematic meshing of lunar and solar time. In the Clouds too, Aristophanes plays on the dissonance between the apparently ‘natural’ progression of time adhered to by the physical world and the gods and the man-made nature of the calendar. His chorus is made to address the moon, which is supposedly upset that the Athenians ‘do not keep the days accurately, but have turned the calendar upside down’,170 thereby getting the sacriWces for the gods on the wrong days, working on holidays, rejoicing on days of mourning, and so on. Some of the comic eVect derives from the failure to notice that the Athenians are manipulating a calendar which is not natural in the Wrst place, but itself man-made. There are no ‘right’ days for particular events, except the ones dictated by the artiWcial calendar, except in so far as certain festivities might be related to the seasons. Nevertheless, the chorus solemnly declares that one should run the days of one’s life in accordance with the moon.171 168 Aristophanes, Peace 414–15: ÆF ¼æÆ ºÆØ H æH ÆæŒº ŒÆd F ŒŒºı Ææ æøª ±Ææ øºÆ. Hermes: ‘So, that’s why for a long time they, the scoundrels, have been secretly stealing some of the days and nibbling at the cycle of the year.’ 169 See Sommerstein (ed.), Peace and Olson (ed.), Aristophanes Peace, ad loc. 170 Aristophanes, Clouds 615–16: A PŒ ¼ªØ a æÆ Pb OæŁH; Iºº ¼ø ŒÆd Œ ø ŒıØA. 171 Clouds 626: ŒÆ a º ‰ ¼ªØ æc F ı a æÆ. Dunn, ‘The Council’s Solar Calendar’, 378–9, concludes that this chorus makes best sense in the context of a change to a solar calendar for the prytanies some year before, in, or soon after 432 bc. See also Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars, 51–2, for this view.

Time for everyone

45

This play makes much of the fact that the moon inevitably dictates one’s life in so far as it determines, through the months, the Wnancial calendar. Strepsiades’ idea that, if he pulls the moon out of the sky,172 he can stop the clock, as it were, on lunar time, and thereby avoid payment of debt which is tied to particular dates in the month,173 forms a strong parallel for the notion in the Peace that one can somehow suspend the progression of festivals by putting the calendar on hold. There is, of course, a subtle diVerence, since putting the counting of days on hold or intercalating others in order to avoid reaching the ‘appointed date’ of a festival constitutes a manipulation of the ‘artiWcial’, measured time of the calendar; by contrast, taking the moon out of the sky might be seen to disrupt the progression of ‘natural’ time, as formulated in terms of lunar cycles and passing seasons. In a sense, Aristophanes is making comic mileage out of a very problematic philosophical conundrum. Strepsiades’ idea that if he pulls down the moon, he will not have to pay his debts, hints at the belief that time will stop if it cannot be measured out, by lunar cycles or by the counting of days in the festival calendar. By manipulating or putting out of action the counting system one simultaneously suspends the associated events. Thus one is left with the notion that events happen only in measured and measurable time; time and the events which punctuate it do not happen independently of the system of counting. This is a rather startling proposition, which runs counterintuitively. Surely the world and the events within it happen whether or not we have our eyes on the clock and the progression of time continues regardless of its measurement. The comic potential must lie in the fact that life in biological terms carries on regardless, and we have a strong sense that this must be true also of the festivals, debt collections, and other regular occurrences which we choose to build into our lives, making it somehow absurd to suggest that the counting of time determines, rather than is subordinate to, these other events. Of course, the Athenians had proved otherwise, by their complex constructions and manipulations of the calendar which brought home very starkly the ability of man to play with time, but this power was perhaps more apparent than real, or at least was conWned to certain aspects of time.174 The striking assertion in the Clouds that interest accumulates ‘month 172 Clouds 749–52. 173 See Clouds 16–17 and 1131–4 for Strepsiades’ fear and lament, respectively, at the prospect of the end of the month and payment day. A similar joke underpins Wasps 92–3, where the complaint is made that the cock has crowed late because it has been bribed by those who wish to avoid any review of their accounts. 174 On the other hand, the manipulation of the calendar would have a real, rather than apparent, eVect in the help it provided to debtors. In this way, Strepsiades’ idea makes a certain amount of sense.

46

Introduction

by month, day by day, as time Xows by’175 suggests that there was a sense in which time could be conceptualized as an aspect of the world, or perhaps a purely abstract phenomenon, which led an independent existence. I shall examine in the next chapter the way in which both the annual cycle of the calendar and the long time span of history were the subject of considerable scholarly attention, especially in the Hellenistic period and beyond. But before temporarily moving to consider the ‘academic’ concern with time, I give one further illustration of the way in which time and its management mattered to the wider populace in a later period of history. When Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Wrst stage of his calendar reform in 1582 in order to bring the calendar back into line with the solar year, by dropping ten days from that year and declaring that the day after October 4th that year would be October 15th, the Catholic nations adopted the change without complaint. But when the Protestant countries of Europe Wnally succumbed in 1752, by which time it was necessary to drop not ten but eleven days, special measures were taken in Britain to ensure that payments were not required before the date when they would have been under the old system. Whether or not the ensuing riots were on any signiWcant scale, or have simply been blown out of proportion from Hogarth’s famous painting of the Oxfordshire parliamentary elections of 1754 for 1755, in which a banner bearing the slogan ‘Give us our Eleven Days’ is depicted, the sense of lost time, however irrational, is easy to understand.176 It is the importance and value placed on time and its organization, especially that of the past, which this book takes as its theme. 175 Clouds 1287–9: j ŒÆ Æ BÆ ŒÆd ŒÆŁ æÆ . . . ææ F æ ı. As K. J. Dover (ed.), Aristophanes Clouds (Oxford, 1968), ad loc., states, this compound of Þø is attested for time nowhere else in Greek literature. But for the personiWcation of time in an epigraphic context, see the inscription set up to honour the Athenian dead after Chaeronea (IG 22 5526: 1–2): ½t æ ; Æ ø Ł ½E ÆŒ Æø, ½¼ªªº æø A½Ø ªF ÆŁø. ‘Oh time, all-seeing spirit of all matters for mortals, Be a messenger to all people of our suVerings.’ Tragedy also oVers many examples of time personiWed. See, for example, Sophocles, Electra 179: æ ªaæ PÆæc Ł (‘for time is the healer god’); 781–2: › æ Æ H æ ØBª ÆNb ‰ ŁÆı (‘time standing over me kept me ever expecting death’). 176 A rather diVerent form of objection, not practical but ideological, attended the inauguration of the four standard time zones in North America on November 18th 1883. This major change in the regulation of time was seen as an attack on the autonomy and independence of the individual states. See Dunn, ‘The Uses of Time in Fifth-century Athens’, 37.

II Making a business of time 1. CONSTRUCTING CALENDARS Æ c KÆÆ fiB æØ F ´æØH ƒ Æı ŒÆ %ŁÆı; ŒÆ a b ´Øø f æØ F —Æı Ł ;fi w ŒÆd F Ø e ¯ººØŒe K —ºÆ ÆØÆE IŁæ ÆØ ıæØ ŒÆd ŁıØ fiH KºıŁæfiø ˜Ød —ºÆ ÆØE bæ B Œ: c b H æH IøÆºÆ P ŁÆıÆ ; ‹ı ŒÆd F ØŒæØøø H K I æºªfi Æ Aºº ¼ºº ¼ººØ e Iæc ŒÆd ºı c ¼ªıØ. They fought this battle on the fourth of the month Boedromion, according to the Athenians, but according to Boeotian reckoning on the fourth day from the end of Panemon, on the day when even still nowadays the Hellenic council meets in Plataea and the Plataeans make sacriWces to Zeus the Liberator in memory of their victory. It is not surprising that there is a discrepancy in the dates, since, even now when matters of astronomy are more precise, diVerent people start and end each month on diVerent days.1

In the previous chapter I examined some methods for patterning time, not least the annual cycle of the calendar in the Greek polis. I also considered ways in which both this small-scale, recurring time of the year and the longer, linear time frame of time past, that is of history, were made familiar to the inhabitants of the polis. The recurring time of the calendar and the linear time of history could be articulated independently of each other or related to each other, with the cycle of the calendar encompassing selected highlights of the historical past. Although this book proposes that the manipulation and presentation of time was of interest to the whole community, I shall focus in this chapter on those who addressed the question of how to organize and articulate time from a scholarly angle. 1 Plutarch, Life of Aristeides 19.8. A more commonly cited example illustrating the same local variations on the calendar is to be found in Aristoxenus, Harmonica 2.37: Iººa Æ ºH ØŒ fiB H æH IªøªfiB H ±æØŒH æd H ø I Ø; x ‹ Æ ˚æŁØØ b Œ ¼ªøØ %ŁÆEØ b æØ Ø Oª (‘But the deWnition of the keys given by the Harmonists is exactly like the treatment of the days such that whenever the Corinthians are reckoning the tenth day of the month, the Athenians are on the Wfth, and still others are on the eighth’).

48

Making a business of time

The extant traces of the chronographic tradition from the ancient world may be described as, if not entirely exiguous, at best extremely fragmentary and heavily dominated by a small number of authors. But it is worth Wrst noting the extent and nature of the evidence, not least since it is so often ignored in modern scholarly works which purport to present and describe the two major forms of time management in the ancient Greek world—the annually recurring time of the calendars and the linear time of history. I shall deal in detail with ancient scholarly works on each of these in the relevant sections of this chapter, but we should note immediately that this tradition is very much a creation of the Hellenistic period, and is represented by a sequence of key scholars of the eastern Mediterranean centres of learning. Eratosthenes of Cyrene spent much of his life in the Alexandrian court of the third century bc and was renowned for the wide range of his scholarly interests, spanning as they did mathematics, literary criticism, philosophy, poetry, geography, and chronography itself. But by far the dominant Wgure in the extant fragments is the second-century bc scholar, Apollodorus of Athens, who moved to Alexandria, subsequently to Pergamum, and later back to Athens, and left not only his great chronographic work, but also a major commentary on the Homeric Catalogue of Ships, and a work on the gods. He is followed in the next century by Castor of Rhodes and historians such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who give a strong sense of the competitive nature of the chronographic scholarly world by this stage. And the ongoing tradition is represented for us in a rather patchy way by Phlegon of Tralles in the second century ad and the third-century polymath, Porphyry of Tyre, with whom we enter (in a hostile sense) the world of Christian chronography and a whole new episode. In spite of its limitations, this Greek scholarly chronographic literature is of great interest and importance. In terms of the history of scholarship, from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century, it gave rise to a whole strand of criticism which saw itself as oVering both the analysis and the revival of the ancient tradition. Renaissance scholars who were engaged in the same attempt to set out the structure of the past, including the Creation, the life of Heracles, the fall of Troy, the Wrst Olympics, as well as the religious practices and beliefs which underpinned the ancient calendars, were very clearly stepping into the shoes worn by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.2 The importance of commentary and competitive interpretation as an element in the ancient chronographic enterprise was illustrated by the extraordinary reconstruction 2 See A. T. Grafton, ‘Tradition and Technique in Historical Chronology’, in M. H. Crawford and C. R. Ligota (eds.), Ancient History and the Antiquarian: Essays in Memory of Arnaldo Momigliano (London, 1995), 15–31 at 16.

Constructing calendars

49

of a Hellenistic chronicle, a List of Olympiads ( ˇºıØø IÆªæÆ) by Scaliger, followed by the even more extraordinary decision of Ewald Scheibel in nineteenth-century Berlin to write a vast commentary on this modern reproduction, explicating Scaliger’s text year by year. Thus ancient chronography was practised again in the modern world, as scholars sought both to solve the chronological problems of antiquity using ancient chronographic works, and to appreciate and criticize the methods which were called into play in the attempt. Trends in classical scholarship have, however, shifted elsewhere in the course of the twentieth century. The interest in chronography as a Weld of study with a history to recount has waned as part of a more general move away from the history of scholarship in its own right. The interest in chronographic texts as the route to establishing accurate dates for such key events as the Trojan War has diminished as scholars have turned their attention from realities to mentalities. Perhaps most compellingly, the patience and mathematical expertise required for scholars to make sense of and be truly engaged with ancient debates over dating have dramatically declined, with some notable exceptions.3 But before chronography became less fashionable, a sequence of late nineteenth-century German scholars paved the way for Felix Jacoby to make it the foundation stone of his career and the underpinning of his life’s work on historiography.4 As outlined before (in the preface), Jacoby wrote his inaugural dissertation at Berlin in 1900 on Apollodorus’ Chronica and made the epigraphic chronicle displayed on the Parian Marble the subject of his Habilitationsschrift at Breslau in 1903. Furthermore, his inaugural lecture in Breslau took as its topic the greatest chronographer from the Hellenistic period, Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Although the chronographic tradition, both ancient and modern, for the very precision and erudition which the subject matter demands, has tended to be located in the realm of recondite scholarship, Jacoby’s building of a career in historiography on the foundation of a thorough understanding and appreciation of the ancient chronographers should remind us of quite how important the development and analysis of formal time systems is to the writing of history.

3 The painstaking study of D. Panchenko, ‘Democritus’ Trojan Era and the Foundation of Early Greek Chronology’, Hyperboreus. Studia Classica 6 (2000), 31–78, oVers a classic illustration of the skills required for this kind of work. 4 See I. Mo¨ller, ‘Felix Jacoby and Ancient Greek Chronography’, in C. Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti dell’opera di Felix Jacoby (Pisa, 2006), 259–75, for the importance of chronography in Jacoby’s historiographical scheme. At 261–3, Mo¨ller discusses the work of H. Diels, Jacoby’s teacher, on Apollodorus’ Chronica (1876), E. Rohde’s work on Die Ko¨nigslisten des Eratosthenes (1884/5), and E. Meyer’s interest in the methods for establishing ancient dates in the Wrst volume of his Forschungen zur Alten Geschichte (1892).

50


The twofold nature of ancient chronography is worth keeping in mind. Combined with the epigraphic record of actual calendars, it underpins modern attempts to reconstruct the calendar systems of Greek cities,5 and, on a grander scale, it sets out explicitly some of the problematic issues which had already vexed historians over how to articulate and measure the time of history. Thus the chronographic tradition treated both the cyclical time of the calendar and the linear time of history.6 Of these, the latter Weld is far better represented in the extant fragments and will therefore occupy the majority of this chapter. It might, in any case, seem appropriate to focus on the scholarly works which address the linear time of history in a book which itself takes the presentation of the past as its primary focus. But we have already seen that the relationship between the two types of time encapsulated by calendars and by the long span of history was a close one, and this blurred boundary is relevant to our consideration of chronography too. Partly for this reason, I have chosen to bring together here works in which the form, origin, and nature of polis calendars were explicitly treated with chronographic works dealing with the articulation of historical time. This clearly places the emphasis on the formal similarity between the two bodies of text, both of which are concerned with scholarly expositions of temporal organization, and on the similarity of the potential readerships of such works. But it is worth noting that alternative ways of conWguring the evidence are justiWable and illuminating. Rather than bringing together scholarly works on diVerent types of time—the annually repeated time of the calendar and the linear time of history—Jacoby, in his Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, included the works on the calendar in the same volume as the local histories. This was partly because the authors of both types of work sometimes coincided in Wgures such as Philochorus, but primarily because Jacoby considered this concern with the annual cycle of festivals as a form of local historiography. 5 Unfortunately, there tends to be little reference made to the chronographic works in books about the Greek calendar(s), but they are potentially an excellent source in so far as they attempt the same task as modern scholars of disentangling the intricacies of the calendar. A. E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity (Munich, 1972) adopts a bipartite approach, integrating the ancient scholarly literature into his discussion of the linear temporal systems adopted in historiography, but not really engaging with the fragments of works on the Athenian festival calendar, not least since he focuses on issues of intercalation and the problems of more than one concurrent civil calendar in that polis; furthermore, he is admirably lacking in Athenocentricity, thereby reducing the relative importance of fragments from Atthides concerning Athenian month names. One would not suspect from R. Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Classical World (London, 2005) that any scholarly tradition or debate surrounding such matters existed in antiquity at all. 6 This two-stranded interest of chronography is noted by Grafton, ‘Tradition and Technique’, 16: ‘Technical chronology reconstructs the calendars and dates the main events of ancient and medieval history.’


51

There is considerable force to the point that the organization of time adopted by the polis was an integral part of the story of the place. Although historians sometimes used local calendars as a chronological framework within which to place historical narrative, this does not seem to have been their prime interest in the calendar, not least since much historical narrative does not happen at the level of days and months, but over the course of years, decades, and centuries. Rather, consideration of the origins of the festivals which punctuated the calendar formed a natural theme, rather than a mere structuring device, for the local historians. It established in memorable and legitimating form, through reference to the distant—often mythological—past, an aetiology for the present articulation of time in the polis. It seems that local historians saw the development of local festivals and the associated patterning of time as fundamental aspects of the city’s functioning. It was both a feature of the everyday life of the polis and an element of its history that it had come to celebrate certain religious festivals on particular days. The question of categorization, then, is very pertinent here. It is not clearcut whether it is more helpful to group together all works which deal with the structures of time, whether on a recurring cycle or stretching across historical time, or whether it would make more sense to consider, as Jacoby did, works on the calendar as another form of local historiography, and the large-scale chronographic works as a separate category which provides the framework, rather than the content, for local histories. That would give rise to a diVerent problem, namely that the works on the calendar concern the past only in so far as it provides aetiologies for the current system of months and festivals, and they therefore do not require any temporal framework of the kind which the chronographers produced. Regardless of this, it seems clear that the overlap in interest between works on the local calendars and works of local history is considerable. The overlap in content between works devoted to the festival calendar and those on other subjects, such as local history or dialectal issues, has a clear point of contact with the arguments put forward by Jacoby in his Atthis concerning the relationship between antiquarian study, particularly of a religious nature, and local historiography. I shall return (in chapter 4) to this relationship between local historiography and antiquarianism, and also the question of whether antiquarianism necessarily implies exclusivity or distance from the world of the functioning polis. It is, however, worth noting here that, in a sense, the rather antiquarian interests of chronographers in the small-scale recurring time of the calendar and in the large-scale progressive time of history both Wnd a place in the works of polis historians. This blurred boundary between the world of local historiography and that of works on the calendar, which Jacoby reXected in his arrangement of the

52


fragments, gives rise to the methodological diYculty of attributing fragments to works. Philochorus, for example, the third-century author, who is most noted for his work of Athenian local history, also wrote a work On Feasts/ Festivals, in which he established the date of various festivals, such as the Chytroi on the thirteenth of the month of Anthesterion;7 and a date and aetiology for the Aloa feast, which was held in the month of Poseideon on the Wfth day of the moon’s waning and took its name from the fact that it took place around the threshing Xoors.8 As Jacoby suggested ‘the natural arrangement for this separate book is that of the calendars of sacriWces as preserved in inscriptions, and it is quite conceivable that the single book —æd æ H [sc. On Festivals] was merely such a calendar’.9 It would have interesting implications for the proximity or distance between scholarly works on the calendar and temporal organization for the citizens of the polis, if the former were essentially identical to the latter, except in terms of audience. The late secondcentury bc writer, Apollonius of Acharnae, oVers another example. He wrote On the Festivals in Athens, the extant fragments of which likewise concern the details and dates of various local festivals. On the Pyanepsia, he concurred with almost all the writers on Athenian festivals in saying that Pyanepsia were brought to Apollo on the seventh of the eponymous month, Pyanepsion.10 It is assumed that other fragments of Apollonius, even where no book title is given by the excerptor, also belong to this work on the festival calendar, linking feasts for the gods to the articulation of time for the polis. So, f 3 on the Chalceia festival, which took place also in the month of Pyanepsion, or f 4 on the Hydrophoria, a festival held in Athens for those lost in the Xood, or the slightly longer f 5 on the Athenian festival of Meilichios Zeus, which took place in the month of Anthesterion when it was already Wve days on the wane,11 all appear to be safely enough attributed to the work on festivals.

7 FGrH 328 f 84: %Ł æØH æ fi Kd ŒÆ. There is some debate over whether the Chytroi were celebrated as part of the Anthesterion festival or whether as a separate feast. See E. Simon, Festivals of Attica: An Archaeological Commentary (Madison, 1983), 93, for a clear assertion that it formed the last day of the Anthesterion. 8 FGrH 328 f 83: —ØH e fi Ł . Jacoby, Commentary, notes that it is hard to tell whether Philochorus would have treated calendar matters diVerently in the Atthis from in On Festivals. 9 See Jacoby, Commentary, ad loc. 10 FGrH 365 f 2. 11 FGrH 365 f 5: e %Ł æØH Ł . As Jacoby, Kommentar, observes, Apollonius sets himself strangely against Thucydides (1.126.6) here by insisting on separating the Diasia from the festival of Zeus Meilichios. He makes the plausible suggestion that Apollonius was reXecting a diVerent and later reality, whereby the old and important festivals of Zeus had lost their former meaning: ‘Vielleicht mu¨ssen wir mit der Tatsache rechnen, daß alle alten und bedeutenden Zeusfeste Athens . . . fru¨h ihre Bedeutung verloren hatten.’


53

We might make the same assumption of certain fragments of Philochorus, such as f 166 on the way in which the Athenians voted the whole of the month of Demetrion a holy month (ƒæÆ), or f 168 on the festival of the Genesia, which took place in Athens on the Wfth of Boedromion. Caution is, however, required. Phanodemus of Athens included in his Atthis, for example, the proposition that the Chalceia festival was originally in honour of Hephaestus rather than of Athena and was held in Pyanepsion, the fourth Attic month.12 As Jacoby’s tentative approach reinforces, unless his proposition that the works on the festivals resembled little more than inscribed calendars is correct, there seems to be little diVerence in form or content between the above-mentioned fragments which seem securely assigned to ‘technical’ works on the festival calendar and those which originally belonged to works of local history.13 The issue is further complicated by the fact that later writers would provide details on the Athenian festival calendar in the context of works on language. Crates of Athens, writing about the Attic dialect in the Wrst century bc, noted that the month of Thargelion was named after the bringing together of the Wrst harvest;14 Istrus the Callimachean, another scholarly Wgure, claimed in his work on Attic language that the name of the third month was Tritogeneia because Athena was born then, and in another work on Attica that Anthesterion was the eighth month, sacred to Dionysus, and so called because of the Xower of the grape, which Xourishes especially in this month;15 Jacoby too had doubts about where to place the fragment of Ammonius of Athens which provided an aetiology for Hecatombaion as the month when most hecatombs were sacriWced.16 The generic problems are clearly far-reaching for fragments which concern the arrangement and origin of the festival calendar. 12 FGrH 325 f 18. Simon, Festivals of Attica, 38, smoothes over the dispute by simply stating that, although Hephaestus took part in the festival as patron of bronze workers, the oVerings were always to Athene Ergane. Jacoby, Commentary, attempts a more detailed explanation, positing a development of the festival along the following lines: Hephaestus festival?—common festival [presumably with dedications to Athene]—diminishing importance of Hephaestus—his reintroduction. Adducing epigraphic evidence (IG 22 674), he argues that the Athene must be Athene Polias rather than Athene Ergane. 13 Except perhaps that the local histories took as a starting point for their discussion the historical origins, rather than the place in the calendar. 14 FGrH 362 f 6. It is noteworthy, though, that Crates was also attributed a work on Athenian festivals, making his interest in the etymology of festival names unsurprising. 15 FGrH 334 f 24 and f 13. For Anthesterion so deWned see also the late Wrst-century bc work of Lysimachides (FGrH 366 f 6). 16 FGrH 361 f 6. See also the work of Lysimachides for this deWnition (FGrH 366 f 5). Jacoby was doubtful over whether f 6 of Ammonius should be attributed to him at all. He comments that, although Ammonius was clearly one of the main experts in the Weld of cult locations, it is impossible to add to the corpus from anonymous fragments, given that he was not the only such expert.

54


And it is indeed worth noting that, although a city such as Athens had more than one way of articulating the year, in fact the prytany calendar, on which the business of the boule and the ecclesia was based, did not attract attention from chronographers, nor does it feature in the temporal frameworks used by historians who wrote about the city. This might be a result of the dominant themes in the extant fragments of local historiography, which tend not to involve political analysis or narrative history. Whatever the reason, study by ancient scholars of the calendar essentially means study of the festival, or archon’s, calendar. Furthermore, although we know from the epigraphic remains of published calendars from several diVerent poleis, that each polis articulated time according to a lunar festival calendar in this way, still the vast majority of such references in the scholarly works are to the festivals of Attica, and, as we have seen (in chapter 1), this is reXected also in the focus of the modern scholarly literature on the festival calendar of Athens rather than those of the other poleis. Although this might seem unsurprising, given the predominance of Atthidography in the extant fragments of local history, in fact the interest in Attic festival calendars is, even so, disproportionately great. It might be tempting to posit that this imbalance is at least consistent with the dominance of the Athenian festival calendar in providing one of the chronological frameworks within which the local historiography of other parts of the Greek world was constructed, as we shall see (in chapter 4). However, it is impossible to prove that the use in other poleis of identical month names, for example, demonstrates actual borrowing, and is not simply the result of a similar set of festivals. The predominance of Athens here cannot be attributed to its political power, since the scholarly interest in its festival calendar seems to have emerged from its tradition of local historiography, which Xourished after Athens’ heyday as a Mediterranean power. Indeed scholarly interest in the calendars of the Greek poleis continued well into the Roman imperial period, but the range and emphasis of interests seems to have remained fairly constant. The extant fragments of Lysimachides’ late Wrst-century bc work, On the Athenian Months, chime in with the themes so far observed; the establishment of what feasts, sacriWces, and so on are performed in which month, and some aetiological and mythological background. Metageition is noted as the second Athenian month, when sacriWces are made to Apollo;17 other fragments, without title, which are commonly assumed to belong to this work, deal with the standard aetiologies for month names.18 In another he 17 FGrH 366 f 1. 18 Besides Anthesterion and Hecatombaion, Lysimachides provides an explanation, albeit rather weak, for the month Mounychion, which he deWnes as the tenth in the Athenian year and the one when sacriWces are made to Artemis Mounychia (FGrH 366 f 8).


55

notes that the Scira festival gave the month Scirophorion its name, and was named after the skiros, the sunshade under which the priestess of Athena and the priest of Poseidon and that of the sun were carried from the acropolis to some place called Sciros—either a double determination for the name, or the place was named after the shade which was carried there.19 The idea of ‘natural’ time comes through in another fragment of Lysimachides, in which he notes that the month of Maimacterion was when winter started and the air was disturbed ( ÆæÆŒ ØŒ ).20 Lysimachides is described in this fragment as one of the writers on festivals and the months of Athens, and it is clear from fragments ascribed to ‘anonymous cult writings’ that the categories ‘those who write about the festivals and months at Athens’ or ‘those who write about feasts’ were signiWcant and identiWable groups.21 Furthermore, it is clear that such writers were known to have potentially divergent opinions, since it is noted that ‘those who write about feasts agree that the Bendideia in the Piraeus happen on the ninth to the tenth of Thargelion’.22 The implication seems to be that they might well have disagreed on the matter, and, as we shall see, the element of competitive expertise in chronographic literature devoted to historical problems is even more pronounced. The scholarly tradition concerning the festival calendar, particularly that of Athens, which continues throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and to a large degree into the world of modern scholarship, has its earliest manifestations in the world of local historiography. But it is not clear that the tradition actually developed, as opposed to simply continuing. The themes remain constant over two centuries or more, giving etymologies, aetiologies, and dates. It is diYcult to say with any conWdence precisely what the overall shape or changing preoccupations of any of these works could have been, since the fragments are exiguous and scarce, and the excerptors are searching for the same information in each case, which successfully disguises any signiWcant diVerences in tone or content between the original works. The pattern of citation deserves some attention, since almost every fragment so far cited in this chapter is preserved in the invaluable dictionary of Harpocration of Alexandria in the service of a speciWc purpose; that is, to elucidate the works of the Attic orators. The dominance of this one 19 FGrH 366 f 3. See also Philochorus FGrH 328 f 14–16. As Jacoby, Kommentar, notes, the question is not whether the priest of Helios went in a procession, but when that tradition started, and therefore whether the detail was already in Lysimachides or whether it was inserted by Harpocration—Jacoby pronounces the former option ‘nicht unwahrscheinlich’. 20 FGrH 366 f 2. 21 See FGrH 368 f 4: ƒ ªæłÆ æ æ H ŒÆd H H %ŁØ and f 3: ƒ æd H %ŁØ æ H ªªæÆ . 22 FGrH 368 f 6: BØ K Ø Kd ŒÆ ¨ÆæªºØH.

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source brings both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, we cannot use the pattern of citation to support the argument that information about the calendar was seen as generically Xexible. On the positive side, the fact that Harpocration did not have any reason for citing the texts except to elucidate Athenian speeches means that his interest is not skewed by another agenda, and in this sense matches our own.23 If there is any pattern at all tentatively to discern, it might be that works on the calendar seem over time to have become the preserve of scholarly experts, as opposed to those who were simultaneously local historians. At very least, on the basis of meagre evidence, we might note that the attribution of works on the calendar to authors also known to us as local historians, such as Philochorus, seems to disappear. This trend itself oVers some insight into the nature and problems of the chronographic texts, as well as into the ongoing scholarly interest in unravelling the intricacies of the calendar. The culture of scholarly elucidation, which dominates the preservation of works on the calendar, since scholia on ancient texts account for almost all those fragments which do not appear in Harpocration, translates more emphatically into a culture of scholarly competition when we turn to the works on the longer span of historical time.

2 . C H RON O G R A P H I C A L WO R K S h Ø ŒH æŁÆØ æØŒE ØØ ºªØ ŒÆ Ø; R ıæØ ØæŁF ¼æØ æ N Pb Æ E ›ºª Æ ÆØ ŒÆ Æ BÆØ a I ØºªÆ. I do not think it right to surrender it [sc. the chronologically impossible encounter between Solon and Croesus] to any so-called Wxed chronological tables. Although countless people have been revising them right up to this day, they have been unable to bring their contradictory arguments to any point which is agreed amongst themselves.24

Sorting out the intricacies of the Athenian calendar was one task facing those who undertook to ‘organize’ time, but an even greater task was the discussion and presentation of the large time scale of the past, that is historical chronography. Chronology and history are essentially bound up together because of 23 Virtually nothing is known of the career and circumstances of Harpocration, and, although he may have been the tutor of Antoninus Verus (Life of Verus 2), this is uncertain enough for us not to be able to date him correspondingly, even tentatively, to the late Wrst or early second century ad. With so little known about the author and his perspective, it is fortunate that his work is essentially a straightforward lexicon. 24 Plutarch, Life of Solon 27.1.

Chronographical works

57

the predominance of time as the matrix along which history and historiography are conWgured: as Bouvier has noted: ‘Pour toute une tradition occidentale, le temps historique est d’abord compris comme l’ordre chronologique qui permet de dater les e´veńements selon un syste`me cohe´rent et objectif de dećoupage du temps’.25 So we are moving now from discussions of calendars and of individual feast days to scholarly works devoted to more abstract issues concerning chronology and the organization of historical time: namely, synchronisms, the coordination of diVerent local systems in ways which would be fundamental to those constructing the past in historiography or oratory, standard and ongoing chronological debates such as that surrounding the acme of Homer or the date of the Trojan War. The extant instances of temporal structures being employed in historical texts and in epigraphic sources, such as the Parian Marble and the Lindos Chronicle, will be discussed later. But here I shall discuss the extant fragments of works which deal with the construction of time past in theory, rather than in practice.

a) Problems of method Echoing some of the problems associated with works on the calendar, one of the diYculties in dealing with the extant fragments of chronographical works is gauging the nature of the original works from extremely scant remains which are dominated by a small number of late excerptors. This is, of course, notoriously problematic when dealing with fragments of any kind. It does, however, seem even more pronounced in the case of chronographies, and it remains diYcult to reconstruct their shape, form, balance, omissions, or preoccupations with any degree of certainty. It seems indisputable that the works devoted to chronography did have as one of their main preoccupations the resolution of some of the chronological problems relating to Greek history. This was clearly central to the project of creating a temporal framework that would accommodate both universal and local accounts of the past. Furthermore, the element of competition which was hinted at in works on the festival calendar is conWrmed for the large-scale chronographic works also by Plutarch’s comment, with which this section started, on the lack of certainty surrounding chronological disputes. Chronography was apparently such a contentious discipline that a chronological hitch would in no way be enough 25 D. Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps me´teórologique chez les premiers historiens grecs’, in C. Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien (Paris, 2000), 115–41 at 119: ‘For the whole western tradition, historical time is Wrst and foremost understood as the chronological order which allows the dating of events according to a coherent and objective system for carving up time.’

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to make Plutarch abandon a scenario of such dramatic value as the meeting between Solon and Croesus. However, while we can be sure that chronographers sought competitively to present answers to issues such as the date of the fall of Troy and the coordination of diVerent temporal systems, we are still left wondering quite how dominant such issues were in the original works, and to what degree our later citations have skewed the picture with their own agendas. If we consider the remaining fragments of works which are assumed because of their titles to be chronographical, it rapidly becomes apparent that their contents were wide-ranging in scope. Ancient works of chronography were often, perhaps even usually, cited by later authors in order to solve or exemplify disputes over key dates in Greek history.26 This has the obvious advantage of giving us a strong sense of where the problems in ancient chronology lay, and which points in the past were considered important enough for their precise date to be the subject of such discussion. As we shall see, the importance could lie in a variety of Welds— events of historical signiWcance in their own right were worth trying to pinpoint in time, but so too were those whose signiWcance extended to their universal applicability, which in turn gave them a crucial role as punctuation marks in the structuring of chronologies. It was thus natural that the date of the fall of Troy would be hotly disputed, partly because the Trojan story had been endowed with special status by its Homeric telling, partly because the fall of the city was an event with huge myth-historical consequences, since it gave rise to a dispersal of heroes, both Trojan and Greek, whose tortuous nostoi would change the map of the Greek world, as they founded cities en route, and partly because its universal signiWcance from both these angles made it a crucial shared hook on which other more local histories and time frames could be hung.27 26 The regularity with which chronographers disagreed about the dates of key events and important historical Wgures is brought out by the surprised tone in a fragment from Phlegon of Tralles FGrH 257 f 8, that on the placing of Cyrus’ rule over the Persians in a particular Olympiad, ‘the date rings true for everyone’: –ÆØ ªaæ ı › æ . The personiWcation of time and the musical metaphor are both rather charming features of Phlegon’s comment. 27 The importance and contentious nature of the date of the fall of Troy in the ancient chronographic tradition is brought out in the painstaking study of Panchenko, ‘Democritus’ Trojan Era and the Foundation of Early Greek Chronology’. By stating that his late Wfth-century Diakosmos was published 730 years after the fall of Troy (further speciWed either by himself or by a later chronographer), Democritus laid an early foundation stone for the Greek chronographic tradition. Unfortunately, uncertainty over whether this was the archonship of Aristion (421/0) or of Ariston (454/3) led to untold confusion and much of Greek history ended up being misplaced by thirty years. See W. Burkert, ‘Lydia between East and West or How to Date the Trojan War: A Study in Herodotus’, in J. B. Carter and S. P. Morris (eds.), The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (Austin, 1995), 139–48, for the way in which the early date for the fall of Troy, given by Herodotus, may have been motivated by his use of Lydian sources which wanted to link the genealogy of Gyges to the heyday of Nineveh, and stretched the chronology of Heracles and Troy backwards with it.


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Leaving aside the more obviously chronographic material, to which we shall return, we Wnd a rich variety of themes treated by these authors. In some cases it is simply that the author wrote a wide range of works, and we should not deduce anything about the contents and scope of his chronographic work from this fact. So, for example, Xenagoras of Heraclea wrote,28 in addition to his Chronoi, a work On Islands, in which he discussed the etymology of the former name of Cyprus, Cerastia (f 26), and it seems likely that some of the fragments which carry no book title came from this work. Fragments on the island of Oenoe near Euboea (f 31), named after its grapes, but according to Xenagoras renamed Sicinus after the son of Thoas and the nymph Oenoe, or on Carpasia (f 34), a city in Cyprus and an island opposite the headland of Sarpedon, would seem ideal candidates. Likewise, we might feel conWdent in assigning a fragment on the identity of the man who discovered the cycles and numbers of the moon—not Endymion nor Typhon, according to Xenagoras, but Atlas—to the Chronoi (f 32). What, however, is to be done with the passage (f 29) on the three sons of Odysseus and Circe—Rhomus, Anteas, and Adreas, all of whom founded eponymous cities? It might seem obvious that this would Wt more neatly into a work on islands and their mythological foundations than into a work of chronography. However, even the fragments of Xenagoras’ Chronoi themselves reveal the diYculty in drawing boundaries for these works. All but three are derived from the Lindian chronicle, and conversely, Xenagoras accounts for a good proportion of cited sources in the chronicle. There is thus a very considerable overlap between the Chronoi and the Lindian document. It is interesting, in that context, that the latter is a chronicle attached to an island, bringing island history and chronography tantalizingly close together, and further confusing the boundaries between the two known works of Xenagoras, one a chronicle and one a work on islands. Jacoby is right to conclude that the extant fragments of the Chronoi give no picture of how Xenagoras dated events, and indeed to suggest that the extant fragments could come from an excursus rather than the main part of the work. The other more substantially extant authors of chronographical works display similar ambiguity over precisely what might fall within the scope of such writing. Eratosthenes of Cyrene at Wrst appears to be something of an exception, in so far as there is a relatively sharp distinction between the subject matter of fragments from his Chronographiai and Olympionikai and those ascribed to other works. These latter fragments range from notes on intellectuals such as his own teacher, Ariston of Chios (f 17) and Zeno of 28 FGrH 240. The date of Xenagoras is uncertain but, if he was the father of the historian Nymphis, then he must have been active around the early second century bc. Jacoby, Kommentar, labels him ‘Kallimacheische Zeit?’.

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Eleate (f 20), to marvels such as Polus the tragic actor, who at the age of seventy performed eight tragedies in four days (f 33), Eudoxus who had conversations with dogs (f 22) and a many-footed animal (f 36), to episodes in Greek history—Alexander (f 28–30), Demetrius of Phaleron (f 32), the deaths of Cleon and Brasidas (f 39), the inscription of the early laws of Athens on triangular tablets (f 37) and the sacred wars between Athens and Phocis over Delphi (f 38). Some of these fragments are cited as coming from particular works,29 but others are cited without provenance, and it is worth asking whether they have been assigned to miscellaneous ‘other works’ because their subject matter does not appear to have a natural place in works on chronography, thereby perpetuating the notion of purely and exclusively chronographical treatises? And even here some fragments are puzzlingly placed. A passage (f 40) on the length of the Pisistratid tyranny, which Eratosthenes says lasted Wfty years, Aristotle forty-one, and Herodotus thirty-six, is a case in point, a fragment which seems obviously chronographic, but is not ascribed explicitly to any particular work. Another example of diYculty in attribution comes in the form of the second-century bc chronographer, Apollodorus of Athens. Described as a grammatikos and one of the pupils of Panaetius the Rhodian philosopher and Aristarchus the grammatikos, he was clearly a polymath, with works on Epicurus and Carneades (t 8), on the gods in twenty-four volumes (t 9), on the gods and history (t 11), and on Athenian prostitutes (t 17).30 It is worth noting that some of those scholars to whom the solution of chronographical problems appealed were the same as those who had chosen to devote attention to the minutiae of Homeric problems, and we shall return to Apollodorus’ commentary on the Homeric catalogue (t 12), which might have given him a particular interest in the chronological problem of the fall of Troy. Many fragments of On the Gods are extant, and others were assigned by Jacoby to that work on the assumption that their subject matter was suYciently clear-cut. It is admittedly the case that the fragments which explicitly declare their work of origin are unambiguously concerned with gods, relevant etymologies, divine genealogies, sacriWces, and other rituals. On the Catalogue of Ships is predictably concerned with places, their names,31 and some elements of mythology, particularly where they relate to heroic foundations, as in the fragments on how Philoctetes came to Croton and founded cities (f 167), or on the complex travels of Hesione, the daughter of Laomedon, following the fall of Troy (f 158). Many other fragments have been assumed to come 29 f 20, for example, is from On Good and Bad, f 22 from To Baton. 30 See also On Epicharmus, On Sophron, Reply to the letter of Aristocles, Languages, Etymologies, On the Earth, all of which are represented by extant fragments in Jacoby. 31 See, for example, FGrH 244 f 163 on Olenus as a masculine, rather than a feminine, city.


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from this work on the basis of their geographical subject matter. However, this is a process of assignation fraught with diYculty. Several fragments (f 184– 97), for example, are all short notes on cities and islands around the Greek world. It might therefore seen eminently sensible to assume that their original location was in a work which concerned itself with explaining the names of places which sent troops to Troy. But these fragments, inter alia, are all citations made by Stephanus of Byzantium, whose interest was notoriously focused on this Weld. Had the same passages from Apollodorus been transmitted to us by a diVerent excerptor with a diVerent set of preoccupations, we might not have ended up with a bald list of place names, which naturally seems to come from the work On the Catalogue of Ships,32 but we might instead have been presented with a series of mythological stories attached to the place names, or accounts of their history, or their famous oVspring, and we might have characterized these fragments quite diVerently and have chosen to assign them to another work. By contrast, other fragments assigned to On the Catalogue of Ships might, it seems, as easily have come from other works. Fragments providing place-name etymologies, for example, such as one on the origin of the name, Samothrace (f 178), or on how Acte in Attica was not so called after the autochthonous Actaeus, but because it lay closest to the coast (f 185), could surely be assigned as readily to Apollodorus’ work on Etymologies as to the work on the catalogue. Given that the vast majority of securely placed fragments from On the Catalogue of Ships come from writers with a strong geographical focus, Strabo and Stephanus of Byzantium, we are left with a problem. Either they excerpted from this work because it oVered precisely what they were looking for, and their citations accurately reXect the nature of the original; or the preservation of these fragments through a very restricted number of excerptors causes real problems in deciding what the scope and tone of the original might have been. Either way, it is certain that we cannot take the fact that a single author wrote many works to imply that the character of each was suYciently distinct for us to place unassigned fragments with conWdence, nor then to use them to support already tenuous characterizations of the original works. Apollodorus’ Chronica is a good case in point. Every one of the twenty-six fragments with book numbers given, except three,33 derives from Stephanus 32 See, FGrH 244 f 184 on a city in Thrace called Aenus, but Poltymbria, according to Apollodorus, or f 194 on the Thracian city of Therma, which Apollodorus believes to be Macedonian. 33 f 14–16 are citations from Diogenes Laertius. f 14 cites Apollodorus on the date of the death of Crates, given in Olympiads. Diogenes’ interest here is clearly in the philosophical books left behind, and his citation of Apollodorus is for chronological accuracy; f 15 on Arcesilaus; f 16 on the acme of Crates, again formulated in terms of Olympiads.

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of Byzantium, and all are brief notes on place names. Perhaps the only hindrance to our assuming that these were from On the Catalogue of Ships, had we not been told that they were from the Chronica, would have been the considerable geographical spread, reaching as far as Zacanthe in Iberia. This danger makes plain that our view of the original works is strongly determined by the later excerptor, since here we would run the risk of reconstructing not the works of Apollodorus, but that of Stephanus, gathering together all likeseeming fragments, but whose likeness was determined by the excerptor not the original author. As it is, Stephanus has the advantage for us of citing by both book title and book number, allowing us to sketch out an extremely rudimentary and thin framework for Apollodorus’ Chronica,34 and preventing us from attributing these particular fragments on place names to On the Catalogue.35 On the one hand, Stephanus’ dominance of the securely placed fragments of the Chronica allows him extraordinary and unwarranted control over our vision of that work; on the other, it reveals that the parameters of the Chronica might have been broader than expected. The list of place names is peppered with additional details, which perhaps allow us to look beyond Stephanus for some small insights into Apollodorus’ interests. A fragment (f 4), for example, on the river Elorus in Sicily, provides the extra detail that the river contained Wsh which ate out of one’s hands; another (f 7) notes that Parparon in Asia was the place where Thucydides died; one (f 9) mentions the battle of Chaeronea; another (f 13) adds the detail that the Iberian city of Zacanthe was taken by Hannibal; and another (f 22) speaks of the Aedusii, allies of the Romans against Celtic Galatia. The impression gained is that, although Stephanus’ preoccupations show us a strangely distorted Chronica, dominated by place names, even he oVers glimpses into a broader work than this, though still not the chronographical work we might have been expecting.36 We shall return to the more obviously chronographical fragments of Apollodorus’ work later. While most of the authors of chronographic texts remain entirely without context themselves, in space, time, function, and readership, Phlegon of 34 See F. Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik: Eine Sammlung der Fragmente (New York, 1973; Wrst published 1902), 10, for the assertion that we can reconstruct the framework for the Wrst two books only: ‘die Verteilung des StoVes la¨sst sich aus den Fragmenten mit Sicherheit nur fu¨r die beiden ersten Bu¨cher feststellen’, with Book 1 going from the fall of Troy to the Persian wars, and Book 2 from then until the death of Alexander, corresponding neatly to Eratosthenes’ Chronica. 35 This should surely act as a cautionary note as regards those many other geographical fragments which are assigned to On the Catalogue for want of any other obvious home. 36 See T. P. Wiseman, ‘The Intellectual Background’, in Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature (Leicester, 1979), 154–66 at 158, for Apollodorus’ Chronica as a broad history in the Hecataean and Herodotean tradition: ‘Apollodorus’ conception of history was the amalgam of mythology, geography and history (in our sense)’.


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Tralles is a rare exception.37 The testimonia present him as a freedman of Hadrian, thereby providing both date and social standing. He wrote fourteen books covering two hundred and twenty-nine Olympiads. As for those fragments which concern the organization of time, we shall come back to them later. But meanwhile it is worth noting the variety of subject matter treated in the fragments securely assigned to Phlegon’s work entitled A Collection of Olympic Victors and Dates, which deWes any expectation that such a work would be narrow in scope.38 There are some more obviously chronographical fragments, but also many fragments of the kind we have seen elsewhere—brief notes from Stephanus of Byzantium about particular places,39 some of which are relatively far-Xung.40 This shows the same kind of geographical spread as we have seen before, and clearly reXects both Stephanus as source, and something of the scope of the original. But it is also the case here, as elsewhere, that some fragments, especially those not from Stephanus, oVer glimpses into a broader historical interest. One passage (f 17), for example, notes that Phlegon in Book 15 of the Olympiads stated that Bosporus was ruled by king Cotys, whom Caesar ordered to wear a crown and whom he told the cities to obey; another (f 23) provides alternative etymologies for the Adriatic sea, one of which is historically grounded in the fact that Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, founded the city of Adrias on the Ionian gulf. An initial consideration, then, of the fragments of chronographical works reveals problems in assessing the nature and scope of the originals. It is certainly reasonable to assert that they contained details which were not purely chronographical, being peppered with geographical and historical notes. This makes it extremely diYcult to assign fragments which are not 37 He is, indeed, such a rare exception that the amount of detail seems suspicious. Jacoby, Kommentar, notes that Phlegon’s chronographic work was commissioned (‘die Chronik war ein Klientelarbeit’) like that of Suetonius, in this case dedicated to P. Aelius Alcibiades (t 3). I owe to Peter Derow the interesting idea that Phlegon might be a ‘constructed’ source, concocted by the author of the Historia Augusta in an attempt to provide fake authority for his account. It is indeed true that Phlegon is cited by only the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta and other very late sources, such as Stephanus of Byzantium and Photius. We may have doubts also about an author such as Eretes (FGrH 242), who is cited only once, and that by Censorinus as part of a list of authors who are at odds over the length of time from fall of Troy to Wrst Olympiad— according to Eretes, Wve hundred and fourteen years. 38 In a sense, this is all the more striking if one has doubts about the reality of the author, since a Wctional work of chronography should surely tell us the parameters of plausibility for such a work if it is set up self-consciously to convince, and it is thus all the more surprising to Wnd them exceeding our expectations. 39 See, for example, FGrH 257 f 2 on the Trojan city of Gergis, f 3 on the little city called ‘temple of Zeus’, f 4 and 6 on Dyspontion, the home town of Olympic victors, f 5 on the city of Hyperasia, and f 7 on the city of Lenos. 40 f 10 on Nibis, an Egyptian city, f 11 on Velitra in Italy, f 15 on Creme in Pontus, f 20 on the Paeonian tribes, f 22 on the Libyan city of Phournita.

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cited with their provenance. The fact that an author wrote works also on other subjects is simply no grounds for assuming that his chronographical work was narrow in scope and could not accommodate fragments on a wide range of themes. Works bearing the title Chronica, or similar, were clearly multifaceted. Just as non-chronographical fragments have been cited to supply information and examples for later authors with their own agendas, leaving us uncertain as to their original context, so too it is diYcult to assess the more strictly chronographical fragments. In a sense the problem is the same—when a later chronographer such as Eusebius or Censorinus cites an earlier author in the context of a chronological dispute, we cannot be certain whether the earlier text is simply a pool of information as to which events happened in which year, or whether that earlier work was itself interested in issues of chronology and the organization of time. Of course, the titles of works may be helpful here—where we are told that Euthymenes placed Homer’s acme at the same time as that of Hesiod, about two hundred years after the fall of Troy, in a work called the Chronica,41 we might reasonably assume that this is not simply a case of Clement of Alexandria citing a random work which happens to mention a date which he can then use in his chronology of early Greek literary history. Rather, it seems likely that Euthymenes himself was already engaged in such an activity, working out the relationship between the time of the Trojan War and that of the earliest poets. But the precise nature and location of the chronographical interest must remain uncertain.

b) Chronography and the organization of time With all of these methodological diYculties acknowledged, particularly the problem of assessing the overall nature, scope, and shape of the original works, and that of distinguishing the interests and motives of the author from those of the excerptor, it is time to turn to the explicitly chronographical fragments in works which, through their titles, do at least appear to claim an interest in conWguring, arranging, and calculating time. In order to avoid paralysis, it seems reasonable to work here on the assumption that these authors were consciously interested in these projects, and that their mention of, for example, key chronological punctuation marks such as the fall of Troy are made not incidentally, but deliberately as part of an attempt to address chronographic problems. The third-century bc polymath, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, makes a good starting point, not only because he is chronologically prior to many of our 41 See FGrH 243 f 1.


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authors, but also because the relatively small number of extant fragments encompasses many widely recurrent chronographic themes. I shall therefore use the fragments of his work to provide a framework on which to hang discussion of other authors. Of course, Eratosthenes was by no means only a chronographer. The pupil of Ariston of Chios, he was summoned from Athens by Ptolemy Euergetes, and joined the Ptolemaic court for about forty years.42 As Fraser notes, his choice of Athens as the location of his education, instead of Alexandria, suggests an interest in philosophy, for which Athens was more renowned.43 The testimonia, however, focus on his role as expert in grammar and philologist, although it is conceded that he was also a poet, philosopher, and geometer.44 Whatever the precise emphasis of his early career, which is rather obscure, his reputation must have been suYciently elevated for him to be appointed to the post of Librarian, which carried with it tutorship of the royal children and incorporation into the Ptolemaic household. It was almost certainly during this period that he produced his most scholarly works, including the chronographical work which concerns us primarily.45 Just as Eratosthenes’ monumental work of geography was preceded and underpinned by a more technical work called the Anametresis, so too did his works on time come as a pair. The Olympionikai are relatively disappointing, in so far as the extant fragments are concerned not with the establishment of a list of Olympic victors as an aid to providing a chronological framework, but rather provide a random selection of notes on the Olympic contests.46 On the other hand, the work represented an attempt to participate in and improve an already existing tradition started by Hippias of Elis with his early fourth-century List of Olympic Victors.47 It seems commonly agreed that, although Hippias’ list laid the 42 See FGrH 241 t 1. 43 See P. M. Fraser, ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, Proceedings of the British Academy 56 (1970), 175–207 at 178. 44 FGrH 241 t 3. See also t 2 for Eratosthenes as measurer of the earth. 45 See Fraser, ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, 183, for the view that the Geography belongs to this period ‘and I would have diYculty in believing that his chronography and his studies in Attic Comedy do not also, for they entailed detailed research most easily carried out in the Library’. 46 See, for example, f 5 on the wooden or iron or bronze object that was thrown in competition, or f 4 on how the Tyrrhenians accompany their boxing with piping, or f 8 on Astyanax the Milesian who completed the circuit of laureate games with no trouble. 47 See FGrH 6 f 2 with Plutarch, Numa 1.4 for the deWciencies of the system. Plutarch notes that there is great diversity over when Numa reigned and over chronology in general, especially when it is Wxed by the list of victors in the Olympic games published by Hippias. See S. Hornblower, Thucydides (London, 1987), 128, for the intellectual climate in which Hippias compiled the Wrst list of Olympic victors, which ‘shows an interest in periodization and a new awareness of ‘‘historical’’ as opposed to mythical time.’ C. Higbie, ‘Craterus and the Use of Inscriptions in Ancient Scholarship’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 129 (1999), 43–83 at 49–51, also comments on the document-mindedness of this period. For the history of attempts in the Hellenistic period to provide improved versions of the list, see C. Wacher, ‘The Record of the Olympic Victory List’, Nikephoros 11 (1998), 39–50 at 41.

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groundwork for universal chronology, it was not designed with that purpose in mind.48 As Panchenko notes, ‘if Hippias’ work pertained to the realm of cultural history rather than chronography, it was natural to relate the time of establishing the Olympic games with the time of the Trojan war and to formulate how many years elapsed since the Troica till the Wrst Olympiad, but there was no obvious reason to relate the list of the Olympic victors with that of the Spartan kings or the Athenian archons.’49 I shall discuss (in chapter 3) the way in which historians, notably Timaeus of Tauromenium, would bring such lists into the service of historiography, but it is worth noting that this translation from list into historiographical framework was not the monopoly of Timaeus. The culture of scholarly competition which characterized the Hellenistic period oVered a natural context within which to improve upon Hippias’ list. But Eratosthenes’ Chronographies, just like his Geography, put Hippias’ groundwork to broader use than this in replacing the ‘multifarious local systems of chronology by a universal chronology of Greek history embracing the period from the sack of Troy to the death of Alexander the Great’.50 It is worth stressing here the precision of Fraser’s words ‘a universal chronology of Greek history’ [my italics]. The Olympic games were, in origin, exclusively a festival for all the Greeks, and this will be worth remembering when we consider the adoption and development of the Olympiadic temporal system by historians such as Timaeus from Sicily. The signiWcance of the ‘universal’ application of Olympiadic, that is Panhellenic, time is easy to overlook, but speaks volumes about both the prestige of the Greek historiographical tradition and the cultural aspirations of those who would bring their works within its conceptual frameworks. It is clear from Dionysius of Halicarnassus that Eratosthenes’ work on the organization of time, his Chronographies, was considered a benchmark for standards in chronography, and oVered the Panhellenic equivalent to using the list of Athenian archons as a framework for history.51 Dionysius says that, although Porcius Cato does not give the 48 Jacoby, Commentary, ad FGrH 328 f 92, strikingly claims that Hippias’ work ‘is more likely to have been a local book than a universal chronicle’. 49 Panchenko, ‘Democritus’ Trojan Era and the Foundation of Early Greek Chronology’, 58–9. Panchenko notes also that victory in stadion was not the most prestigious (Thucydides 3.8 uses the pankration and see Philostratus, Imagines 2.6, for the status of this sport), but the most ancient; therefore the stadion could be used to determine how deep in the past went the institution of the Olympic games. 50 Fraser, ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, 198. 51 I would diVer from Fraser, ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, 200, who praises Eratosthenes’ system at the expense of the ‘rather amateurish scheme, or lack of scheme’ of the Parian Marble, which includes mythical dates and makes no reference to a general chronological scheme such as that of the Olympiads. Eratosthenes was engaged in a project to provide a general framework for time, as he had done in his Geography for space; the Parian Marble had no such universal pretensions, and thus reasonably used more local time frames.


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date [for the foundation of Rome] in Greek terms, he places it four hundred and thirty-two years after the Trojan War, and that if this time is measured out (IÆ æŁ) alongside the chronography of Eratosthenes it comes out as the Wrst year of the seventh Olympiad, revealing that Eratosthenes’ work brought into a meaningful and calculable relationship Wxed markers such as the Trojan War and the continuous temporal system oVered by the counting of numbered Olympiads.52 Dionysius’ praise for Eratosthenes is worth noting—he says that Eratosthenes used ‘sound tables’ (ƒ ŒÆ ªØE), although it is implied that it is Dionysius’ achievement to have put together Eratosthenes’ system with the information provided by Cato, enabling him to relate the foundation of Rome to the Olympiadic system. The relation of key points in Mediterranean history to the Olympiadic sequence is a theme which recurs consistently through the chronographic fragments, as we shall see.53 It is, however, worth noting at this early stage that Olympiads were not the only system against which events might be Wxed. Besides the Trojan War, another crucial and recurrent point in Greek history, as we shall see in the next chapter when considering the universal historians, was the return of the Heraclidae. Eratosthenes is cited on the time diVerence between the return of the Heraclidae and the archonship of Euaenetus, during which Alexander invaded Asia, as being seven hundred and seventy-four years.54 It is interesting to see the return placed in chronological relation to the Athenian archonship—like the Olympiads, another continuous rather than sporadic time system—and furthermore to Wnd the mythological past of the Heraclidae and the Athenian magisterial system linked to another notorious Wgure in the Greek historical memory—Alexander the Great. Thus a chronological network involving mythical and historical events and the Wxed framework of the archons is constructed. Another framework to be brought into play is that of the Spartan kings. We are told that those who calculate the time (IÆºª Ø e æ ) for the succession of kings at Sparta, such as Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, say that Lycurgus was several years older than the Wrst Olympiad.55 In this way a local time system is brought into relation with the Olympiadic framework, oVering a means to place local history in a more Panhellenic temporal context. 52 See f 1b ¼ Dionysius 1.74.2. Also f 1c from Censorinus, which cites Eratosthenes on the time diVerence between the fall of Troy and the Wrst Olympiad (407 years). 53 The one properly extant fragment of Ti. Claudius Polybius (FGrH 254 f 2) relates that the names of winning athletes were inscribed only from the twenty-eighth Olympiad, in which Coroebus of Elis won the stadion and was the Wrst to have his name inscribed, from which point the Greeks could count time: ˇºıØa Æo æ K Ł; I w ' ¯ºº IæØŁFØ f æ ı—a stark statement of the fundamental importance of Olympic victor lists in Greek chronography. 54 FGrH 241 f 1d. 55 FGrH 241 f 2.

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These glimpses into the way in which Eratosthenes attempted to bring together diVerent time systems, partly, though not exclusively, seeking to relate them to the Olympiadic structure, and placing individual events of wider signiWcance from the mythological and historic period against this backdrop, are nowhere more concentrated than in the Wrst fragment, preserved by Clement of Alexandria:56 From the capture of Troy to the return of the Heraclidae eighty years, and from there to the colonization of Ionia, sixty years. The succession of events from there to the guardianship of Lycurgus, one hundred and Wfty years, and then to the initial year of the Wrst Olympiad, one hundred and eight.

Here we Wnd the whole panoply of set historical punctuation marks, brought into an Olympiadic framework. And once we have reached the Wrst Olympiad, we are told that from that point to the crossing of Xerxes two hundred and ninety-seven years elapsed; then there were forty-eight to the start of the Peloponnesian War, a further twenty-seven to the defeat of Athens, thirtyfour to the battle of Leuctra, thirty-Wve to the death of Philip, and then twelve to the death of Alexander. This provides a spectacular example of how important moments in Greek and Mediterranean history could be used as stepping stones in constructing a coherent chronology. But it also reveals the advantage of a continuous temporal system such as those oVered by Olympiads or the archon lists. It would be quite possible, and thereafter more convenient, to convert all the events in this list which fall after the Wrst Olympiad into Olympiadic time.57 The importance and value of drawing together events such as the Trojan War, Xerxes’ expedition, and a coherent system of Olympiads extended also to the intellectual world. Placing the poets, particularly Homer, in relation to the major events of Greek history was crucial. We are told that Eratosthenes, inter alios, claimed that Homer was at his height a hundred years after the fall of Troy ( a ŒÆ e B ( ºı ±ºø), neatly providing a relative dating for Homer, which could theoretically be translated into Olympiads.58 But Eratosthenes is also cited for the age of Euripides when he died,59 and for 56 Although it might be claimed that we are witnessing here Clement’s synthesis rather than that of Eratosthenes, the way in which the fragment is introduced suggests otherwise: ‘Eratosthenes recorded the dates in this way’ (¯ æÆ Ł b f æ ı z IÆªæØ). 57 See FGrH 241 f 1a. Note that in this instance the Athenian archonship is not adduced, though this was commonly used as a continuous temporal scale. It is worth noting that one could also incorporate events which preceded the Wrst Olympiad into such a scheme, on the analogy with our own bc/ad system which extends both sides of the chronological marker point of Christ’s birth. 58 FGrH 241 f 9. 59 FGrH 241 f 12.


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the geneaology of another intellectual, Hippocrates of Cos.60 We shall see this interest in aligning intellectual history with political history in the fragments of other chronographic works. One Wnal fragment of Eratosthenes is worthy of mention. f 47 is assigned by Jacoby to ‘other works’, that is he does not give it a speculative place in the chronographic work or that on Olympiads. This decision is probably correct, justiWed by Jacoby on the grounds that we Wnd no trace elsewhere in Eratosthenes of the chronographic use of the acme.61 But the fragment nevertheless oVers a further, interesting, and rather poetic means of conWguring time, which we might not expect from a scientiWc chronographer. Here it is claimed that Eratosthenes said that the pinnacle of youth was life’s spring, and that what followed that peak was its summer and autumn, and that old age was life’s winter,62 an interesting use of the seasonal metaphor to link natural and biographical time and reminiscent of some of the forms of biographical time patterning which we saw in chapter 1. One might be tempted to dispute Jacoby’s assumption that such a method for calibrating time did not belong to Eratosthenes’ chronographical work, especially given its dominance in many societies and indeed in classical literature as a form of time reckoning (as discussed in chapter 1). It is, however, noteworthy that reckoning by the seasons, either literally or metaphorically, or by the vague unit of the human generation is strikingly absent from the extant fragments of formal works on chronography.63 The chronographers were clearly engaged in projects which attempted to move beyond ‘natural’ temporal frameworks, embedded in the physical world, towards a humanly constructed one, formulated in terms of political or religious activities and patterns, and 60 FGrH 241 f 13. Apollodorus of Athens (FGrH 244 f 73) is also cited for this geneaology. 61 Jacoby, Kommentar: ‘Von der chronographischen Verwendung der IŒ Wndet sich bei E keine Spur.’ On the other hand, this would seem a rather precarious mode of argumentation when dealing with exiguous remains of lost texts. We Wnd little trace of anything in the fragments of most chronographers. 62 ¯æÆ Ł B ºØŒÆ e b IŒ Ææ r ÆØ; e b a c IŒc Łæ ŒÆd øæ; ØHÆ b e ªBæÆ. 63 One striking and remarkable exception, where interest is shown in the generation, might be Phlegon of Tralles (FGrH 257). His On Wonders and Long-lived People catalogued, inter alia, people whose life spans far exceeded the normal expectations. f 37, for example, oVers a vast list of named individuals, of varied provenance and status, who lived for extraordinarily long stretches of time. The list could be seen as suspicious in many ways—it gives a level of personal detail which sounds Wctional, the life spans are impossibly long (f 38 notes Epimenes who died at the age of one hundred and Wfty-seven, one hundred and Wfty-four according to Xenophanes of Colophon, and a remarkable two hundred and ninety-nine according to the Cretans), and its very existence, given the general absence of interest in generations might seem to count against its authenticity. On the other hand, it does not claim to be a work of chronography, but rather a work of marvels, and its marvellous nature tells us nothing about the usual generational span or the use it could be put to in chronography. A parallel for this interest in extreme longevity is to be found in Ps-Lucian’s Macrobioi.

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punctuated by mythological events. Thus the focus was not on seeking to uncover the temporal patterns built into the backdrop of life, but rather on seeking to impose patterns which were created by the events that took place against that natural backdrop—conceptualizing time, not as an integral feature of the cosmos, but as an externally constructed and imposed framework, within which the ordering, duration, and relationship of events could be expressed. Of course the two were not separable. The annual magistracies, the four-yearly Olympiads, the calendar of months were inevitably linked to the natural cycles. But there seems to be a marked diVerence in focus between the formulation of time in natural phenomena, and that made explicitly in terms of human activities. The small number of extant fragments of Eratosthenes oVers glimpses into many recurrent themes in the arrangement of time in chronographical projects, and it seems sensible, using his cue, now to take these in turn and see how they are treated by the other chronographers. It will, however, rapidly become clear that these chronographical markers and systems were of value only when related to each other, creating a chronological network which could encompass the whole Greek world, and that indeed it was almost impossible to express the date of a single event without recourse to its relationship either to other events or to a continuous counting system. Therefore there is little to say about each recurring topos individually, and much of interest in considering the way in which the chronographers tried to coordinate them. First, it is worth saying more about the importance of literary and intellectual activity in the structuring of time, since this phenomenon forms a constant undercurrent against which we may then consider the various methods for arranging time. Many of the fragments of works whose titles indicate their chronographical interests and motives are concerned with the birthdate, date of death, or most often the acme of authors and other intellectuals from Homer onwards.64 Apollodorus of Athens oVers a prime example of the importance of working out a chronology for the literary and intellectual world, just as for the political one. The extant fragments of his 64 A Roman chronicle, found near Rome itself and inscribed in stone, neatly illustrates the way in which intellectual history and political history were inseparable for the chronographer, at least where Greek history was concerned. IG 14.1297 (FGrH 252) oVers a bipartite chronicle— one side Roman, the other Greek. Both adhere to a rather simple chronographic structure, each entry giving the number of years from a speciWed event or events. So, Column A f 1 (¼ Column I, lines 2–7) notes that from the time when Sulla set out on his Mithridatic campaign and Soter called Physcon II returned to Egypt to rule, 103 years had elapsed; Col. B f 8 (¼ Col. II, lines 22–5) notes that from Harmodius and Aristogeiton killing Hipparchus the tyrant, and Darius crossing to Scythia and yoking the Cimmerian Bosporus was 528 years. But, whereas the Roman side is strictly political and military in its interests, the Greek side incorporates entries on the sophists (Col. B f 4 ¼ Col. II, line 15) and on Socrates, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Parmenides, and Zeno (Col. B f 10 ¼ Col. II, lines 30–2).


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Chronica are liberally sprinkled with literary notes of this kind. As so often, we are hindered in our interpretation by the source problem. The vast majority of such notes are from Diogenes Laertius, and it is impossible to tell whether Apollodorus has simply included intellectuals and their works, among many other Wgures and events, as examples to illustrate the happenings of a particular year, or whether he was more directly concerned with the notion of creating a chronology of literature or intellectual activity in its own right.65 Furthermore, since Apollodorus is often cited in conjunction with other chronographers, it is not straightforward to work out which formulations are his and which derive from others. What we can do is to observe that very many philosophers are dated in the fragments, almost exclusively linked to Olympiadic time.66 One example on Anaxagoras will suYce for the rather formulaic treatment: ºª ÆØ b ŒÆ a c ˛æı ØÆØ YŒØ K H r ÆØ; ØøŒÆØ b Œ Æ : d `ºº øæ K E æØŒE ªªBŁÆØ ÆP e BØ Œ BØ OºıØØ; ŁŒÆØ b HØ æ øØ Ø B Œ B Oª : XæÆ b ØºE `ŁØ Kd ˚Æººı; K H YŒØ þ; u Ø ˜ æØ › *Æºæf K BØ H `æ ø `ÆªæÆØ;

ŁÆ ŒÆd ÆØ ÆP e K H ØÆ æEłÆØ æØŒ Æ. He [sc. Anaxagoras] is said to have been twenty at the time of Xerxes’ crossing, and to have lived seventy-two years. Apollodorus says in his Chronica that he was born in the seventieth Olympiad, and died in the Wrst year of the seventy-eighth. He began to be a philosopher in Athens under Callias, when he was twenty, according to Demetrius of Phaleron in his list of Archons, where they also say that he spent thirty years.67

This is a prime example where it is not entirely clear which elements of the dating to attribute to which source, but it is fairly explicit in Diogenes that Apollodorus’ contribution was the Olympiadic formulae for Anaxagoras’ birth and death.68 And there are many fragments which must come also 65 There are a few indications that Apollodorus did have some interest in the history of intellectual endeavour, where fragments concern literary activity, but without any apparent chronographic interest noted. See, for example, FGrH 244 f 48 on Eudoxus the playwright and his successes in various contests, or f 49 on Ctesibius, the historian. Of course, the fragmentary nature of what remains may be masking an original chronographic purpose in mentioning these Wgures. Wiseman, ‘The Intellectual Background’, 158, sees Apollodorus’ inclusion of philosophical and literary Wgures as a ‘characteristically Hellenistic addition’. 66 See, for example, FGrH 244 f 14 on Crates, f 29 on Anaximander, who was sixty-four in the second year of the Wfty-eighth Olympiad, f 36 on Democritus’ birth in the eightieth Olympiad, Chrysippus’ death in the one hundred and forty-third (f 46), that of Carneades in the fourth year of the one hundred and sixty-second (f 51), the acmes of Protagoras and Melippus both in the eighty-fourth Olympiad (f 71 and 72). 67 FGrH 244 f 31 (¼ Diog. Laert. ii. 7) on Anaxagoras. 68 It is worth noting, in passing, the use by another, unnamed, source of the dating in terms of Xerxes’ expedition, a prime chronological marker in Greek history, and Diogenes’ coordination, in turn, of several diVerent formulations for the same information.

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from the Chronica and which array the great intellectuals of Greek history alongside the Olympiadic framework—Simonides, Pherecydes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, the headship of the academy by Speusippus and then Polemon.69 Literary and intellectual activity was set by Apollodorus not only against the dating system of Olympiads, but also that oVered by other temporal systems. Archilochus is described as already Xourishing as a poet at the time of Tullus Hostilius’ reign in Rome, and Pythagoras’ acme came at the time of Polycrates of Samos.70 Conversely, political events could be dated against literary Wgures, as in f 74 where we are told that Artaxerxes took power in Persia at the time when Antimachus the poet was at his height. Alternatively, literary Wgures could be set in time not against a political or chronographical framework, but simply in relation to each other. For example, Euripides died in the same year as Sophocles (f 35). There are many other examples of the intertwining of literary and intellectual time against that of political systems or Olympiads in Apollodorus, but those involving the combination of more than one such system I shall return to below. It is important to remember that, although Apollodorus yields a large crop of fragments concerning the literary and intellectual world, he was by no means alone in this interest. We have already mentioned Eratosthenes, but the third-century ad philosopher, Porphyry of Tyre, to whom we shall return in earnest later, also dated key intellectuals in terms of Olympiads, inter alia. He gives the date of Homer in terms of Olympiads and the fall of Troy, the latter an obvious comparison, the former less so, and Hesiod he dates in relation to Homer and in Olympiadic terms.71 Gorgias too is dated in Olympiadic terms by Porphyry (f 23). One could certainly argue that none of this interest in intellectuals is surprising, given that Porphyry wrote a work called Philosophical History, the fragments of which are largely devoted to Socrates, the seven sages, the tutors of Plato, and the like. It is nevertheless interesting that matching up intellectuals and relevant Olympiads was considered worthwhile and was indeed possible. We have already noted with Euthymenes that the dates of Homer and of Hesiod could be related to the fall of Troy,72 and indeed this provides us with our transition to another key feature in the way that chronographers such as Eratosthenes structured the past. The fall of Troy was both an important event in Panhellenic history, and also evidently a turning point in the practice of 69 See FGrH 244 f 337, 338, 340, 341, 344, and 346 respectively. 70 See FGrH 244 f 336, 339. 71 FGrH 260 f 19 and 20. f 20: —ææØ ŒÆd ¼ººØ ºE Ø æ ð ˇæıÞ ŒÆ e KØÆı E ›æ ıØ; ‰ º ı KØÆı f ıæ æE B æ OºıØ. 72 FGrH 243 f 1 on Homer’s acme at the same time as Hesiod, about two hundred years after fall of Troy: æd e ØÆŒØ e o æ B (ºı ±ºø.


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chronography. Apollodorus is described by Diodorus as a trustworthy source for post-Trojan chronology, as though it marked a shift in the possibilities for accurate calculation of past time.73 Thallus uses the Trojan War as a Wxed point in relation to which other events and people could be placed.74 Besides the Trojan War, in mythological times, the return of the Heraclidae was the next most important event to act as a punctuation mark in the otherwise amorphous centuries before the Olympic festivals could be used as a continuous and comprehensive structuring device. In the more recent past, Xerxes’ invasion of Greece was a major hinge in Greek history, in relation to which other events could be placed,75 as were the life, expeditions, and death of Alexander the Great. Castor of Rhodes dates the battle between Ptolemy and Demetrius at Gaza not only by the Olympiadic system, but also by this monumental Wgure in history: the battle happened in the eleventh year after Alexander’s death, in the one hundred and seventeenth Olympiad.76 The mention of Olympiads brings us to the broader set of chronological systems which might be seen as complementary to the stress on Wxed marker points in the past, namely those which attempted a continuous and comprehensive list of magistrates, religious oYcers, kings, or even more dramatically and accurately Olympiadic years, which provide a precise and consistent framework within which to place events. The value of ‘regal’ time in mapping out a past that was both continuous and punctuated by signiWcant moments (that is, points of succession) is attested by its regular appearance in the works of those whose project was precisely the organization of time. Apollodorus of Athens appeals to two named individuals to place an institution in history, noting the establishment of the ephorate at Sparta one hundred and thirty years after Lycurgus and in the reign of Theopompus.77 Two fragments cited 73 Or, of course, it may have been simply that Apollodorus had chosen to start at that point. However, even if this were the case, it would still carry some signiWcance, since the start point can hardly have been arbitrary. See FGrH 244 t 6 ¼ Diodorus 13.103.5. It is worth noting, however, that Apollodorus’ emulator, Nepos, conWdently took his framework back beyond the Trojan War as far as even the reign of Saturn, as well as ‘Romanizing’ the chronological scheme of Apollodorus by synchronizing, for example, Homer with the Alban kings. 74 FGrH 256 f 3. Virtually nothing is known of Thallus, although he may have been a freedman of the emperor Tiberius. As E. L. Bowie, ‘The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic’, Past and Present 46 (1970), 3–41 at 11, notes, we do not even know whether he was a chronographer, rather than an epitomator. C. R. Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. Volume I Historians (Chico, California, 1983), 343, notes that he was seen by ancient sources as a historian, and considers him a Hellenistic Jew, although it is not clear on what grounds. 75 See F. G. B. Millar, ‘Polybius between Greece and Rome’, in J. T. A. Koumoulides (ed.), Greek Connections: Essays on Culture and Diplomacy (Notre Dame, 1987), 1–18 at 12–13, for Polybius’ use of key punctuation marks of Greek history in order to anchor his own narrative. 76 FGrH 250 f 12: Œ fiø b Ø B `ºæı ºı B; Kd b OºıØ ŒÆd Œ ŒÆd ŒÆ B. 77 FGrH 244 f 335: Kd ¨ ı ÆØº .

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by Syncellus, which Jacoby deems to be falsely attributed to the Chronica, suggest that Apollodorus included long king lists in his work—one of the kings of Thebes in Egypt (F85) and one of the kings in Sicyon (F86). The former is a list which gives the names of successive Theban kings, with the length of their reigns in years, and the year of the cosmos in which each came to power.78 Little other detail is given—just occasionally a note on the name or status.79 But the eVect of the list is to create a continuum of regal time, set against another continuous time frame, that of the counting of cosmic years. The fragment relating to the kings of Sicyon is much shorter, being only a summary which might have belonged at the end of a list similar to that of the Theban kings. In it the Wrst Sicyonian king, Aegialeus, is related to the time of the cosmos; we are then told the length of time occupied by the royal succession, up to the last king Zeuxippus, at which point priestly rule took over for another speciWed number of years. It was thus possible to perform an easy addition and work out for how long (and crucially also from which point, at least in cosmic time) Sicyon was ruled in this way. Another chronographer who used regal time was the Wrst-century bc writer, Castor of Rhodes. In his Epitome of Dates he devoted attention to the Assyrian kings (f 1),80 the Sicyonian kings from Aegialeus, the Wrst king, to Zeuxippus, at which point the account turns to one of priestly rather than kingly rule (f 2),81 the Argive kings (f 3), the Athenian kings (f 4), and the kings of Rome (f 5). f 6 shows that Castor was cited for the date of Cyrus’ reign, suggesting that he also included material on the Persian kings.82 Of course we are hindered in gauging the tone and shape of the overall work partly by the extremely fragmentary nature of the remains and partly by the fact that the few fragments are dominated by the Armenian translation of Eusebius’ Chronica, which had its own agenda in citing them. However, it does seem reasonable to assert that Castor’s work listed kings (or priests) from particular cities or kingdoms, giving the length of their reigns in years, and used this information to build up a chronological framework covering several centuries for each place. Castor’s king lists, or at any rate what has been 78 As we shall see in the next chapter, the use of king lists and cosmic time is a feature characteristic of chronological schemes used by authors of the Fertile Crescent. It is striking to Wnd its use here by Apollodorus. 79 See, for example, the standard formula: ¨Æø ØŁ KÆºı —ÆB %æc º: F b Œ ı q ªıº. But some kings are additionally described as æÆ or ŒæÆ ÆØ or given some other deWning feature. 80 On the Assyrian kings, see also Thallus (FGrH 256 f 6). 81 See FGrH 250 f 2 for the priests of Carnios, who follow on directly from the kings in being used to map out Sicyonian time. Hellanicus of Lesbos’ work on the Priestesses of Hera at Argos (FGrH 4 f 72–84) must be seen as fundamental to the study of priestly chronographical structures. 82 Thallus also (FGrH 256 f 7) is cited for the reign of Cyrus, set in an Olympiadic structure.


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transmitted through Eusebius, add an extra chronological anchor to this construction of regal time by linking it to Olympiadic time. So, for each king list we are told not how it relates to cosmic time, as by Apollodorus, but how it relates to Olympiadic time. For example, the list of Sicyonian kings and priests ends with the comment that from this point to the Wrst Olympiad was three hundred and Wfty-two years. It is unclear whether this comment belongs to Castor or to Eusebius, but, as we shall see, the attempt to tie various temporal systems together, particularly local to more Panhellenic, is widely attested, and indeed seems to have been fundamental to these chronographic projects.83 Perhaps the most striking attempt to combine regal time and Olympiadic time is made by Porphyry of Tyre.84 He was born in the 230s and was the author of a huge range of works. The similarity in the method and content of his chronographical work strongly supports the suggestion already made concerning the stability of the chronographic tradition over time. The fragments explicitly ascribed to his Chronicle are hard to interpret, not least since they are preserved in a German translation of the Armenian translation of Eusebius’ work which was directed precisely against Porphyry. We thus encounter fragments which are not only at several removes from the original through translation, but also in the context of polemic against our author. Besides the Wrst fragment, which dates the acme of Thales, one of the seven sages, to one hundred and twenty years after Nebucadnezar in yet another example of regal frameworks, we have two long sections of the Chronicle cited by Eusebius. Both are king lists—the Wrst concerning kings of Egypt and Alexandria after Alexander, the second rulers over the Greeks and Macedonians after Alexander’s death. These two lists are of considerable interest, both for their common features and for their points of divergence. The list of kings of Egypt and Alexandria (f 2) stretches from 323 bc to the battle of Actium in 31 bc. Some of the entries are brief and simply give the name of the king and the length of his reign in years. Others give much

83 Note a rather diVerent process in Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.70–1, where he provides a list of Alban kings, together with the length of their reigns in years from Ascanius onwards to the time of Romulus and Remus and the foundation of Rome. Here we Wnd a king list used to tie one mythologically crucial event, the fall of Troy, to a diVerent one, the foundation of Rome. The chronological separation of the death of one city and the birth of another can be formulated using regal time. Livy 1.3 performs almost exactly the same manoeuvre, moving generation by generation from Ascanius to the birth of Romulus and Remus. The link between the time of Aeneas and that of the foundation of Rome was given as a number of years by Castor of Rhodes (FGrH 250 f 10). 84 For the complex perspective and identity of Porphyry, see F. G. B. Millar, ‘Porphyry: Ethnicity, Language, and Alien Wisdom’, in J. Barnes and M. T. GriYn (eds.), Philosophia Togata II: Plato and Aristotle at Rome (Oxford, 1997), 241–62, in particular stressing the oriental context of this Tyrian intellectual in spite of his place in the history of Greek philosophy.

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more detail about the reign in the form of a miniature narrative.85 But for our current question concerning the relationship between regal and Olympiadic time, the fragment is of interest, since it anchors the subsequent list of rulers and reigns right at the start in Olympiadic terms—the second year of the one hundred and fourteenth Olympiad. Having then mapped out time through the successive reigns of the Egyptian kings, throughout which there is no mention of any external time frame, the text then returns to re-anchor itself to Olympiads right at the end—when Octavian took power from Cleopatra in the battle of Actium in the second year of the one hundred and eighty-fourth Olympiad. For the chronological account of the Egyptian kings, then, the Olympiadic structure acts as a means of tying down each end of the dynasty into a more widely applicable, although speciWcally Greek, framework.86 The corresponding post-Alexander king list for Greeks and Macedonians (f 3) follows the same pattern. It stretches from the death of Alexander until 149/8 bc, at which point the history of Macedonia becomes merged with that of Rome, in parallel to the end of the Egyptian king list at the point of subordination to Rome, albeit by a diVerent process. But, in contrast to the Egyptian list, in which Olympiadic time simply anchors the regal list at each end, here, where the history of Macedonia and Greece is concerned, each reign is tied into the Olympiadic system. So each reign, leaving aside the additional narrative details that are given for some, is marked out by the name of the ruler, the length of his reign in years, and the start and end of his reign in Olympiadic terms. In a sense, of course, this provides superXuous information. The Egyptian list had proved that only the start point of the dynasty needed to be Wxed in universal time. From then one could simply add up the reigns, and the Wnal Olympiadic date oVered a backup for faulty addition. Here in Greece and Macedonia, not only is the Olympiadic date given for each ruler, but in fact two are given for each—one for the start and one for the end of his reign, in spite of the fact that we are also told the length of the reign in years and could easily work out one Olympiadic date without the other. It seems that the royal history of Macedonia and Greece required, or allowed, a chronological context which was far more closely integrated with the Olympiadic system, hinting at a question which I shall address later (in chapter 3); namely whether Greek authors applied diVerent temporal systems to 85 See, for example, the entry for the sons of Ptolemy Epiphanes, Philometor and Euergetes II (FGrH 260 f 2). 86 See R. L. Fowler, ‘Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation of the Hellenes’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44 (1998), 1–19 at 3–4, for the focus paid to the start and end of king lists, ‘since the revered founders tend to be remembered, and recent generations are still present to living memory, the ones in the middle drop out continually by a process of telescoping.’


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non-Greek peoples. One might have wondered whether for Porphyry in the third century ad, the ‘Greek’ associations of mapping out time according to this exclusively Panhellenic institution had been lost under the inXuence of its use in universal Mediterranean historiography, but these king lists seem to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, it appears that each of the rulers in the world of Macedonia and Greece was given the facility to have an independent history told, with his reign being explicitly anchored at either end to the Olympiadic system. Here there was no need for each king’s story to be read as part of a sequence, unlike the Egyptian kings, whose stories were linked by the continuous counting of years, making every episode crucial to the continuation of the tale. This apparent dichotomy between the integration or otherwise of the Olympiadic structure into the temporal framework of Greek or non-Greek king lists is unfortunately confused by other fragments, which are not attributed by Jacoby to any work, but must surely sit alongside the king lists in the Chronicle. One passage (f 31) on the Thessalian and northern Greek kings oVers a list of reigns from Philip onwards, but the expected ongoing link to the Olympiadic system is nowhere to be seen until the end, when the total extent of the reigns is summarized. By contrast, we Wnd that an extremely long and detailed list of Asian and Syrian kings (f 32)—where we would, by analogy with the Egyptian kings, expect to Wnd minimal anchoring in Olympiadic terms at either end of the sequence—mirrors the continuous and ongoing linking to Olympiads reign by reign as seen in the list for Macedonia and Greece—and, like that list, it takes its story right up to Roman times, with the intervention of Pompey in the East.87 A further temporal framework which the chronographers set alongside the Olympiadic system is that of the Athenian archons.88 A chronicle preserved among the papyri from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 12) oVers an extremely formulaic version of how these systems might be juxtaposed to provide a tight-knit chronological framework in which historical events might be placed. The chronicle follows a strict pattern, giving the number of the Olympiad, the winner of the stadion, the archons in Athens during that four-year period, and then, with the chronological context Wrmly established, the relevant world events in that period. In a sense one could say that this is a predominantly Olympiadic chronicle, since it follows a four-year cycle, and places 87 Were it not for the fact that Eusebius is the source for all these lists in Porphyry, such variation could be explained by inconsistency in the practice of those who preserved the fragments, provided we assume that Eusebius himself is not the source of the inconsistency. 88 That the two should be coordinated is suggested by the title of some lost works. See, for example, FGrH 246 f 3 from Stesicleides (Ctesicles) of Athens, who wrote a List of Archons and Olympic Victors (Chronica).

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that time unit Wrst. It is, nevertheless, interesting that the Athenian archons are added, and not entirely clear why. One might imagine that they would provide the obviously useful subdivision of Olympiads into four individual years so that events could be more precisely placed in time. However, this function is served by the simple system of listing events under each Olympiad according to whether they occur in the Wrst, second, third, or fourth year; that is, using a system internal to the Olympiadic structure. In chronographical terms, it seems that the archons add nothing. Even the tighter geographical focus which their presence lends the chronicle, by contrast with the Panhellenic nature of the Olympiadic structure, is rather overshadowed by the broad geographical spread of the material encompassed. One or two sample entries will give a sense of the shape and form of the chronicle:89 ½ ˇºıjØØ K Ø ŒÆd ŒÆ½ BØ j KŒÆ Ø %æØ ½ ºıŒ j ½%ŁÆE qæ %ŁØ j ½¸ıŒŒ —ıŁ #øØjª½ ˝Ø½Œ Æ: Æ j ŒÆ a b e æ ˜ØjØ › æ B #ØŒºÆ j æÆ KŒg B jIæB ŒÆ ºı N ˚ jæØŁ ŒÆd KŒE ŒÆ Ø j ªæÆ Æ ØŒø: ŒÆ a b j e Ææ ´ÆªÆ j PF , - e ÆØºÆ H —æH ºjÆ e Æ ÆP F H j ıƒH @æ ŒÆ ÆjØºÆ; ÆP e Æ ØØŒH. In the one hundred and ninth Olympiad, Aristolycus the Athenian won the stadion race and at Athens Lyciscus, Pythodotus, Sosigenes, and Nicomachus were archons. In the second year of this Olympiad, Dionysius the second, tyrant of Sicily, fell from power and sailed to Corinth and stayed there as a school teacher; in the fourth year, Bagoas the eunuch slew by deceit Ochus, the king of the Persians, and established his youngest son, Arses, as king, organizing everything himself.

Worth noting are, Wrst, the fact that not every year is Wlled out with an account of historical events—the chronographer provides a framework, but it is just that, to be exploited only where appropriate; secondly, the capacity of this system to encompass very diverse histories—here ranging from the Greek West in Sicily, to the East in Persia. The following fragment, besides the usual combination of Olympiadic and archonal time, exempliWes the trend which we have seen elsewhere, to set literary history alongside political history. So, as well as noting Philip’s success at Chaeronea and the distinction earned by Alexander in the battle, it also records the death of the orator, Isocrates, at the age of ninety. Another fragment (6) uses the same formulaic framework and again demonstrates how widely applicable the Olympiadic scheme was, in spite of its purely Panhellenic origins. This rather longer entry, for the one 89 FGrH 255 f 4.


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hundred and eleventh Olympiad, when Cleomantis won the stadion, and Pythodelus, Euaenetus, Ctesicles, and Nicocrates were archons in Athens, ranges from the death of Philip of Macedon, the accession of Alexander and the beginnings of his expansion of power, to a note on the Vestal Virgins in Rome, and then back to Alexander’s campaigns in Asia, with the battles of Granicus and Issus, before Wnally returning to Rome and the granting of citizenship without the vote to Campania.90 We have seen above the way in which key moments in the Greek past, such as the Trojan War and the return of the Heraclidae, as well as more recent historical events such as the invasion by Xerxes of Europe or the retributive gesture by Alexander against Asia were used as chronological punctuation marks in the articulation of the past. We have also seen a variety of systems—regal, magisterial, Olympiadic—which oVered more continuous methods for calibrating time. We saw with Eratosthenes an early attempt to draw chronological systems together, and indeed it has become apparent with the other chronographers that the various means for indicating time were largely interdependent. Now is the moment to extend this exploration and, rather than examine one by one the chronological frameworks used, to consider the more challenging and interesting question of how they could be accurately, meaningfully, and productively combined. At the simplest level, we have already noted the combination of intellectual history with various other chronological systems, primarily, but not exclusively, Olympiads; we have also seen both regal time and magisterial time placed alongside and anchored to the Olympiadic framework.91 But there are 90 For this fascinating statement of early Roman and Italian relations in 333/2 bc, ŒÆ a b Ææ .øÆEØ ½˚ÆÆf j KØÆ ½º Æ j .:½:: ¼ı łjı ½. . . the extremely fragmentary nature of the text at this point is unfortunate. In fact, the grouping together of all Campanians en bloc is striking when set against the more piecemeal picture of this process drawn by modern scholars. See T. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 bc) (London and New York, 1995), 348–51, for the gradual incorporation of the cities from 338 bc onwards, based on the principle that ‘the Romans dealt with the various defeated communities individually rather than in groups’ (348). In Campania, Capua, Suessula, and Cumae were joined in 332 by Acerrae. The importance of the innovation of ‘citizenship without suVrage’ is reXected in its inclusion in this highly selective chronicle. 91 It is important to note that sometimes the combination is not exactly a synchronism, but rather a use of two dating systems in relation to a particular person or set of events. So, for example, when Apollodorus notes the birth of Anaximenes around the capture of Sardis and his death in the sixty-third Olympiad (f 66), or the birth of Xenophanes in the Wftieth Olympiad and death in the times of Darius and Cyrus, he is combining Olympiadic time with key events and Wgures in Greek history, but not oVering a precise mapping of the two systems. He is not here formulating the capture of Sardis in terms of Olympiads, but simply using various means of indicating time within the same sentence. Sometimes, of course, the mapping is precise: see f 332 on Periander’s death at the age of eighty, which is deWned as forty-one years before Croesus and three years before the forty-ninth Olympiad—both rather indirect forms of dating. f 28 oVers another example of Croesus in combination with Olympiads.

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many instances where the chronographers attempted a much more complex coordination of temporal systems, linking local with universal, myth/historical turning points with continuous sequences, and so on.92 We have already seen the combination of Olympiadic sequence and the time patterned by Athenian archonships as forming a structure within which world events could be placed (P.Oxy. 12). But this combination was also regularly used as the context within which to place intellectual and literary activity. Apollodorus of Athens oVers several examples of this in practice. The ambiguously literary and political Wgure of Xenophon has his acme placed in the fourth year of the ninety-fourth Olympiad, and the start of his expedition placed when Xenaenetus was archon and one year before Socrates’ death (f 343).93 Aristotle’s birth is deWned both in Olympiadic terms and as occurring when Diitrephes was archon in Athens, making him three years older than Demosthenes (f 347). Again, intellectuals are given a chronological position, which relates them to other intellectuals, as well as to the apparently all-subsuming Olympiadic framework and the local magisterial sequence of Athenian archons. Apollodorus takes this system to extremes when treating the life of Aristotle in full. One fragment maps out every stage in his life and career in relation to Olympiads and archonships, and to historically important Wgures:94 He [sc. Aristotle] was born in the Wrst year of the ninety-ninth Olympiad; he was close to Plato and spent twenty years with him; when Plato died in the Wrst year of the one hundred and eighth Olympiad under Theophilus, he went to Hermeia for three years; then to Mytilene in the archonship of Euboulus in the fourth year of the one hundred and eighth Olympiad. Under Pythodotus, in the second year of the one hundred and ninth Olympiad, he went to Philip, when Alexander was still Wfteen years old; he came then to Athens in the second year of the one hundred and eleventh Olympiad, where he spent thirteen years in the Lyceum; and he Wnally travelled to Chalcis in the third year of the one hundred and fourteenth Olympiad, where he died in his sixty-third year from disease. Demosthenes also died at this time, in Calauria, and under Philocleus.

Every stage is tied to a precise Olympiadic year, with the Athenian archons providing yet further chronological context. Apollodorus’ attempt to locate chronologically the great Wgures from Greek intellectual history goes beyond the use of Olympiads and archonships in combination. A passage (f 34) on Socrates introduces the Athenian months as a means of adding yet greater speciWcity. Socrates is here said to have been 92 As will be discussed at the start of chapter 3, the locus classicus for this combination of time frames in historiography is Thucydides 2.2.1. 93 For a precise repetition of this version of Xenophon’s career, see FGrH 246 f 3 from Stesicleides (Ctesicles) of Athens. 94 FGrH 244 f 38 ¼ Diog. Laert. 5.9–10.


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born under the archonship of Aphepsion, in the fourth year of the seventyseventh Olympiad, on the sixth of Thargelion, when the Athenians purify the city and the Delians say Artemis was born. Another fragment (f 37) on Plato oVers a neat parallel, claiming that Plato was born in the eighty-eighth Olympiad, on the seventh of Thargelion, when the Delians say Apollo was born. And yet another (f 42) takes the technique a stage further for Epicurus, who was born in the third year of the one hundred and ninth Olympiad, under the archonship of Sosigenes, on the seventh of the month of Gamelion, seven years after the death of Plato. Thus he is dated not only in Olympiads, archonships, and Athenian months, but also in relation to the life of another philosopher. We have already seen the way in which attempts were made to connect the Olympiadic structure with not only the local magistracies of Athens, but also the kingly successions of various, geographically diverse, peoples. The more sophisticated attempts to construct a comprehensive network of temporal systems, which would stretch beyond the conWnes of particular poleis, used might and main to draw together disparate traditions and chronological structures. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his attempt to prove the Greekness of Rome, made it his business to draw their respective histories into close alignment. Thus, by a tortuous route, he manages to provide a chronological link between the foundation of Lavinium and the fall of Troy, in relation to the Athenian festival calendar.95 Elsewhere he establishes that king Numa and the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, were contemporaries, again stressing the points of contact between Roman and Greek.96 Although chronological coincidence is no proof of connection, nevertheless being able to tell the two stories in one narrative framework, as it were, is suggestive of links which Dionysius wishes to establish, and is, at least, proof that a particular connection is possible. In line with the competitive context proposed for chronography at the start of this section, Plutarch, by contrast, records the dispute over whether a Pythagoras-Numa connection, like the Solon-Croesus encounter, was a chronological impossibility. Plutarch notes that, while some say that Numa was a close friend of Pythagoras, others say that Pythagoras the philosopher lived as many as Wve generations after Numa, but that there was another Pythagoras, a Spartan, who was Olympic victor in the foot race of the sixteenth Olympiad in the third year of Numa’s reign, and who met Numa and helped him to set up the governance of Rome.97 It is interesting that this 95 See FGrH 251 f 6 ¼ i.63: Lavinium was founded in the second year after the departure of the Trojans from Ilion, which was captured at the end of spring, seventeen days from the summer solstice, and eight days from the end of the month of Thargelion. 96 FGrH 251 f 8 ¼ ii.59. 97 See Plutarch, Life of Numa 1.2–3.

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version, although it replaces one Pythagoras with another in a form of chronographic one-upmanship, still maintains that Roman and Greek history can be brought together, with the scales simply shifted along to match Numa up with the correct Pythagoras. But Dionysius’ extensive analysis of Greek versions of the dating of Rome’s foundation enables him to weave together not only the history of the two cultures, but also their chronological frameworks, although in fact he attributes the initial calculations and synchronisms to a series of prior chronographers, both Greek and Roman. Timaeus, he says, places Rome’s foundation at the same time as that of Corinth, namely in the thirty-eighth year before the Wrst Olympiad, Lucius Cincius in the fourth year before the twelfth Olympiad, Quintus Fabius in the Wrst year of the eighth Olympiad. Porcius Cato omits to use Olympiads, but instead links the foundation to the Trojan War (which it follows by four hundred and thirty-two years), a key chronological marker, as we have seen. Dionysius explicitly favours Eratosthenes’ careful synchronisms over what he sees as the slapdash methods of Polybius, who claims that Rome was built in the second year of the seventh Olympiad, or those who rely on a single priestly record.98 It is clear that for Dionysius chronography involves serious comparative work, and the consultation and coordination of various possible temporal frameworks.99 His own illustration of this is a complex attempt to date the establishment of the consulship at Rome in terms of Athenian archonships and Olympiads, using the Gallic invasion as a key date, which could be expressed in both Greek chronological terms and Roman ones, through the censorial and family records. The result is that he can state with conWdence that the consulship at Rome was initiated in the Wrst year of the sixty-eighth Olympiad, when Isagoras was archon at Athens. Here, Dionysius interestingly combines a piece of competitive chronographic accuracy with some political interpretation. His linking of Athenian and Roman liberation, through the replacement of tyranny by Cleisthenic and Republican democracy respectively, can hardly be accidental. From here, using the known length of the reign of each king, he can calculate that Romulus’ reign started in the Wrst year of the seventh Olympiad, when Charops was archon. Thus by an ingenious mechanism, Dionysius makes it possible to express early Roman history in Greek chronological terms, thereby reaYrming his thesis that Roman history is essentially a form of Greek history. 98 See FGrH 251 f 2 ¼ i.74.3: Kd F Ææa E IæØæFØ ŒØı ÆŒ e ŒÆd ı. 99 This is entirely in line with what J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), 244–6, identiWes as a self-conscious and systematic attempt on Dionysius’ part to forge a special place for himself in the historiographic tradition: ‘continuing the work of such masters as Herodotus while at the same time using the example of Rome . . . in a thoroughly Greek way’.


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It was not only Greek and Roman history whose chronological frameworks could be usefully synchronized. The temporal frameworks used to tell the history of the Old Testament and the regions of the Fertile Crescent could also be brought into contact with the Greek, with suYcient care and imagination. Given the subject of Porphyry’s Against the Christians, it is not surprising to Wnd that he had an interest in relating biblical time to the chronological frameworks he was familiar with from his other works. He notes that Moses was one thousand, four hundred and Wfty years prior to the Trojan War,100 not only establishing the extraordinary antiquity of the Jewish tradition, but also making it theoretically possible to express biblical history in Greek terms. But other authors too were engaged in the same synchronizations. Apollodorus found ways in which to relate Moses chronologically to the apotheosis of Dionysus, from which point one could trace a route through Heracles and Jason, Asclepius and Castor, up to the fall of Troy.101 Thus, rather tortuously, one could draw the world of the Old Testament into the same chronological frame as that of Troy, and from then on through the calculable centuries of Greek history. Castor of Rhodes, who wrote not only chronographic works, but also about Babylon, the Nile, and the world of the Fertile Crescent, enabled his reader to skip from Moses across to the Wrst Olympiad, from which point, as he says, the Greeks thought it possible to calculate dates accurately (› Ł ' ¯ºº IŒæØF f æ ı K ØÆ).102 The crucial link here, the equivalent of the Gallic sack for Roman chronography, was the ruler Ogygus. One fragment (f 14) relates that Moses was leader of the Jews at the time of Ogygus ( E æ Ø -ªªı), and in another this turns out to be a point in Greek history, at which there was the Wrst great Xood in Attica and when Phoroneus was king of Argos, from which one could reliably count the years to the Wrst Olympiad.103 The synchronism of Moses with the mythical period of the Greek past would play nicely into the hands of later Christian writers, who could assert the priority and superiority of the Jews, who were receiving their constitution and laws at a time when the Greeks were still enveloped in myth and uncertainty. For George Syncellus, writing in the early ninth century ad, it was a set of diVerent and still more resonant moments in history than the reign of 100 FGrH 260 f 33. 101 FGrH 244 f 87. 102 Photius clearly agreed. He claims (FGrH 257 t 3) that Phlegon of Tralles started his chronography at the Wrst Olympiad because everything before that had not been dealt with in any accurate or true account: Ø Ø a æ æÆ . . . PŒ ı Ø IŒæØF ŒÆd IºŁF IÆªæÆB. 103 FGrH 250 f 7: Ie -ªªı; F Ææ KŒØ ÆP Ł Ø ıŁ ; K y ªª › ªÆ ŒÆd æH K fiB % ØŒfiB ŒÆ ÆŒºı ; *æøø %æªø ÆØº . . . æØ æ OºıØ . . .

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Ogygus, which were pivotal in the relationship between a range of diVerent chronological systems. Although the world of Christian chronography lies outside the scope of this book, it is worth considering his project momentarily, since it both echoes some of the earlier phases in the chronographic tradition and highlights some distinctive features. What he set out to prove is that ‘in am 5500104 our Lord and God was made incarnate from the Holy Virgin and in the beginning of the year 5534, as has been previously stated, on the 1st of the Hebrew month of Nisam, the 25th of the Roman month of March, and the 29th of the seventh Egyptian month of Phamenoth, he trampled upon death and arose from the dead’.105 Of course, for Syncellus, the virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ were not simply convenient chronological hooks; the fact that they fell at particular moments in time was not the starting point for establishing chronologies, but rather the end point of a long and painstaking compilation of diVerent chronologies. Thus, although Syncellus is for us a major source of earlier chronographic works, he has a clear and deWned agenda of his own, which dictates his pattern of citation. Furthermore, Syncellus was interested not only in establishing a Christian chronology, encompassing all others, which allowed the accurate placing of key events in the long timescale of history. The date of the Resurrection is, in fact, placed in historical time only according to Syncellus’ system of years from the point of creation. It is on the smaller scale of annual time where the synchronism takes place. Thus Syncellus pinpoints not just a particular year, but a particular day within the year at which all temporal systems converge on a momentous event.106 The date within the year, expressed in Hebrew, Roman, and Egyptian terms, when the Resurrection took place, was also the date when the world was created.107 As Syncellus goes on to make explicit, ‘with good reason, then, the Holy Trinity, creator of all things, began the creation of the visible world also on this day, since it preWgures the holy day of the Resurrection.’108 Here, then, we Wnd a fascinating combination of the annual cycle of the calendar and the progressive time of history brought together in the service of a Christian view of history. The notion of ominous days (discussed in chapter 1) is interestingly reversed. In the divinely ordained 104 Syncellus, like those who wrote about other parts of the Fertile Crescent, such as Egypt and Babylonia, adopted a system of ‘cosmic’ time. Thus every date could be expressed in am terms where am is an abbreviation for annus mundi. 105 Syncellus, Chronography 1. 106 The importance of the individual day is brought out very clearly. It is in terms of days that the creation story is formulated, and, as Syncellus states explicitly, ‘it is abundantly clear that a day is at the head of every monthly and yearly chronological cycle’ (2). 107 The date of the creation is declared at the very start of the Wrst chapter. 108 Syncellus, Chronography 2.


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world of the Holy Trinity, which revolves around the crucial and deWnitional event of the Resurrection, creation is retrospectively made to foreshadow that event by occurring on the ‘right day’. Setting the world oV on a date whose signiWcance would not become apparent to others until 5534 years later would not exceed the capabilities of an omniscient and prescient god. It is worth noting yet again the competitive way in which the chronographic tradition develops. Syncellus states at the beginning of his work: ‘I have made every eVort to arrange the chronology presented here with tables and explanations, disagreeing as it does with the majority of historians in claiming the following . . .’. Thus, although for us Syncellus is the source of fragments of many earlier chronographies, he himself set out not to preserve their views, but to disagree with them.109 But, although Syncellus seems to have set new scholarly standards in terms of supporting evidence and careful criticism of the sources, he devoted considerable attention to the task of reestablishing the traditional synchronism between Moses, Inachus, and Ogygus, thereby reasserting the antiquity of Judaism compared with Greek culture.110 Thus, although within a completely diVerent Christian framework, he returned to the chronology represented for us by authors such as Castor of Rhodes. It is ironic that the opponent of this view, Eusebius, rather than Syncellus, should be one of our major sources for Castor, but it serves as a salutary reminder that both proponents and opponents cited earlier authors in order to refute or conWrm their claims in the agonistic world of chronographic scholarship. Syncellus’ work of chronography stretched from the Wrst day of the world until the reign of Diocletian, but most chronographies made it their task not to set out a vision of a whole world order, but rather to bridge gaps, both chronological and spatial—bringing together temporal systems from diVerent cultures, and forming links between early chronological markers and the continuous counting system of Olympiadic time. In this context, the idea that one could simply add up the years which preceded the Wrst Olympiad was clearly a widespread one. We have already seen the way in which Eratosthenes used key moments in history as stepping stones to enable him to traverse the huge span of time separating the fall of Troy and the death of Alexander, and 109 See, however, W. Adler and P. TuYn (eds.), The Chronography of George Synkellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation (Oxford, 2002), p. xxxix, for an apparently contradictory view of Syncellus: ‘Synkellos saw his task as that of defending a timehonoured consensus, and drawing on it to Wll in chronological gaps.’ This is contrasted with the more bullish attitude oVered by Eusebius, who made it his business to disagree with all his predecessors. 110 This was in direct opposition to Eusebius, who had proposed a radical redating of Moses which placed him at a later stage in Greek history (Cecrops instead of Ogygus) and thus lost the advantage of Jewish priority over the Greeks.

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noted that from the Wrst Olympiad onwards, a more convenient, uniform, and continuous measure of time was available. Porphyry of Tyre performed precisely that smaller calculation, from the fall of Troy to the Wrst Olympiad, but using the same technique as Eratosthenes.111 From the fall of Troy to the return of the Heraclidae was sixty years, another sixty to the colonization of Ionia,112 one hundred and Wfty-nine to Lycurgus, and then one hundred and eight to the Wrst Olympiad, making a grand total of four hundred and seven years. There were multiple ways in which the disparate chronological frameworks and historically or mythologically important moments could be put together. The greatest chronographers were clearly past masters. Eratosthenes provided our cue by incorporating in his scheme virtually every form of temporal construction imaginable. But he had strong successors, not least Apollodorus.113 Diodorus, whose universal history required him to Wnd ways to make time coherent across space, relied on Apollodorus for help in bringing together the key moments in the Greek past with the continuous temporal systems oVered by Olympiads and, here, the Spartan king lists: ‘Following Apollodorus of Athens, we place eighty years between the Trojan period and the return of the Heraclidae, and from there three hundred and twenty-eight to the Wrst Olympiad, reckoning up the lengths of time from the kings of Sparta’.114 And it is worth stressing here, in the light of the theme of this book, that the world of the chronographer was of enormous relevance to the world of the historian; that chronography was not merely an end in itself, the pastime of scholars, but also served a practical function when it came to putting together histories which were more than just local tales. One of the values of the Olympiadic system was its Panhellenic nature, which avoided the inevitably parochial feel of systems based on local magistracies. But, as we shall see (in chapter 3), this essentially Greek system came to be applied to wider Mediterranean and universal histories, either as though it were itself somehow neutral or universal, or perhaps in a self-conscious bid to aspire to 111 FGrH 260 f 4. 112 This was clearly a more important chronological marker than we might have imagined. Apollodorus too uses it in conjunction with the fall of Troy in dispute over Homer’s acme, saying that it fell one hundred years after the Ionian colonization ( a c (øØŒc IØŒÆ

Ø ŒÆ ), which was itself two hundred and forty years after Troy (FGrH 244 f 63). 113 Apollodorus clearly became a major model for later chronographers. Nepos’ Chronica through its title naturally invited comparison with the work of Apollodorus. 114 FGrH 244 f 61 Ie b H æøØŒH IŒºŁø %ººæøØ HØ %ŁÆøØ Ł OªŒ æe c ŒŁ H ˙æÆŒºØH; Ie b Æ Kd c æ OºıØÆ ıd º Æ H æØÆŒø ŒÆd æØŒ Æ; ıººªØ Ø f æ ı Ie H K ¸ÆŒÆØ ÆØºı ø. That Apollodorus, like Eratosthenes, made full use of the Spartan king lists is clear also from f 64 where he is cited as having calculated from the succession of Spartan kings the fact that Lycurgus was not many years prior to the Wrst Olympiad. For the use of Spartan king lists by later chronographers, see Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik, 80–91.


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Greek culture. This wider application had the beneWcial eVect of bypassing local systems, each of which changed at diVerent times of year, as did the consuls of Rome and the archons of Athens. Phlegon of Tralles makes plain this point in his Collection of Olympic Victories and Dates. The fragments of this work include a long account (f 1) of the foundation of the Olympic festival, culminating with the information that Daicles the Messenian was the Wrst to be crowned for winning the stadion in the seventh Olympiad.115 But another fragment (f 12) is of greater interest to us here, since it reveals how all-encompassing the Olympiadic structure could be. It starts in the form of a list relating which person from which place won each event for the 107th Olympiad. This list begins with the triple victory by Hecatomnus from Miletus in the stadion, the double stadion or diaulos, and the race of men in armour, and moves on through the full panoply of events and winners, ending with the victory of Callippus of Elis in the younghorse chariot race. The Wrst thing to note is that the list of winners is itself geographically diverse, with successful competitors coming from Elis, Miletus, Rome, Sicyon, Cyparissus, and so on. The Olympic festivals, in spite of their original exclusively Greek nature, have become all-embracing, or at least for all who would aspire to a share in that Hellenic heritage. The fragment then moves on to relate the political and cultural events of that Olympiad year by year, making clear that the chronographical work has provided a vessel for narrative history, rather than an ediWce which will serve no further purpose. The events of this Olympiad (72–69 bc) include in the Wrst year Lucullus’ siege of Amisus, the exploits of Murena, an earthquake in Rome and the note that ‘many other things happened in this Olympiad’;116 in the fourth, the war between Tigranes and Mithridates and Lucullus, in which Lucullus is victorious, and Metellus’ exploits in Crete. The third year of the Olympiad is of particular interest, in terms of the themes we have been considering, since here political and literary events come together under the Olympiadic umbrella. As well as the death of the king of Parthia, here is noted the birth of the poet Vergil in the month of October.117 There is thus a strong resemblance to the chronicle on the papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, discussed above, in which the Olympiadic framework is used 115 According to Phlegon (f 1 §10), for the Wrst Wve Olympiads no one was crowned, and in the sixth they decided to send Iphitus to ask the oracle whether they should institute a crown for the victors. The oracular response was that they should not use cultivated fruit for the crown, but the wild olive which was covered in delicate spider’s web. The following Olympiad, they followed the instructions and chose a wild olive tree in the precinct which was covered in spiders’ webs. 116 FGrH 257 f 12: ŒÆd ¼ººÆ b ºE Æ K Æ fi ıŁ fiB OºıØØ. It is interesting that Plutarch’s Life of Lucullus uses an Olympiadic dating near the start (Lucullus 5.1 notes that shortly after the death of Sulla, Lucullus became consul with Marcus Cotta, in about the 176th Olympiad), raising the question of whether Lucullus’ extensive intervention in the Greek world has any bearing on the chronological frameworks used to articulate his Roman story. 117 f 12: ŒÆd ˇPæªºØ !æø › Ø c KªŁ ı F ı NE ˇŒ øæÆØ. But note the striking use of a Roman date for the Latin poet. Clearly not everything was subordinated to Greek frameworks.

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for a wide-ranging account, moving around the various theatres of action, in exactly the same way as would be done by universal historians such as Polybius and Diodorus, in spite of Polybius’ claim that after 220 bc world history was a single story.118 Indeed, the combination of political and intellectual history within this chronological structure is also highly reminiscent of Diodorus, who regularly rounds oV his account of a year with a summary of the literary or philosophical products of that period, or a note on the birth or death of a prominent writer.119 We shall see a striking example of this phenomenon in epigraphic form when looking at the Parian Marble. For now it is worth noting its existence simply to reinforce again the point that the world of chronography and its preoccupations was neither remote from the world of the historian, nor apparently from the much wider world of publicly displayed inscribed stones. What we have here is a weaving together of both various Greek chronological structures and those from some diVerent cultures and traditions, and furthermore a stunning array of not only political events from a huge geographical and chronological range, but also the history of invention and civilization as well, just as we shall see on the Parian Marble. Nowhere in the chronographies is this better paralleled than in the work of Thrasyllus. One single citation exists, preserved by Clement of Alexandria, and Jacoby expresses serious doubts about the existence of the work.120 But it is a substantial passage and, just like Eratosthenes, our starting point, it encapsulates much of what has gone between. The fragment does not make clear which elements are provided by Clement himself and which are citations from Thrasyllus, so I shall present the entire passage, as printed by Jacoby: I shall bring together Greek chronography from Moses onwards. From the birth of Moses to the exodus from Egypt of the Jews was 80 years, and the rest of the time up to his death was 40 years. The exodus happened at the time of Inachus, since Moses set out from Egypt 345 years before Sothes’ circumnavigation. From the time of Moses’ expedition and of Inachus to the Xood (I am referring to the second one) and the burning of Phaethon, all of which happened under Crotopus, is reckoned to be 40 generations. They reckon three generations to 100 years.121 118 Polybius 4.28.4: ŒØc . . . c ƒ æÆ. 119 See K. Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden, 1999), 249–79, for an analysis of this feature of the work. 120 See Jacoby, Kommentar, ‘Daß Th eine Chronik geschrieben hat, ist nicht bekannt, auch nicht wahrscheinlich.’ 121 FGrH 253 F1 The Greek does not make clear whether Thrasyllus’ contribution to this chronographic survey starts only after this point, and whether we should therefore attribute what precedes to him or to Clement.


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From the Xood to the conXagration of Ida and the discovery of iron and the Idaean Dactyls, was 73 years, according to Thrasyllus, and from the burning of Ida to the snatching of Ganymede 65 years. From here to the expedition of Perseus, when Glaucus and Melicerte founded the Isthmian games, 15 years. From Perseus’ expedition to the foundation of Troy, 34 years. From there to the voyage of the Argo, 64 years. After this until Theseus and the Minotaur, 32 years. Then, to the Seven against Thebes, 10 years. To the Olympic contest which Heracles set up against Pelops, 3 years. To the campaign of the Amazons against Athens and the rape of Helen by Theseus, 9 years. From there to the apotheosis of Heracles, 11 years. Then, to the snatching of Helen by Paris, 4 years. From there to the capture of Troy, 20 years. From the sack of Troy to the arrival of Aeneas and the foundation of Lavinium, 10 years. To the rule of Ascanius, 8 years. To the return of the Heraclidae, 61 years. To the Olympiad of Iphitus, 338 years.

Here biblical and Greek history are brought into a single temporal frame. As is so often the case in chronographic works, Thrasyllus builds up in the Weld of discovery and innovation a parallel for the political stepping stones. After moving in small leaps from one key event to another, he resumes with the comment that from here to the Olympiad of Iphitus was three hundred and thirty-eight years. Since this was the Wrst Olympiad, we have been carefully guided through time from Moses, via the history of civilization, to the point at which we can safely start to use the accurate and continuous system of Olympiads.

III The world outside the polis 1. THUCYDIDES AND THE PROBLEM OF SUPRA-POLIS TIME ÆæÆ b ªaæ ŒÆd ŒÆ KØÆ Æƒ æØÆŒ Ø Æd ÆQ Kª ¯PÆ –ºøØ: fiH b fiø ŒÆd Œ fiø Ø; Kd æı K @æªØ Œ Æ ıE Æ ƒæø ŒÆd `Nı K æı K #æ fi ŒÆd —ıŁæı Ø BÆ ¼æ %ŁÆØ; a c K — ØÆfi Æ d Œ fiø ŒÆd –Æ qæØ Iæfiø . . . For the Thirty Years’ truce which was established after the recovery of Euboea lasted for fourteen years, but in the Wfteenth year, when Chrysis was in the forty-eighth year of her term as priestess at Argos, and when Aenesias was ephor in Sparta and Pythodorus still had two months of his archonship at Athens to run, six months after the battle at Potidaea and at the start of spring . . . 1

Thus Thucydides introduces his account of the Theban attack on Plataea, placing it in a chronological context which spans several diVerent poleis in its references to the magistracies of Sparta and Athens and the oYce of the priestess of Hera at Argos, alongside a dating which is expressed in relation to another important event of the war at Potidaea, and Wnally the ‘natural’ time frame of the seasons. In so doing, he pins down the crucial moment at which the truce was broken not only to a year, but also to a time within that year,2 and in terms which are meaningful to the inhabitants of more than just one polis. As we shall see, Thucydides had no need to date the event in this way, since he developed his own dating system which required one to specify only which year of the war it was and which season. As Hornblower suggests, the reasons for such an elaborate introduction must be manifold, including the use of chronological accuracy as a means of lending gravitas to the Wrst 1 Thucydides 2.2.1. 2 As E. Greenwood, Thucydides and the Shaping of History [Classical Literature and Society] (London, 2006), 46, comments, the sequences of temporal references move down not only from decades to years to months and seasons, but Wnally concentrate on a single point in time when the attack took place, ‘about the Wrst watch of the night’. This increasingly precise reference has the eVect of focusing the reader on the initiation of the narrative proper.

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event of the war proper, the wish to correct Hellanicus, and possibly also a more general interest in Athens in the 420s in chronology and periodization.3 Thucydides was able to beneWt from the chronographical groundwork that had been carried out both by Hellanicus himself, who had compiled a list of priestesses of Hera at Argos for chronological purposes, and by Charon of Lampsacus, who was similarly gathering together a list of Spartan magistrates for the same ends in the late Wfth century.4 But the relationship between Thucydides and Hellanicus has been much debated. It is clear that, in the passage above, Thucydides nods to both the Priestesses of Hera and Hellanicus’ Atthis, which followed an archonal chronological scheme. Furthermore, he again in Book 5 accumulates several dating devices relying on magistracies in diVerent poleis in order to give the clearest account of precisely when the treaty between Sparta and Athens of 421 bc came into eVect: @æØ b H H < K b ¸ÆŒÆØ > æ —ºØ ºÆ %æ Øı e æ fi Ł ; K b %ŁÆØ ¼æø %ºŒÆE ¯ºÆºØH e Œ fi Ł . Pleistolas, the ephor in Sparta, on the twenty-seventh day of the month of Artemisium, and Alcaeus, the archon in Athens, on the twenty-Wfth day of the month of Elaphebolion, established this treaty.5

Here Thucydides dates the eVective start of the treaty according to a diVerent chronological system for each of the participating poleis, and furthermore does so by means of both calendar month and eponymous magistrate for each respectively.6 In a sense, Thucydides here displays through example the importance of developing some kind of synchronic temporal system for works of history which took as their scope more than the aVairs of a single polis. It is noticeable that Thucydides exploits the notion of synchronism throughout the narrative in order to add interpretative resonance. In the summer of 422, for example, ‘at the same time’ as Athens captured the town of Torone in Thrace, the Boeotians captured Panactum, an Athenian fortress on the frontier of Attica, and simultaneously Phaeax embarked for Sicily as an Athenian ambassador.7 3 S. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides. Vol. I: Books I–III (Oxford, 1991), ad loc. Hornblower points to the publication of the inscribed archon list (ml 6) and the chronographical research of Hippias and Hellanicus himself as additional spurs for a serious historian, such as Thucydides, to prove himself au fait with all the latest debates. 4 Of course, the date of composition of the various works is relevant if we are to assert Thucydides’ direct use of, say, Charon’s work, but at the very least, the intellectual climate of the late Wfth century can be gauged by the surge in chronographical interest. 5 Thucydides 5.19.1. 6 It is possible, however, that Thucydides here simply copied the contents of the decree, in which case, at the very least, it gives an insight into local dating systems. 7 Thucydides 5.3.5–6 and 5.4.1–2.

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The world outside the polis

The synchronism allows Thucydides to bring together three separate theatres of war. As Rood has noted, ‘Thucydides’ chronological scheme creates juxtapositions which may themselves suggest parallels’, such as that between Plataea and Mytilene, both of whom are let down by their allies.8 Even the carefully expressed synchronism between seasonal changes and events can contribute positively to the interpretative framework, as when the siege of Mytilene starts as winter begins—rather than summer ends (3.18.5), thereby emphasizing the sense of harshness.9 Drawing together into a single narrative framework poleis which ran on diVerent dating systems was a feat which would tax historians of Hellenic aVairs, and yet more so those who attempted universal history. Doing so successfully could be seen as a real coup, and the competitive and polemical context in which historiography took place must have encouraged bold attempts. Greenwood oVers some interesting comments on this chronological one-upmanship, stating that Thucydides recognized the way in which his contemporaries saw events in local perspectives, ‘but he also piles up diVerent systems of chronology in order to transcend the limits of local knowledge . . . By using chronological systems that span several diVerent regions, Thucydides creates the impression that he has space and time covered—unlike most of his contemporaries.’10 The task was clear—to produce a chronological framework for a narrative history, which would accommodate the necessary geographical range. But the solution of piling up magistracies from diVerent poleis or oVering ‘something to everyone’, was vehemently rejected by Thucydides only a chapter after he had used it to date the treaty between Sparta and Athens in 421. In a much discussed chapter in Book 5 (5.20), he dramatically rejects the dating by eponymous magistracies as inherently imprecise (since a magistracy covers a whole year) and additionally complicated by the fact that magistracies rotate at diVerent times in diVerent poleis, making eVective synchronism across space almost impossible to achieve: 8 T. Rood, Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation (Oxford, 1998), 120. On the one hand, as Chris Pelling has pointed out to me, the interplay between the Plataea and Mytilene episodes highlights the impossible dilemma facing ‘little’ allies, since whether one stayed loyal and trusted Athens, as did Plataea, or whether one defected from Athens and trusted Sparta, as did Mytilene, the outcome was the same. On the other, it could be said that Potidaea oVers a closer parallel to Plataea than does Mytilene, since Mytilene had actually defected from Athens in the Wrst place. The narrative proximity of episodes has the eVect of not only stressing similarities, but also implying that the same patterns were operative all over the Greek world. I owe this point to Sarah Cottle. 9 Rood, Thucydides, 118. See also C. Dewald, Thucydides’ War Narrative: A Structural Study (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), 45, for further examples of the way in which Thucydides’ choice of temporal marker, particularly natural phenomena such as the ripening of the grain, could be used as a tool of interpretation as well as chronological punctuation marks. 10 Greenwood, Thucydides, 46–7.


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Æy ÆØ Æƒ Æd Kª ºı H F ØH –Æ qæØ; KŒ ˜Øıø PŁf H I ØŒH; ÆP ŒÆ K H ØºŁ ø ŒÆd æH Oºªø ÆæªŒıH j ‰ e æH Kºc K c % ØŒc ŒÆd Iæc F ºı F Kª : Œ ø b Ø ŒÆ a f æ ı ŒÆd c H ŒÆ ÆF j Iæ ø j Ie ØB Øe K a æªªÆ ÆØ ø c IÆæŁØ H O ø Ø Æ Aºº: P ªaæ IŒæØ K Ø; x ŒÆd IæØ ŒÆd FØ ŒÆd ‹ø ı fiH Kª Ø: ŒÆ a Łæ b ŒÆd ØHÆ IæØŁH; uæ ªªæÆ ÆØ; æØ; K ØÆ ŒÆ æı F KØÆı F c ÆØ ; ŒÆ b Łæ; Yı b ØHÆ fiH æ fiø ºfiø fiH ªªı. This treaty was concluded at the very end of the winter and the beginning of spring, directly after the City Dionysia, just ten years, with the diVerence of a few days, after the Wrst invasion of Attica and the beginning of this war. It is better to calculate according to the actual periods of time than to rely on the lists of archons or other oYcials whose names may be used in diVerent cities to mark the dates of past events. By this method there can be no accuracy, since a particular event may have taken place at the beginning or the middle or at any time during their periods of oYce. But by reckoning in summers and winters, as I have done here, it will be found that, each of these being equivalent to half a year, there were ten summers and ten winters in this Wrst war.11

Thucydides thus deals a blow to one of the primary systems of temporal designation used in the Greek poleis, namely that of eponymous magistrates, which he himself has been using and which was underpinned by the enormous eVorts of his contemporaries to produce accurate lists of magistrates, kings, priestesses, and so on.12 Thucydides’ complaint concerns lack of precision (P ªaæ IŒæØ K Ø), which directly conXicts with his stated desire for accuracy (IŒæØÆ) in his preface. This was a complaint which Thucydides targeted particularly at Hellanicus, claiming that the latter’s account of the Pentecontaetia was brief and ‘chronologically inaccurate’.13 In matters of chronology, then, as elsewhere, Thucydides stakes his claim to be the most precise, the most careful, the most trustworthy historian, and he will devise his own system in the service of that aim, if need be. The combination of ‘war years’ and the natural cycle of the seasons might strike us as rather less precise than the alternative combination of magistracies and months,14 and it is indeed not 11 Thucydides 5.20. 12 Other late Wfth-century signs of interest in the past included the puriWcation of Delos in 426, an indication of interest in archaeology as well as possibly a shrewd if desperate propaganda move, and the inscribing of the archon list in the Athenian agora during the 420s, possibly drawing on the research of Hippias. 13 Thucydides 1.97.2: E æ Ø PŒ IŒæØH. 14 See Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Thuc. 9 for an ancient criticism of the system: ‘Thucydides wished to follow a new path, untrodden by others, and so divided his history by

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entirely clear what his exhortation that one should calculate ŒÆ a f æ ı really means. Gomme translates ‘by natural divisions of time’,15 that is by the seasons, and that is certainly implied by the system as set out more fully by Thucydides in terms of winters and summers, by no means irrelevant phenomena in warfare. In Gomme’s view this is a better solution to the chronological problem than simply using the combinations of eponymous magistracies and calendar dates, as Thucydides had done near the start of Book 2 (2.2.1), since the time of year was of direct military signiWcance and therefore oVered not a neutral dating device, but rather an additional layer of meaning. The notion that a seasonal chronological system might better accommodate the needs of a military narrative is implied several times within Thucydides’ narrative. The speciWcity of the comment that Athens marched against Boeotia on the sixty-second day after the battle of Tanagra seems, as both Rood and Smart have noted, to be a piece of concealed polemic against Hellanicus, whose system of archonal dating would have placed the two events in separate years, whereas they clearly belong together in terms of the logic of the war and its narration.16 For Smart, the polemic against Hellanicus was determined and relentless, and motivated, for example, Thucydides’ decision to make the start of the war an event which validated his chronological scheme of seasonal time, namely the attack on Plataea, rather than the invasion of Attica which coincided with the start of an archonal year.17 Smart’s claim that ‘Thucydides, then, was obsessed with the superiority of his own seasonal chronology over the eponymic chronology of Hellanicus’,18 may seem rather extreme, but it is clear that Thucydides was intent on propounding the superiority of his historiographical skills in terms of both accuracy and interpretative quality. Pritchett has noted that the irregularity of the calendar, with intercalations and so on disrupting the sequence, would render a ‘magistrate and month’ system less useful than it might appear, and potentially less useful than Thucydides’ ‘war year and season’ system.19 As we have seen in chapter 1, the ability of magistrates to manipulate the archonal calendar is well illustrated in the epigraphic evidence, and suggests that a system based on summers and winters. The result of this division was contrary to his expectations: the seasonal division of time led not to greater clarity but to greater obscurity.’ 15 A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides Vol. III (Oxford, 1956), ad loc. 16 Rood, Thucydides, 235 and J. D. Smart, ‘Thucydides and Hellanicus’, in I. S. Moxon et al. (eds.), Past Perspectives: Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing (Cambridge, 1986), 19–35 at 30. 17 See Smart, ibid. 27. 18 Smart, ibid. 31. 19 W. K. Pritchett, ‘Thucydides V. 20’, Historia 13 (1964), 21–36 at 26. In ‘Thucydides’ Statement on his Chronology’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 62 (1986), 205–13, Pritchett oVers a further strong defence of Thucydides’ claims to chronological accuracy.


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astronomical dates might be more reliable. In terms of the relationship between ‘artiWcial’ and ‘natural’ time (as discussed in chapter 1), the suggestion that Thucydides favoured the use of seasons over that of magistracies in order to assert the superiority of physis over nomos, on the grounds that ‘[o]nly a natural chronological scheme, grounded in phusis through its employment of astronomically deWned summers and winters, could reveal the true nature of human history and so enable its beneWcial comprehension’,20 oVers an interesting perspective.21 There may also be a further reason for the choice, which concerns not authorial interpretation, but audience reception. Pritchett claims that astronomical dates would have been well known within the Greek cities, since parapegmata containing such calendars were set up around the Greek world. Therefore, Thucydides was using ‘the only available accurate (within a few days) method of dating which would be understood, not in one city state, but throughout the Greek world’.22 We see Thucydides struggling with the diYculty which would tax all writers of universal history, be it truly all-encompassing or simply Panhellenic, that is, how to Wnd a chronological system which was readily comprehensible and meaningful to the inhabitants of more than one polis.23 Thucydides’ revelation of the limitations of an apparently well-organized system for indicating time outside the boundaries of a single polis, that is, the combination of diVerent eponymous magistracies, raises the issue of boundaries and limits more generally, not least with regard to this book. I have chosen to focus on local historiography partly in order to give some detailed attention to commonly neglected fragmentary texts, and partly in the hope that this will enable us to draw some conclusions about local identity and shared views of the past. However, it is worth considering also whether there was something actually distinctive in the possibilities for chronological patterning and its expression in the local historiography of the Greek poleis, which set it apart from 20 Smart, ‘Thucydides and Hellanicus’, 36. 21 On the other hand, where Thucydides brings the role of physis in determining history to the fore, it is associated with periods of chaos and crisis such as the plague (Thucydides 2.47–55) and civil strife in Corcyra (3.69–85, espec. 82–3), giving it a negative connotation. 22 Pritchett, ‘Thucydides V. 20’, 28. But see D. Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps me´teórologique chez les premiers historiens grecs’, in C. Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien (Paris, 2000), 115–41, for the proposition that Thucydides’ use of seasonal time was not necessarily dependent on a revolution in chronological accuracy and the calendar of Euctemon. Rather, in Bouvier’s view, it was simply a systematization of the appeal to seasonal time found in Herodotus, no more accurate than the time used by Hesiod, but devoid of a sense of divine order. 23 The question of applicability to not only more than one place but also more than one time is relevant in the light of 1.22. I owe to Sarah Cottle the interesting suggestion that Thucydides’ profession to write ‘an eternal possession’ (Œ BÆ K ÆNd) might actually have been enhanced by a lack of local speciWcity in dating.

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‘universal’ historiography or the accounts of non-Greek lands. This chapter, then, is about establishing some parameters through the exploration of the historiographical border-lands of the project.

2. INVENTING UNIVERSAL HISTORY: EPHORUS’ CONTRIBUTION The predicament facing Thucydides concerned a relatively small-scale problem of how to construct a narrative time frame which would accommodate more than one Greek polis. However, the most helpful starting point for a consideration of where the world of local historiography, which forms the focus of this book, ends and what is distinctive about it, may be to look at the opposite extreme, namely a work of Greek historiography which claims to have no limits, either temporal or spatial. Such is the work of the Wrst-century bc writer, Diodorus Siculus, and this will be discussed in detail in this chapter. But Diodorus wrote as part of a tradition of universal historiography, and one which takes us back to the same period as that occupied by the bulk of our local material, namely the fourth century and particularly the Hellenistic period. It is thus worth devoting some attention to the pioneers of the ‘universal’ genre, partly by way of background to the more fully extant universal writers, Diodorus and Strabo; partly as a foil to the local historians who will be discussed later; partly in order to explore (not only in terms of priority) the complex relationship, which is so central a theme in this book, between the universal and the local, the great and the parochial, the macroand the micronarrative, the large and the small historiographical project. Ephorus of Cyme was, according to Polybius, the Wrst (and to date only) predecessor to have attempted a ‘general history’, devoting thirty books to the ‘shared deeds’ (ŒØÆd æØ) of Greeks and barbarians from the return of the Heraclidae to his own time.24 Polybius’ praise was echoed by Strabo,25 who admired Ephorus’ account of foundations, kinships, migrations, and so on.26 Little, however, is known of Ephorus as an individual. The Suda notes that he was the son of Demophilus or of Antiochus, and was a pupil of Isocrates. Controversy surrounds the date of his birth, which is given in two

24 See Polybius 5.33.2. Also 9.1.4 and 34.1.3. 25 See Strabo 9.3.11 and 10.3.5. 26 He was listed as one of the ten canonical historians along with Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Philistus, Theopompus, Anaximenes, Callisthenes, Hellanicus, and Polybius (FGrH 70 t 34).

Universal history: Ephorus’ contribution

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contradictory forms by the Suda.27 Even the parameters of his history are diVerently presented by diVerent authorities. The Suda claims that the work covered the period from the fall of Troy to Ephorus’ own times; Diodorus that he started with the return of the Heraclidae, ended with the siege of Perinthus (341/0 bc), and thereby covered a stretch of 750 years;28 Clement of Alexandria gave yet another set of boundaries, starting with the Heraclidae, ending with the archonship of Euaenetus (335/4 bc), and covering 735 years.29 As we saw with the chronographers and shall see repeatedly with the universal writers, both the fall of Troy and the return of the Heraclidae were signiWcant chronological punctuation marks in early Greek history, so either could have made a natural starting point for Ephorus’ universal history. Dispute over the end point is complicated still further by the fact that the last (thirtieth) book of his history was not written by Ephorus himself, but by his son, Demophilus. Thus, in spite of the existence of whole books on Ephorus, given the little known about him and also, more importantly, the scant remains of a work which was originally thirty books long, we can draw only tentative conclusions on his reputedly important role in the development of universal history. It may help us to gauge the contribution made by Ephorus to the development of historiography and of appropriate chronological systems, if we keep in mind also to what extent his project diVered from that of the ‘great’ historians of the Wfth century, Thucydides and Herodotus. Any attempt to contrast, say, Ephorus with these illustrious forerunners by a single criterion is quick to fail. One cannot simply characterize Ephorus’ work as truly universal as opposed to the more limited Panhellenic scope of his predecessors.30 Fourth-century Panhellenism has been seen as the primary stimulus to universal historiography, as represented by Ephorus.31 But in fact, in both the Wfth and the fourth centuries, the relative unity of the Greek world and its rhetoric of self-deWnition in opposition to the barbarian foe generated works which were not merely Panhellenic in scope, but explicitly and perhaps 27 It is clearly a chronological impossibility that Ephorus was born both at the time of anarchy in Athens (404/3 bc) and in the 93rd Olympiad (408/5 bc), as the Suda claims. 28 Diodorus Siculus 16.76.5. 29 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.139.3–4. 30 Herodotus 1.1: a b ' ¯ººØ; a b ÆææØØ IŁ Æ, is suYcient to complicate any such stark contrast in geographical scope. 31 See, for example, G. L. Barber, The Historian Ephorus (Cambridge, 1935), 78: ‘a universal history, devoting the larger part of its space to the issues of the Greek-speaking world, was bound to emphasise the concept of the unity of that world in opposition to the barbarian; and the strange belief in the alliance of east and west against the Greeks tended to stress the importance of their collaboration.’ But C. W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley and London, 1983), 42–3, oVers an alternative explanation, namely that the huge accumulation of history, ethnography, and antiquarian material was ripe for synthesis and uniWcation, and that Ephorus was stimulated by the demands of the educated circles of his day.

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paradoxically concerned with relating the deeds of both Greeks and barbarians.32 In any case, Thucydides’ tale of an ongoing war between two great Hellenic powers was entirely diVerent in scope from the geographically and temporally expansive narrative of Herodotus. Just as Ephorus’ geographical universalism cannot be seen as revolutionary, it should be acknowledged that other historians had included elements of the remote past in their works.33 But it would be fair to assert Ephorus’ innovation in providing a systematic account through time across a broad geographical compass, and devising narrative strategies and chronological frameworks accordingly. As a close forerunner of many of the local historians who form the focus of this book, Ephorus is an important exponent of this diVerent style of historiography, and, according to Schepens, representative of a more widespread fourth-century attempt to bridge the gap between the ‘prehistory’ of Panhellenic myths and sagas and the more recent past of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.34

a) Spatium mythicum: spatium historicum The great temporal scope of Ephorus’ work, from the return of the Heraclidae onwards, if we accept Diodorus’ account,35 is the most striking diVerence between his work and that of the great Wfth-century historians. Whereas Thucydides and Herodotus each had a sense of limits in terms of how far back one could reasonably go with any accuracy, Ephorus chose to take his account far back in time. Scholars have been quick to note that Ephorus did not in fact take the story as far back as he might have done, and have stressed Ephorus’ exclusion of much of the mythical age on the grounds that he was concerned with sources and the importance of truth in historiography.36 Schepens underlines the lack of a written tradition contemporary with mythical events and sees this as one major reason for its exclusion from Ephorus’ account. Still more explicitly, Strabo notes Ephorus’ scorn for mythographers and approval of the truth, with the implication that the latter was incompatible with mythography.37 32 See ch. 4 for the complicated status of Hellenica as a form of historiography, caught between the local and the universal. 33 See R. L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography. Volume I: Text and Introduction (Oxford, 2000), for the extant fragments of authors who dealt with the mythical period. 34 G. Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems in Ephorus’, in Historiographia antiqua. Commentationes lovanienses in honorem W. Peremans septuag. editae (Louvain, 1977), 95–118 at 97. We shall see again in ch. 5 this same tendency in the orators who were contemporaries of Ephorus. 35 See Diodorus 4.1.3 ¼ FGrH 70 t 8. 36 See Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 106–7. 37 FGrH 70 f 31b: KØ ØÆ ªF E ØºıŁFØ K BØ B ƒ æÆ ªæÆBØ ŒÆd c IºŁØÆ KÆØÆ.


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Parmeggiani sees the distinction between myth and history as absolutely fundamental in the development of historiography as a scientiWc discipline, but notes that it is approached diVerently by each historian:38 for Herodotus, Polycrates of Samos was the Wrst thalassocrat of ‘the so-called human generations’ (IŁæø ºª ªB) excluding his famous predecessor, Minos (3.122.2); Thucydides presents Minos’ thalassocracy as a concrete historical phenomenon (1.4). For Parmeggiani, Ephorus was engaged in the same process, but simply chose a diVerent point at which to draw the dividing line. However we classify the return of the sons of Heracles, whether as a mythical or as a historical event,39 it seems clear that Ephorus has a sense of limits, while drawing them further in the past than most. But even if his is simply the choice of a diVerent point at which to start writing,40 the consequences are nevertheless dramatic in terms of temporal scope, and entail the development of chronological strategies for a much broader time frame. Although Thucydides may have delved into the more distant past in the Archaeologia and in his account of Sicily, and although Herodotus may have set a nominally strict limit on how far back in time the historian could go with certainty, but nevertheless related, for example, foundation accounts, it seems that Ephorus both took historiography further into the world of myths and heroes, and did so not only in sporadic digressions, but as the starting point of a continuous account, thus redeWning the boundary between spatium mythicum and spatium historicum.41 It has been noted by others that Ephorus’ concern with evidence and accuracy which might preclude any treatment of the mythical period was in fact simply applied to it, as far as was possible, as well as to more recent times,42 and that there was ‘no concern that a real gap existed between current times and the distant past’.43

38 See G. Parmeggiani, ‘Mito e spatium historicum nelle Storie di Ephoro di Cuma (Note a Eph. FGrHist 70 t 8)’, Rivista Storica di Antichita` 29 (1999), 107–25 at 107–8. 39 Or whether we adopt Schepens’s point, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 107, that the distinction may be formulated in terms of heroic versus human periods. 40 And note the suggestion of F. Pownall, Lessons from the Past: The Moral Use of History in Fourth-Century Prose (Ann Arbor, 2004), 114, that the starting point was partly determined by a sense of historia perpetua, since it picked up from Hellanicus’ work. 41 It is thus my view that we need not be apologetic about Ephorus’ occasional forays even deeper into the mythical period. Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 107, points, for example, to the inclusion of the founding of the Delphic oracle (f 31) as explicable because it is introduced in a rationalizing way, but it seems that no such explanations are needed. See J. McBride’s review of Pownall, Lessons from the Past, in BMCR 2004.07.17, for the view that Ephorus’ rationalization of the behaviour of gods and heroes followed ‘a procedure for the historical treatment of myth known since Hecataeus’, thereby mitigating any ‘transgression’ of the anti-myth principle. 42 See Parmeggiani, ‘Mito e spatium historicum’, passim. 43 J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), 98.

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Here Polybius’ deWnition of diVerent types of history associated with diVerent periods of the past may be helpful. ‘The genealogical side appeals to those who like to listen to a story; the account of colonies and foundations and kinship ties, as are to be read in Ephorus, for example, appeals to the person who is full of curiosity, perhaps even excessively so; the aspect which deals with the actions of peoples and cities and dynasties is of appeal to the reader who is interested in political life.’44 It may be that Ephorus’ choice to start with the return of the Heraclidae implied that he was excluding the ‘genealogical’ phase of history and starting with colonies and foundations. But in fact, as Walbank has pointed out, the diVerent aspects identiWed by Polybius were not mutually exclusive.45 After Hecataeus’ work in the early Wfth century, devising a genealogical framework and sorting out the generations of epic heroes,46 and Hellanicus’ work on foundations, it was a natural move to bring the various strands together. By the early fourth century, the mythical and the genealogical were closely linked. The blurring is visible in the regular use by Ephorus of the standard unit of time for the period of genealogy, namely the generation,47 while he is cited by Polybius as the chief example of a historian for the succeeding period, that of colonies, foundations, and kinship. So, for example, Lycurgus is said to have lived Wve generations after Althaemenes (f 149) and in the eleventh generation after Heracles.48 Homer was to be placed many generations after the return of the Heraclidae.49 The conclusions are in a sense obvious—that the generation was a unit of time which suited more than just the ‘genealogical’ period,50 and that Ephorus was by no means restricted to Polybius’ second phase of history, but 44 Polybius 9.1.4. 45 See F. W. Walbank, ‘Timaeus’ Views on The Past’, in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and ReXections (Cambridge, 2002), 165–77 at 169. 46 It is important not to attribute more than can be attested to Hecataeus. See T. S. Brown, ‘The Greek Sense of Time in History as Suggested by their Accounts of Egypt’, Historia 11 (1962), 257–70 at 260, for a cautious approach to Hecataeus with regard to his role in devising a universal chronology. 47 We can surely not reasonably follow Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 171–2, in using the generation as a precise unit for solving chronological conundrums. His second appendix, devoted to establishing the exact date of the return of the Heraclidae and of Lycurgus, depends on the span of a generation being precisely thirty years (and also on the date of Heracles being 1200 bc!). The attempt to calculate in terms of single years or even decades seems to me astonishing for these chronologically vague periods. See D. W. Prakken, Studies in Greek Genealogical Chronology (Lancaster, 1943), 96, for the proposition that Ephorus used a 35- or 3313-year generation, again on the methodologically dubious basis of the length of stretches from one chronologically key point in the text to another. 48 f 173: ŒÆ K Ø Ie ˙æÆŒºı. 49 f 102: ººÆE ªÆE æE ÆP ÆØ (sc. ' ˇæ B H ˙æÆŒºØH ŒÆŁ ı). 50 Barber, The Historian Ephorus, declares that it is impossible to know whether Ephorus applied generations only to the genealogical period and then moved to a more annalistic sequence (within the kata genos arrangement).


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rather was quite willing to blend ‘genealogy’ with the phase of foundations— and we should not Wnd this surprising, although the latter may seem to soften the signiWcance of Ephorus’ supposedly careful choice of starting point to avoid the potential uncertainty and inaccuracy associated with the spatium mythicum. An alternative approach to emphasizing Ephorus’ exclusion of the earliest mythical tales is rather to lay stress on the still extraordinary breadth of his project, and to examine, in so far as this is possible given the fragmentary nature of the work, some of his strategies for managing this scope.51 One of the disadvantages of taking the story back as far as the Heraclidae was the problem of evidence. Although some modern scholars have seen the return of the Heraclidae as the beginning of Greek civilization and the era ‘which would stand the test of the search for truth’,52 in fact, the decision to include the remote past had a clear impact on the sources available. Schepens sees Ephorus’ consequent shift from primary to secondary research as one of the most important aspects of his contribution to historiography, marking a crucial new departure from Herodotus and Thucydides’ stress on autopsy and oral enquiry to a focus on the consultation of extant historical literature.53 It is striking, therefore, that Ephorus continued in this focus on literary citation even for the more recent past, for which primary evidence in the form of inscriptions and archaeological remains was available. It could be said that the obvious opportunity to use diVerent methods and approaches for diVerent phases of the past was passed over in favour of a uniWed methodology.54 It is, in any case, clear that Ephorus did diVerentiate between the distant and the more recent past in terms of evidential quality and reliability, even if he chose 51 Pownall, Lessons from the Past, 121, argues alternatively that Ephorus overcame his concern about the lack of safe evidence for the mythical period because he found there a valuable stock of examples for moral instruction. The idea is an interesting one, but founded on the assumption that Ephorus was driven by a moral didacticism (see 141: [his] ‘primary purpose seems to have been the moral instruction of his readers’), which prevented him from always sticking to his own rules for how to write history, in particular those which encouraged him to avoid the mythical period as part of his search for accuracy. As Pownall herself concedes, there is little verbatim that would justify this assumption (119), but she makes her search for moral messages nevertheless, somewhat weakening any conclusions. 52 See Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 22. 53 See Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 104–5, and passim for an excellent treatment of this subject. The range of evidence needed to cover 750 years of history is certainly striking, including as it does historiography, poetry, documentary sources such as epigraphy, oracles, and so on. 54 This appears to cast doubt on Ephorus’ having a sense of periods with distinctive features and distinctive methodological approaches, in favour of a more uniWed vision of the whole sweep of time from the return of the Heraclidae onwards. In fact, the picture is rather more complex, since Ephorus did not turn his back on primary evidence for the more recent past, but combined it with an ongoing stress on the literary accounts of others.

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not to replace secondary with primary sources at the point where that became possible.55 Furthermore, Strabo’s citation of Ephorus on the history of Aetolia reveals a careful use of the oral reports of current inhabitants about the foundation, of inscriptions, and of geographical detail (10.3.2), showing that he was not neglectful of non-literary forms of evidence. He was keen to use the present as a source of visible traces of the past, while being aware of the possibilities for misinterpretation.56 Perhaps it would be more accurate than claiming either complete coherence through exclusive use of literary evidence or an absolute distinction between use of secondary and primary evidence for the distant and recent past respectively, to see the unity in Ephorus’ work as lying in its methodological awareness. Some of this is a direct development within the historiographical tradition—as Schepens notes, the logographers worked without explicit criticism, Herodotus vowed ‘to say what was said’ (ºªØ a ºª Æ), and Antiochus of Syracuse was more critically selective still, claiming to tell ‘the most trustworthy and the most true of the ancient tales’;57 Ephorus, however, moved the level of source criticism up a notch with his careful combination of primary and secondary sources, as appropriate and as available, and within the latter, his ‘combination of historians and logographers’, according to Polybius.58 He was critical of Hellanicus (t 30a), from whom he must have taken much of his material on the earliest periods covered, and he corrected Herodotus and Thucydides using diVerent types of evidence, including poetry. An excellent case study of the way in which Ephorus used literary, and in this case speciWcally poetic, sources to correct Herodotus has been put forward by Michael Flower.59 When Diodorus cites Simonides’ poem on the battle of Thermopylae, Flower considers it ‘beyond reasonable doubt that Diodorus found these lines in Ephorus’, giving other examples, which make plain that Ephorus habitually cited poetry in support of his account.60 The 55 He argues interestingly in FGrH 70 f 9, that accuracy and detail create the opposite presuppositions depending on whether they are applied to contemporary events, for which they are the sign of reliability, or to ancient events, when they lead to a presumption of Wction: æd b ªaæ H ŒÆŁ A ªªø f IŒæØ Æ Æ ºª Æ Ø ı ªŁÆ; æd b H ÆºÆØH f o ø ØØ Æ IØŁÆø ı r ÆØ . 56 See Thucydides 1.10, the locus classicus for this concern, but also Strabo 10.4.17 for Ephorus’ awareness of variant tales concerning Cretan customs. 57 See FGrH 555 f 2: KŒ H IæÆø º ªø a Ø Æ Æ ŒÆd Æ Æ Æ. Here I take Æ to be an approximation to ‘true’ or ‘certain’, rather than just ‘clear’, as at Thucydides 1.22. 58 See Polybius 12.28.11: æd B ıªŒæø YæŒ B H ƒ æØªæø ŒÆd ºªªæø. 59 M. A. Flower, ‘Simonides, Ephorus, and Herodotus on the Battle of Thermopylae’, Classical Quarterly 48 (1998), 365–79. See Walbank, Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World, 167, for a similar kind of competitiveness vis a` vis Herodotus with Timaeus, who subversively substitutes the synchronism of the battle of Himera with victory of the Greeks at Salamis with a Greek defeat, that at Thermopylae. 60 Flower, ibid. 369. See Diodorus 11.11.6. Flower notes that Diodorus quotes Eupolis and Aristophanes on the causes of the Peloponnesian War at 12.40.6, explicitly citing Ephorus as his


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interesting overlap between the world of history and that of poetry is one to which I shall return in more detail in chapters 4 and 6, but the treatment of historical themes in known poems, such as the Smyrneis of Mimnermus, and Simonides’ composition of poems about the episodes of the Persian wars,61 provided, as Flower suggests, an excellent source for those who would later wish to challenge Herodotus.62 Whatever the merits of either version, in terms of Ephorus’ approach, a poetic source for a historical account was not necessarily less accurate than that of a historian, and indeed one might reasonably prefer the version of Simonides, who was a much closer contemporary of the events of the Persian wars than was Herodotus. Ephorus’ continued interest in using literary sources even for contemporary history might seem less explicable than his preference for Simonides’ account over the later one of Herodotus. However, as Schepens points out, Ephorus’ task was a quite diVerent one from that of ‘great’ historians with whom he might be unfavourably compared.63 Thucydides might have been able to give preference to autopsy and primary reports over literary accounts and thereby secure the prize for historical methodology, but Ephorus was dealing with not only a vastly greater chronological span, but also a great geographical spread, not least because the polycentric world of the fourth century in which he lived stimulated interest in a broader set of theatres of action. Bringing spatium mythicum and spatium historicum into a single work entailed a vast temporal span, and diVerent phases might require diVerent time systems. We have already seen the use of the generation as a chronological unit. But many of the other chronological markers, such as the Trojan War and the return of the Heraclidae, which we shall see recurring in later universal writers such as Diodorus and Strabo, are to be found among the fragments of Ephorus. The methodological diYculty is determining whether the inclusion of these commonly known points in the past, on which to hang other lesser-known events, was primarily the work of Ephorus himself or of his successors, since this is precisely the kind of issue which the nature of citation in ancient literature obscures. Common sense suggests that it would be remarkable for Strabo or Diodorus, for example, to have added their own chronological markers on an extensive scale if there were no traces of these in their sources. Nevertheless, some of these Ephoran fragments will appear source for the causes, and several of Strabo’s poetic citations (of which there are many—see D. Dueck, ‘Strabo’s Use of Poetry’, in D. Dueck, H. Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia (Cambridge, 2005), 86–107), are channelled through Ephorus, such as 6.3.3—Wve lines of Tyrtaeus on the foundation of Tarentum. 61 Of which the new Simonides on Plataea is but one. 62 Flower, ‘Simonides, Ephorus, and Herodotus’, 370. 63 See Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 112.

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again as ‘duplicates’ later in this chapter, and so they may rightly belong either to Ephorus or to his later citers.64 The sons of Heracles not only formed the probable chronological starting point for Ephorus’ great work, but they also featured prominently in the narrative.65 In a sense, of course, the two points are interrelated, since it is likely that it was precisely the importance and legacy of their deeds which led to the choice of starting point. We hear of the adoption by the Dorian king, Aegimus, of one of the sons of Heracles, Hyllus, in addition to his own two sons, Pamphylus and Dymas, in thanks for Heracles’ restoration of the king from exile.66 Strabo makes clear that Ephorus dealt with the aftermath of the arrival of the Heraclidae, particularly the division of the Peloponnese,67 in which circumstance, they were both a chronological marker and part of the narrative. Their mention in the story of Oxylus (f 115), the son of Aetolus (after whom Aetolia was named), with whom they led their expedition back to the Peloponnese, shows yet again the way in which they can be both active players and a form of chronological note, since they allow us thereby to place Aetolus a generation back in time from this. The Heraclidae are not, however, the only well-known temporal indicator to appear in the fragments of Ephorus. One passage (f 11) provides a temporal framework for the foundation of the city of Carides on Chios with the information that it was carried out by ‘those with Macar who had been saved from the Xood which happened under Deucalion’.68 The Trojan expedition, which lay just outside the chronological scope of Ephorus’ work, nevertheless was mentioned by him, according to Strabo.69 It seems that the period of intensive colonization, which would enable later writers such as 64 Occasional fragments indicate that the later writers sometimes introduced the well-known temporal markers independently of their sources. See, for example, f 121 (¼ Strabo 9.4.7) on the naming of Naupactus. According to Strabo, it was either the Heraclidae who built a Xeet there or, in Ephorus’ account, even earlier the Locrians. Of course, Strabo is here not using the Heraclidae as a temporal indicator, but nevertheless it is clear that he was by no means dependent on Ephorus for every mention. 65 We shall see the same doubling of certain events as both chronological markers and narrative episodes in their own right with Strabo. 66 See f 15. f 16 also notes Heracles’ benefactions and refers to the expedition of the Heraclidae to the Peloponnese. 67 f 18a: a æd c ØÆæØ B —ºı ŒÆ a c H ˙æÆŒºØH ŒŁ. See also f 117 from Strabo’s extensive account of the return (8.5), which he claims to have taken from Ephorus and f 118 on the handing over of land to the Dorians by the suspiciously named Philonomus (Lover of laws), ‘at the time of the return of the Heraclidae’ (ŒÆ a b c H ˙æÆŒºØH ŒŁ). 68 ØÆøŁ Æ KŒ F Kd ˜ıŒÆºø ªı ŒÆ ÆŒºıF a !ŒÆæ. 69 See f 123 ¼ Strabo 10.2.25 and 7.7.7. But f 34 on Heracles’ conquest of the giants of Phlegra ‘after having taken Troy’ must refer to the separate expedition against Troy undertaken by Heracles with Telamon, the son of Aeacus, whose son, Ajax, would be one of the greatest warriors in Homer’s Trojan War.


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Strabo to create a chronological mesh of foundations in relation to each other, was treated extensively by Ephorus.70 One fragment (f 22) hints at the possibility that Ephorus engaged in some of the scholarship on the origin of festivals and the development of the festival calendar of the type discussed in chapter 2, dealing as it does with the origins of the festival of Apatouria, which took place on the fourth of Pyanepsion. Although we have little evidence for the chronological systems adopted for the later periods dealt with by Ephorus, the earliest periods are, as far as scant evidence allows, mapped out using a mixture of generations and well-known chronological markers. Whether we are witnessing a retrojection by Diodorus and Strabo on to Ephorus, or rather gaining some tantalizing glimpses into Ephorus’ own chronological strategies, remains uncertain. Continual caution is required—the fragments are massively skewed towards the mythical and earliest periods, since Strabo’s practice of citation by name gives him a far greater presence in Jacoby’s collection than in Diodorus, and therefore Strabo’s own preference for the earliest phases of a place’s history means that we have a great deal more to say about Ephorus’ early phase too.71 We can for the most part only speculate on how Ephorus dealt with the chronological framework of more recent times. One rare moment of enlightenment is oVered by Polybius, who comments in the course of his polemic against Timaeus that Timaeus had falsely accused Ephorus of ignorance, alleging that Ephorus claimed that Dionysius the Elder took power in his twenty-third year, ruled as tyrant for forty-two, and died at the age of sixtythree.72 The chronological diYculty here is, according to Polybius, a slip that no one would attribute to a historian, only to a scribe, thus answering Timaeus’ criticism of Ephorus. But the episode gives rare support to the idea that Ephorus himself probably took a careful year-by-year approach to the historical period, and calculated the passage of time accordingly.73 The lack of more than scarce glimpses into the chronological structure and terminology of the majority of Ephorus’ work, the ‘historical’ narrative, is a great loss. It would be of great interest to see whether and how a universal historian, working before the development of the Olympiadic system,

70 See f 125 for the Ionian colonization; f 127 for Miletus. On Strabo’s complex web of interrelated foundations, see K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (Oxford, 1999), 265–70. 71 Just brief glimpses of chronological indicators emerge from the later fragments and they bring little illumination to our problem. See, for example, f 207 with its helpful ‘later’ (æ øØ b o æ). 72 f 218 ¼ Polybius 12.4a3. 73 Note the opportunity here also for the development of regnal time as a means of signifying the passing of time as well as the relative chronology of diVerent rulers.

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managed to provide an adequate and meaningful method for mapping out the temporal progress of his multilocational narrative.

b) Synchronism and topicality: writing across time and space If we are frustrated by the lack of extant material which might allow us to establish whether or not Ephorus distinguished between the remote past and the historical period in terms of the chronological systems used, similar vagueness surrounds the question of how he arranged a work of such vast scope. The issue is of some relevance for the relationship between the local and the universal, as well as for our understanding of the use of temporal units and synchronicity. Discussion hinges on the statement in Diodorus (5.1.4) that Ephorus was very successful in his organization of the subject matter, which was carried out ŒÆ a ª, each book containing the achievements of cities or of kings individually, from beginning to end. The phrase ŒÆ a ª has proven particularly elusive. As modern treatments have demonstrated, it is unclear whether it should be taken to mean ‘episodic’ or ‘thematic’ or ‘geographically organized’, meaning that each book or section would deal with a particular region.74 The weight of opinion has, however, tended to come down on the side of a geographical interpretation, which, as Schepens points out, would have been helpful since, when Ephorus wrote, ‘no general system existed for a uniform dating of the events in Greece, let alone in the West and the East as well’.75 As Schepens’ statement implies, the relationship between time and space is at the heart of the problem. If Ephorus’ work was geographically organized, we might expect the relationship to be predominantly spatial, with a close preservation of local accounts. Indeed, whereas there is real debate over the priority of the Herodotean project or the local accounts of individual poleis, as discussed in the next chapter, it is clear that when the Wrst universal historian embarked upon his project, there was no question as to the existence of local histories on which he might draw. In amongst the huge range of literary sources which Ephorus privileged throughout his work, might have featured not only Herodotus, Hecataeus, and Thucydides, but also Hellanicus, the other Atthidographers, and the regional historians such as Ctesias and Xanthus, later to be embodied in numerous Persica, for the East.76 Josephus 74 See R. Drews, ‘Ephorus and History Written KATA GENOS’, American Journal of Philology 84 (1963), 244–55. 75 Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 116. 76 See Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 133. Hellanicus could, of course, provide the histories of many more individual states than Athens alone, and his huge chronological scope must have made him invaluable for the earliest period.


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notes, for example, that Ephorus pointed out many mistakes in Hellanicus, which oVers clear proof that Ephorus had read the latter carefully.77 Although Barber is somewhat scathing of the value of regional and local accounts,78 the assumption that they loomed large among Ephorus’ sources leads us to various possibilities. Either Ephorus’ work was fragmented and incoherent in its chronological, mythological, conceptual frameworks, simply recording the local sources as he moved from one theatre of events to another, or he carefully ‘reformulated’ the diverse sources to Wt his own frameworks and style. In fact, just as we shall see again with the more fully extant Diodorus and Strabo, the extant fragments of Ephorus’ account give no hint of ‘local’ time systems, although, as we shall see (in chapter 4), these were a common feature of local historiography,79 thus suggesting that the temporal and conceptual framework of the source was substantially replaced in works of universal scope. This might seem too sweeping a generalization in the case of a fragmentary work. It can, however, be noted that at least Diodorus, even if not one of his major sources, Ephorus, did not choose to preserve local time systems, and preferred instead to allow his universal system of Olympiads and magistracies to cut across space. The notion of a geographical arrangement thus comes under some pressure, if a universal chronology subsumed local time systems. However, the supposition that Ephorus’ status as forerunner to Diodorus means that we can infer Ephorus’ historiographical practice from that of Diodorus is clearly Xawed. It has been noted that Ephorus provided a crucial model for subsequent Greek universal historiography in not trying to provide a truly synchronized, synthetic account across several arenas.80 It should also be noted that, while Diodorus, for example, as soon as he reached the ‘historical’ period, placed his tour of various theatres within a strict annalistic framework, which was continuous at least year by year, and was counted by means of a carefully comprehensive combination of Olympiads and magistracies, Ephorus provides us with no evidence for a uniWed and universally applicable chronological framework. Barber may well be correct to defend Ephorus against charges of chronological neglect,81 but the supposed adoption of an 77 See FGrH 70 t 30. 78 See Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 121: ‘The literature of the Persica and Atthides, belonging more to the fourth than to the Wfth century, was the embodiment, not of historical fact, but of popular legends which easily accumulate around the personalities of great men.’ 79 This was, however, not to the exclusion of more widely understood and applicable frameworks at least at the Panhellenic level. The issue of to what degree local historians used a common mythological and chronological currency will be discussed further in ch. 4. 80 See Drews, ‘Ephorus and History Written KATA GENOS’, 253, on the model followed by Polybius and Diodorus, at any rate. 81 Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 47: ‘Nevertheless the criticism that Ephorus’ system implied the total abolition of an annalistic framework is unjustiWed, except perhaps in the earliest books,

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annalistic framework still leaves unanswered the question as to the terms in which such a framework might have been calibrated. But, assuming that Fornara is correct to surmise that ‘events were tied together synchronistically and dated in relation to well-known epochs such as the reign of Croesus, the era of the Persian War, and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, by generations in archaic times, and by intervals of years thereafter,’82 is this radically diVerent from what we might expect, or indeed from what we Wnd in other authors? Both the gathering together of contemporary events and the association of those events with well-known chronological landmarks can be executed at a greater or lesser level of speciWcity. Although Fornara sees Ephorus’ method as a rejection of Thucydides’ synchronistic approach, which would have been incompatible with a topical arrangement,83 Drews must be right to stress that both were simply operating at diVerent points along a spectrum of synchronization. Episodic history was not necessarily a deliberate replacement of synchronicity with rapidly changing scenes, and indeed Thucydides’ own form of synchronism was not precisely that, allowing a unit of six months.84 Drews points out, very convincingly, that the issue here is the unit of chronology, which for Polybius would be larger still—not the year, but the Olympiad. As he says, for Polybius, synchronic and episodic history were not mutually exclusive, ‘but instead of advancing all players on the board one move each season, or each year, he would feel free to follow one player’s progress to a logical halt, covering several years in the process.’85 And he rightly brings Thucydides back into the frame with the comment that his synchronistic history ‘diVers from episodic only in the degree to which the unit of synchronism has been articulated’. This attempt to soften the contrast between synchronistic and episodic history seems entirely sensible, not least since, alluring though the prospect of identifying a distinctively Ephoran stance on the relationship between time and space in his work might be, especially if it brought him into conXict or competition with the approaches adopted by his predecessors, the extant fragments oVer nothing like suYcient insight into his chronological scheme to allow this characterization.86 But it may be safe to go as far as Fornara in where a total reckoning by generations was coupled with the parallel exposition of the history of various states.’ This would appear to imply a geographical sense of kata genos in the Wrst books, followed by something else (unspeciWed). But it seems that we simply cannot draw arguments from silence where a fragmentary author is concerned. 82 Fornara, The Nature of History, 44. 83 Fornara, ibid. 84 Drews, ‘Ephorus and History Written KATA GENOS’, 245. 85 Drews, ibid. 246. 86 In any case, as Drews, ibid. 249, notes, it is easy to attribute deliberate intent and innovation to the results of pure lack of precision or concern: ‘laxity in carrying through a

The Olympiadic revolution

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seeing Ephorus as breaking new ground with his topical organization within relatively narrow chronological limits, which would be adopted in some form or another by many subsequent Greek historians. It is hard to be sure whether the lack of rigidity here is the result of ignorance on our part as to exactly how Ephorus organized his work, and in particular what chronological framework he used, or whether it was a deliberately Xexible system, allowing for the inclusion of digressions where relevant. Fornara gives Ephorus the beneWt of the doubt, praising a narrative arrangement which allowed Ephorus ‘to organize intelligibly a sequential narrative consisting of lengthy historical segments that were at once independent and synchronous.’87 It is that combination of independence and synchronicity which will prove key in trying to understand the world not only of the universal historians but also, perhaps more unexpectedly, that of the local writers, who chose to compose their histories in such a way as to maintain the uniqueness and superiority of each polis, but with an awareness that the past of that polis ran alongside and often in conjunction with that of others.

3 . E XT E N D I N G T I M E AC ROS S S PAC E : T H E OLY M P IAD IC R EVO LU TION One limitation of Ephorus’ work, about which we can only guess in the absence of the more complete text, is the lack of a single chronological system, which could be used for all theatres of events. Attempts to synchronize, to draw together events which took place across a wide geographical area into a chronological unity, provided a certain validation for the universal historiographical enterprise. It was not necessary, however, for geographically disparate events to coincide chronologically. The mere use of the same chronological currencies would reveal something about the unity of the world being described. Thucydides, with whom this chapter started, had already begun to hint at the desirability of drawing together disparate time systems into a more coherent whole. His combination of Argive priestesses, Spartan ephors, and Athenian archons, his lament over the problem of placing a multilocational narrative in time, given the local nature of chronological frameworks, and thirdly the unsatisfactory nature of Thucydides’ own solution of seasons and war years, applicable as it was only to a single narrative, strongly indicate the synchronistic presentation must not be confused with an intentional episodic approach’. It is furthermore easy to pounce too quickly on the mere mention of elements which could be part of a chronological framework, such as seasons, and assume that they are precisely that. 87 Fornara, The Nature of History, 45.

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value of a uniWed system that could be used to provide an accurate temporal framework for universal historiography. Such a system was developed, just a little too late for Ephorus, through the cumulative labours of Hippias of Elis, Timaeus of Tauromenium, and Eratosthenes, all of whom were in some way responsible for the fact that, when Polybius set out to write a universal history, he would do so within a clear chronological framework which transcended the local magistracies and calendar systems of the various places encompassed by his narrative, namely that of Olympiads. The earlier stages of this development have already been outlined (in chapter 2), since the practical use of Olympiads in historiography was dependent on more purely chronographic interests. Hippias of Elis, with his early fourth-century List of Olympic Victors, set the trend for compiling such lists, but it was the historian Timaeus of Tauromenium who, according to Polybius, Wrst produced a comparative list of ephors and kings of Sparta from the earliest times, Athenian archons, priestesses of Argos, and, the missing ingredient from Thucydides’ list and of great importance in oVering continuity, length, and universality, the Olympic victors.88 The quest to improve the list was taken up by Eratosthenes, who produced not only the Olympionikai, an apparently random selection of notes on Olympic contests, but also more revealingly a work of Chronographia, which, as already noted, was a serious attempt to bring the Olympic victory list into a meaningful and accurate relationship with key events in Greek history. As we have seen (in chapter 2), many chronographers attempted to tie more local temporal systems to the Olympiadic frame, seeing it as a central, shared, apparently detached, measure of time. The advantages of a Panhellenic festival for marking out time over the many local ones were multifaceted—the victors were representative of a wide spread of Greek poleis, and the history which could be attached to the list as a chronological frame was even more geographically diverse.89 I have already discussed the chronicle from Oxyrhynchus in which the Olympiadic framework is used for a historical account which ranges widely around diVerent theatres of action (pp. 77–9), and this is, of course, what we see most vividly exempliWed for the Wrst time in Polybius’ Histories. But it is Wrst worth recalling Polybius’ namesake, Ti. Claudius Polybius, who points out the fundamental importance of the published Olympic victor lists in the Greek organization and measurement of time by stating that it was 88 Polybius 12.11.1 ¼ FGrH 566 t 10: › ªaæ a ıªŒæØ Ø IŒÆŁ H K æø æe f ÆØºE f K ¸ÆŒÆØ ŒÆd f ¼æ Æ f %ŁØ; ŒÆd a ƒæÆ a K ¢ æªØ ÆæÆººø æe f ˇºıØŒÆ. As Polybius goes on to comment, Timaeus convicted cities of inaccuracies in these matters when there was a diVerence of only three months. 89 See ch. 2 for the way in which Phlegon of Tralles displays the geographically diverse nature of the victory list, as well as the universal nature of the history which would be tied to it.


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not with the Wrst Olympiad, but only with the Wrst inscription of a victor’s name, that of Coroebus of Elis, who won the stadion in the twenty-eighth Olympiad, that the Greeks counted time.90 This ability to ‘count time’ underpins the historiographical enterprise undertaken by Polybius, for whom the framework of numbered Olympiads provided the structure within which both synthetic and geographically disparate accounts could be located.91 It is something of an irony that it should be Timaeus, for whom Polybius had little but scorn, who pioneered the application of Olympiadic time to the writing of history, of which Polybius would become our chief exemplar. Timaeus, whose life spanned the second half of the fourth century bc and the Wrst of the third, was noted for his interest in chronological accuracy and for his synthesis of diVerent time frames with each other against the continuous backdrop of Olympiadic counting, with a view to creating a narrative framework for history. Although Timaeus himself wrote Sicelica, as we shall see in chapter 4, Sicilian historiography seems to have held a rather more elevated status than most local historiography. Whether this was due to its inherent scale and themes, which lifted it above the scope of most local historiography, or whether to a more self-conscious wish on the part of its authors to reXect Sicily’s wider aspirations to Hellenic culture and Hellenic identity in its historiography is a question to which we shall return. But we might at least question whether Polybius’ description of Timaeus’ wish to be seen on a par with ‘those who gave accounts of the whole inhabited world and of universal history’,92 is the whole story, or whether it is indeed signiWcant that the ‘universal chronology’ adopted and developed by this Sicilian author was one with such strong connotations as an essential marker of Greekness.93 Besides an elaborate system of synchronisms and Wxed markers from both the mythical and historical periods,94 the fragments of Timaeus reveal Olympiads brought into conjunction with other temporal frames and also used on their own as the Wrst coherent, universal, and continuous dating device. The synoecism of Camarina, for example, happened, according to Timaeus, in the 42nd Olympiad (ŒÆ a c OºıØÆ), and its capture was at the time of 90 See FGrH 254 f 2: OºıØa Æo æ K Ł; I w ' ¯ºº IæØŁFØ f æ ı. We should probably assume that this character is the freedman who held the position of a studiis under the emperor Claudius. 91 F. W. Walbank, Polybius (Berkeley and London, 1972), 99, points out the need for a good and eVective chronological structure when covering 75 years. 92 FGrH 566 f 119: E bæ B NŒı ŒÆd H ŒÆŁ ºı æø ØØ a ı Ø. 93 See Herodotus 2.160.3 for the answer given by the Eleans to king Amasis of Egypt when questioned about who could compete in the Olympic festival: ‘They said that it was open to any of the Greeks who wanted, including themselves (ŒÆd ø ŒÆd H ¼ººø ¯ººø ›ø fiH ıºfiø), to compete’. 94 These will be discussed in ch. 4.

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the expedition of Darius, son of Hystaspes (ŒÆ a c ˜Ææı F 0 ı æÆ Æ).95 We have already seen the attempts of the chronographers to determine the chronological relationship between the Trojan War and the Wrst Olympiad; for Timaeus, it was four hundred and seventeen years.96 But, just as Olympiadic time could be used independently of other chronological markers—in order to date, for example, the magniWcent procession in Acragas which took place ‘in the Olympiad before this one’97—so too could pre-Olympiadic time be used without reference to other chronological markers. In a wonderful combination of synchronism and Olympiadic dating, Timaeus places the foundation of Rome at the same date as that of Carthage, its arch-rival, namely in the thirty-eighth year before the Wrst Olympiad.98 As Walbank comments, the beneWt of the Olympiadic structure was that it both enabled the calculation of intervals between events and provided a set of externally established points to which elements of the narrative could be anchored; both features are clearly perceptible even in the extremely fragmentary remains of Timaeus’ work.99 It should be easier to assess the use of the Olympiadic system as a structure for the writing of history in the Histories of Polybius, of which far greater continuous stretches of text are extant. It is, however, worth noting that even here the exercise is severely compromised, since the continuous stretches of extant historical narrative fall predominantly in the Wrst few books, before Polybius reaches the point at which his standard ‘universal’ Olympiadic framework comes into play.100 Thus, we are more reliant on Polybius’ explicit statements of intent than on the extensive exempliWcation of the Olympiadic structure. Polybius nowhere actually states that he is adopting Timaeus’ chronological system for universal historiography, but he does explicitly claim to be his continuator, which might, but clearly need not, given Polybius’ criticism of Timaeus on other counts, imply some continuity of frameworks.101 But at the end of his work Polybius neatly recounts his practice, 95 FGrH 566 f 19b. 96 FGrH 566 f 125. 97 FGrH 566 f 26. The Olympiad in question is further deWned in victory list terms, as the one when Exaenetus won the stadion. 98 FGrH 566 f 60: Oª øØ ŒÆd æØÆŒ HØ æ æ Ø B æ OºıØ. 99 Walbank, Polybius, 99. 100 Walbank, ibid. 101–4, stresses the distinction between the Wrst books in which Polybius follows an Ephoran model of writing kata genos, and the later books when he adopts Timaeus’ Olympiadic structure. He notes the way in which, in the 140th Olympiad, when world history was not yet intermingled, Polybius allows geography to override Olympiads, and observes that he uses synchronisms to make the chronological connections in this section. Even in Books 4 and 5, says Walbank, the East and West are kept separate and Olympiads not strictly observed. This must surely be right to a degree, but I would prefer to see a more blurred boundary between the early books and the point at which Olympiadic dating comes fully into play. We have considerable evidence for the use of Olympiads in the Wrst books, and much less for the later ones. 101 See Polybius 1.5.1 for his starting point as the Wrst time the Romans crossed the sea from Italy, which followed immediately on the close of Timaeus’ history (Æo Ø ıc b E


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broadly speaking, for its organization; namely, that he undertook to begin with the 139th Olympiad and henceforth to deal with the general history of the whole world, ‘classing it under Olympiads, dividing those into years and taking a comparative view of the succession of events’.102 Elsewhere, he explains further how this arrangement will work. In Book 9 he speciWes how the Olympiadic span is to relate to the number of books, with two years dealt with in each book: ‘These are the main events in the abovementioned Olympiad, that is in the space of four years which we term an Olympiad and I shall attempt to narrate them in two books’ (9.1.1). It was, however, perfectly possible for this scheme to be overridden when events were particularly worthy or unworthy of attention. As Polybius concedes at the start of Book 14, ‘perhaps it is true that in all Olympiads the range of events holds the attention of the reader, owing to their number and importance, since the actions of the whole world are brought under one point of view, but in fact this Olympiad was particularly engaging. Therefore, this time I have not used a book for every two years, as I have done in previous cases’.103 Thus we learn from this exceptional case Polybius’ normal practice also. Elsewhere he adds further Xesh to the plan. Within the dominant Olympiadic framework, he will subdivide material according to geographical area: ‘in narrating in their proper order the events of each year (ŒÆŁ ŒÆ ), I try to include under a separate heading the events which happened in each place in each year’.104 So much for the theory, and there are some extant examples of the practice. Some are explicitly historiographical, where Polybius marks out the progress of his narrative and that of his task through reference to the Olympiad he is treating. So, for example, he states that he will start his history with the 140th Olympiad, anchoring the text to a temporal framework as well as to a particular event (1.3.1). The Olympiad as structuring device for the text is reiterated many times—he declares that he will end the third book (3.118.10–11) now that he has dealt with Spain and Italy in the 140th Olympiad; again at the end of Book 5 (5.111.9) he states that he has chosen this date for interrupting his narrative, having now described events in Asia and Greece I z ÆØ IºØ) and took place in the 129th Olympiad, an early indication that this chronological system will form the basis of Polybius’ account too. At 11.1.1, he states his preference for giving the summary of events in each Olympiad over writing prologues as book introductions, as most historians do, thus further emphasizing the central importance of the Olympiad in his historiographical pose. 102 Polybius 39.8.6: æØªæ ŒÆ OºıØÆ ŒÆd ØÆØæF ŒÆ ŒÆd ıªŒæ KŒ ÆæÆºB a ŒÆ Æºººı. 103 Polybius 14.1.5. Walbank, Polybius, 108, discusses the reasons for each aberration from the two years per book system. 104 Polybius 28.16.10–11: K d ŒÆØæfiH ıªŒÆºÆØFŁÆØ a Ææ Œ Ø æØ.

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for this same Olympiad. Keeping an eye on which of his material lay in which Olympiad was worthy of comment. One explicit changeover point in the narrative comes near the start of Book 4, where he states that ‘this [sc. the background on Achaea] fell in the previous Olympiad, whereas what followed fell in the 140th.’ (4.14.9) Sometimes Olympiads are used simply to indicate ‘when’ an event happened. In the second year of the 149th Olympiad, for example, the senate heard embassies from Eumenes, Pharnaces and Philip, the Achaean league, the exiled and the non-exiled Spartans (23.9.1). This was in keeping with the tone of an Olympiad which overall saw more embassies in Rome from Greece than ever before (23.1.1). Another bumper year expressed in Olympiadic terms was the third year of the 140th, when the battle of the Romans in Etruria, that of Antiochus in Coele-Syria, and the treaty of the Achaeans and Philip with the Aetolians took place (5.105.3). But again, it had been an Olympiad full of action, a pivotal one for Polybius, the one in which the famous interweaving of events across the Mediterranean world took place, after which world history would progress in unison. The Wrst year was marked by the start of the Social War (4.26.1) and the dispatch of a Roman force to Illyria under L. Aemilius just before the summer, oVering a neat combination of diVerent levels of detail: the number of the Olympiad, the year of that Olympiad, and the season within that year.105 Strikingly, the year of the Olympiad itself acts as the subject of the verb as it draws to an end.106 The clustering of events in particular Olympiads was sometimes so speciWc and extraordinary as to be presented as a synchronism. The succession of rulers in diVerent parts of the Mediterranean world seems to have been the single most important factor determining Polybius’ sense of periodization. As he states explicitly, his choice of start date for the main narrative was decided by various factors: Wrst, the end point of Aratus’ narrative, and second, the possibility of using autopsy and eye-witness accounts as evidence if his chosen period coincided with his own and the preceding generation. However, the most important motivation was that this was the point at which Tyche made the world new through the succession of a whole panoply of new rulers— Philip in Macedon, Achaeus in Asia, Antiochus in Syria, Ariarathes in Cappadocia, Ptolemy Philopator in Egypt, Lycurgus in Sparta, while Hannibal 105 Polybius 3.16.7: e c ‰æÆÆ . . . ŒÆ a e æH B ŒÆ B ŒÆd ÆæÆŒ B OºıØ. 106 Polybius 4.66.11: ŒÆd e b æH ºª B ŒØ OºıØ (‘And the Wrst year of the current Olympiad waned.’). The corresponding phrase for the last year of an Olympiad occurs at 21.40.1, where the arrival of embassies from the Greek cities of Asia and several other quarters to Gnaeus Manlius, the Roman consul, who was wintering in Ephesus, is dated to ‘the last year of this Olympiad’: ŒÆ a e ºı ÆE KØÆı e B ŒØ OºıØ.


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became general of the Carthaginians. This set of new leaders resulted in an array of new wars—Antiochus and Ptolemy over Coele-Syria, the Achaeans and Philip against Aetolia and Sparta (4.2). While these formulations may lead to the impression that, in fact, biographical history or the history of personalities was a more important structure for Polybius than that of the Olympiad,107 he makes clear elsewhere that the two go hand in hand, since the synchronization of several successions was what characterized some Olympiads as pivotal. Such was the importance of the 124th Olympiad (284–281 bc)—when not only did Patrae and Dyme enter into alliance, but the deaths of Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy Ceraunus all occurred—that the synchronism is mentioned twice.108 On the second occasion, this synchronism of successions is cited as a parallel for yet another extraordinary coincidence of transitions of power, namely the succession of Ptolemy Philopator on the death of Ptolemy Euergetes, of Antiochus on the death of Seleucus, and of Philip on that of Antigonus, but again it is striking that the Olympiadic framework is so prominent for Polybius. All of the successors of Alexander who provided the early model by dying at roughly the same time did so in the 124th Olympiad; their later parallels died in the 139th.109 It would have been quite enough to note the synchronistic deaths of major personalities without anchoring these to the Olympiadic system,110 but for Polybius the coincidences of successions and the impact these have on the tone of their respective Olympiads seem to carry roughly equal weight. We have already seen with Timaeus the way in which synchronisms could suggest that the history of the world was at times moving in unison, and could thereby oVer validation to the broad extent of the historiographical enterprise. Polybius rejects the possibility that separate histories could add up to a coherent picture of events (8.2.1–11), and explicitly sets himself in contrast to 107 See also Polybius 14.12.1, where he explains why he has broken away temporarily from his normal practice of dealing with successive events of each year separately, and instead, in the case of Egypt alone, is giving a narrative of events extending over a considerable period. The answer is that he has chosen to focus on the character of Ptolemy Philopator. Walbank, Polybius, 113, makes the interesting observation that Polybius describes this reign as øÆ Ø (‘organic’, ‘corporate’), just as he would describe the history of the world as whole after the 140th Olympiad. Are we, then, to extend the biological metaphor and see the individual life as a microcosm of the life of the world, in an echo of Theopompus and his universal Philippica (‘events associated with Philip’), or of Dicaearchus and his Life of Greece? 108 See Polybius 2.41.1 and 2.71.3–7. 109 Polybius 2.71.3–7. It is interesting that on this occasion he ignores one of the previous list, Lysimachus, presumably because he wants to make the repetition of the scenario seem as precise as possible. 110 This is indeed the case at 4.1.3–9, his potted recall of what he related of Greek history in Book 2. Here he notes that he took the story up to the deaths of Antigonus Doson, Seleucus Ceraunus, and Ptolemy Euergetes, all of which occurred at about the same time.

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those predecessors who have treated only the aVairs of Greece or of Persia, instead undertaking to relate the events occurring in all the known parts of the inhabited world (2.37.4). But that Polybius’ rejection of local historiography, the Hellenica and Persica of his predecessors, would amount to more than just a compilation of separate histories, is explicitly claimed in his famous identiWcation of the point at which the occasional synchronism was transformed into a systematic universal approach. As he suggests, the ‘interweaving’ or ıºŒ of events took place towards the end of the Social War in the third year of the 140th Olympiad,111 after which he would give a general history of events in chronological order. The transformation from a history made up of separate local histories into one which would follow time rather than space as its dominant matrix is all the more eVective, Polybius claims, precisely because he keeps the narratives distinct right up to the relevant moment: ‘The circumstances of Italy, Greece, and Asia were such that the beginnings of wars were particular to each country, while the ends were shared; therefore I give a separate account of each until the point where they came into connection, so that each individual narrative should be clearer, and the point of conjunction more conspicuous.’ Yet again, it is worth noting that the point at which his compilation of local histories makes the transition into an integrated universal history is dated in terms of the most obviously universal chronological system, that of the Olympiad, although one wonders whether there was any deliberate irony in the fact that this ‘universal’ system within which he would explain to the Greeks how it had come about that they had been taken over by Rome was in origin associated with the assertion of Greek culture and identity. But in spite of the development by Timaeus of the Olympiadic system for historiography, and Polybius’ appropriate adoption of it for his universal history of the rise of Rome, local time systems are strikingly and surprisingly also present in the narrative. Dating by consuls is a feature throughout, continuing beyond the point at which the systematic use of Olympiads was to come into force. This is a dating system which marks both the passage of time and the point in time reached (on the assumption that one has a list, which is the clear weakness in the system) through the succession of named magistrates, on the whole indirectly through the mention of their actions. The fact that the year 223 bc has been reached is indicated by the note that ‘the next year’s consuls, Publius Furius and Gaius Flaminius, again invaded Celtic territory’ (2.32.1). Shortly afterwards in the narrative, the Celts respond with an embassy to Rome, and the transition to a new year is marked by the fact 111 Polybius 4.28.5: Kª b ıºŒc H æø æd c F ºı ı ºØÆ ŒÆ a e æ B ŒÆ B ŒÆd ÆæÆŒ B OºıØ.


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that it is new consuls, Marcus Claudius and Gnaeus Cornelius, who urge its rejection (2.34.1). The mention of the consular elections themselves fulWls the same function of indicating the passage of time, and several examples can be found. At 3.106.1, we are told simply that it was time for the consular appointments, and that L. Aemilius Paulus and Gaius Terentius Varro were elected; at 18.42.1 that, after Claudius Marcellus had entered oYce as consul, ambassadors came from Philip and from Flamininus; and at 16.24.1 that, at the start of the winter when Publius Sulpicius was appointed consul in Rome, Philip at Bargylia was worried that the Rhodians and Attalus were not disarming their ships, but were making further preparations. But it is interesting and signiWcant that Polybius refers both to the election and to the accession of consuls, two events which occurred at diVerent times of year. This makes very plain that there is nothing systematic about Polybius’ use of consuls as a means of articulating time, but rather that they oVer an incidental opportunity for the reader to orient the narrative in relation to the major magistracy of Rome. Sometimes the change in consuls is mentioned alongside other temporal indicators—when Philip dismissed his troops to winter quarters, the winter is identiWed as the one when Hannibal went into quarters at Gerunium in Daunia, and the Romans had just elected G. Terentius Varro and L. Aemilius Paulus to the consulate (5.108.9). Perhaps most striking is the fact that Polybius chooses to date the Wrst treaty between Rome and Carthage not in terms of Olympiads, but using a combination of consular dating, the foundation of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and a Wxed marking point in Greek history. The treaty was formed ‘in the consulship of L. Junius Brutus and M. Horatius, the Wrst consuls after the expulsion of the kings and the founders of the above-mentioned temple, and twenty-eight years before the crossing of Xerxes to Greece’.112 This treaty lay perhaps so far out of the time frame of Polybius’ main narrative that a date given in terms of the counted scale of Olympiads would be less meaningful than one given in relation to a well-known event from the relevant period. Alongside the use of consular dating, we also Wnd extensive use of the chronological frameworks oVered by the local magistracies of the Greek 112 See Polybius 3.22.1–2: ŒÆ a ¸ŒØ ( Ø ´æF ŒÆd !æŒ -æ Ø; f æ ı ŒÆ Æ ÆŁ Æ ı a c H ÆØºø ŒÆ ºıØ; z ı ŒÆŁØæøŁBÆØ ŒÆd e F ˜Øe ƒæe F ˚Æ øºı: ÆF Æ Ø æ æÆ B ˛æı ØÆø N c ¯ººÆ æØŒ Ø ºıØ ıE. As we shall see, the crossing of Xerxes was an important chronological marker for universal historians such as Diodorus, but we might note the more speciWcally Polybian observation made by F. G. B. Millar, ‘Polybius between Greece and Rome’, in J. T. A. Koumoulides (ed.), Greek Connections: Essays on Culture and Diplomacy (Notre Dame, 1987), 1–18, that Polybius regularly locates events from early Roman history in relation to key events in Greek history.

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world. There is a unique instance of a Byzantine eponymous dating, appropriately enough to place in time a treaty made by the Byzantines and the Rhodians ‘in the year of Cothon, son of Calligeiton, hieromnemon in Byzantium’.113 Presumably this reXects the wording of an epigraphic source, but it could, had Polybius so wished, have been ‘translated’ into Olympiads. Coincidentally, it is Byzantium’s partner in this treaty, Rhodes, which provides the only other use of Greek magistracies for dating in Polybius, to my knowledge, besides the important and substantial exceptions, namely the generalships of Achaea and Aetolia. A letter from Gaius Lucretius arrived in Rhodes, we are told, asking for ships, ‘at the time when Stratocles was prytanis for the second half-year’.114 As with the Roman consuls, the strategoi are sometimes used purely as temporal reference points for the events of the narrative—‘the strategos of the Aetolians was Ariston, when . . .’ (4.5.1). Sometimes their election is a point worth noting in its own right, as well as incidentally locating the reader in time—‘at this time, it being the date for their annual election (ıłÆ F H IæÆØæø æ ı), the Aetolians elected as strategos Scopas’ (4.27.1). The election could itself be further anchored in time by its relation to the Olympiadic system, as is the case at 4.66.11, where Polybius notes that the Wrst year of the Olympiad in question was drawing to a close, and it was now the date for the elections in Aetolia, at which Dorimachus was made strategos. As with the consuls at Rome, the decision to date according to the Aetolian and Achaean generals could be attributed to at least two factors other than that Polybius chose to complement his Olympiadic chronology with more local systems. First, there is the question of sources. It is impossible to ignore the fact that all of the instances of dating by general belong to two single books—4 and 5—and may very well have been a feature of Polybius’ main sources for that stretch of the narrative.115 Furthermore, just as can be argued for the Roman consuls, the generals of Achaea and Aetolia are not merely dating devices, but predictably active players in the narrative. It is, however, clear that Polybius was interested in, and frustrated by, the use of these magistracies as chronological devices. We have already noted the lack of accuracy entailed by the fact that the election and accession of Roman consuls happened at diVerent times of year. Polybius encountered a similar problem 113 Polybius 4.52.4: Kd ˚Łø F ˚ÆººØª ƒæF K fiH ´ı Æ øØ. 114 Polybius 27.7.2: # æÆ Œºı æı Æ c ı æÆ Œ. 115 See Walbank, Polybius, 106–7, for the suggestion that the dating by Achaean generals came directly from Aratus, just as other sources must have used a variety of systems—consular dating for Fabius Pictor, ‘war years’ for Philinus. Walbank points out that there was no reason for Polybius to convert local dating into Olympiads in the Wrst few books before the point at which the interwoven narrative started.


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in the fact that Greek poleis changed their magistracies at diVerent times of year. As he explains at 4.37.1–2, when Aratus’ term of oYce in Achaea was expiring and his son was on the point of succeeding him as strategos, Scopas was still the general in Aetolia, his term being about halfway through, ‘since the Aetolians held their elections after the autumn equinox, whereas the Achaeans held theirs in early summer at about the time of the rising of the Pleiades’.116 In a way which is strongly reminiscent of Thucydides,117 exactly the same point is made at the start of Book 5 about the lack of synchronism between the elections in each place. Here Polybius notes that the year of oYce of the younger Aratus ended at the rising of the Pleiades, ‘for this is how the Achaean people reckoned time then’,118 and he was succeeded by Eperatus, while Dorimachus remained strategos of the Aetolians. The mention of yet another successive election in Achaea at 5.30.7, when Eperatus laid down his oYce and the Achaeans elected the elder Aratus as strategos ‘at the start of the summer’ ( B ŁæÆ KÆæ), the third in a row, suggests that, at least for this section of the narrative, Polybius is quite consistently using (or adopting from his source) a systematic form of local dating. In many instances of dating by Achaean or Aetolian generals, the succession of a new oYcial is explicitly linked to the appropriate season of the year.119 Of course, this may be seen as a simple piece of factually correct detail, but it is also the case that Polybius, less systematically than Thucydides, but nevertheless with some frequency, uses the natural seasons as a means of marking the progress of time in the narrative. This is hardly surprising, given the importance of the seasons in campaigning,120 but worth noting as an additional level of chronological detail. Sometimes the mention of spring is our only indication in the extant text that a new year has started—it was ‘at the beginning of spring’ (KØ Æ b B KÆæØB uæÆ) that Gaius Flaminius advanced through Etruria, and that Antiochus and Ptolemy were ready to Wght.121 The start of the summer is marked out to add Xesh to the temporal location of other events: ‘at the start of summer’ (X B ŁæÆ KØ Æ), following the victory of the Romans over Antiochus, King 116 a ªaæ IæÆØæÆ `N øºØ b Kı a c ŁØøæØc NæÆ PŁø; `ÆØd b æd c B —ºØ KØ º. 117 See Thucydides 5.20 and the discussion of this passage at the start of this chapter. 118 Polybius 5.1.1: o ø ªaæ qª f æ ı e H `ÆØH Ł. 119 See, for example, 5.91.1, where we are told that ‘in early summer (¼æ Ø b B ŁæØB uæÆ KØ Æ) of the year [217 bc] in which Agetas was strategos of Aetolians and shortly after Aratus had entered the same oYce in Achaea, Lycurgus of Sparta came back from Aetolia.’ 120 It is worth noting the point made by Walbank, Polybius, 102, that Polybius adapts the notion of Olympiad years so as to make them coincide with the end of campaign seasons, decisive battles and so on, rather than always halfway through summer, further underlining the military nature of this narrative. 121 Polybius 3.77.1; 5.79.1.

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Eumenes, the envoys of Antiochus and those from Rhodes and elsewhere arrived in Rome (21.18.1). The harvest too provided yet another marker through the year.122 The fact that these cases rarely come in the context of actual campaigns suggests that they oVered something of a temporal system in their own right, though by no means in the way developed by Thucydides. The sense of competition, though, yielded a further sense of historical patterning. The notion that ‘this was the biggest and best occurrence’ of whatever phenomenon was under discussion, mostly martial, was not only a direct echo of the claims of Herodotus and Thucydides,123 but also lent a sense of historical progression and the culmination of the past in the present narrative. The Wrst part of Polybius’ narrative is littered with claims to the superlative, as he builds up the importance and status of his work. The twenty-four-year war between Rome and Carthage for Italy was ‘the longest, most relentless, greatest war’ that Polybius knew of;124 the Libyan war for Carthage, which lasted three years and four months, ‘excelled all wars we know in cruelty and lack of principle’ (1.88.7); the war against the Celts was second to none in terms of the desperation and daring of the combatants and the numbers who took part and perished in battles (2.35.2). At the start of Book 3 he notes that the Wfty-three years with which the main body of the work is concerned contained more grave and momentous events than any other period of this length in the past, implying that a Wxed span of time could be elastic in terms of content and importance, and that this particular span of history was the most tightly packed of all (3.1.9–11). He goes on immediately to locate this superlative period in history in the Olympiadic system, starting with the crucial and pivotal 140th Olympiad, and this neatly recalls for us Polybius’ prime chronological structure for the bulk of his narrative, as explicitly declared by the author. But it is worth observing that Olympiads are reWned, complemented, sometimes perhaps even supplanted, by other methods for indicating time. We have seen local time systems in play, as well as the use of the seasons within each year. On a couple of striking occasions Polybius speciWes the timing of key events with reference 122 Polybius 5.95.5: X b F ŁæØF ı . 123 Herodotus’ decision at 1.1.1 to record ‘great and wonderful deeds’ ( æªÆ ªºÆ ŒÆd ŁøÆ ) and Thucydides’ claim at 1.1.2 that the Peloponnesian War was ‘the greatest upheaval’ (ŒØ ªaæ Æo ª ) set the tone for the Greek historiographical tradition. See also Thucydides’ account of the Sicilian expedition (7.87), which more than any other episode epitomized the tragedy of the war as a whole, with a spectacular sequence of superlatives. The expedition was the greatest (ªØ ) event of the war, most glorious (ºÆæ Æ ) for the victors, most disastrous (ı ı Æ ) for the defeated. The destruction was total. See C. Macleod, ‘Thucydides and Tragedy’, in The Collected Essays of Colin Macleod (Oxford, 1983), 140–58, especially 140–1 and 153. 124 Polybius 1.63.5: ºıæØ Æ ŒÆd ı Æ ŒÆd ªØ .

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to several Wxed points in Greek and Mediterranean history, another way of stressing the universal impact of the events he relates, without using the Olympiadic framework.125 Even the time within each day receives attention, since Polybius stresses the importance of astronomy for dealing with variations in the length of day and night, with a view to assessing distance (9.14.6–12). Polybius’ concern to keep control over the pacing and ordering of his narrative is also made explicit on several occasions, not least at the close of the Wfth book. Here he declares that he has continued his history of Greece up to the date of the battle of Cannae, the decisive Carthaginian victory over Rome with which he had broken oV his account of the war in Italy, and that he would thus bring this book to a close, not overstepping the aforementioned date (5.105.10). The Loeb translation for 9.15.1 enticingly runs: ‘It is time, indeed, which governs all human action and especially the aVairs of war’ (tr. Paton)—an apposite summation of Polybius’ concern for matters of chronology. In fact, the Greek dictates that ‘time’ (› ŒÆØæ ) must surely rather be ‘timing’, doing and saying things at the ‘right time’,126 giving a quite diVerent sense, but one which perhaps suits my point even better; not ‘time’ in the abstract being dominant, but ‘timing’, human control over when things happen, as exercised so carefully by Polybius himself.

4 . DI O D O RU S S IC U LU S A N D T H E C U L M I NAT IO N O F U NI V E RS A L C H RON O LO G Y Diodorus wrote his account of ‘all the events which have been handed down to memory and took place in the known regions of the inhabited world’ during the period from around 60 to 30 bc (1.9.1). He might therefore seem to be a strange inclusion in a book whose primary chronological focus is the fourth century bc and the Hellenistic period. He does, however, oVer a useful foil for understanding the temporal organization of earlier players in the Greek historiographic tradition. On the one hand, he furnishes an extensive and largely complete model for how to deal with similar problems to those 125 See Polybius 1.6.1, where the key date is the nineteenth year after the battle of Aegospotami and the sixteenth before that of Leuctra, in the year when the Spartans ratiWed the peace of Antalcidas with the king of Persia, and when Dionysius the Elder, after defeating the Italiot Greeks in battle at the River Elleporus, was besieging Rhegium, and when the Gauls after taking Rome itself by assault occupied the whole of that city except the Capitol; and 2.20.6 on the defeat of the Gauls by Rome, which happened three years before the crossing of Pyrrhus to Italy and Wve years before the destruction of the Gauls at Delphi. 126 ŒæÆ E Kd ø b H IŁæøø æªø › ŒÆØæ ; ºØ Æ b H ºØŒH.

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which faced the authors of chronologically large-scale histories in the Greek poleis; notably how to handle the mythical period in an account which also ran through to the contemporary world. But he simultaneously casts into relief some of the strategies adopted by those who wrote universal history which were diVerent from those whose spatial scope was more restricted. I have discussed elsewhere some of Diodorus’ more general organizational strategies for handling a work of huge temporal and spatial scope,127 so here I shall focus on the aspect which is most relevant to the theme of this book; namely his use of temporal frameworks for the composition of accurate, comprehensible, and meaningful history. It is worth raising from the start the signiWcance of the fact that Diodorus, like his great forerunner in the development of universal chronology, Timaeus, was a Sicilian, from the town of Agyrium. As with Timaeus, we may wonder to what degree Diodorus’ ‘universality’ was underpinned by a deeply rooted Sicilian perspective,128 and whether Diodorus’ extensive adoption of an Olympiadic framework was motivated not merely by convenience or by tradition, but also by a desire to aYliate himself and his Sicilian background to Greek culture, in spite of his absorption into the world of Rome.

a) The problem of time, space, and historiography Diodorus is one of the most explicit historians on the nature of his task, and thereby oVers extensive insights into questions of approach in ancient historiography. The problem of time and the writing of history is no exception. As he points out at the start of Book 5, historians need to take especial care over the arrangements of varied material. This immediately leads him to consider the case of his fellow Sicilian, Timaeus, who demonstrated great accuracy over chronology ( H æ ø IŒæØÆ), but was criticized for excessive censure, whereas Ephorus was successful in his universal history in both style (ºØ) and organization (NŒÆ), with each book written ‘according to theme’ (ŒÆ a ª), a principle to which Diodorus himself will adhere (5.1.3–4). Taking care over chronology clearly earns Timaeus some praise, even if other aspects of his work come in for criticism. It is clear that Diodorus himself took seriously the two related problems of 127 See K. Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden, 1999), 249–80 at 255–76. 128 K. S. Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century (Princeton, 1990) sees the Sicilian angle as deliberately muted in Diodorus’ text: see 17 for the observation that in the early periods, Diodorus includes Sicilian aVairs ‘only at sensational moments’; 154–7 on the playing down of Aeneas’ Sicilian connections. But Sacks has almost nothing to say on Diodorus’ chronological structures, and these may tell a rather diVerent story in terms of cultural aYliations.


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accuracy in chronology and appropriate organization of a work which would span vast tracts of both time and space.129 As he famously laments, ‘one could censure the art of history because in life many actions happen at the same time (ŒÆ a e ÆP e ŒÆØæ ), but those who record them must interrupt the narrative and parcel out diVerent times to simultaneous events contrary to nature, with the result that the written record mimics events, but lacks the true arrangement’ (20.43.7). On the other hand, the astute historian needed to be alert to cases where adhering inXexibly to a particular narrative structure might not prove the most eVective strategy. In the cases of Philip of Macedon and his son, Alexander (dealt with in Books 16 and 17 respectively), the thematic unity brought by the individual life overrides other structures, and each is treated in his own book ‘topically’ (ŒÆºÆØøH).130 Diodorus’ careful, and often self-referential, attention to the business of organizing his text is evident throughout. At 18.19.1, for example, he declares: ‘Now that I have narrated all the actions of the Lamian War, I shall turn to the war in Cyrene so that the course of my history may not deviate too much from chronological sequence.’131 He regularly signiWes his control over the historical narrative by summing up where he has reached, how much time has been covered, and what the next stage will be.132 A good example is the start of Book 13, at which point he explains that the scale of his undertaking forces him to abandon the usual self-indulgent prefaces on reXective themes, which might be enjoyed had he taken ‘a brief chronological span’, in favour of the more practical need to keep the reader informed of the chronological progress of the narrative. ‘But since I have undertaken in few books not only to set forth events, but also to embrace more than 1,100 years, I must forgo long discussion in introductions and treat long events themselves, with only this preface—that in the preceding six books I have set down events from the Trojan War to the war of Athens against Syracuse—768 years from the fall of Troy. In this book, I shall add to the narrative the next period from the

129 John of Antioch, the chronicler, described Diodorus as ‘the wisest chronographer’ (› Æ æªæÆ ) (Diodorus 6.5.3). 130 Diodorus 16.1 and 17.1. The biographical arrangement of this part of the history raises anew the issue discussed in ch. 1 of how appropriate biological metaphors and models might be for historiography. 131 ¥ Æ c ÆŒæa E æ Ø IºÆHÆØ e ıb B ƒ æÆ. It is worth noting how close a temporal parallel this oVers for the adherence to spatial order striven for by the authors of periplus texts. See Clarke, Between Geography and History, 204–5, discussing Ps-Scylax in C. Mu¨ller, Geographici Graeci Minores I (Paris, 1855) §13, 53, 58. 132 The standard place for such progress reports is at the start of each book, although, as we shall see, the earlier books lend themselves to a rather diVerent chronological treatment and the later fragmentary books tend to lack the relevant opening chapter. These accounts are thus clustered in the central books of the work.

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expedition against Syracuse to the beginning of the second war of Carthage against Dionysius of Syracuse’ (13.1.2–3). The following book starts similarly: ‘I shall now continue the account, deWning the temporal limits.133 The preceding books deal with the capture of Troy until the end of the Peloponnesian War and of the Athenian empire— a total of 779 years. I shall now start with the Thirty Tyrants until the capture of Rome by the Gauls, a period of eighteen years.’ Book 15 follows suit, looking both backwards and forwards in order to embed itself chronologically. It notes the point that has been reached at the end of Book 14 and declares the intention to continue with the period from the war of the Persians in Cyprus against Euagoras and the year preceding the reign of Philip, son of Amyntas. Books 16 and 17 follow a diVerent pattern and format, as noted above, due to the appropriateness of a more biographical and thematic approach, but Book 18 returns to the pattern. Book 19, coming like Book 13 after the end of another hexad, takes the opportunity to oVer a fully resumptive summary: ‘In the preceding eighteen books I have described as far as possible the events in the known parts of the inhabited world from the earliest times up to the year before the tyranny of Agathocles, up to which time is 866 years from the destruction of Troy. Now I shall tell up to the battle at Himera between Agathocles and the Carthaginians, a period of seven years’ (19.1.10). Finally, before fragmentation of the extant text disrupts the sequence, Book 20 opens, after a brief discussion of the place of speeches in historiography, with a note of the chronological scheme of the narrative, and yet another summary of the state of play. Having dealt with Greek and barbarian deeds from the earliest times to the year before Agathocles’ Libyan campaign, a point which was 883 years after the sack of Troy, he would now start with Agathocles’ crossing to Libya and end with the year in which the kings started joint operations against Antigonus, a span of nine years (20.2.3). In all of this it is interesting to note not only Diodorus’ concern to present himself as Wrmly in control of the chronological progress made by his narration through the events, but also to consider the terms in which he formulates this progress. It is the Trojan War, or more speciWcally the fall of Troy, which provides the chronological benchmark from which the distance to other events can be counted in years. This is only one of many chronological frameworks against which his narrative is constructed, but the fall of Troy is a recurring theme throughout this chapter on the structures of universal history. I shall consider (in chapter 4) whether this is true also of the local histories, or whether the Mediterranean-wide marker of the Trojan War is deemed appropriate only for universal narrative. But it is worth noting also 133 14.2.3. This becomes something of a stock phrase for Diodorus: f æ ı Øæ .


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that, while the overarching scope of Diodorus’ work is articulated in relation to this single and momentous event, his narrative is also, signiWcantly, divided up according to marker points in Sicilian history such as the Athenian expedition to Syracuse and the battle of Himera. These give Diodorus’ native land a pivotal role in the periodization of Mediterranean history and show that a study of the temporal structuring of historiography may oVer new insights into the perspective and aspirations of the text in question, since this Sicilian focus plainly belies the view put forward by some scholars, on the basis of the narrative contents, that Sicily was played down in Diodorus’ text.134

b) Time for myths The mythical period was naturally problematic for the historian, not least because there was ‘no proof of dates, with the result that the whole account was untrustworthy’ (4.1.1). Most historians had therefore tended to avoid this period, and to conWne their accounts to more recent events, even Ephorus starting his account only with the return of the Heraclidae. Diodorus himself, by contrast, decided to tackle, rather than evade, the diYculty, in spite of the inevitable chronological vagueness which characterizes the early books.135 Even so, certain strategies for indicating time immediately emerge. The Trojan War, which we have already noted as the benchmark against which the progress of the narrative was measured, appears in the early books as a crucial hook on which to hang mythical episodes. The third, and most famous, person to be called Heracles was born ‘shortly before the events at Troy’ (3.74.4); it was ‘after the Trojan War’ that the Carians became thalassocrats and took control of the Cyclades (5.84); and the Amazons disappeared from Libya ‘many generations before the Trojan War’, whereas those near the Thermodon river were still Xourishing until ‘shortly before these times’.136 The last of these examples introduces two further important features of Diodorus’ treatment of time in the earliest period, namely the use of the generation as a temporal unit, and the links between the distant past and the present. Generations as a measure of time have already been discussed (in chapter 1), but it is easy to see how appropriate they might seem in a work of 134 See Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, for this view. 135 See, for example the narrative of Crete and the mythologically associated islands at 5.50–80, especially 64–80. The chronological framework is formulated in vague relative terms such as ‘after this’ (K b E o æ æ Ø) at 5.63.1. From the seventh book onwards a diVerent, more systematic, approach to the combination of various dating systems for use in the historical narrative begins to emerge. I shall, therefore, treat the Wrst six books together. 136 Diodorus 3.52.2: ººÆE ªÆE æ æ H æøØŒH and ØŒæe æe ø H æ ø.

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huge temporal scope. It is interesting, in the light of the calculations performed by modern scholars in relation to ancient texts, that they are on the whole used by Diodorus not as a unit, say thirty years, to be multiplied by a particular factor, but rather more vaguely with the adjective ‘many’ to indicate the passage of ‘a long period of time’. Minos, for example, was honoured ‘for many generations’, until more recently, after the city of Acragas was founded, his tomb was dismantled and given back to the Cretans (4.79.3); Aphrodite’s worshippers at Eryx, after the establishment of the cult by Aeneas, was carried out by the Sicanians ‘for many generations’ (4.83.4); Heracles was said to have pitched camp at the site where Romulus would found the city of Rome ‘many generations later’ (4.21.1).137 Diodorus goes on to explain in the same chapter that some Roman families from that period, such as the Pinarii, still survived to his day, as did certain customs, such as tithing. This sense of continuity across such a vast temporal scope, the notion that the mythical period and Diodorus’ own day were part of the same story, is a recurring theme of the early books. The narrative concerning Heracles is no exception. Heracles founded Alesia in Gaul, which Diodorus says was never sacked until his own times.138 The oVerings to the Mother Goddess of gold and silver continued ‘right up to the writing of this history’, a very personal link being made to Diodorus himself in authorial capacity.139 In spite of Diodorus’ concerns over the chronographical diYculties of the mythical period, he keeps close control over the ordering of events, and seems to have a strong sense of the ‘right place’ for each story.140 But, in accordance with the limitations of the period—the lack of precision in dating by contrast with later periods for which he can use the panoply of ‘counting’ systems—his universally applicable temporal frameworks here are vague and strikingly relative.141 ‘Many generations later’ does not assign an event a place in a Wxed counting system, such as that of Olympiads, or to a magisterial list.142 137 See also 5.6: the Sicani inhabited eastern Sicily until they were forced by an eruption of Etna to move west, but ‘many generations later’ the Siceli crossed from Italy to eastern Sicily. See Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, 257–8, for the use of generations by Diodorus. 138 Diodorus 4.19.2: æØ F ŒÆŁ A æ ı—a clear reference to Caesar’s siege of Alesia and eventual defeat of Vercingetorix there in 52 bc. 139 Diodorus 4.80.4: ¼æØ H H ƒ æø ªæÆø. 140 The set formula ‘I shall relate this at the appropriate time’ is a commonly recurring feature of the entire text, including the earliest books: 5.6, 5.21. So too, is the notion of running back in time to Wll in necessary details: 4.67, 4.73. 141 One more speciWc example of relative dating is the foundation of the city of Eresus by Carthage sixty years after the foundation of the mother city itself: 5.16.3. 142 Both Olympiads and archon/king lists are, of course, in a sense relative, but they are not only anchored to a Wxed start point, but also part of a continuous and evenly spaced sequence, resulting in a comprehensive and veriWable system.


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c) Hitting the historical period After the generally vague chronology of the Wrst six books, the seventh heralds a noticeable change. In chronological terms, Books 7–10 might be seen as transitional, perhaps even pivotal, in so far as we here see the Wrst glimpses of the complex chronological system which Diodorus will employ for the rest of his work. One of the diYculties in interpreting Book 7 is that its fragments are so heavily derivative from Eusebius, the great Christian chronographer. All of the usual cautions over precisely where a fragment starts and Wnishes are particularly relevant here, if we are concerned with assessing the chronological approach of Diodorus, rather than that of Eusebius.143 Thus it is with caution that we note, for example, the interesting mixture of the temporal strategies which were used in the early mythical books, such as the contemporaneity of Orpheus and Heracles, one hundred years before the Trojan war,144 together with several references to the universal chronological systems which were used to structure Greek historiography from Timaeus onwards. The statement that Rome was founded in the second year of the seventh Olympiad, that is 433 years after the fall of Troy (7.5.1), oVers a neat illustration of the way in which the two systems could be brought together for maximum accuracy and comprehension. As we have seen when considering the formal chronographical works, the problem of how to bridge the gap between Wxed markers such as the Trojan War and the Wrst Olympiad from which, in crude terms, one could simply count the years in groups of four to denote the passing of time, attracted much scholarly attention. What is unclear is whether it is really Diodorus in 7.8 who makes the point that it was ‘hard to determine the interval from the events at Troy to the Wrst Olympiad because there were no annual magistracies then either in Athens or in any other city’, with the result that the Spartan king list was used as the bridge; or whether this is Eusebius speaking. The notion of bridging the gap from the Trojan War to another key point in Greek history, Xerxes’ invasion of Europe, is approached diVerently in another fragment, where a list of thalassocracies, with the length of each, is used in similar fashion to the Spartan king list to map out the temporal span.145 But, if Eusebius is accurately representing Diodorus, he showed a distinct interest 143 See the classic article by P. A. Brunt, ‘On Historical Fragments and Epitomes’, Classical Quarterly 30 (1980), 477–94. 144 Diodorus 7.1. It is worth noting also in Book 7 (fr. 9) the appearance of the return of the Heraclidae, another of the key chronological markers for universal writers such as Ephorus and Strabo. 145 Diodorus 7.11. See also 12.2 where Diodorus notes the span of the previous book as being from the crossing of Xerxes to the year before Athens’ war against Cyprus.

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in regal time, using periods of rule to measure out the time occupied by his history. A list of tyrannies, the Argive kingship of 549 years, and the period of Macedonian kings all feature in Book 7.146 If Book 7 is atypical in terms of the provenance of its extant fragments, Books 9 and 10 give a more reliable picture of the way in which Diodorus builds up a coherent and precise chronological framework within which to set the ‘historical’ part of his narrative. He describes Solon as having lived at Athens in the period of the tyrants before the Persian wars, and states that Draco lived forty-seven years before him.147 It might be argued that this is qualitatively little diVerent from designating an event as happening before or after the Trojan War, but the note that Cyrus was king of the Persians in the Wrst year of the Wfty-Wfth Olympiad moves us to a higher level of speciWcity and to a new and universally applicable chronological system (9.21). In Book 10, we see two chronological systems combined to increase the apparent reliability of the temporal reference—Pythagoras was, according to Diodorus, already famous when Thericles was archon in Athens in the sixty-Wrst Olympiad (10.3.1). The twist comes in connection with his theory of the transmigration of the soul, which allowed Pythagoras to claim to have lived in two historical contexts, the one speciWed by Diodorus in his authorial voice, but also as a man named Euphorbus ‘at the time of the Trojan War’ (Kd H æøØŒH), neatly linking the traditional chronological marker and the new system of Olympiad and magistracy combined through the two ‘lives’ of a single man (10.6.1). These ‘transitional’ books, in which the narrative moves from the mythical to the historical period, oVer glimpses into the development of a more coherent and speciWc chronological framework within which Diodorus locates his main historical narrative. We have already noted the concern which he expresses over the need for chronological control by the author, particularly when writing universal history, both in time and in space.148 Book 11 sets the pattern for how Diodorus will thenceforth indicate where in ‘time’ the events he relates are to be placed. It is worth noting that this terminology I have adopted hints at the notion of absolute time, which exists independently of the events, and against whose scale Diodorus needs simply to place the episodes of his narrative. This is misleading, since the systems for denoting ‘when things happened’ in terms of Olympiads and magistracies are no less ‘constructed’ and therefore, in a sense, random in terms of where ‘in time’ 146 Diodorus 7.10, 14, 15. 147 Diodorus 9.17: Kd H æ ø H ıæø . . . æe H —æØŒH æ ø. 148 See Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, 265–71, for Diodorus’ ‘weaving’ technique, whereby he intertwines the ongoing events of diVerent theatres in order to maintain chronological progress in all of them.


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they start and Wnish than simply anchoring events to well-known markers such as the Trojan War. Both entail a ‘relative’ rather than an ‘absolute’ sense of time. And yet, there is something qualitatively diVerent about the two patterns. The regularly calibrated aspect of the Olympiadic and magisterial systems, which continue to record the notching up of another year’s passing regardless of the presence or absence of noteworthy events, creates the impression that the ‘chronological system’ is marking time independently. It is this humanly constructed, but regularly calibrated, time rather than an abstract and absolute Newtonian time against which Diodorus places his narrative.149 The narrative of Book 11 opens with a note of how the preceding book had Wnished, and then moves on to announce its own limits as the campaign of Xerxes against the Greeks and the year before the campaign of Athens against Cyprus under Cimon. It proceeds to anchor this time span to a variety of chronological systems: ‘Calliadas was archon at Athens, the Romans made Spurius Cassius and Proculus Verginius Tricostus consuls, and the Eleans celebrated the seventy-Wfth Olympiad in which Astylo of Syracuse won the stadion; this is when Xerxes campaigned against Greece’ (11.1.1). Diodorus then tells the events of this year in various diVerent theatres, marking his geographical transitions explicitly.150 He rounds oV his tour with a note of cultural events worthy of mention—in this case the fact that, of the lyric poets, Pindar was in his prime at this period. Those, he says, are the notable events of the year. With the next chapter, the next year starts, marking quite clearly the predominance of time over space in the organization of the historical narrative. But this year, 479 bc, does not mark the start of a new Olympiad, and so the opening dating formula lacks that element, and instead tells simply that ‘Xanthippus was archon at Athens, and the Roman consuls were Q. Fabius Silvanus and Servius Cornelius Tricostus’, when the Persian Xeet, except the Phoenician contingent, after their defeat at Salamis, lay at Cyme (11.27.1). The battle of Plataea, yielding Greek victory over Mardonius and the Persians, is noted by Diodorus as happening on the same day as the battle of Greeks and 149 One striking instance of Diodorus’ assuming the existence of time as a concept which can operate independently is in the fragments of Books 34 and 35.17, where he says that the mourning in Antioch for the death of Antiochus continued until sadness was taken away by æ , the best healer (NÆ æ ) of grief. See also 10.12 where Diodorus comments on the ephemeral nature of inscribed monuments as records of human behaviour, by contrast with the eternal power of words. Here again, time (æ ) is assumed to be an active and independent agent, which can destroy memory. 150 See, for example, 11.20.1, where he declares that he has Wnished telling about Europe and will shift the narrative to another set of events: ÆØ c ØªØ Kd a æªE æØ.

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Persians at Mycale in Ionia (11.34.1), raising the issue of synchronisms, to which we shall return. Diodorus’ account of this year includes another literary note, this time that Herodotus started with the period ‘before the Trojan War’ and wrote in nine books a general history of the ‘events which were virtually shared across the inhabited world’ up to the battle of Mycale and the siege of Sestos.151 Diodorus thus marks Herodotus out as a predecessor universal historian, although in fact the geographical scope of Herodotus’ work is, unlike that of Diodorus, very much focused on the eastern Mediterranean and Fertile Crescent, and the chronological focus is strangely bipolar—the early ethnographic books being virtually timeless, and the later books being predominantly devoted to the relatively compact period of the Persian wars.152 Meanwhile, in Italy the Romans were warring against the Volscians, and Spurius Cassius, the consul, was suspected of tyranny and executed. Then, with the standard formula ‘these were the events that took place this year’ ( ÆF Æ b s KæŁ ŒÆ a F e KØÆı ), Diodorus closes another annual cycle. The following year is denoted by the archonship of Timosthenes at Athens and the consulship of Caeso Fabius and Lucius Aemilius Mamercus at Rome, and the geographical focus starts in Sicily with the seven-year rule of Gelon, to be succeeded by his brother, Hieron, for eleven years and eight months (11.38). The length of reigns is a recurring theme in Diodorus, and oVers yet another chronological strand, though clearly not a comprehensive system, either in space or in time. The Wnal year of the Olympiad is introduced by mention of the archon and consuls, and focuses on Themistocles and the fortiWcation of Piraeus. Diodorus then moves on to restart the cycle with the opening of the next Olympiad, and hence the more elaborate dating at the start of 11.48, giving the archon’s name, the two consuls, and the fact that this was now the seventy-sixth Olympiad, in which Scamandrius the Mytilenian won the stadion. The opening of Book 11, the Wrst fully to employ the chronological frameworks which will dominate Diodorus’ account of the ‘historical’ period, thus already introduces many temporal structures and patterns which recur throughout his narrative. The combination of Olympiads, universally meaningful across the Greek world, both eastern and western, with the eponymous 151 Diodorus 11.37.6: ŒØa Ø a B NŒı æØ. This is an interesting reading of Herodotus’ own description of his work, as commemorating ‘great and wonderful deeds, accomplished by both Greeks and barbarians’ (1.1.1). 152 Of course, one might argue that the structure of Herodotus’ Histories is entirely hung on the framework oVered by the progression of Persian imperial ambitions, and that the apparent timelessness of the earlier books is digressive from (or subordinate to) rather than indicative of any overall lack of chronological structure.


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magistrates in Athens and Rome, oVers a strong web of chronological systems. The Olympiadic system, as already noted, was already established as the appropriate time frame for universal history, but may also still have carried more speciWcally Panhellenic connotations. Besides this, since there were magistrates in cities across the Mediterranean world,153 Diodorus was clearly making an implicit comment through his choice of Athens and Rome. Athens, whatever its reduced state and status in Diodorus’ day, deserved inclusion partly by virtue of its former glory; furthermore, the Athenian archonship had, alongside the Spartan kingship and the priesthood of Hera at Argos, become one of the essential features of attempts to locate events in time, and was therefore built into the historiographical tradition as a dating device. Rome, as the dominant power across the Mediterranean in Diodorus’ own time, naturally becomes an integral part of the universal history at an early stage, its progress interlocking both chronographically and in terms of real power, with that of the other great Mediterranean forces, which it would eventually overcome. Diodorus encapsulates the need to look in all directions—his Sicilian background seems to dictate a wish for Greek cultural aYliations, but his understanding of Roman realities means that he also has an eye Wrmly on the location of power, and we shall see (in chapter 6) some further indications of how Rome was impinging on even the apparently untouched world of local Greek historiography from as early as the 180s bc. The web of interlocking chronological systems generated is clearly appropriate to the scope of a universal history, but also suYciently strong to withstand damage and omissions. In 444 bc, for example, one could list the archons at Athens and give the number of the Olympiad, but Rome had no consuls, but rather decemviri who were elected to draft laws (12.23–6). The civil strife attendant on this period of reform led to a constitutional revision of the consulate and the tribunate,154 which Diodorus records, and it was only in 442 that the consuls could Wnish oV the Laws of the Twelve Tables, and order was restored. Diodorus’ chronological scheme regularly carries on regardless of internal strife at Rome, which disrupts its ability to provide a continuous sequence of magistrates by whom to articulate time. In 431 bc there were again no consuls, but three named military tribunes (12.32.1), and 153 This is true not least of his own native Sicily. At 16.70.6, Diodorus notes the institution by Timoleon of the annual oYce called the ‘amphipoly’ of Zeus Olympios. The Syracusans designated their years ( f KØÆı f KØªæ ) by these oYcials right up to the writing of Diodorus’ history, at which point the oYce became insigniWcant, after three hundred years’ importance, due to the spread of Roman citizenship. 154 See H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome 133BC to AD68 (5th edn., London and New York, 1982), 6–8, for the relationship between the tribunate and the senatorial oligarchy.

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the same happened again in 427 bc.155 In 404 bc the situation was even more severe, as Athens too was in turmoil and had no eponymous archon (14.3.1). Diodorus seems to Wnd this upheaval particularly signiWcant, since, in the absence of an archonship, he dates this momentous occasion by reference not only to the fact that it was the ninety-fourth Olympiad, or to the four military tribunes who provided some kind of temporal marker in Rome, but also to the note that this was the 780th year from the capture of Troy. Thus, this year which sees such chaos in Athens and in Rome that neither can come up with its usual eponymous magistrates, is placed in time by the combination of the ever-ticking counter of the Olympiadic system and the stable Wxed point in the great scheme of Mediterranean history, the fall of Troy—both of these supersede the ephemeral and unstable magistracies of even the greatest city states. This closely woven net of Olympiadic and bilocational magisterial time, supplemented by reference to the great Wxed markers of Mediterranean history, is further augmented at a microlevel in the narrative with other indicators of time. Diodorus occasionally refers to the individual season at which events took place, sometimes in the most poetic language: ‘When spring with its warmth was melting the snow, and crops were now, after long period of frost, beginning to develop and grow, and men too were resuming activity’, Arsaces VII Phraates II sent envoys to Antiochus to discuss peace.156 The reference to dating by seasons leads naturally to the point that, for his narrative of the Peloponnesian War, Diodorus regularly adopts Thucydides’ system of ‘war years’.157 He sums up in 422 bc that ‘the Peloponnesian War, which was so far ten years old, ended’ with a Wfty-year truce between Athens and Sparta, and then, following its recommencement, at the end of his account of 417 bc that ‘these were the events of the Wfteenth year of the Peloponnesian War’.158 A skeletal decline theory sits alongside the Olympiadic and magisterial framework to add further nuance in patterning the temporal layout of another part of Diodorus’ work, that is the history of Rome. The later books of the work are seriously fragmented, but nevertheless we can gain some sense of this decay. Diodorus notes, in one of the fragments (8) of Book 155 Diodorus 12.53.1. See also 15.75 for the year 367/6 bc when no Roman date could be given because civil strife had led to IÆæÆ. 156 Diodorus, Fragments of Books 34 and 35.15: ‹ Ø B KÆæØB uæÆ fiB ºØfi A Œ c Ø Æ ŒÆd H ŒÆæH KŒ F ıF ªı æe c ıc ŒÆd º Ø æØ ø; H b IŁæø Kd a æØ ‰æø. See also 19.50.1: F Ææ Iæı ‘as spring started’. 157 In fact, the Wrst instance of this system is not borrowed from Thucydides for use in relation to the Peloponnesian War at all, but concerns the war of Athens against Cyprus in 450 bc, in his account of which he sums up by stating at 12.3.4 ‘such were the events in the Wrst year of the war’ (ŒÆ a e æH F ºı). However, at 12.37.2, Diodorus signals explicitly his knowledge of Thucydides’ narrative, commenting that, although the war itself lasted twentyseven years, Thucydides covered twenty-two of them in eight, or possibly nine, books. 158 Diodorus 12.74.5 and 12.81.5.


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30, that the Roman senate of those days (c.170 bc) left models and patterns for all those who strive for empire. The implication is clearly that the early second-century senate was an exemplary institution by contrast with the current one. Further, in the fragments of Book 37 (3–8), he discusses the old-fashioned virtue which led the Romans to the greatest empire known to history, whereas more recently (K b E ø æØ ŒÆØæE), when most nations had been subjugated and peace prevailed, ancient practices at Rome had fallen into decay. And in the scant fragments of Books 38 and 39, he interestingly ties this notion of Roman decline to the Etruscan theory of temporal patterning by races, each assigned an age, the end of which would be marked by the gods with a great year, marked by extraordinary phenomena. The catastrophic decline in Rome’s politeia was marked out in 88 bc with civil war, portended by natural phenomena—the gods and the natural world, as it were, ratifying the passing from one age to another.159 Yet another temporal layer is added by the multiple references to the length of reigns, which are often stacked up into continuous dynastic lines, giving an extensive sense of regal time. A few examples will suYce, although the selection will not fairly indicate the considerable volume of such references. The early books do contain references to mythical and divine kings, but these are not accompanied by any form of chronological note.160 We have already observed that Book 7 is atypical, in being represented almost entirely by fragments from Eusebius. Here we Wnd the Wrst references to regal time as the basis for continuous chronology.161 It is, however, worth noting that the impression gained from the fragments of Book 7 is out of line with Diodorus’ practice elsewhere. Even where the great Hellenistic monarchies are concerned, these regal time systems are in no way universal in geographical scope, nor does even the combination of all the dynasties in Diodorus amount to a system which is comprehensive in chronological extent. Regal time is bitty and fragmented, both temporally and spatially. References to the regal period in Rome are vague and chronologically dispersed,162 but the Persian monarchy oVers a recurrent punctuation 159 Diodorus, Fragments of Books 38 and 39.1. 160 See, for example, Diodorus 3.55.10 V. on the exile of Mopsus by Lycurgus, king of Thrace; 3.72.2 V. on Silenus, the Wrst king of Nysa; 4.55.5 V. on king Medus, who gave his name to the Medes; 4.79 for the expedition of Minos against king Cocalus of Sicily. The reign of this king forms the starting point for Antiochus of Syracuse’s nine-book history of Sicily, which reached to 424 bc (12.71.2). 161 Diodorus 7.11. It is worth noting the neat geographical symmetry here—from the attack made from West to East to the counter-attack from Asia to Europe. 162 See Diodorus 8.14 for the peaceful reign of Pompilius, 8.25 for problems with the Albans under the reign of Tullus Hostilius, and 8.31 for the virtuous and wise king, Lucius Tarquinius. Only when we reach the reign of Servius Tullius (10.2) do we Wnd a time span given, of forty-four years.

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mark in the narrative. The accession of Cyrus the Great, a momentous episode in the history of the eastern Mediterranean, is, uniquely among the regal datings, tied to Olympiadic chronology, being placed in the Wrst year of the Wfty-Wfth Olympiad (9.21). Thereafter, the reigns of the Persian kings run like a thread through the text. The year 424 bc is marked by the rapid succession from Xerxes II, who ruled for one year and two months, to his brother, Sogdianus, who reigned for seven months, and then Darius II Nothos, with his nineteen-year rule (12.71.1). The story of Persian kingship is picked up in the year of Darius’ death, with the accession of his son, Artaxerxes, who reigned for forty-three years (13.108.1). Other Asian kingships feature intermittently. The succession between Satyrus of Bosporus and his son, Leucon, each of whom ruled for forty years (14.93.1); that between Dionysius of Heraclea Pontica after thirty-two years and his sons, Oxathras and Clearchus, who ruled for seventeen (20.77.1); and that between Eumelus of Bosporus, who died in the sixth year of his reign, and his son, Spartacus, who ruled for twenty—all help to measure and pace events at a regional level (20.100.7). The whole story of Asian kingship acquires a certain ring composition in the fragments of Book 31, where the ancestry of the Cappadocian kings is noted as reaching back to Cyrus the Great of Persia (fr. 19), and the 160-year dynasty of seven Cappadocian kings begins. Thus a continuity could be traced from Cyrus right through to the end of that dynasty. The history of kings and the development of a sense of regal time applied also to parts of Europe. Sparta, of course, was the notorious case. Diodorus marks the death of Pleistoanax of Sparta after a Wfty-year reign and the accession of Pausanias for fourteen years (13.75.1); he notes the death of Agesipolis after fourteen years and the succession of his brother, Cleombrotus, for nine years (15.23.2); later he picks up on the death of Cleomenes after a ten-month reign, and his succession by Atreus for forty-four years (20.30.1). But kings elsewhere are also mentioned, together with the lengths of their reigns. Perhaps the most striking instance of the ending of a royal life is the ignominious death of Agathocles, who was killed after seventy-two years of life and twenty-eight years of royal power, by Menon of Segesta through a drug implanted on a toothpick quill!163 Another kind of ‘parallel’ chronology formed out of successions is to be found in the world of literary production. It has already been noted in relation to Book 11 that Diodorus tends to publish literary notices at the end of a year’s account. We shall see in a moment the way in which this applies to 163 Diodorus, Fragments of Book 21.16.4. See 14.84.6 for another, non-Spartan, royal death, that of Ae¨ropus of Macedonia, who died from illness after six years of power, and was succeeded by Pausanias for one year.


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historiographical productions, whereby the continuous and comprehensive time of the narrative is replicated in the sequence of historical accounts which encompass them. Before that, it is worth observing the prominence that Diodorus accords to cultural history alongside the history of politics and war. The momentous year with which Philistus would end his Wrst history of Sicily was also the year of Sophocles’ death at the age of ninety, overcome with pleasure at his eighteenth victory with a tragedy (13.103.4), and also possibly the year of Euripides’ death. Another momentous year in history, historiography, and literature, was 398 bc, when war was declared against Carthage and Ctesias ended his history of the Persians; it was also a vintage year for dithyrambs with Philoxenus of Cythera, Timotheus of Miletus, Telestus of Selinus, and Polyidus all at their prime.164 As we shall see with other attempts to map out the past, including both mythical and historical times, such as the Parian Marble, the histories of intellectual life, of invention, and of literature could routinely Wnd a place. One striking instance for our purposes is Meton’s revelation of his nineteenyear cycle after which the stars would have returned to their original places—a discovery which had important implications for the management of time (12.36.2–3). But it seems that Diodorus’ interest in non-historiographical literature, and perhaps speciWcally poetic production, goes beyond this. He cites poetic sources on several occasions,165 and recognizes the closeness in subject matter between historical and poetic themes, noting that the brave defeat of the Spartans at Thermopylae was the stuV of not only histories, but also poetry like that of Simonides (11.11.6), as we have already noted in relation to Ephorus. He likens the battle between Cyrus and his brother Artaxerxes to the conXict between Eteocles and Polynices, celebrated in tragedy.166 Roman history too could evince some tragic situations, as when Aquillius defeated the Sicilian rebels at the turn of the Wrst century bc, while the dramatic death of the prisoners at Rome at the conclusion of four years’ war was a tragic catastrophe.167 164 Diodorus 14.46.6. It is not only literary acmes that Diodorus notes. 14.43 concerns the Wrst play of Astydamas, the tragedian. 165 See 11.14.4 where he cites elegiacs commemorating Delphi’s deliverance from the Persians; 32.27.1 where he gives a poetic source on the brightness of Corinth (now reversed by Roman action in 146 bc); 37.30.2 where he cites poetic fragments in support of his moralizing on the evils of wealth. 166 Diodorus 14.23.5: ŒÆŁæ N IÆ B ÆºÆØA KŒ ŒÆd æÆªfiøı B æd e ¯ ŒºÆ ŒÆd —ºıŒ º. 167 Diodorus, Fragments of Book 36.10.3: æÆªØŒc c ŒÆ Æ æc. One wonders here whether Diodorus’ Sicilian background heightens his sense of tragedy on this occasion. The relationship between poetry and historiography is one to which we shall return in the context of local historiography and performance contexts.

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But let us return now to the notion that not only history with its kings and magistrates could be lined up end to end to form far-reaching and measurable chains across time, but that this can also be extended to the narratives which related that history. Unsurprisingly, it is the late Wfth century and fourth century in Diodorus’ account which are littered with notices concerning historiographical activity, but of course, the works he notes extend over a much wider time span than this, and thus oVer relatively comprehensive parallel coverage across the historical scope of Diodorus’ work. The year 411 bc is marked by Diodorus as the end point of Thucydides’ history, after twenty-two years covered in eight (or nine) books,168 but, as he comments, Xenophon and Theopompus began where Thucydides left oV, Xenophon to cover forty-eight years and Theopompus seventeen of Greek history.169 Thus, the historiographical note for one year in Diodorus’ narrative is made to extend across seventy years in terms of the scope of the works produced, no doubt some of the very works that Diodorus had used in order to write his own history. The battle of Mantinea proved to be another point which was signiWcant historically and, not accidentally, also historiographically. Here was the end point of Thucydides’ continuator, Xenophon. But it is also noted as the end point of several other works of varied scope (15.89.3). Here ended Philistus’ history of Dionysius the Younger, a work covering Wve years in two books and, one presumes, with a fairly close biographically oriented focus. But this year also marked the end of Anaximenes of Lampsacus’ account, which had started with the birth of the gods, including almost all the deeds of Greeks and barbarians—an astonishing work whose spatial scope was universal, and whose chronological scope, moving from the theogony to Mantinea, covered both mythical and historical time.170 Thus, a whole panoply of historiographical treatments overlap at this point, whether they stretch way back into the past or concern a much more restricted period. Besides Mantinea, another key historiographical turning point was the seizure of the temple at Delphi by Philomelus the Phocian. This was the 168 The issue of book division was clearly of interest to Diodorus. We have already seen at 12.37.2 the possibility that Thucydides’ work was divided into eight or nine books. Diodorus notes at 15.37.3 that Hermeas of Methymne ended his narrative of Sicily ‘in ten or twelve books’ this year [sc. 376/5 bc]. 169 Diodorus 13.42.3. He returns at 14.84.7 to note the end of Theopompus’ Hellenica and to repeat that this work had formed the continuation of Thucydides’ Histories, from the battle of Cynossema. At 16.3.8 he comments that this is the point at which Theopompus’ history of Philip started, extending over Wfty-eight books, of which Wve were lost. 170 Another work of large chronological scope was Ctesias’ history of the Persians, which reached to 398 bc (at which point it receives its notice from Diodorus) from the time of Ninus and Semiramis. The reign of Ninus was clearly a key moment in the formulation of histories which claimed to be universal—it was the starting point for Pompeius Trogus’ universal account (1.1.4).


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end point of Callisthenes’ thirty-book history (14.117.8), and the start point of the history written by Demophilus, son of Ephorus, who treated the Third Sacred War, omitted by his father (16.14.3).171 It was also the start of Diyllus the Athenian’s twenty-six-book history of Greece and Sicily. Diyllus would come back into play later in the same book of Diodorus, this time as the continuator of Ephorus himself, since Diyllus started the second part of his history with Philip’s sieges of Perinthus and Byzantium, just where Ephorus ended his 750-year account of Greek and barbarian history which had begun with the return of the Heraclidae.172 Diyllus, according to Diodorus, saw himself as clearly taking up the challenge of this literary legacy by attempting a connected narrative of the Greeks and the barbarians until the death of Philip, son of Cassander. And so the succession continues. In Book 21, Diodorus notes that Diyllus compiled a universal history in twenty-six books, of which Psaon of Plataea wrote the continuation in thirty.173 The need of continuity and comprehensive coverage, which could be developed by a single author, is made most explicit in Book 15, where we are told that Athanas of Syracuse wrote thirteen books starting with the expedition of Dion, but that he felt the need to preface it with a book which recorded the seven years not included by Philistus (363 to 357 bc), so as to achieve a continuous history, with no chronological gaps.174 However, alongside this range of temporal conWgurations—the temporal punctuation marks oVered by the seasons, the time of dynasties mapped out and counted, the time of historiography, most notably in the form of historia perpetua—the dominant temporal structure for the narrative of the historical period is undoubtedly that provided by the framework of Olympiads and magistracies.

d) Spanning space; synchronizing narratives Within this predominantly annalistic arrangement, it is worth noting the way in which Diodorus makes his history geographically universal by paying an annual visit to each of the major theatres of events. Very occasionally, as in 171 Here Diodorus repeats his note about Callisthenes’ account, which ended at this date. 172 Diodorus 16.76.6. 173 Diodorus Fragments 21.5: ıªªæÆf a ŒØa æØ ı Æ. 174 Diodorus 15.94.4. Philistus himself had acted as his own continuator. He ended his Wrst history of Sicily with the year 406 bc, having treated 800 years in seven books, and then wrote his second history in four books, starting from where the Wrst had Wnished (13.103.3). See V. J. Gray, ‘Continuous History and Xenophon, Hellenica 1–2.3.10’, American Journal of Philology 112 (1991), 201–28, for interesting comments on Athanas’ work, and particularly at 204–5 for discussion of why Athanas chose a summary for the ‘bridging’ period between Philistus’ work and his own. Possibilities include a reluctance to write in full about events of which he was not an eye-witness, or the tension between the need for continuity and the wish to start his own work at a memorable and signiWcant point in history.

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Books 16 and 17, we Wnd a more extensive treatment of a single theme—the lives of Philip and Alexander, respectively. Occasionally, too, there are hints at global perspectives.175 However, the more usual arrangement is a tour, sometimes very rapid, in which the universal aspect of the account lies in the comprehensive nature of the geographical coverage for each year, without any attempt made at synthesis into a single, interwoven narrative. Book 15 oVers a good example of the way in which Diodorus’ narrative moves around the various theatres of action. Within the Wrst dozen chapters covering 386 and 385 bc, Diodorus has moved from the Persian campaign against Euagoras in Cyprus, to the Spartan deportation of Mantineans from their native land, to Sicily, where the poetry of Dionysius forms the subject in the absence of any current wars, to Cyprus again, then back to the siege of Mantinea, and a return to Sicily where Dionysius is plotting foundations on the Adriatic to gain the Ionian sea routes (15.2–13). Book 19 also opens with a rapid tour of the current most signiWcant theatres of events, opening with the Sicilian history of Agathocles’ rise to tyranny, then moving swiftly to the ninth year of the Samnite war in Italy, followed by Macedonia, with the capture and death of Eurydice and king Philip, and then the broad picture in Asia, where Eumenes was gathering satraps and armies (19.1–15). This rather fragmented approach to universal historiography, which allows no doubt as regards the dominance of temporal over spatial organization, is tempered by moments at which diVerent parts of the world acted in harmonious synchronism, thereby validating the notion of universal history rather than a series of individual local projects. These were the moments at which not only could the temporal systems be brought into some kind of harmony (and it is worth noting that for the limited universalism of Diodorus’ world, the same temporal frameworks could apply),176 but the events themselves coincided. We have already seen Timaeus’ predilection for historically signiWcant synchronization, but it appealed no less to Diodorus. The end of Book 13 oVers such a moment, when the Peloponnesian War in Greece and the war between Carthage and Dionysius in Sicily came to an end independently, but at the same point in time (13.114). Sometimes Diodorus makes the coincidence more explicit, as is the case with the three deaths of Amyntas of Macedon, Agesipolis of Sparta, and Jason of Pherae in the same year, or the even more striking coincidence between the battle of Chaeronea and that

175 See, for instance, 17.113, where embassies come to Alexander at Babylon from almost the whole inhabited world as enumerated at length by Diodorus. 176 See §6 in this chapter (‘Telling the time for the non-Greek world’) for a systematic consideration of the lesser chronological coherence of the genuinely non-Greek world, which was prone not to Wt into Olympiadic and magisterial structures.


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between Tarentum and the Lucanians which took place not only in the same year and on the same day, but even at the same time on that day.177 A rather diVerent form of temporal and spatial mapping occurs among the fragments of Book 37, where Diodorus claims that the greatest war in memory was the Marsic War. He does so by setting it in a succession of wars across history and across the world which had claims to be considered great. The Trojan War dominated Homer and tragedy because it involved Europe against Asia; Xerxes’ expedition was so great that even the streams dried up; the war of Carthage against Sicily was huge; Alexander took Persia; Rome took Macedon; Carthage fought against Rome over Sicily for twentyfour years; then came the Hannibalic war; then the defeat of the Cimbri by Rome; then fortune set Rome against Italy and the two great forces clashed in the Marsic War (Book 37, fr. 1). This array of references to other great wars takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of diVerent locations and diVerent times. But in a sense the repetitive nature of history lends the diversity of times and places a certain unity—not the synchronism brought by great events happening in diVerent locations at the same time, but nevertheless the sense that great things could happen anywhere at any time, as Herodotus had noted and as we have seen with Polybius.178 Diodorus, although he lies outside the primary chronological scope of this work, oVers an important and extensive insight into the temporal structures and organization of a universal account. His universality led him to extend his account temporally across not only the whole historical span, but also the mythical period, and I have noted some of the strategies he adopts in order to mark both the passage of time in this period through the use of generations, and the existence of key chronological turning points which aVected the history of many diVerent regions simultaneously—the Trojan War and the return of the Heraclidae. But he reserved the vast majority of space in his work for a systematic, roughly annalistic account, structured and calibrated by a combination of magistracies and Olympiads. The extensive chronological span of Diodorus is very much like that found in the fragments of local histories, and it will be interesting to consider whether or not they adopt the same shift in chronological strategy. In terms of spatial scope, Diodorus’ universal work is by deWnition at variance with local historiography, and here the point of comparison will concern whether, as we might predict, the more universal chronological systems, such as appeal to the Trojan War or the use of Olympiadic dating, are absent, and only more local eponymous dating is in play.

177 Diodorus 15.60.3–5; 16.88.3.

178 See Herodotus, Histories 1.5, as noted in ch. 1.

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The world outside the polis 5. S T R A B O N I A N S T R ATE G I E S: BETWEEN LOCAL AND U NIVERSAL In the case of most peoples, myth is kept apart from history, which desires the truth, whether it is ancient or more recent. But in the case of the Amazons, the same stories are told now and of the distant past (ŒÆd F ŒÆd ºÆØ), even though they are incredible. Even now, strange tales are told about them which reinforce beliefs in the ancient accounts ( a ÆºÆØ) rather than in the recent ones.179

The work of another universal writer, Strabo, allows us to see played out a set of quite similar, though not identical, strategies for constructing time in a work of huge scope. Again, a study of these strategies should help in identifying what, if anything, is distinctively diVerent about the construction, delineation, and expression of time in local historiography. I shall not elaborate in detail here the actual historical events or periods to which Strabo chooses to give coverage. The one exception will be the mythical period, which looms so large in what purports to be a work of Augustan geography, and which is itself the generator of some of the key chronological markers in Strabo’s account. Nor shall I discuss the way in which Strabo himself, although writing a universal geographical account, does so largely as a string of local histories, telling the distinctive story of each place individually as he reaches it.180 I shall, however, consider how, if at all, Strabo attempts to provide a universal chronological structure for his universal account, in the way that Diodorus illustrates more systematically. If not, what emerges instead in terms of temporal indications to give shape to an account of considerable chronological depth? Does he, indeed, demonstrate a coherent approach to the chronological articulation of his work at either the local or the universal level?

179 Strabo, Geography 11.5.3. 180 For both of these angles, see Clarke, Between Geography and History, ch. 5. It is clear from the sources which Strabo cites by name that he did indeed use earlier local histories quite extensively for some areas. See 5.2.4, on the history of the Pelasgians, where he cites not only Ephorus and, through him, Hesiod, but also Aeschylus, Euripides, and the Atthidographers; 9.1.6, where Strabo notes the agreement of all the Atthidographers, in spite of their general disputes, on the fact that Pandion had four sons, of whom Niscus was given Megaris when Attica was divided up. He then gives a hint of the kinds of disagreement between Atthidographers which relate to this division: according to Philochorus, his rule extended from the Isthmus to Pythium; according to Andron, only to Eleusis. Also 9.1.20 where he cites Philochorus again, on the settlement by Cecrops of the people of Attica into twelve separate cities, as in the Peloponnese, only for them to be synoecized by Theseus.

Strabonian strategies

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a) Myths, Heraclids, and Troy First of all, however, let us return to the opening quotation. Strabo comments here that the Amazons were exceptional in the lack of distinction between tales concerning them from the mythical period and those relating to later times. This, however, belies the great attention and space which he himself devotes to the myths associated with the places he describes, alongside their later history. The juxtaposition, or rather lack of diVerentiation in treatment between mythical and historical associations, is brought out most clearly when Strabo notes that the demes of Attica were mostly associated with mythical or historical Wgures and events. He gives some examples—Aphidna and the rape of Helen by Theseus; Marathon and the battle against the Persians; Decelea and the base of Peloponnesian operations; Phyle, from where Thrasybulus brought back the popular party to the Piraeus (9.1.17). He apparently Wnds it entirely natural to cite the battle of Marathon alongside the rape of Helen as events of equal status. Another such juxtaposition again relates to Marathon—the location at which Miltiades destroyed the troops of the Persian, Datis, without waiting for the Spartans, but also the setting for the myth of the Marathonian bull, slain by Theseus (9.1.22). Some of the mythological elements are scattered randomly through the work—such as the note that Tarsus was founded by Argives with Triptolemus in quest of Io (14.5.12). But there is a distinct concentration of such material in Strabo’s description of Greece, southern Italy, and Asia Minor. The Troad is naturally dominated by the world of the Homeric epics, although the prominence of the Aeneas story here and in Italy suggests that Strabo had also absorbed the promotion of that strand of the past in Augustan Rome. Strabo himself observes the existence of competing accounts of what happened to Aeneas after the fall of Troy, and the consequent discrepancies in matters of geography. Scepsis was, for example, supposedly the royal kingdom of Aeneas, but this was incompatible with the view that Aeneas had continued westwards, having sailed with Antenor to the Adriatic in the great post-Troy migration of heroes (13.1.53).181 But more typically, he uses the stories associated with Troy—the scenes of Homeric battles, the rivers Scamander and Simoeis, for example—to evoke a mythical landscape through which the reader may be guided as though transported in time back to the heroic age.182

181 He claims at 13.1.33 that the whole area was subject to Aeneas and the sons of Antenor, contradicting the migration story yet further. At 13.1.52 he gives some more detail about the rule of Palaescepsis by Scamandrius son of Hector and Ascanius son of Aeneas. 182 One such example is at 13.1.34, the scenes of Homeric battles. Of course, there was a sense in which the past still lived on through the associations of the place.

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This combination of reference to episodes from the mythical past and the creation of a mythological landscape which transcends the passage of time is found as far west as Italy.183 Pisa is described as having been founded by the Pisatae, who made the expedition to Ilium with Nestor and went astray on their return to the Peloponnese (5.2.5); Nestor turns up in the heroic geography of southern Italy too, since Metapontium was founded by Pylians sailing with him from Troy (6.1.15). The island of Aethalia had a port named after the Argo because of its connections with Jason, giving the whole island a mythical association (5.2.6); and naturally, the history of Rome itself was bound up with the myths of Aeneas and of Amollius, of his brother Numitor, and of Romulus and Remus, which Strabo carefully combines with an unusual piece of relative chronology, noting that the latter story was to be placed four hundred years after the former (5.3.2). But it is in his description of the Greek mainland that Strabo most fully makes plain the central place held by the mythical landscape in the geographical imagination. Some instances simply note a particular place as the setting for a well-known myth: Temenium, where Temenus was buried and the scene of the myth of the Hydra (8.6.2); the setting for the myth of Sciron and the Pityocamptes, robbers killed by Theseus (9.1.4); Harme, where some say Amphiarau¨s fell in battle from his chariot where the temple now stands and others say the chariot of Adrastus was destroyed (9.2.11); Hyria, the scene of the birth of Orion and of the myth of Hyrieus (9.2.12); Mount Messapius, the scene of the myth of Glaucus, the Anthedonian, who turned into a sea monster (9.2.13); Mount Cithaeron where Pentheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchae (9.2.23); Potniae, another scene of mythical sparagmos, where Glaucus was ripped apart by the Potnian mares (9.2.24); Daulis, the scene of the Philomela and Procne story (9.3.13); and Panopeus, the scene of the myth of Titus, where could still be found a hero temple at which honours were paid (9.3.14). Although much work has been done on the creation by Pausanias of a mythical landscape in which monuments and tales from the present evoke a long-distant past,184 it seems that Strabo’s account, at least of Greece, can be read in a similar way. Examples abound—in northern Greece, the abode of Deucalion and the grave of Pyrrha were to be found at Cydnus (9.4.2); the 183 It is found sporadically elsewhere too—sometimes close to home, as at 13.1.46, where Strabo notes the myths associated with the island of Tenedos. ‘In it is set the myth of Tennes, after whom the island was named; as also that of Cycnus.’ Both Dionysus and Heracles were said to have visited India (15.1.6); Armenia and Media itself were infused with the myth of Jason and Medea—Medea had introduced a peculiar mode of dress, says Strabo at 11.13.10, when she ruled there with Jason, and the country was named after her son, Medus; at 11.14.14, the Armenians are noted as kinsmen of the Thessalians and descendants of Jason and Medea. 184 See, for example, K. Arafat, ‘Pausanias’ Attitude to Antiquities’, Annals of the British School at Athens 87 (1992), 387–409.


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monument of Thetis in Thessaly proved that Achilles ruled there; and the Melitaeans claimed that the Hellenes had migrated to their own city, pointing as evidence to the tomb of Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha in the agora (9.5.6). Both the associations of the location and the physical monuments and rituals act as bridges between the past and the present, adding temporal richness and depth to the spatial description. Besides these more or less concentrated, but one-oV, references to particular myths, there are some clusters of several references to the same mythical or heroic Wgures. Nestor, for example, is alluded to several times in diVerent contexts.185 Even gods could walk on earth and make an impact on the mythical landscape. Strabo relates the account that the people who dwelt on Parnassus were civilized by Apollo, having helped him to quash Tityus and Python as he travelled from Athens to Delphi by a route which was still used now (9.3.12). And the demigod Heracles, not surprisingly given his itinerant career, turns up repeatedly. In the fragments of the seventh book (25), Strabo notes that the site of Potidaea had previously been inhabited by giants, and then broken up by Heracles when he sailed back after capturing Troy.186 He cites Hecataeus for the view that the Epeans and Eleans had joined Heracles against Augeas and Elis, although he notes that ‘the ancient writers’ tell many lies (8.3.9); the cavern through which he led Cerberus out from Hades could be seen near Sparta (8.5.1).187 Just as the wanderings and exploits of Heracles formed a major element in the creation of a mythical landscape for the Mediterranean, so too the return of his descendants was a key factor in forming the Greek mainland,188 especially the Peloponnese, but also further aWeld in the Mediterranean.189 Sometimes their return is used straightforwardly as a temporal indicator—it was after their return, for example, that the Aetolians gained control of Olympia and invented the games (8.3.30); Messenia was subject to Menelaus ‘before the events at Troy’, but to Melanthus at the time of the return of the Heraclidae (8.4.1).190 However, their prominence in the text is almost entirely due to the fact that, like the Trojan War and the subsequent dispersal of heroes 185 See 8.3.7 and 8.3.19. 186 Strabo thus provides a neat link between the world of Heracles and the world of Troy— each would give rise to one of the key chronological indicators of Strabo’s text. 187 See also 9.2.40 for the murder of Erginos, tyrant of Orchomenus, by Heracles. 188 The start point for their momentous return is noted at 9.4.10. 189 Even as far as Sardinia, the children of Heracles made their presence felt. There was a mountain tribe called the Diagesbes, who were formally called the Iolae¨s, after Iolau¨s who went there with some of the sons of Heracles (5.2.7). 190 The chronological relationship between these two key events is attempted at 13.1.3. The expedition of Orestes’ son, Penthilus, to Thrace is given as sixty years after the Trojan period, at around the time of the return of the Heraclidae to the Peloponnese: Œ Æ Ø H æøØŒH o æ; ÆP c c H ˙æÆŒºØH N —º ŒŁ.

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around the Mediterranean, the return of the Heraclidae was seen as having had a profound eVect on the shape and texture of Mediterranean settlement patterns. As we have seen in relation to Ephorus, who made their return the starting point of his universal history, the eVects of their return on the political landscape of the Peloponnese were dramatic. They ‘expelled those who were previously in power’, razing cities like Mycenae.191 Indeed, the return of the Heraclidae was not merely chronologically coincidental with the reign of Melanthus in Messene, since they actually drove him out of power (9.1.7). The ramiWcations of such actions were far-reaching. Two of the sons of Heracles, Eurysthenes and Procles, according to Ephorus, had taken possession of Laconia, divided it into six, and founded cities there (8.5.4); their return gave rise to the emigration of Achaeans from Laconia to Ionia (8.5.5), and conversely the settlement of Ionians at Epidaurus with the Carians (8.6.15). In apparent contradiction, or at very least confusion, the return of the sons of Heracles meant the exodus of Ionians from the Peloponnese,192 ousted by the Achaeans, who forced them back to Athens, from where they colonized the coast of Caria and Lydia (8.7.1). According to Strabo, Attica was full of exiles after the return of the Heraclidae, provoking the latter to attack, through fear. They were defeated on that occasion, but nevertheless clung on to the Megarid, which they populated with Dorians rather than Ionians (9.1.7). The period of the Trojan War, which, like that of Heracles and his descendants, looms large in the mythological geography of Strabo’s world, is used by Strabo, no less than by Diodorus, as a chronological benchmark, against which other world events can be placed. Sometimes this seems to be purely a temporal marker, bearing no relation to the subject matter. Posidonius, for example, is cited as saying that the ancient theory of atoms originated in Sidon with Mochus ‘before Trojan times’ (16.2.24); the city of Sardis is described as ‘ancient, but more recent than Trojan times’ (13.4.5). It is, however, the case that, as with the return of the descendants of Heracles, which so altered the political and settlement landscape of mainland Greece in particular, so too with the Trojan War were the consequences and fallout most keenly felt in certain parts of the Mediterrranean world. Thus, although its use as a chronological marker could be seen as independent of content and relevance,193 in fact, its usage in Strabo is concentrated in his account of the 191 8.6.10. More detail is given at 8.6.19, where Strabo explains that Eurystheus, ruler of Mycenae, had participated in an expedition against Iolau¨s and the sons of Heracles at Marathon, in which he was defeated. Mycenae then fell to the descendants of Pelops and later to the sons of Heracles. 192 The Athenians had sent a colony to the Peloponnese after the death of Ion, because of overpopulation (8.7.1). Elsewhere Strabo cites Polybius on the Peloponnesian foundations and settlement patterns emerging from the return of the Heraclidae (8.8.5). 193 Some cases of the Trojan War being used simply as an indicator of time ‘when’ do exist. See, for example, 8.4.1, where Strabo notes that Messenia was subject to Menelaus ‘from Trojan


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Troad and, particularly, of the Greek mainland. As in the case of the Heraclidae, it is the dispersal of heroes and the consequent changes in population and settlement which feature repeatedly and make this a far from neutral chronological indicator, but one with geographical resonance.194 It was, for example, starting from Trojan times (Ie H æøØŒH) that Greeks penetrated the inland area behind the Adriatic coast of the Leucani (6.1.2), and ‘after the events at Troy’ ( a b a æøØŒ) that all kinds of transformations took place: Mycenae was reduced (especially after the return of the Heraclidae);195 the Boeotians took Coronea when they returned from Thessalian Arne (9.2.29); cities were founded by Dorians with Althaemenes the Argive (10.4.15); there were migrations of Greeks and attacks by Cimmerians and Lydians, all leading to confusion of peoples (12.8.7); Abydos was inhabited by Thracians (13.1.22); and, according to Xanthus, the Phrygians moved to Asia (14.5.29). The Trojan War was thus seen as something of a turning point for the map of Greece and of the eastern Mediterranean. There were, however, elements of continuity which spanned this period of transition, and yet which are described by Strabo in terms of this chronological marker. Sometimes this amounted simply to the continuous history of certain settlements, such as Eretria and Chalcis, which he says were founded by Athens ‘before Trojan times’, and then settled with colonists from the same city ‘after the events at Troy’ (10.1.8). Here the Trojan War does not alter the continuing development of the settlements concerned—they are not suddenly populated with returning heroes, but the original mother city continues with its programme. It does, however, act as a chronological punctuation mark, and perhaps there is the implication that the disruption of the war in the eastern Mediterranean delayed the completion of the Athenian plan for Euboea? A case in which the Trojan War is used as a chronological marker in an ongoing, but disputed, story is that of Amphilochian Argos. According to Ephorus, this was founded by Alcmaeon ‘even before the Trojan period’,196 but Thucydides and others said that Amphilochus moved there ‘after events at Troy’. The confusion of peoples across the Mediterranean was certainly times’. It was ‘during the Trojan period’ (ŒÆ a a æøØŒ) that Cephallenia and Samothrace were called Samos (10.2.17) and Echinades was ruled over by Meges (10.2.19). At 13.1.7, Strabo exceptionally uses a diVerent formula, noting that all the coast was subject to Troy ‘during the Trojan War’ (ŒÆ a e (ºØÆŒe º). 194 As Strabo notes at 1.3.2, the migration of heroes across the inhabited world ‘shortly after the events at Troy’ (ØŒæe H æøØŒH o æ) should be seen as part of the description of ancient peoples. 195 8.6.10. Note that this conWrms the relative chronology of the Trojan War and the later return of the Heraclidae, as given at 13.1.3. 196 10.2.26. This is described as an account ‘contrary to the Homeric version’ (Ææa c ˇæØŒc ƒ æÆ), although the discrepancy or contradiction is not elaborated upon.

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something which Strabo saw as by no means restricted to the aftermath of Troy. As he states at 12.8.4, there were many incursions especially ‘during the Trojan War and after this’, because Greeks and barbarians both wanted to acquire land at the same time, but mass migrations, such as those of the Pelasgians and Cauconians, also took place ‘before the Trojan period’, although it was not possible to prove that the Cilicians already existed before this point. Intimately connected with, but importantly distinct from the use of the Trojan War as a chronological marker, is the appeal to its primary narrator, Homer. Homer features throughout Strabo’s Geography, not only because his compositions are so dominant in the mental geographies of Strabo’s own readers,197 but also as the indicator of a time period in his own right.198 Three times he claims that the Cimmerian invasions took place either slightly before or during Homer’s own time;199 elsewhere Homer’s time is explicitly distinguished from the heroic period, since Strabo claims that at the time of Homer and Stesichorus Arabia was already so called after Arabus, whereas it may not have been so ‘at the time of the heroes’.200

b) Measuring time for geography These ‘mythical’ periods, which clustered around key articulation points such as the Trojan War and the return of the Heraclidae, could be further delineated in Strabo’s account only in limited units of time. Magistracies and Olympiads were clearly of no use, king lists did not exist. As Ephorus had already observed, and Diodorus showed in practice, the mythical period was prone to be mapped out in terms of generations, and Strabo too conforms to this pattern. Of course, as with Diodorus also, many cases can be attributed directly to Strabo’s sources. The Wrst Greek cities in Sicily, according to Ephorus and in a way which was adopted by Strabo, were founded in the tenth generation after the Trojan War;201 it was in the tenth generation after the foundation of cities in Aetolia that Elis was settled by Oxylus, the son of 197 See 8.3.3. Strabo claims to be comparing the current situation with ‘the things said by Homer’ ( a ˇæı ºª Æ) because he is famous and well known. See also 8.3.23. 198 See, for example, 8.3.2 where Strabo claims that the current polis of Elis had not yet been founded in Homer’s time. 199 1.1.10; 3.2.12; 1.2.10—here he attributes the information to ‘the chronographers’ (ƒ æ ªæÆØ), who use it to argue that Homer knew of these people, hardly a logically necessary conclusion. The argument of familiarity derived from contemporaneity is implicit also at 7.3.8 where Strabo notes that ‘those near the times of Homer’ were as he described. 200 1.2.34. At 10.5.2, the heroic age appears again as an identiWable period of the past—at this time, Delos was revered because of its connection with Leto’s children. 201 6.2.2: Œ fi ªfi A a a æøØŒ.


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Haemon, from Aetolia (10.3.2). Generations linked foundations to great events like the Trojan War, but also to each other. They could also connect prominent historical individuals with the age of colonization, providing something of a bridge between the heroic and the historical periods. Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, was placed ‘Wve generations later’ than Althaemenes, who led the colony to Crete (10.4.18). The diVerent waves of colonization could be brought into chronological relation with both the return of the Heraclidae and the Trojan period all in a single breath:202 the Aeolian colonization preceded that of the Ionians by four generations, but was delayed and took a longer time; Orestes had led an expedition to Thrace, succeeded by his son, Penthilus, sixty years after the Trojan War at around the time of the return of the sons of Heracles to the Peloponnese, and it was Penthilus’ son, Archelaus, who led the Aeolian move to Cyzicene, and his son in turn who led the Aeolians to the river Granicus and to Lesbos (13.1.3). This account, complex and rambling though it may be, nevertheless allows us to place the events in some order—the Trojan War, followed sixty years later by the return of the Heraclidae and Penthilus’ expedition,203 then the Aeolian colonizations in the succeeding two generations, and three generations after the latter of these, the Ionian colonizations. The observation that the return of the Heraclidae came around sixty years after the Trojan War is unusual in Strabo for its speciWcity, and is no doubt reXective of the amount of scholarly time spent on both as chronological markers in the ancient world. On the whole, the generation was the most precise unit that was appropriate for the vagueness and longue dureé of the heroic age. But other forms of chronological system do appear in Strabo’s Geography when dealing with later periods of history. Occasionally, he uses 202 This was also true of various phases of colonization which could be linked to each other, independently of the standard chronological markers. See 14.1.3, where Strabo picks up from Ephorus the various colonizing ventures to aVect the coast of Asia Minor. Androclus, the son of Codrus of Athens, led the Ionian colonization (IØŒÆ) and was founder (Œ ) of Ephesus, with the result that the royal seat of the Ionians was placed there; Miletus, meanwhile, was founded by Neleus from Pylos. However, the kinship between Messenians and Pylians meant that the more recent poets claimed that many Pylians followed Melanthus (the father of Codrus) to Athens and that they all joined in the general colonization of Ionia which took Athens as its base. He then lists individually the foundations made in this and other phases: Myos by Cydrelus, son of Codrus; Lebedus by Andropompus; Colophon by Andraemon, a Pylian; Priene by Aegyptus, son of Neleus and later by Philotas, who brought a colony from Thebes; Teos Wrst by Athamas and during the Ionian colonization by Nauclus, son of Codrus, and after this by Apoecus (a suspicious name if ever there was one) and Damasus, both Athenians, and Geres, a Boeotian; Erythrae by Cnopus, son of Codrus; Phocaea by Athenians under Philogenes; Clazomenae by Paralus; Chios by Egertius; Samos by Tembrion and later by Procles. 203 It is worth noting that Thucydides 1.11.3 maps out the intervals rather diVerently, with sixty years between the fall of Troy and the expulsion of the Boeotians by the Thessalians, but then a further twenty years before the return of the Heraclidae.

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the straightforward unit of the year to indicate duration or interval. It was, for example, not until the eightieth year of their war against the Sallyes that the Romans were successful (4.6.3). For thirty-three years already, at the time of Strabo’s composition, the people around Aquileia had been at peace and paying tribute.204 Both instances are strikingly late chronologically, and at the other end of the spectrum from the mythical period in terms of the opportunities for speciWcity.205 The time of kings is also used, sparingly, by Strabo of the historic periods treated in his work.206 Naturally, these focus on the eastern Mediterranean where the Hellenistic dynasties held sway. Thus, Pergamum is described as prospering under the Attalid kings for a long time (13.4.1). But it also extends back to the period of tyranny in Greece, such as the tyrants of Lesbos (13.2.3), and even further back to the time of Persian rule and the reign of Croesus (14.1.21). Rome too, of course, incorporated a regal period in its history, and Strabo’s compressed history of that city naturally maps out that time in terms of royal generations, that is reigns.207 The same is partially true of Corinth, where Strabo uses a combination of years and then generations to denote the history of the successive rules of Bacchiads and Cypselids.208 We are far from a systematic or comprehensive framework of dynastic successions or royal eras, but rather see glimpses of reigns, which oVer some chronological context for the event in question. As with his use of generations and of years, Strabo oVers a very fragmented sense of regal time. By contrast with Diodorus, Strabo’s strategy for encapsulating a vast temporal and spatial scope in a universal framework is distinctively geographical. Both authors follow the Ephoran scheme in distinguishing between the mythical and historical periods in terms of the chronological systems which could be satisfactorily applied, and indeed both see Wt to include the mythical period in accounts which culminated in the world of the late Wrst century bc. But whereas Diodorus moves on from the vague time of generations in the 204 4.6.9: X æ ŒÆd æØÆŒ e . 205 One notable instance of chronological speciWcity is at 6.4.2 where Strabo is oVering a potted history of Rome from its foundation. The loss of the city to the Gauls is dated to the nineteenth year after the naval battle at Aegospotami, at the time of the peace of Antalcidas. The information is, however, attributed to Polybius, and therefore still contributes nothing to the notion of Strabo as a careful chronographer. 206 Exceptionally also of the heroic age at 1.3.17, where he mentions the earthquakes which took place long ago in Lydia and Ionia, swallowing up villages and shattering Mount Sipylus in the reign of Tantalus (ŒÆ a c Æ ºı ÆØºÆ). 207 The city was ruled ‘for many generations’ by kings, until Tarquinius Superbus (6.4.2). The lack of strict identity between royal generations and reigns should be noted, but the diVerence tends to be overlooked in literary treatments. 208 8.6.20. The Bacchiads ruled for nearly two hundred years (ØÆŒ ØÆ ), after which Cypselus and his family were in power for three generations ( æØªÆ).


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mythical age to a thorough and systematic combination of Olympiadic and bilocational magisterial time, which he uses to provide an almost unshakable framework within which to present a geographically integrated account of the historical period, Strabo does not develop, either universally or locally, any sophisticated way of indicating and measuring the passage of time, or indeed Wxed points in time. Counterarguments can be put forward to both elements of this characterization. In universal terms, besides his use of the helpful markers of the Trojan period and the return of the Heraclidae for the mythical age, Strabo exceptionally ties into both of these key moments a mention of the Olympiads, which proved so useful to those writing universal history. At 8.3.30, where he tells the history of Olympia and its games, he notes that the Eleans were not prosperous ‘in Trojan times and even before this’ (ŒÆ a b ªaæ a æøØŒa ŒÆd Ø æe ø), having been humbled by the people of Pylos and later by Heracles, when king Augeas was overthrown. Later still, after the return of the Heraclidae, the Aetolians under Oxylus enlarged Coele Elis, gained control of Olympia and invented the Olympic games.209 The Eleans remained in charge, as he states, from the Wrst to the twenty-sixth Olympiad. It is, however, noteworthy that there is nothing systematic about this juxtaposition of various chronological indicators, and no mention of the chronographic importance of the Olympiads.210 It is, however, not the case that Strabo had no interest in time and its eVects. Indeed, he goes so far as to use ‘time’, in the abstract, as the subject of the sentence, when he describes its destructive eVects.211 Strabo also, interestingly, provides a deWnition of ‘extinction’ ( ŒºØłØ) in relation to peoples and places, namely when a people has vanished and their country is now totally deserted, or when the ethnic name no longer exists and the political organization is no longer the same (9.5.12). If there are signiWcant changes of this kind, he says, he must mention them. His concern for chronology, even when dealing with the vague mythical past, is sometimes striking. At 8.6.2 he worries about the chronological impossibility in genealogical terms of the myth of Nauplius. If later writers grant that he was a son of Poseidon, he asks, how can a man who was still alive at the time of the Trojan War have been the 209 At this point he comments that one should disregard accounts about the founding of the temple and the establishment of the games by Heracles. 210 I can Wnd only one instance of the use by Strabo of Olympiadic time, at 14.2.10 where he notes the Rhodians’ expertise at sea, not only from the time of the synoecism of the current city, but ‘even for many years before the establishment of the Olympic games’ (ŒÆd æe B ˇºıØŒB Łø ıE Ø). It is clear that, although this phrase locates the Rhodian seafaring in chronological relation to the Olympics, this could not be described as a true use of the Oympiadic dating system. 211 See 3.5.6: › æ ØÆŁæfi. See also 8.1.1, where Strabo notes that Homer tells of ancient matters, ‘which are mostly obscured by time’.

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son of this god and of Amymone? In fact, Strabo is himself guilty of the chronological confusion here, since he is mixing up Nauplius, the son of the aforementioned and distant ancestor of Palamedes, with Nauplius, the father of Palamedes. Nevertheless, his identiWcation of a chronological inconsistency for the mythical period is in itself noteworthy. But temporal extent is regionally variable; some areas have a spatium mythicum and a spatium historicum, others only the latter. Whether this is determined by the nature of sources for diVerent areas is diYcult to judge. Strabo’s sense of change over time is both universal and localized. The great Mediterranean chronological markers, such as the destruction of Troy and the return of the Heraclidae, feature not only as markers of time, but also as events in their own right at the mythological end of the spectrum covered by Strabo’s account. But, through his presentation of city histories, his sense of change over time is constructed discretely for each place described, in sharp contrast to Diodorus’ use of a coherent, systematic chronological framework.212 In that sense, Strabo sits interestingly between the universal and the local.213 Having considered some of the strategies used in universal accounts for indicating both the passage of time and the placing of particular events in chronological relation to each other, I turn Wnally to another ‘foil’ for the way in which local history was presented to the polis, namely the presentation of time in works which deal with the non-Greek world.

6 . T E L L I N G T H E TI M E FO R TH E N ON - G RE E K WO R L D Next to the library and separated from it by a wall is an exquisitely built hall, equipped with twenty dining places and containing statues of Zeus and Hera and images of king Osymandeas. Here it seems the body of the king is 212 For the way in which Strabo relates the lives of individual cities, using predominantly relative chronological markers, such as ‘earlier’ or ‘later’, all that was needed for the internal life history of a single place, see Clarke, Between Geography and History, 264–76. For the contrast with Diodorus, see Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’. The contrast is highlighted by the diVerent treatment of literary history in each author—for Diodorus, the place for lists of literary and cultural events is at the end of each year; for Strabo at the end of a description of a place, where he lists its famous oVspring. A tantalizing question remains over how Strabo might have ordered space and time in his lost historical work. Generic considerations must surely be relevant here. 213 A further angle is, of course, the dominance of the universal power of Rome in the work. On this see Clarke, Between Geography and History, 210–28. For the way in which the Roman present dominates even Strabo’s interest in certain foundation stories, see F. Trotta, ‘The Foundation of Greek Colonies and their Main Features in Strabo: A Portrayal Lacking Homogeneity’, in D. Dueck, H. Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s Cultural Geography (Cambridge, 2005), 118–28.

Telling the time for the non-Greek world

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buried. And around this building in a circle is a huge number of chambers in which are excellent pictures of Egyptian sacred animals, and through these chambers is a staircase up to the tomb as a whole, with a golden border at the top, three hundred and sixty-Wve cubits in circumference and one cubit wide. On this the days of the year are inscribed, each one cubit long. By each day are the risings and the settings of the stars as ordained by nature, and the eVects which the Egyptian astrologers hold that they produce. They said that this border was plundered by Cambyses and the Persians when he conquered Egypt.214

Diodorus Siculus’ wonderful description of the calendar frieze running around the top of the staircase in the hall which formed the mausoleum of king Osymandeas forms a perfect introduction to a consideration of how Greek authors chose to articulate time and the past for parts of the non-Greek world to which they devoted often extensive works. The passage is resonant with associations. The hall containing the staircase is next to the library, with the result that constructing, rather than merely being familiar with, time as an abstract and malleable concept is appropriately juxtaposed with a repository of learning and science. The context is not only intellectually charged, but also a religious one,215 and furthermore the religious associations are both Greek and native Egyptian. The time of the annual solar cycle is measured out spatially up the stairs, and accompanied by the movements of the stars, both natural cycles brought under the representational control of man in this context. The value of such power and knowledge is encapsulated in the theft of the border of days by the Persian conquerors. Such ‘alien wisdom’ in the Weld of time and its construction will be one of the themes of this section.216 I shall, however, be considering not only the appreciation by Greek authors of the same tendencies towards controlling and manipulating time in nonGreek lands as they could Wnd in their own poleis, but also the chronological frameworks which they themselves used to articulate the temporal aspects of their own works in relation to other parts of the world. The two, of course, often overlap, since Greek authors regularly claim to use native sources and records in composing their accounts. Josephus, not without his own agenda, claims in Contra Apionem to have shown that the tradition of keeping chronicles of antiquity is found rather among non-Hellenic races than with the Greeks.217 He notes that Berossus’ account of Phoenicia is supported by 214 FGrH 665 f 179 ¼ Diodorus Siculus 1.49.4. 215 We have already seen the way in which religion and time management go hand in hand through the festival calendar of Athens and other Greek poleis. 216 A. Momigliano’s classic work, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge, 1975), does not in fact focus so much on the actual intellectual achievements of non-Greek peoples as on the interaction between clashing civilizations. 217 Josephus, Contra Ap. 1.58. This echoes his point earlier in the work that huge care was taken by the Egyptians and the Babylonians over chronicles from ancient times. In Egypt these were entrusted to the priests; in Babylon to the Chaldaeans.

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the Phoenician archives, which tell how the kings of Babylon subdued Syria and all of Phoenicia.218 He comments that for very many years the people of Tyre had kept public records (ªæÆ Æ fi Æ ªªæÆÆ), compiled and carefully preserved by the state, of memorable events in their internal history and in their relations with foreign nations.219 And, of course, Egypt was notorious for its tradition of priestly record-keeping, which was the source of much information for authors from the Greek world. I shall return to the more speciWcally chronographical nature of Egyptian records, preservation and commemoration of the past, but for now note simply their famed expertise in keeping records of any kind.220 That even unlikely places could be prone to historical record-keeping in this way is demonstrated by a fragment from the history of Armenia by Moses of Chorene. When Valarsace had Wnished organizing his empire and wanted to know his lineage, he sent to his brother Arsaces to open the Syrian royal archives at Nineveh. There was found a document with a subscript in Greek claiming that ‘this book was ordered by Alexander the Great and translated from Chaldaean into Greek, and contains a list of the Wrst ancestors’.221 The book was taken to Valarsace, who treasured it in the palace and had some of it inscribed in stone—an interesting case of the royal records of Babylon being used and immortalized in stone by an Armenian king. An immediate methodological objection to setting such ‘alien wisdom’ against works of Greek historiography might be raised in so far as the writings about non-Greek lands might be described as ethnographic rather than historical, and therefore less prone to have a strongly articulated temporal dimension.222 This is undoubtedly true of certain regions, for which the extant works, admittedly fragmentary and scarce, give little or no indication of any temporal patterning.223 Taking a geographical, rather than Jacoby’s alphabetical, approach would lead us to identify particular large areas which 218 Ibid. 1.143. 219 Ibid. 1.106–11. 220 See Herodotus 2.100.1, where he says that the priests told him the names of 330 kings; FGrH 610 f 1, where it is stated that Eratosthenes had taken from the sacred records in Diospolis and translated from Egyptian into Greek the list of Theban kings, with the number and length of each reign, and the age of the cosmos; Diodorus 1.44.4–5 takes a diVerent view of the utility of Egyptian records, noting that the priests have records of all the kings of Egypt, including their stature, character, and deeds, information which Diodorus deems mostly useless. 221 FGrH 679 f 7 ¼ Moses, Hist. Arm. 1.7.3–8. 222 For the view that historiography was appropriate only to Greek lands and ethnography or geography to non-Greek lands, see F. Prontera, ‘Prima di Strabone: Materiali per uno studio della geograWa antica come genere letterario’, in F. Prontera (ed.), Strabone: Contributi allo studio della personalita` e dell’Opera I (Perugia, 1984), 189–256, at 194. 223 This is true (in terms of Jacoby’s regions) of Aethiopia, Arabia, Bithynia, Epirus, Getae and Goths, Illyria, India, Celts and Galatians, Caria, Cilicia, Cyprus, Libya, Lydia, Lycia, Macedonia, Pamphylia, Paphlagonia, Pontus, Scythia, Spain, Thrace.


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were apparently not suited to chronological treatments, although they attracted the interest of Greek authors for their customs, Xora, and fauna. In short, chronologically interesting accounts survive of only Egypt in Africa, Greece and Italy in Europe, and in Asia of the Fertile Crescent from Phoenicia and Judaea round to India, and to a lesser degree some of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Thus there are large swathes of the known world, which authors writing in Greek appear from the fragments not to have submitted to a chronological treatment. But yet more methodological problems arise. Is it the case that works on these regions really were devoid of chronological interest, or has our picture been distorted by the excerptors and citers who chose to write about them, and selected from their sources in ways which answered their own ethnographic requirements? One check on this might be to consider the patterns which emerge from an author who treated the entire range of regions, such as Strabo, to see whether the patterns are borne out there too. There are, however, dangers of circularity here, since Strabo is often one of only few sources for the fragmentary remains of works on an area, and we cannot determine whether he is reXecting the original works in dealing with certain regions more chronologically than others, or conversely skewing our picture of those sources with his own view of how each region should be treated. It seems best to proceed with caution here, reserving judgement on areas which appear to be lacking chronological interest, in order to avoid the pitfalls of arguing ex silentio. At the same time, it is possible to take a more positive approach to those areas where chronological frameworks can be detected. Of particular interest are those regions where there was a strong native interest in chronography and recordkeeping, with which Greek authors could and did engage. In those areas for which little in the way of a chronological structure emerges from the fragmentary remains of Greek writings, there are very few hints of the chronological markers and systems which we have observed to be used in Greek chronographic works, in more everyday contexts, in universal historiography, and which we will see again in the fragments of local Greek historiography. The technique of relative dating with reference to a wellknown event such as the Trojan War or the return of the Heraclidae is present in the Hellenistic work on Phrygia by Hermogenes, with the note that king Nannacis reigned ‘before the times of Deucalion’ (æe H ˜ıŒÆºø æ ø).224 The marker itself is not a standard one for the historiography of Greece, although one might argue that it was clearly indicative of ‘very early’, that is ‘before the Xood’. Etruria oVers an interesting case, since, although its archaeology and epigraphy show that it was a polis-based region, Greek 224 FGrH 795 f 2.

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writers do not seem to have seen it as such. Thus it attracted primarily ethnographic and timeless treatments from Greek authors rather than anything resembling historical narrative. However, one of the most striking of Etrurian customs was precisely their interest in the arrangement of time. Thus, although the region did not attract chronologically organized accounts, its own temporal constructions are noted as a feature of its timeless present. Censorinus comments on Etruscan cycles, not only as a form of natural time-measurement (naturalia saecula), but also as a means of patterning and thereby, broadly speaking, indicating when things happened. He mentions, for example, some histories which were written in the eighth of their cycles (quae octavo eorum saeculo scriptae sunt).225 The Suda notes under the heading ıææÆ (‘Etruscan matters’) the account of an expert ( Øæ Icæ) who told a creation story lasting 12,000 years, with 1,000 years allocated to each major stage in the development of the world.226 In fact the creation came in only six phases (as in the Old Testament version) leaving 6,000 years as the span which man’s presence on earth had to Wll out. We shall return to the more familiar traditions of creation when considering the fragments of Greek historiography which concern the Fertile Crescent, but the Etruscan notion of progressing cycles or eras is one which is clearly not unique to that region. The strange combination of complex views of the longue dureé with a lack of historical narrative which seems to characterize Etruria is strikingly at odds with the writings on the rest of Rome and Italy. Dionysius of Halicarnassus alleges that Fabius Pictor, the Wrst native to write a systematic account of Roman history in Greek, was negligent in matters of chronology, as in other aspects of his work.227 Nevertheless, the use of the annalistic structure as a framework within which to write history immediately marks out Fabius and the subsequent tradition of Roman annalists as engaged in an elevated level of chronological interest and sophistication, albeit one which may seem unremarkable given Rome’s political system. As the painted inscription from Tauromenium so beautifully illustrates, Fabius clearly discerned a succession of stages in Roman history.228 In the next chapter I shall discuss in more detail 225 FGrH 706 f 7b ¼ Censorinus, De Natura Deorum 17.5. 226 FGrH 706 f 7a. 227 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 4.30.2. Dionysius attributes the lack of chronological accuracy to a broader trend: ‘so little evidence of a laborious enquiry over truth do we Wnd in that author’s history’ (o ø Oºª K d K ÆE ƒ æÆØ ÆP F e æd c K ÆØ B IºŁÆ ÆºÆøæ). 228 For the inscription, which summarizes Fabius’ history, see G. Manganaro, ‘Una biblioteca storica nel ginnasio di Tauromenion e il P. Oxy. 1241’, Past and Present 29 (1974), 389–409, with C. P. Jones, ‘Graia Pandetur ab Urbe’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 97 (1995), 233–41 at 235. As J. Reynolds, ‘Roman Inscriptions 1971–5’, Journal of Roman Studies 66 (1976), 174–99 at 180, notes, the inscription makes indisputable the claim that Fabius wrote annals in Greek.


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Jacoby’s arguments which dissociate the local historiography of Attica from the annalistic tradition at Rome in terms of its dependence on priestly records.229 But whatever the strength of the local annalistic formulation in terms of magistracies at Rome, the annalists seem also to have located their accounts in a wider framework of Olympiadic dating. As Dionysius states, it was necessary to correlate Greek and Roman chronology,230 and he notes that Quintus Fabius placed Rome’s foundation in the eighth Olympiad, whereas Lucius Cincius Alimentus placed it in the fourth year of the twelfth Olympiad. The methodological diYculty here is, of course, that we cannot be certain whether it really was the annalists who gave the Olympic dating or whether that is Dionysius’ own gloss. If the Roman annalists themselves chose to place Rome’s history not only in the framework of its own political system, but also that accepted as the common currency for the history of the wider Mediterranean, then it would say something about their historical interpretation of Rome’s place in the world and perhaps, because of the Greek origins and associations of the Olympiadic system, it would also reXect on Rome’s cultural aspirations. On the other hand, interest by non-Roman historians in drawing Rome and its past into that broader context might suggest that Greek writers recognized Rome’s special status in the Mediterranean from very early on and oVered it a chronological treatment which set it apart from other non-Greek parts of the world. We may be witnessing early glimpses into a widespread fascination (and fear) concerning the great Polybian question— how had a single polis become so great so quickly? The Polybian story might have focused on a Wfty-three year period of astonishing expansion, but a broader question was also relevant and in a longer time span—where had this emergent city state in the West come from? What were its mythological claims? What, if any, links did it have to the Trojan story? What kinship claims could it make? The mythological origins of Rome formed a major element in the accounts of both Roman and Greek writers on this area. Diodorus comments that Fabius Pictor ‘mythologized’ on Aeneas and Romulus (7.5.4) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus cites his extensive account of the Romulus and Remus story, with the comment that others ‘consider that nothing of the more mythological element has any place in historical writing’ (Pb H ıŁø æø 229 Cicero, De Oratore 2.52 on early writers such as Fabius: historia nihil aliud nisi annalium confectio. Serv. Dan. on Vergil, Aeneid 1.373, notes that the record of ‘achievements at home and abroad by land and sea day by day’ (domi militiaeque terra marique gesta per singulos dies) gave rise to the Annales Maximi. 230 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.74.1: ŒÆd H ¼ Ø IıŁØ f .øÆø æ ı æe f ¯ººØŒ;

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IØF ƒ æØŒfiB ªæÆfi B æŒØ).231 Other Roman annalists too incorporated the mythical foundations of the city into their accounts, though presumably not within the chronologically rigid structure of the rest of their works.232 Greek authors writing about Rome clearly gave their works the same extensive chronological scope. Promathion’s third-century history of Italy dealt with the origins of Rome, according to Plutarch,233 Galitas’ work, supposed to be from roughly the same date, covered the period from the death of Aeneas to the establishment of Romulus on the Palatine,234 and Zenodotus of Troezen’s work from the second century bc took the broader scope of Italy too, dealing with the early history of the Umbrians and Sabines, and giving the mythological aetiology for Praeneste, named after the grandson of Odysseus.235 The diYculty entailed in providing the story to explain Rome’s growth not just as an imperial power, but as a great city state with a link to Troy itself, is made explicit by the authors themselves. Dionysius complains at the lack of an accurate history of the Romans in Greek, even by his own time (1.5.4) and asserts that even then most Greeks were ignorant of the early history of Rome, thinking the Romans vagabonds, and successful through luck rather than good judgement (1.4.2). He often stresses the hotly debated nature of the early phases—the date of the foundation of Rome, on which he states his preference for using Roman over Greek historians, but in view of their lack is pushed towards older accounts on sacred tablets (1.73.1); the multiple versions of where Aeneas went; and the diversity of foundation myths for the city (1.72.5). His decision to start his history ‘from the most ancient myths’ (1.8.1) is due to the fact that earlier historians have omitted the early period as being diYcult to clarify. His citation of other authors rather contradicts this, but his project clearly implies the validity of including the mythical period in a historical work. Rome thus constitutes a most unusual example of a non-Greek region. It has a myth-history which more strongly resembles the past of the Greek poleis than any other and a historiography to match—extended over a huge time span from the foundation myths to the present day and, for the historical period, employing some kind of systematic chronological framework.236 231 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.79–84. 232 L. Cincius Alimentus is cited by Dionysius 1.79.4 (¼ FGrH 810 f 2) on the founding of Rome by the twins; C. Acilius by Plutarch, Life of Romulus 21.4 (¼ FGrH 813 f 2) on the same story. 233 Plutarch, Romulus 2.3–8 ¼ FGrH 817 f 1. 234 FGrH 818. 235 FGrH 821 f 3 and 1. 236 For more discussion of the historiographical appeal and complexity of early Rome with its variant foundation myths, see ch. 4 with the excellent book by E. Dench, Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian (Oxford, 2005).


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Furthermore, the fact that it is presented to us by both native and Greek writers is striking. It is true that many of the extant fragments of works concerning Egypt and the Fertile Crescent were written by authors whose Greek or non-Greek identity was hard to discern. Blurred boundaries in the cultural identity of authors are, however, a rather diVerent matter from discrete accounts by native and non-native writers. The growing supremacy of Rome in the Mediterranean at the time when much of the historiography was generated is surely a crucial factor in explaining the strong interest of Greeks as well as Romans in formulating a past for the new world power. We shall see later (in chapter 6) some of the ways in which the presentation of the local history of Greece seems to have been tailored in distinctive ways in direct response to the emergence of Roman dominion. The Greek texts concerning Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, round through Judaea, Phoenicia, and Babylonia, have an even stronger chronological focus. If we consider these accounts in terms of mythological frameworks, then they share with those even further round towards and into India a non-Greek Xavour which is distinctively diVerent from the world of the Mediterranean. But in chronological terms, India falls into a category containing only itself. The fourth-century writer, Ctesias of Cnidus, creates a picture of India which is almost timeless, setting out the customs, Xora, and fauna as though they were eternally unchanging in a land unaVected by the progress of time. But even here, a more careful reading reveals that the Indian landscape and its inhabitants are imbued with temporal rhythms, and that the natural world somehow pulsates of its own accord. According to Ctesias, the Indians’ lifespan is one hundred and twenty, or thirty, or even Wfty years; and at the most, they live for two hundred years.237 This extraordinary longevity is matched at the other end of the spectrum by the bird which dies as the sun sets, thus providing the opposite extreme of the way in which the individual life might be used to map out time in the way that Solon indicated.238 The mountain-dwelling people oVer a further example of how unusually human time operates in India. Reproduction is strikingly presented as being a unique occurrence—no woman gives birth more than once, and the babies are born already with teeth and hair, thereby defying the usual eVects of the progression of time on the human form. The colour of their hair is a measure of time, but inversely to the usual pattern, since they are covered in white hair for one year and this gradually darkens until it is entirely black by the time they reach sixty.239 Furthermore, the Indian 237 FGrH 688 f 45 §32. 238 FGrH 688 f 45 §34. See the opening quote of ch. 1 and following discussion for the attribution of this view of biographical time by Herodotus to Solon. 239 FGrH 688 f 45 §50.

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landscape has striking temporal rhythms—the sitachora tree weeps sap at a particular season; the river Hyparchus runs with electrum one day each year—thus oVering an internal clock with its own remarkable manifestation of the passage of time. India clearly operates in its own unique way. Its apparent timelessness belies the existence of strong underlying temporal rhythms, but these are naturally occurring and naturally manifested. If we are looking for humanly constructed temporal patterns, it is the sweep of lands from Egypt to the Persian Gulf which forms a discrete unit, and its coherence comes not only from the similarity or equivalence of the systems used for organizing historical time, but also at a more basic level from the strikingly high degree of interest in the calibration of time at all. I have already cited Josephus several times for his notes on the recordkeeping practices of certain near-eastern peoples, such as the Chaldaeans and the Egyptians. But his citations of Greek authors often reveal a very speciWc interest in the precise dating of key events in the history of these regions. After commenting that the people of Tyre had kept public records of memorable events in their internal history and in their relations with foreign nations, he goes on to note that the temple in Jerusalem was built by Solomon one hundred and forty-three years and eight months before the foundation of Carthage by Tyre, a strikingly precise piece of relative dating.240 There were clearly key marker points in the history of this region, to which other events could be anchored. According to Josephus, the great Xood was mentioned by all writers of ‘barbarian histories’.241 But writers place the events of Phoenician history also in relation to other markers, such as reigns and foundations.242 The source of the later work on Phoenicia by Herennius Philo of Byblos (Wrst to second century ad)243 is described as ‘older than the events at Troy’, interestingly setting the historiography, if not the history, of Phoenicia in a Greek chronographical framework.244 However, this source is also set in

240 FGrH 794 f 1c ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.106–11. 241 Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae 1.93. 242 FGrH 789 f 1a ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 10.228 citing Philostratus’ Phoenician Histories in which he said that Nebuchodnosor was king at the same time as Ithobalus was king of Tyre. See also FGrH 794 f 9 ¼ (Aristot.), Mis. Ausc. 134 on the foundation of Tyre placed two hundred and forty years before that of Carthage by Phoenicians, according to those who write Phoenician histories. 243 Working out precisely what part of the fragments is to be attributed to Philo is extremely diYcult. His work is described as a translation into Greek of the history of Sanchuniathon, which Porphyry considers the truest account of the Jews, having taken the records from Hierombalus, the priest of the god Ieuo. 244 FGrH 790 f 1 ¼ Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 1.9.19–29 at 20: H æøØŒH æ ø . . . æ æ.


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the same fragment in a near-eastern framework ‘close to the times of Moses’, making the interstitial nature of the context clear. Besides these attempts at chronological context, however, there is something prehistoric about the account brought from Sanchouniathon via Philo into Greek. Sanchouniathon wanted, we are told, to know the history of all the nations from the start of the world. He searched out the history of Taautus, the Wrst to invent letters (› H ªæÆ ø c oæØ KØÆ) and the writing of records ( B H ø ªæÆB ŒÆ æÆ), and started his history with the Egyptian Thoyth. The story resembles a creation myth, including the discovery of Wre, the birth of allegorical Wgures in human development such as Agreus and Halieus, the hunter and Wsher, the invention of ships, and the building of the Wrst city by Cronus, namely Byblos.245 The theme of patterning time through the history of inventions, which we shall see again when considering, inter alia, the Parian Marble, is one which characterizes Greek accounts of the Fertile Crescent no less (and perhaps even more) than those of the Greek world itself. The anonymous second-century bc work attributed to Eupolemus and cited by Eusebius is replete with such discoveries.246 Abraham is ascribed the invention of astronomy and Chaldaic art. He is indeed seen as the source of such knowledge for other peoples too, being sent by God to Phoenicia to teach astronomy, and travelling to Heliopolis in Egypt to introduce astronomy and the other sciences to them, with the explicit claim that he and the Babylonians, rather than the Egyptians, had made these intellectual discoveries.247 Thus Ps-Eupolemus develops Abraham into not only an important ancestor of the Israelites, but also an international Wgure, bringing culture and civilization to other peoples of the Mediterranean, and thereby enhancing the status of the Jews and of Judaism. Artapanus in his On the Jews also makes much of the inventor status of Abraham— attributing to him the instigation of land distribution and the invention of measures.248 Moses is ascribed by Artapanus an even greater role in the development of civilization, being the inventor of ships, stone-laying machines, arms, water-drawing equipment, and hieroglyphics, alongside his

245 FGrH 790 f 1 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 1.9.19–29 at 23 for Taautus and literacy. 246 For the fragments and excellent commentary, see C. R. Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. Volume I Historians (Chico, California, 1983), 157–87. Holladay notes, 157, that the work seems to have interwoven biblical stories with elements of both Greek and Babylonian myth. Scholarly consensus is that the fragments are to be attributed not to Eupolemus, but to an anonymous Samaritan author. But see E. S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley and London, 1998), 147, for criticism of this view. 247 See FGrH 724 f 1 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.17. 248 FGrH 726 f 2 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.23.2.

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status as a philosopher.249 One could see the promotion of Jewish ‘heroes’ and bringers of civilization in the writings of Hellenistic Jews as a clear manifestation of cultural competitiveness, but caution is needed, since the tone of these works seems often to be either scholarly or light-hearted and entertaining, rather than motivated by serious patriotism. Babylonia too gave rise to some interesting invention myths—again, mapping out time through the history of the development of civilization. The early third-century bc author Berossus250 included in his work on Babylonia not only the Xora and fauna of the region, but also something resembling a creation myth, in which the sea creature, Oanne, is the driving force. He says that in the Wrst year this creature emerged from the Red Sea, having the body of a Wsh, a man’s head over that of a Wsh, and a man’s feet emerging from a Wsh’s tail. His voice was that of a man, and he spent the daytime giving men knowledge of letters, learning and all the arts, the creation of cities and hunting of wild beasts, laws, geometry, agriculture, and all life skills. There was, according to Berossus, no time of greater invention.251 Further hybrids follow in Berossus’ account and this peculiar world was ruled over by a woman named Omorca (‘Thalassa’ by the Greeks). The god Belus cut this woman in half and made her into earth and heaven and completed the creation of stars, sun, moon, and Wve planets. The appearance of sea creatures seems to have articulated Babylonian time for several writers. Berossus himself uses the appearance of the Wshlike Annedotus from the Red Sea to punctuate his list of kings, in which he starts with Alorus and gives the length of each reign.252 But the later writer, Abydenus, uses the same technique, again incorporating into his king list for Babylonia not only the lengths of reigns, which in succession provide a continuous sweep across the whole span of time, but also the discrete 249 FGrH 726 f 3 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.27.4. Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors, 189, notes the obscurity of Artapanus’ identity—the fragments being too syncretistic to have been produced by a Jew, but the preoccupation with Jewish heroes too pronounced to have been produced by a non-Jew. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 87, more conWdently describes Artapanus as ‘a Hellenized Jew in Egypt’. As Holladay, 190, notes, the genre is perhaps best described as ‘popular romance literature’, and the author, for all his Judaism, seems to feel free to reshape biblical traditions at will. Gruen, 156–60, presents a convincing case for an even more subtle and humorous version of Moses in this tradition, displaying playful inventiveness rather than serious and competitive patriotism. 250 Berossus wrote for Antiochus I, and clearly used his work to present Babylonian culture and wisdom to the new Greek/Macedonian regime of the Seleucids. But, as S. M. Burstein, The Babyloniaka of Berossus (Malibu, 1978), 9, notes, there were few concessions made to Greek readers in terms of conceptual framework, and the diYculty of accepting, for example, the existence of Oanne, a sea creature living 432,000 years before the Xood, was almost insurmountable for those brought up on a notion of the past which essentially started with the Trojan War. 251 FGrH 680 f 1. 252 FGrH 680 f 3b.


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moments at which Annedotus came out of the sea.253 Water dominates these accounts in other ways too, since the standard chronological marker is the great Xood. Berossus is said by Josephus to have related the history of Babylonia from the Xood onwards and to have told of Noah and his descendants, giving dates—a neat combination of a chronological marker-post, generational spans, and years.254 His king list which started with Alorus runs as far as Xisuthrus, ‘under whom was the great Xood’.255 The wisdom of Babylonia and of Judaea was clearly not only the general, albeit useful, wisdom of the inventor Wgures; it also extended to matters chronological.256 Berossus’ king list is detailed and systematic—giving the lengths of reigns in the local measures of saroi, neroi, and sossoi, for which the equivalent number of years is noted.257 But he also oVers a striking example of macro- and microtime combined. When Cronus stands over Xisuthrus in a dream he foretells that mankind will be destroyed by a Xood on the Wfteenth of Daisios.258 This is an interesting juxtaposition of an event, which had catastrophic consequences and which would be used in grand-scale chronology, and a date which is speciWc to the day and formulated in terms of a monthly calendar as was characteristic of the Greek poleis. Ctesias of Cnidus had a reputation for being inaccurate over matters of chronology and preferring, in essence, to tell a good story.259 Plutarch complains that Ctesias should know the chronology of events well, especially those at which he was himself present, but that he ‘changes the action away from its proper time’.260 His narrative at times clearly supports this allegation, being non-speciWc in terms of chronological relationship to other events, lacking indications of temporal duration or punctuation markers. Other fragments, however, suggest that Ctesias was interested in the large timescale of the rise and fall of empires.261 When the Assyrian empire of Sardanapallus fell to the 253 FGrH 685 f 2b. 254 FGrH 680 t 3 ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.128–31. 255 FGrH 680 f 3b: › ªÆ ŒÆ ÆŒºı . 256 Although the dominance of Eusebius in the preservation of the fragments relating to Judaea should not be overlooked. It is quite possible that his own chronographical interests are distorting our view of the historiography of these regions. However, Josephus’ similar picture provides some reassurance. 257 FGrH 680 f 3b. 258 FGrH 680 f 4b. 259 See D. Lenfant, Cte´sias de Cnide: La Perse. L’Inde. Autres fragments (Paris, 2004), whose superb and substantial introduction to her new Bude´ edition treats the life, works, literary and historical qualities, as well as the textual tradition, in such depth and detail as to settle once and for all the question of whether Ctesias is a historian of suYcient interest and complexity as to repay serious analysis. 260 FGrH 688 f 29: KŒ F æ ı Æ BÆØ e æª. Here Plutarch accuses Ctesias of turning to ‘the mythical and the dramatic, away from the truth’. 261 See FGrH 688 f 33a, a scholion on Aristeides, Panathenaicus 301, in which the theory of the succession of Wve empires is set out, with Ctesias’ dates up to the Persian empire, which suggests that he was a well-known authority on such matters of chronology.

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Medes, it was, according to Ctesias, after more than 1,300 years, the longestlasting empire in history, having endured thirty generations from the time of Ninus, a neat combination of two chronological systems.262 The notion of a king list with names of kings and lengths of reigns is explicitly rejected on the grounds that nothing worthy of mention was achieved by individual rulers in that time, with one exception—namely, the sending of an Assyrian force under Memnon to help Priam of Troy. This is a fascinating admission of the tedium of the Assyrian period, at least from the Hellenocentric perspective, and a clear indication that the lack of history worth relating implied the lack of need for chronological calibration and articulation. If there were no events for the historian to discuss, then there was no need to know where to place them in a chronologically ordered narrative, nor how large the gaps between them were. But the sole event worthy of mention was one which acted as a bridge between the world of eastern kings and that of perhaps the most famous of all chronological landmarks in the Greek chronographical tradition, the Trojan War. Greek authors writing about Judaea also entered into a world of numbers. Demetrius, for example, probably writing in late third-century bc Alexandria, relates the complex story of Jacob’s Xight to Mesopotamia after his quarrel with Esau, his marriages to Leah and Rachel, his journey back towards Canaan during which he is intercepted by an angel and renamed Israel, followed by his travels to Emmor’s house, then to Bethel, then Chaphratha and Ephratha (Bethlehem), and to his father, Isaac.263 The tale continues as a series of apparently perpetual migrations, but perhaps even more striking is the number of Wgures at every point in the story—the age of each player in years and months, often combined with relative dates. For example, Jacob is said to have arrived in Egypt in the third year of the famine there, when his relatives (all named) were their respective ages (most, but not all, in years and months). The account then continues to Joseph’s stay in Egypt, which it notes as being of thirty-nine years’ duration. This is set in the grand chronological context of the history of the area, there being 3,624 years from the time of Adam until Joseph’s relatives came to Egypt and 1,360 years from the Xood until Jacob came to that region. It is ironic that, in spite of the proliferation of Wgures and calculations, through this kind of comparison, involving two diVerent Wxed chronological points, Demetrius leaves the reader signiWcantly more confused about the order of events than before. A further fragment of Demetrius’ work charts the genealogy of Moses’ wife, Sephora, stating with pleasure, satisfaction, and no doubt some relief that ‘the generations are in

262 FGrH 688 f 1b ¼ Diodorus 2.1–28.

263 FGrH 722 f 1 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.21.1–20.


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accord’,264 since he can then go on to list the ancestors of Moses from Abraham onwards. The fragments of Demetrius’ history give us a remarkable range of methods for conWguring, mapping out, and measuring time, albeit in the most confusing manner. Indeed, he has sometimes been deemed more of a chronographer than a historian,265 and his focus is clearly on solving the chronological problems of the biblical stories,266 rather than on the creation of a glorious and heroic past for Judaea, which characterizes the work of later Hellenistic Jewish historians such as Artapanus. It appears that Demetrius was not trying to place Judaea or its history within a broader narrative or within a set of comparative chronological schemes, but to solve some of its internal inconsistencies presumably for an educated, Greek-speaking, Jewish readership. The introspective nature of his work is interestingly reXected in his articulation of time. Some of the temporal systems he uses are local—the Egyptian famine, like the Peloponnesian War for Thucydides, provides its own internal time frame; some make use of the great Wxed markers of the history of the region, such as the Xood and the exodus;267 some use an even broader time frame including elements of the creation story; and alongside these huge chronological sweeps stands the time frame of the individual human life.268 It seems to make as much sense to map out time by successive generations or to date an event to a particular point in the life of an individual as to the third year of a major famine. But, whatever the scale, the time is not Panhellenic or universal, but Jewish throughout. But for the most stunning example of a non-Greek land which was notorious for its chronographical interests, we should turn to Egypt. We have already noted the marvellous staircase by the tomb of Osymandeas, and, more prosaically, the general predilection for accurate record-keeping in Egypt.269 The Egyptian fascination with recording and measuring time was 264 FGrH 722 f 2 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.29.2: ŒÆd a ªa b ıøE. 265 See Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors, 52. 266 But see Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 113, for the view that Demetrius’ interest in chronology is part of a broader concern for solving puzzles and inconsistencies in Genesis and Exodus. The fact remains that many of these problems were of a chronological nature, such as how Jacob could father twelve children in seven years, for which Demetrius ingeniously provides a workable timetable (FGrH 722 f 1). 267 For other examples of the Xood used as a chronological marker, see FGrH 724 f 1 and 728 f 1; for the dating of the exodus as a controversial matter, 728 f 2. 268 Of course, the lives of some individuals were more obviously resonant than others. The importance of the individual life in conceptualizing or measuring the time of history is reminiscent of Herodotus’ Solon, with whom this book started. 269 An interesting parallel is the corselet, with 360 threads, dedicated by King Amasis at the temple of Athene in Lindos—clearly referring to the number of days in a year (minus the intercalary ones) and beautifully encapsulating the Egyptian preoccupation with time through the choice of gift. See FGrH 532, and discussion in ch. 6.

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a spectacular aspect of their culture, which attracted much admiration and comment. Herodotus noted that the Egyptians were always keeping calculations and writing down the years.270 Indeed he attributes to the Egyptians the invention of the year and its twelve-part division, based on their observation of the stars (2.4.1). Strabo too made Egypt into the source of chronographic wisdom for the Greeks, saying that the priests of Heliopolis could tell the fractions of day and night which Wlled out the time of the true year.271 It was only ‘recently’ that the Greeks gained access to this wisdom, which was clearly superior to their system of intercalary months.272 One of the reasons for the development of Egyptian excellence in matters chronographic was the extreme longevity of the land and its people. The Egyptians were widely claimed to be the oldest race on earth, and the secondcentury ad author Asclepiades wrote a history of them which covered more than 30,000 years.273 Egyptian history was thought to go back to the times of the gods—Diodorus Siculus states that it is the only land in the inhabited world where many of the Wrst cities were founded by gods.274 He and other writers would try to establish a chronology for Egypt which could incorporate this divine period as well as being anchored to more conventional markers and chronological systems from the Greek historiographical tradition. He records (1.44.1) the mythical claim of some that gods and heroes ruled Egypt for 18,000 years, followed by 5,000 years of mortal rule down to the eightieth Olympiad and he notes (1.26.1) the claim of the priests that there were 23,000 years from the reign of Helios to the crossing of Alexander to Asia.275 270 Herodotus 2.145.3: IªæÆ Ø a Æ. Indeed it is Egyptian priests’ knowledge of the distant past which qualiWes them to be described as logioi. According to P. Vannicelli, ‘Herodotus’ Egypt and the Foundations of Universal History’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford, 2001), 211–40 at 214, deciding who was logios outside the world of the Greek polis was one of Herodotus’ concerns; that is, determining the location of alien wisdom. 271 Heliopolis was clearly a centre of chronographic excellence. Herodotus (2.3.1) notes that its inhabitants were the greatest chroniclers of the Egyptians. 272 Strabo 17.1.29. Strabo later (17.1.46) gives some detail on the Egyptian system of solar, rather than lunar, reckoning, with the intercalation of an extra day every so often, the equivalent of our leap year. Herodotus 2.4.1 also notes the superiority of Egyptian over Greek calendric wisdom. 273 See FGrH 614 f 1 for some of those who propounded this view contra Herodotus. For Asclepiades, see FGrH 624 t 1. 274 1.12.6. The divine history of Egypt was noted too by Herodotus, who claimed a place for Heracles among the Egyptians when, 17,000 years before Amasis, the eight gods became twelve (2.43.4). He records (2.145.2) that the Egyptians believed that Heracles was part of a second phase of gods and that even between Dionysus and Amasis was a span of 15,000 years. 275 Elsewhere (1.23.1), he puts the length of time between Osiris and Isis and the reign of Alexander at more than 10,000 years, but notes that some give the Wgure as 23,000. Again, Alexander the Great makes an appropriate marker against which to align the divine history of Egypt.


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He marvels at the age of the pyramids (1.63.5), some over three thousand years old, and indeed the Wgures involved in Egyptian history are strikingly large. For Diodorus, they were not only too high, they were unbelievable. His explanation is that at Wrst they reckoned the year by a lunar cycle with the result that a ‘year’ was really only thirty days; and that later they counted each season—spring, summer, and winter—as a ‘year’, a period of four months.276 A further problem lay in the fact that, in spite of the Egyptians’ best eVorts to keep accurate and full records, such things were vulnerable to destruction. As Dio Chrysostom states, the Egyptians wrote their history in sacred books and on stelae, but the stelae were destroyed and the inscriptions erased.277 Chaeremon of Alexandria records a more dramatic tale of how the Nile Xooded and destroyed all the Egyptian astronomical books, so that the Egyptians were obliged to consult the Chaldaeans to Wnd out the eclipses and re-establish their grip on time and its management. The Chaldaeans were reluctant to share their knowledge and deliberately ‘changed the times’ ( æ ı ººÆÆ). So the Egyptians in despair established their own scholars and discovered and wrote the truth on baked bricks so that they could not be destroyed by Wre or Xood.278 The value of ‘knowing time’ was clearly high. Bearing in mind this association of Egypt with chronological expertise, it is no surprise to Wnd a wide and sophisticated range of temporal systems in play in the texts concerning Egypt, even when these are the products of Greek pens. The two voices are not, in any case, dissociable, as I have mentioned before, since the existence of detailed and accurate sources would have facilitated as well as encouraged the incorporation of chronological features into the Greek accounts. Some standard elements of Greek chronography appear. The Wrstcentury ad author Apion of Oasis and Alexandria was said by Josephus to be in accord with previous writers in placing the exodus under Moses in the Wrst year of the seventh Olympiad, the year when the Phoenicians founded Carthage.279 The same author, clearly interested in the relationship between Egyptian and Greek culture, notes that the Egyptians also call Aphrodite 276 Diodorus Siculus 1.26.3–5. See also FGrH 665 f 170 ¼ Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum 22B, commenting that, if Eudoxus is right, the Egyptians call a month a year, with the result that the counting up (IÆæŁØ) of these years is not remarkable. A strange reference in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei (12.11) to Leon of Pella (c.300 bc) on Alexander, which relates various events chronologically to his lifetime, comments that the numbers work out in Egyptian accounts much larger than when the Greeks calculate them, since ‘the Egyptians have short years’ (FGrH 659 f 3). 277 Dio Chrysostom, Oration 11.38. 278 FGrH 618 f 7. Berossus of Babylon relates that, when the great Xood was foretold, the Babylonians were advised to preserve the writings in the city of Heliou Sispari, before embarking on a boat with their relatives and friends, so that they could come back and collect them when the waters receded (FGrH 680 f 4b). 279 FGrH 616 f 4 ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 2.15.

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Athor, and have given this name to the third month of the year.280 We might argue for the same kind of assimilation, this time on a grander chronological scale, with Josephus’ comment that, if one added up all the years enumerated by Manetho, one would discover that the Jews left Egypt 393 years before Danaus went to Argos, which contradicted the commonly held view that Danaus was the most ancient of men, but it seems fairly clear that Josephus is the force behind wishing to line up two diVerent chronological worlds here. But by far the most common conWguration of time in the accounts of Egypt is that of the king list. Herodotus notes that after the Wrst Egyptian king, Min, one could name 330 kings, including eighteen Ethiopian ones and one woman, Nitocris (2.100.2). The Egyptian records included the king list from Thebes, which Eratosthenes was said to have taken from the sacred records at Diospolis and translated into Greek.281 Herodotus wrote of the king lists in terms of generations (2.142.1), and it is easy to see how this conWguration would lend itself to such calibration. The standard format for an Egyptian king list is most clear to see from the fragments of Manetho of Sebennytos. This Egyptian historian and priest (probably of Ra at Heliopolis) broke new ground by organizing his history of Egypt according to dynasties. Josephus describes Manetho’s account of the Hyksos dynasty, which lasted 511 years before their expulsion from Egypt, as having given the length of each reign.282 He says that he consulted it for ‘the chronological order’ ( H æ ø Ø), going on to cite the series of reigns from Tethnocis onwards in terms of years and months.283 Eusebius and Syncellus oVer a picture of Manetho’s king list which is rather hard to interpret, but it seems that it listed monarchs, lengths of reign, lengths of dynasties, and noteworthy events. This includes both human and divine dynasties, as noted before, in an almost entirely formulaic way, relating these also to the age of the cosmos. The last fragment to appear under Manetho’s name in Jacoby’s corpus is an extensive king list stretching from Hephaestus to the capture of Egypt by Cambyses. It concludes with the note that, in the 4,986th year of time, the dynasty of the Egyptians which reached from the 2,776th year of the cosmos in 10 dynasties and 86 kings and covered 2,211 years, was captured by Cambyses, in the 86th year of Amasis’ reign.284 In Brown’s view, ‘Manetho provided a chronology that might well have become a universal standard of reference, far better than the priestesses of Hera, the archons of Athens or the Olympic Games,’285 but it was the Aegyptiaca of Hecataeus of Abdera rather than that of Manetho which continued to be read. 280 282 283 284 285

FGrH 616 f 20. 281 FGrH 610 f 1 and f 2. FGrH 609 f 8 ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.74–92. FGrH 609 f 9 ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.93–105. FGrH 609 f 28. Brown, ‘The Greek Sense of Time in History’, 268.


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The king list, then, oVers a continuous account, in so far as each reign is contiguous with the next and by adding up the consecutive lengths of reigns, one can calculate the entire chronological span of the series of dynasties. However, it is a span of time which is anchored to the ‘natural’ time of the cosmos, and shaped not only by the transition of power from one individual to another, but also by great events which act as chronological punctuation marks. Apion of Oasis showed that the great events could be marvels, in keeping with the miraculous nature of the land itself. Aelian cites him for the point that, in the reign of Athotis a two-headed crane appeared and Egypt Xourished; while in the reign of Hyllus, a four-headed bird was seen and the Nile Xooded as never before.286 Other wonders marked out Egyptian time. Every Wve thousand years the phoenix Xew to India, made a nest, and was burned up, but soon afterwards another was born on an altar in Heliopolis—a striking, though one might argue fairly unhelpful, mapping out of time on the grandest scale.287 This section started with an example of how the calibration of time could be a marvel in its own right. Nowhere was this more vividly illustrated than in the dynamic form of the procession which took place in Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus, related by Callixenus of Rhodes in the mid-second century bc, and cited by Athenaeus.288 The scene is set for a temporally striking display, with the note that the temperate nature of Egypt enabled it to defy the constraints of the seasons in its produce, including astonishing Xowers at this winter procession. The procession itself started in the morning and was thus led by the group of the morning star. Then followed others, with the evening star bringing up the rear. There were victories and incense bearers and a man called ‘the year’ (n æªæ ¯ØÆı ),289 a woman called Penteteris (a period of Wve years), accompanied by four seasons carrying appropriate fruits, and images of empire with representatives of a panoply of diVerent exotic lands. Thus both space and, here more interestingly, time were ordered, lined up, and made to process in honour of the ruler in exotic fashion, as beWtted the ‘alien’ context. The purpose of this chapter has been to look at the chronological systems and structuring devices by which the past was conWgured in accounts of places other than the Greek polis. This may highlight more clearly whether the writers and composers of Greek city histories had particular and distinctive 286 FGrH 616 f 13. 287 FGrH 661 f 4. 288 See FGrH 627 f 2 ¼ Athenaeus 5.25–35. 289 See E. E. Rice, The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Oxford, 1983), 50, for the point that eniautos rather than etos signiWed any twelve-month span made up by the accompanying horai, rather than a calendar year.

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strategies in this regard, which in turn might be revealing of the relationship between the polis and the telling of its past. The writers of universal or Panhellenic accounts clearly had a range of chronological options which enabled them to create narratives which meaningfully spanned many diVerent places. Their strategies tended to diVer between the mythical period and historical time, but both were important to the account, and we shall need to consider whether the same distinctions and inclusions apply in more local histories. The earlier periods tend to be punctuated by large-scale Panhellenic events such as the Trojan War or the return of the Heraclidae; later periods are articulated either by the universal Olympiadic system or by a combination of this with the magistracies of signiWcant places such as Athens and Rome. Again, we shall need to see whether in the local histories such universal chronological systems, or at least common chronological currencies, are used, or whether time is marked out for the past of individual poleis in terms which are meaningful at only a local level, making the account less comprehensible to a wider audience but perhaps more signiWcant to the inhabitants of the polis in question. A Wnal consideration which we may use to cast into relief the nature of historical time in the Greek polis is that of the historiography of the non-Greek world and, as we have seen, although the concern with time, especially in the case of places such as Egypt, rivals that of the more chronologically interested polis, the frames used are distinctively non-Greek, comprising relevant local punctuation marks such as the great Xood, or local king lists. With these questions in mind, let us turn to consider the extant fragments of local Greek historiography.

IV ‘City is history incarnate’:1 writing the past of the polis 1. FROM THE CITY OF BYZAS TO CONSTANTINOPLE ŒÆd Œ Æ ŒÆd æØÆŒø Ie B `Pª ı ˚ÆÆæ ÆæÆ ØººıŁ ø KØÆı H . . . ˚ø Æ E › ˚ø Æ ı ÆE . . . c Æ I Ø . . . . ºŒ b E ‹ø K IæB ªª ŒÆd e ø IøŒŁ; KŒ H IæÆø Ø H ŒÆd ıªªæÆø c ŁØ ØıØ. When three hundred and sixty-two years had passed since the monarchy of Augustus Caesar, Constantine the son of Constantius . . . established the new Rome . . . I must tell how it [sc. Constantinople] came into existence right from the start and by whom it was founded, forming a judgement of my subject from the ancient poets and historians.2

The sixth-century ad account by Hesychius Illustris of Miletus of the foundation of Constantinople might seem an unlikely starting point for exploring a historical and literary phenomenon, for which the majority of our evidence relates to the fourth century bc and the Hellenistic period. However, the ‘potted’ city history, which follows the introductory comments above, neatly encompasses very many of the elements which occur in a more disparate form throughout the fragmentary remains of earlier Greek local historiography. The declared use of poetic and historiographical sources (§2),3 the initial foundation expedition undertaken by the Argives on the advice of an oracle (§3),4 the entry of the colonists into an already mythical landscape, at the 1 The quote is from Y.-F. Tuan, ‘Space, Time, Place: A Humanistic Frame’, in T. Carlstein, D. Parkes, and N. Thrift (eds.), Timing Space and Spacing Time I: Making Sense of Time (London, 1978), 7–16 at 15. 2 FGrH 390 f 1. 3 On the combination and the blurred boundary between poetic and historiographical media for the exposition of the past, see discussion in ch. 6. 4 The Pythian oracle concerned, promising wealth to those who settle in a particular place, is given in verse. Oracles are a common element in Herodotean stories of colonization. At Herodotus 4.155, Battus is told by the Pythia, unprompted, to found a city in Libya and misunderstands this unsolicited instruction; at 4.156 the Therans themselves seek clariWcation and set out on the initially ill-fated, but Wnally successful, colonizing expedition. At the opposite end of the spectrum

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conXuence of the rivers Cydarus and Barbyse where they Xowed into the sea by the altar of the nymph called Semestre (§3)—all are common features of the local histories of the Greek poleis. The existence of an alternative account (§5) involving the Megarians under the leadership of Byzas, after whom they named the city, raises the importance not only of named founder Wgures,5 but also of etymological explanations in local history, linking place names with particular events and people in the past. Furthermore, etymological accounts themselves often took various forms—others, we are told, explained the name of the city of Byzantium not through the leader of the Megarians, but through the story of the nymph, Semestre, whose son was called Byzas (§5).6 Hesychius, following those who wish for a trustworthy account (ØŁÆc c ƒ æÆ) interestingly rejects all of these versions in favour of a story involving Io, the daughter of Inachus the Argive king, in an interesting combination of the local and the Panhellenic. This version relates the wellknown tale of how Io, raped by Zeus, turns into a cow, and is driven forth by a jealous Hera. In this version, her daughter, Ceroessa, having been brought up by the nymph, Semestre, bears a son to Poseidon, namely Byzas (§§6–9). The exploits of Byzas lead him through a landscape which is tied to the Trojan tale—he reaches the Bosporan headland named Chrysopolis after Chryses, the son of Chryseis and Agamemnon, who has Xed there from Clytemnestra after the death of his father, and whose burial the name commemorates for the locals.7 There Byzas founds his city with the help of Poseidon and Apollo, and establishes a panoply of cults, including not only gods, but also heroes.8 of enthusiasm, at 5.42–3, Dorieus of Sparta sets oV to found a city in Libya without consulting the Pythian oracle and is driven out. Having learned his lesson, he consults Delphi before securing the winning formula, namely to found a colony in Sicily instead. For an interesting analysis of the narrative pattern whereby foundations are channelled through Delphi, especially where they follow a murder, thereby playing on the identity of Apollo the puriWer and Apollo the colonizer, see C. Dougherty, ‘It’s Murder to Found a Colony’, in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.), Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics (Oxford, 1998), 178–98. 5 For the named individual as founder of a city, see the famous example of Battus who led the expedition to found Cyrene (Herodotus 4.150–8). M. Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past: Colonial Traditions and the Writing of History. The case of Cyrene’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford, 2001), 116–37, suggests that the ritual context surrounding the hero cult of Battus acted as a context for the continued circulation and transmission of the story at a local level (121). For the complexities of the tradition surrounding the foundation of Cyrene, see R. Osborne, Greece in the Making 1200–479 bc (London and New York, 1996), 8–17. Battus’ tomb is still pointed out to visitors to Cyrene. 6 See Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 185, for the importance of autochthonous Wgures in local foundation myths: ‘Byzas spielt die Rolle des in muttersla¨ndischen Œ Ø hau¨Wgen Autochthonen.’ 7 It is worth noting the local element here (§11: E KªøæØ) set alongside the much broader context of the Trojan story. 8 Here there are yet more Trojan echoes. Not only do major divinities such as Hecate and Rhea receive cults, but so too are altars set up to Ajax and Achilles (§16).

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The city founded by Byzas comes under successive attack, not least from Scythians led by Strombus, joined by the leaders of Greece, the Rhodians, and Dineus of the neighbouring city, Chalcedon, who had come there as a colonist from Megara ‘nineteen years before the rule of Byzas’ (§20).9 Not only does this provide a relative chronology linking the histories of the two cities, but it also gives rise to another set of place name etymologies, this time for Chalcedon, which was named either after the river, or after the city of Chalcis in Euboea from which colonists were sent, or after the son of the seer, Chalcas, ‘who was born after the Trojan War’ (§21).10 Thus we Wnd yet another thread linking this local history to a well-known and universally understood chronological marker. The linked histories of Byzas and Chalcedon continue with a shift of policy on Dineus’ part from attack to alliance, and ‘a little later’ (ØŒæHØ ª c o æ) he takes control of Byzantium ‘at the time when races of monsters were attacking the city’ (§23). The transition of power from Dineus to Leon marks a new stage in the chronological framework of the city’s history, since it was under his rule that Philip of Macedon besieged it, only to be defeated by the Byzantines (§§26–7). In this city history, structured at this stage by the apparently endless stream of visitors, the next to call is Chares the Athenian. His wife falls ill and dies, but Hesychius cites the inscribed verse epitaph which was set up for her, which, as he states, had been preserved to his own day, forming a neat proof of historical veracity and a link between past and present.11 The civilizing of the site chosen by Byzas is completed by Timesius, an Argive who synoecized the city of Ephesiate with Byzantium and, as strategos of the whole, developed it greatly, establishing laws for everyday transactions and ‘modes of behaviour which had the polis in mind and were gentle, through which he made the citizens thoughtful for the town and humane’ (§32).12 This process naturally involves piety to the gods—Timesius 9 ŒÆ ŒÆØ KÆ æŁ Ø B ´ Æ ÆP ÆæÆ. 10 o æ F æøØŒF ºı ªı. 11 FGrH 390 f 1 §29: l Ø Øa H KªªªæÆø ø æØ H ŒÆŁ A ØÆØ ÆØ æ ø. Supporting a historical narrative by physical remains, which guarantee the truth of the tale and thereby the authority of the historian is, of course, a technique used extensively by Herodotus. See 1.24 for the small bronze Wgure of a man on a dolphin in the temple at Taenarum, which veriWes the tale of Arion, or 1.50 for the diminished remains of the golden lion dedicated by Croesus to appease the Delphic god, which ‘lies today in the Corinthian treasury’, along with a golden mixing bowl ‘which now stands in the treasury of the Clazomenians’, a silver one ‘which is in the corner of the ante-chapel’ (1.51), and a golden shield and spear ‘which were still at Thebes in my own day, in the temple of Ismenian Apollo’ (1.52). Thus Herodotus, in a very Pausanian mode, evokes a partially-ruined landscape made up of the guarantors of his narrative. 12 The language here is very suggestive: Ł ŒÆŁØ a ºØ ØŒ ŒÆd læÆ; Ø z I ı ŒÆd ØºÆŁæı f º Æ IØ. The terminology of political life and civilization brought to bear on barbarism with positive eVect is utterly unambiguous.

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paid attention not only to extending but also to restoring the religious life of the city (§33), a context which oVers yet another opportunity to embed the narrative in a wider framework, since one of his restorations was of a temple on the Pontic coast ‘which Jason had once dedicated to the twelve gods’ (§33).13 From this point, Hesychius adopts a diVerent strategy, no longer building up the history of Byzantium through time, but rather taking a broad brushstroke approach to the political systems employed by the city across the ages: mostly a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, with occasional tyrannies (§35), until the Roman empire replaced dynastic rules with governors and enslaved the Greek peoples. But the town was embellished under Severus’ reign (§36),14 with a huge bath building by the altar of Zeus Hippios or the so-called grove of Heracles, where they say Zeuxippus tamed the mares of Diomedes, giving the name its place. Thus we are suddenly taken back to the world of mythical aetiologies, with a striking bridge across the span of the city’s history which has intervened between the foundation and the Severan period. And, with this ring-composition unifying its history, the city moves oV into new phases, renamed ‘Antonia’ by Severus’ son, Antoninus (§38) and then refounded altogether by Constantine. The entire life of Byzas’ city is thus neatly encapsulated within a relatively small number of chapters, which oVer a concise but resonant piece of local historiography. It is worth recalling some of the most striking features which, as we shall see, also characterize local historiography from the period on which this book focuses, namely the fourth century bc and the Hellenistic period, where our evidence is more scattered and fragmentary. The declared use of poetic and historiographical sources; the existence of alternative foundation accounts; the importance of named founder Wgures, and of etymological explanations in local history, linking place names with particular events and people in the past; the crucial move to tie the local into a wider framework, here exempliWed by references to the myth of Io, to events at Troy (both for personalities and as a chronological marker), to the stories of the House of Atreus, of Jason, and of the mares of Diomedes. The shift in register from the vague relativism of the mythical period to the chronological speciWcity of the late fourth century bc onwards15 reXects a phenomenon which 13 n (ø b E ŒÆ ŁE ŒÆŁØæø: places the event in the distant and nonspeciWc past, by stark contrast with the increasingly careful chronological framework which the history of this city gains over time. 14 §36: #æı ÆØºÆ . The use of regal time is a common feature of local historiography, but it is revealing of the location of power that this is no local king, but the Roman emperor. 15 See Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 187, however, for the rejection of any suggestion that Hesychius used a city history in which a list of strategoi delivered ‘the chronological framework’ (‘das chronologische Geru¨st’).

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we have already observed with the universal historians, namely the periodization of history in terms of diVerent temporal systems and this is a feature which we shall observe in the local historians too. We might also note the citation of physical evidence in the form of a verse inscription to back up the tale of Chares’ wife, and the incorporation of a civilizing Wgure, Timesius, associated with the advent of polis life and the development of institutions. The encapsulation of the history of a polis, in which time is articulated according to a life cycle of foundation, followed by key moments of development, change, even regression, leads us into the second half of this book. So far I have explored various aspects of temporal patterning, both conceptual and practical, both annual and linear. I have viewed these from the perspective of the scholarly and competitive environment of the chronographers, who made the problem of structuring time, especially linear or historical time, into the subject of their study. I have also considered how the chronological articulation of historical time was dealt with by a variety of authors, primarily writing about aVairs which spanned beyond the boundaries of the individual city, whether it be in the creation of Panhellenic or even universal narratives, or in writing about the non-Greek world altogether. I hope that it has already emerged that time is ‘made’ in these diVerent contexts, rather than simply being a given, and that the choices about its structuring and expression therefore say something about the aspirations, aYliations, self-perception of those who make it, of those whom they describe, and of the audiences and readers of their compositions. Time as not only a constructed, but also a negotiated, aspect of conceptualizing and formulating the past and present is an important undercurrent in this picture. It seems to me that we have an opportunity when considering the construction of the past in, for, or about a relatively restricted community, such as a polis, to observe the dynamics of this negotiation with particular resonance and intensity. Therefore, in the second half of this book, I shall explore the phenomenon of city history, and with a special focus on the temporal patterns and expressions used to articulate this ‘community past’.16 Given the underlying argument of the Wrst chapter, that historiography and, in particular, the temporal patterning of the past, were of concern to more than a scholarly audience, looking at the formulation of history within a civic context should prove particularly fruitful. Both constructing time and creating pasts have been seen as modes of self-expression for communities, so 16 The notion of ‘local historiography’ is unfortunately vague, potentially referring to both histories written about regions and those concerning individual poleis. I shall use it to refer primarily to city histories, but with the proviso that each polis assumed a certain amount of non-city territory, the chora, and furthermore respecting Jacoby’s inclusion of both city histories proper and histories of Greek peoples, although the former were clearly more numerous.

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looking at their intersection has the potential to be particularly illuminating. Throughout these last three chapters I shall present material and arguments which illustrate the way in which the construction of the past should be read as a social activity, a reXection of and ingredient in the shared views of the polis, which contributed towards its sense of identity. It is worth noting, however, from the start that the model of polis history being presented to its own polis audience, while an important element in the discussion, does not accommodate all the evidence, and that we need to bear in mind wider, politically inXuential, audiences for the reception of local historiography. Of particular interest will be whether the chronological world of the local historians was signiWcantly diVerent from that of those undertaking to write about the past of many poleis, or indeed of parts of the world which were not dominated by poleis at all. One point of methodological diYculty is, of course, that some of the ‘universal’ authors considered in the last chapter used local history as a prime source, and it is diYcult to say whether the conceptual frameworks therein belonged to the original author or to the later universal writer. In other words, one could at times be reading either the constituent authors of Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker or a writer such as Diodorus or Strabo. It would be hard to know whether one should attribute one’s observations on the chronological frameworks to the former or the latter.17 Furthermore, the structure of Jacoby’s collection of fragments can obscure rather than illuminate the true extent and nature of diVerent types of historiography—local, specialized, mythographic, and so on. As Fowler has noted, Jacoby’s insistence on placing authors in the Weld which he considered they had most contributed to in terms of the evolution of genres18 leads to 17 On precisely this problem, see G. Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories: Self-deWnition through History Writing’, in K. Demoen (ed.), The Greek City from Antiquity to the Present: Historical Reality, Ideological Construction, Literary Representation [Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Gent, 19–20 mei 1999] (Leuven, 2001), 3–25 at 10 and n. 18, where he discusses the use of ‘great’ historiography as a source for ‘anonymous’ traces of the local writings and the problems inherent therein. ‘The rather frequent opportunities which ‘‘great’’ historiography seems to oVer for such a retrieval operation, illustrate one of the complexities inherent in the distinction between ‘‘local’’ and ‘‘general’’ history in Greek historiography’. He speaks of ‘the diYculties of making impermeable genre deWnitions’ and the problem of ‘the heuristic tools that can assist us in identifying local traditions’. See also on the same methodological problems, D. Ambaglio, ‘Per il reperimento di materiali di storia locale greca: Diodoro, Strabone e Pausania’, in D. Ambaglio (ed.), #ıªªæÆ: Materiali e appunti per lo studio della storia e della letteratura antica (Como, 1998), 93–109. ¨ ber 18 This is, of course, according to the principles laid out in his programmatic article, ‘U die Entwicklung der griechischen Historiographie und den Plan einer neuen Sammlung der griechischen Historikerfragmente’, Klio 9 (1909), 80–123, whereby the fragments would be organized in such a way as to reXect the development of the various prose genres, as though in a literary genealogy. See L. Porciani, ‘Il problema della storia locale’, in C. Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti dell’opera di Felix Jacoby (Pisa, 2006), 173–84 at 183, for an excellent exposition of how ‘le concezioni evoluzionistiche dei fenomeni culturali’, which were current in the early twentieth century, inXuenced Jacoby’s vision.

The history of local historiography

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books of predominantly mythographical content being placed among the local historians. For the student of early mythography this is clearly problematic,19 although it gives a strong sense of the importance of the spatium mythicum in the telling of local history.20 With such limitations as these in mind, we can nevertheless Wnd in the fragments of the Greek city histories a treasure trove of insights into the subject matter and narrative frameworks used by writers who told the past of the various poleis.

2. TRAC ING T H E H I STORY O F LOC AL H I STORIOG RA PHY: RESURRECTING JACOBY’S AT TH I S It is striking that so little scholarly attention has been paid to the vast number of works of local history which have survived in fragments (mostly citations by later excerptors) by contrast with that devoted to the extant works of a tiny number of ‘great’ historians.21 Gabba states the discrepancy bluntly: ‘Thucydides and Polybius, precisely because their historical method is close to our own, are regarded as paradigms against which to judge ancient historical writing—quite wrongly. In fact they are untypical and exceptional.’22 The point echoes that made by Wiseman too with regard to Thucydides and the unusual nature of his quest for truth and accuracy.23 The very absence of complete local histories from the body of texts to survive from antiquity might in itself be revealing of the real or perceived value or quality of local 19 Hence the decision of R. L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography. Volume I: Text and Introduction (Oxford, 2000) to gather together material in response to the question, ‘what is the evidence in early prose for the state of this myth’ (p. xxx), thereby sacriWcing any sense of integrity of the work of each author. 20 The same point might be made about the works on the festival calendar, discussed in ch. 2, which are included among the local histories. They thereby gain a context as part of the life of the city, but lose in terms of chronographic interest. 21 By ‘great’ I mean both those who wrote about intra-polis aVairs, such as Thucydides, and those who turned their attention to the even larger stage covered by universal history. The term ¨ ber die Entwicklung der griechischen ‘great’ is nebulous, but the notion derives from Jacoby, ‘U Historiographie’, and it attempts to deWne a group of writings as narrative political histories taking a larger view of the Greek world as a whole, as opposed to ethnography, chronicles, and local history. 22 E. Gabba, ‘True and False History in Classical Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies 71 (1981), 50–62 at 50. But for the view that Polybius might, in fact, display some less Thucydidean, more Herodotean, characteristics, see K. Clarke, ‘Polybius and the Nature of Late Hellenistic Historiography’, in J. Santos Yanguas and E. Torregaray Pagola (eds.), Polibio y la Penıńsula Ibe´rica: Revisiones de Historia Antigua IV (Vitoria Gasteiz, 2003), 69–87. 23 See T. P. Wiseman, ‘Unhistorical Thinking’, in Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Literature (Leicester, 1979), 41–53 at 41: ‘But Thucydides was unique.’

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works. The processes of canon formation and the accident of survival are, however, too complex to allow for crude conclusions to be drawn.24 As Gabba notes, the ‘great’ historians who formed part of the canon were chosen largely on the basis of which historians, lined up in sequence, would oVer complete chronological coverage, rather than according to any assessment of quality.25 Schepens, who has done more than almost anyone to resurrect the study of local Greek historiography decades after Jacoby put it seriously on the map with his Atthis,26 states: ‘In spite of the intense interest which classical scholars take in studying both the Greek polis and the development of Greek historiography, the questions just asked about the relevance and meaning of city histories to the historical consciousness of the ancient Greeks have failed to attract as much attention as they deserve.’27 The fact that local histories, especially city histories, proliferated to an extraordinary degree28 demands some explanation as to why their study has been so neglected. Part of the preference for ‘great’ over local historiography derives from ancient judgements. Schepens notes the impetus among Greek historians to note and record enterprises which were taken on communally (ŒØfiB) above those achieved by individual poleis.29 He identiWes very eVectively the context for the production and reception of local historiography as a factor in understanding its place within the political framework. ‘It is against this background of the undisputed priority accorded in ancient historiographical thought and practice to the narration of ŒØÆd æØ, that we 24 I am grateful to Simon Price for drawing the complicating factor of canon formation to my attention in conversation about the survival of historical fragments. See L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford, 1968). For the importance of the rhapsodic tradition in the preservation of texts, see J. Wyrick, The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature 49 (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 205–20. 25 See Gabba, ‘True and False History’, 50. One might argue, though, that the notion of ‘coverage’ was already built in to the sense of historia perpetua. See H. I. Marrou, Histoire de l’e´ducation dans l’Antiquite´ (6th edn., Paris, 1965), 245, for the detail that ‘ces listes [sc. de grands hommes] Wnirent par eˆtre codiWeés, sans doute dans les milieux universitaires de Pergame, peuteˆtre de`s le milieu du IIe sie`cle avant Je´sus-Christ’. 26 F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949). 27 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 3. 28 See D. P. Orsi, ‘La storiograWa locale’, in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, D. Lanza (eds.), Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica iii 1 (Rome, 1994), 149–79, who opens her account with the claim that ‘la storiograWa greca si conWgura principalemente come storiograWa locale’. 29 See Thucydides 1.3.4, where he disparages the eVorts made ‘city by city’ (ŒÆ a ºØ) compared with the great Panhellenic ventures, although, as Sarah Cottle has pointed out to me, this judgement is made in the very speciWc context of the Trojan expedition, and nothing comparable is said about, for example, the Persian wars. When he goes on to denigrate the power of individual cities, their weakness is attributed to tyrants rather than to the civic structure (1.17). It is worth, as Schepens does, comparing Polybius’ claims for the superior status of ‘general history’ ( ŒÆŁ ºı ƒ æÆ) over ‘particular history’ ( ŒÆŁ ŒÆ ƒ æÆ).


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have to consider the question to what extent the Greek historians also catered to the need of the poleis to look into the mirror of their own heritage and to make themselves known to the outside world as entities with a political and cultural tradition of their own.’30 But he is insistent that this ancient preference for ‘great’ historiography is nevertheless over-represented in modern accounts of the historiography of Greece at the expense of other genres, and that local historiography is not only under-represented, but also misrepresented, when it is mentioned at all, by the recurrent failure to note the existence of history written about any more than one single polis, that of Athens.31 One question to keep in mind throughout our consideration of the fragments of local history, then, is the degree to which this form of composition about the past was distinct from the relation of the ‘shared deeds’ of the Greeks (and barbarians); to what degree the local historians told their story as part of a larger whole; and how Wxed the enterprise was to the promotion of the image of each polis. Schepens’ important contribution to the rehabilitation of local historiography extends to explaining why it was fundamental to the inhabitants of the Greek poleis, in spite of the prevalence of other forms of historiography among both them and subsequent scholars. The crucial issues of context, and of what local historiography could oVer to the citizens of a polis, will be addressed in more detail (in chapter 6), but the case seems compelling that modern scholarship should once again pick up the trail left by Jacoby.32 Given the fact that, almost sixty years after its publication, Jacoby’s Atthis remains the one serious, systematic, and substantial attempt to approach even a fraction of the material which makes up the fragments of local Greek historiography, it is worth taking stock of its main contributions as a starting point.33 It should be noted that, at least in Jacoby’s view, the fact that he was 30 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 7. 31 Again, the reason is a combination of the ancient and the modern—the ancient prominence of the city naturally makes its history a source of widespread interest, but the modern reception of city history has also been partial, dominated as it is by a single, monumental work, that of Jacoby’s Atthis. 32 Fowler, Early Greek Mythography, preface, oVers fulsome appreciation for the fundamental status of Jacoby’s perceptions and research: ‘let it be said once and for all that Felix Jacoby is the undisputed master of Greek historiography of our time and all who work after him must labour merely in his shadow’. See also O. Murray, ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’, Classical Quarterly 22 (1972), 200–13 at 213, for his description of Jacoby’s Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker: ‘the greatest philological work of this century and the greatest work on Greek history for all time.’ 33 That is not to underestimate the importance of those who have indeed taken up Jacoby’s work in recent times, not only the continuators of the FGrH project, but also scholars who have written on various sections of the fragments, such as Schepens and Fowler. But the systematic continuation of work on the fragments is a separate challenge from the development of the

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dealing with only a fraction of the extant fragments of city histories did not matter, since all local historiography in Greece was of the same character as the Atthis.34 On the same premise and also because the Atthides have already received such a thorough treatment from Jacoby, I shall treat Atthidography alongside the local historiography of many other Greek poleis in this chapter, since in many respects it is indeed possible to take it as paradigmatic. Jacoby’s insistence that Atthidography was typical of the historiography of the Greek poleis was one of the reasons why Wilamowitz’s model of historiography emerging from the priestly chronicles, and particularly from a work attributed to the Anonymous Exegete, found so little favour with him, since it ‘isolated Athens and the Athenian local chronicle’,35 whereas Jacoby wanted to see Atthidography as part of a broader phenomenon of local historiography, and as motivated by factors which might be universally applicable. I shall argue later in this chapter that Athens does indeed give rise to some historiographical structures which exceed in complexity those found in the local histories of most Greek poleis, but it is not alone in this—Sicily too appears to be a ‘special case’—and it may be simply a lack of substantial evidence from other poleis which prevents us from seeing similar features in terms of extended narrative and chronological structure in the local historiography of a much broader range of poleis. Whether or not the Atthis can be allowed to stand as part for the whole in an explanation of the nature of local historiography, Jacoby’s study raises some crucial questions about the relationship between local and ‘great’ history, about the sources for the historiography of the Greek poleis, and about the Wgure of the local historian—all issues which are of clear relevance to more than just the historiography of Athens. The starting point for Jacoby’s treatment is, as is well known, not a positive proposition about the nature and development of Attic historiography, but rather a negative reaction to two aspects of Wilamowitz’s model. In Jacoby’s view, ‘the ‘‘Atthis’’, i.e. the history of Athens, as written by Athenians between c.350 and 263 bc, does not derive from an old and semi-oYcial chronicle kept by the priestly board of Exegetai, but was created in the lifetime of Thukydides conceptual issues raised by Jacoby’s work and ideas. For an interesting treatment of the circumstances in which Jacoby’s Atthis was produced, see M. Chambers, ‘The Genesis of Jacoby’s Atthis’, in E. Craik (ed.), Owls to Athens: Essays on Classical Culture Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover (Oxford, 1990), 381–90. Jacoby had initially intended to produce a work on ‘not only the Atthidographers proper . . . but also the writers on special subjects and special parts of Athenian history, the remains of the books on the Athenian kings, archons etc., about Athenian constitution and laws, religion and festivals, demes, topography and so on’ (383). The resulting manuscript was three times as long as Oxford University Press had agreed (1,800 instead of 600 pages) and Jacoby was forced to publish the introduction alone as the Atthis, and reserve the rest of his material for a separate commentary on the fragments. 34 Jacoby, Atthis, p. v. 35 Jacoby, Atthis, 67.


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by a learned man, the foreigner Hellanikos of Lesbos’.36 Furthermore, contrary to the ‘general view [which is] that local history (literary or pre-literary) is the earliest genre of historical writing and the primary source of great history, have become more and more convinced that the local chronicle is a rather late creation and (to put it quite crudely) an oVshoot from the main line of historiography, which, in its turn, is a successor to epic poetry and Ionian philosophy.’37 Schepens is perhaps right to see Jacoby’s work as too deeply absorbed in the task of disproving Wilamowitz’s preliterary chronicle.38 Nevertheless, Jacoby’s sustained attack on the notion that the local historiography of Athens and Attica developed from a priestly chronicle has the merit of challenging an otherwise easily assumed parallel between the development of historiography in the Greek poleis and that at Rome from the annales maximi.39 The relationship between the historians of Athens and the exegetai (and even the identity of the latter) was, according to Jacoby, obscure, and aspects of priestly colleges, such as the ordering of the calendar, were in Athens the task and responsibility of the polis and not only of a set of religious experts.40 The notion that ‘the Athenian calendar neither developed into a chronicle, nor was in itself an historical document in the sense in which the Roman became such by the added notes’,41 is one which we may dispute.42 But Jacoby’s 36 Jacoby, Atthis, p. v. 37 Ibid. pp. v–vi. Jacoby’s insistence that the local historiography of Greece had been fundamentally misunderstood, is brought out by his comment to Oxford University Press when trying to explain why his treatment of Athenian historiography had ended up being so much longer than he had anticipated, ‘My Introduction and the commentary rest on the conviction that the general opinion about the foundations of our historical tradition (not for Athens alone) are laid wrong, and I have to prove this fundamental assumption.’ See Chambers, ‘The Genesis of Jacoby’s Atthis’, 385. 38 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 14, describes Jacoby’s ‘all-consuming, almost obsessive dissension’. 39 It is, of course, not self-evident that the model of priestly record being transformed into literary history provides an accurate account for Rome either. See B. W. Frier, Libri Annales PontiWcum Maximorum: The Origins of the Annalistic Tradition (Ann Arbor, 1999; Wrst published 1979), who radically questions the notion that the pontiWcal chronicle not only preserved a record of the early Republic, but also shaped the annalistic literary tradition as Cicero seems to claim. 40 See K. von Fritz, ‘Atthidographers and Exegetae’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 71 (1940), 91–126, who explores the relationship between those two groups. He does not, however, ever really explain what he thinks an exegete is. At 93 he stresses the large number of fragments of Atthides concerning religious institutions, in support of the non-secular nature of the exegetical tradition underpinning the local historiography of Athens and Attica, but he himself goes on to ask whether the exegetai might have been involved in matters of secular as well as religious law at least in the fourth century. 41 Jacoby, Atthis, 66. 42 The basic point must be right, but see ch. 1 for the idea of the calendar as a form which oVered a telescopic vision of the past of the polis, with the key moments compressed into a version of history which could be celebrated as part of an annual cycle.

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proposition that the calendar and thereby the organization of time was a concern not for a priestly college, but for a magistrate, the archon, representing the polis as a whole, is of great importance in understanding his argument that Atthidography and, by extension, other forms of local historiography in Greece, were not the oVspring of a priestly chronicle, such records not existing in the same way as in Rome,43 and that some other origin and development must be sought within a civic, rather than a priestly, context. The idea that the historiography of the Greek poleis was not the product of a particular priestly record in a particular polis is by no means unconnected to Jacoby’s view of the distinction between antiquarianism and historiography, and his inclusion of the Atthides Wrmly in the latter category.44 The relationship is a vexed one and diYcult to deWne. We have already seen (in chapter 2) that there was a considerable overlap in content between scholarly works on subjects such as the festival calendar and works of local historiography. A similar observation may be made concerning the many ancient studies of politeiai, describing the history and functioning of the political regimes in cities—again material which could properly belong also to a historiographic context. Jacoby complained that Wilamowitz had overplayed the link between Atthides and treatises concerning the politeia of various cities,45 but with atypical inconsistency he repeatedly claimed that an Atthidographer, Androtion, was the main source for the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia.46 But, as de Ste. Croix has pointed out, such a theory was never proven, and in any case the Atthides do not seem to have been solely or primarily constitutional.47 It seems that Aristotle, or at least his school, should be seen as the primary researcher for the Athenaion Politeia, rather than relying on the work of the Atthidographers.48 43 Jacoby is rather dismissive of any link between local historiography and the temple records and lists of priests which do exist—he argues that Hellanicus’ Priestesses of Hera at Argos was used for structuring the history of all Hellas, not the history of Argos; similarly that the victors at the Carneia did not provide the framework for the local history of Sparta (59). 44 Jacoby, Atthis, 99. See also 108, where he notes the increase in antiquarian literature from Philochorus onwards, with an explosion of works on months and festivals. By the third century, these preoccupations had displaced the narrative entirely. 45 Jacoby, Atthis, 99. Jacoby is guilty of further inconsistency in including in IIIB, the local histories, references to the politeia works. 46 See Jacoby, Commentary IIIB vol. II (notes), 101: ‘The Atthis of A is the book which gave Aristotle the general frame-work, and which he used in the historical introduction for the details of Attic history and Attic institutions mostly, even if not alone.’ 47 G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Athenian Democratic Origins and other Essays (Oxford, 2004), 286. 48 As de Ste. Croix, Athenian Democratic Origins, 302, states: ‘Aristotle undertook the laborious and most unphilosophical task of investigating the records at Delphi and Olympia and Athens, and compiling lists of victors in athletic and artistic competitions’. See also G. Huxley, ‘Aristotle as Antiquary’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 14 (1973), 271–86, for the innovation brought by Aristotle in terms of systematic collection of evidence, be it poetic, epigraphic, or archaeological.


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The question of the relationship between Atthidography and the study of politeiai may seem unimportant, unduly preoccupied with irrelevant generic divisions and artiWcial classiWcations. But the issue is of interest in our attempt to deWne both the development and the nature of the local historiographical enterprise, and particularly its reception in, and relationship to, the functioning polis. Is the local historian simply gathering up curiosities after the event for an erudite readership, such as we might imagine for the politeia treatises, or playing a more active and integrated part in the ongoing image creation and self-promotion of the city? Should we in any case dismiss apparently ‘antiquarian’ works as disengaged from the reality of the polis?49 Momigliano has been the most avid proponent of the close link between the practice of local historiography and that of antiquarianism. Taking his cue from the ancient reception by writers such as Quintilian, who failed to include a single antiquarian or a single Atthidographer in his list of important historians, Momigliano claimed that ‘authors of local history, chronography, genealogy, erudite dissertations, ethnographical works, whatever their merits, did not rank as true historians’.50 He saw these forms of writing as marginal, lacking prominent political interest, and substituting it with detail on the past, curiosities, the systematic history of institutions, and an ‘undisguised local patriotism’.51 It is clear that Momigliano saw a marked distinction between the preoccupations of political history, by which he referred to the works of Thucydides and other ‘great’ historians, and those of local history, since he made plain that by the end of the Wfth century, ‘political history and learned research tended to be kept in two separate compartments’,52 whereas there was a close connection between antiquarianism and local history, to the detriment of the latter’s status. The idea that local historiography was ideologically as well as practically isolated from the mainstream of polis aVairs conforms with the view of Ephorus’ local history ( ¯ØæØ º ª), which he composed in addition to his more notable universal history, as being written ‘when, apart from the 49 Jacoby, Atthis, 109, observes that Atthidography ends with the Wnal loss of independence after the Chremonidean war. At 111 he makes plain the implications of this for the connection between historiography and political life. Just as Tacitus would so vividly explore for imperial Rome, ‘the old form did not long outlast the destruction of ‘‘freedom’’ ’. 50 A. Momigliano, ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, in The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley, 1990), 54–79 at 59. He repeatedly cites the passage in Plato, Hippias Maior 285d in support of the view that the subject matter of local historiography—genealogies of heroes and men, traditions on foundations of cities, and lists of eponymous magistrates of cities—was classiWed as ‘archaeology’ by Plato and thus, in Momigliano’s view, was a form of antiquarianism. 51 Momigliano, ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, 61. 52 A. Momigliano, ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’, in Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), 1–39 at 4.

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feeling of kinship which far-sighted politicians sought to instil into the Greekspeaking peoples, the tiny city-states in their geographically watertight compartments vied with one another for the triXing distinction of greater antiquity or more famous stock.’53 But it is not clear that this view of the Greek poleis as ‘geographically watertight’, and each Wghting its own individual and isolated corner, can be allowed to stand, and indeed one of the aims of this book is to challenge this old orthodoxy from the fragments of the local historians. The notion of isolated and watertight poleis has been convincingly laid to rest from a variety of angles by a range of scholars in recent years.54 The association of local historiography with the works of scholarly, rather parochial Wgures, detached not only from other poleis, but also from the mainstream life of their own polis, oVers a very diVerent reading from the one which I shall elaborate in this and the following chapters.55 More recently, a subtler approach has been adopted in analysing the nature of this relationship. Gabba does not deny Momigliano’s link between antiquarianism, even parochialism, and local historiography,56 but he sees this as part of the development of an entirely diVerent approach to historiography in the late Classical and Hellenistic periods, in which not truth and high politics, but entertainment for a broader audience was important.57 The presence or absence of ‘political’ strands is a question to which we shall return (in chapter 6). In this regard, Schepens has stressed the blurred boundary between the themes of local historiography and that of ‘antiquarian’ interest,58 pointing 53 G. L. Barber, The Historian Ephorus (Cambridge, 1935), 5. Barber later (16) acknowledges the possibility that our sources for Ephorus distort our view of his work in such a way as to overemphasize the parochial viewpoint: ‘his misplaced pride in an insigniWcant little town, or a vague interest in antiquities unaccompanied by a sense of their historical importance.’ 54 See, for example, P. Horden and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000) for the magniWcent and detailed exposition of a Mediterranean world which was made up of interconnected and interdependent microregions; or I. Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, in I. Malkin (ed.), Mediterranean Paradigms and Classical Antiquity (London, 2005), 56–74 at 57, for the idea that microregions were complemented by networks of syngeneia, colonization, and religious aYliations. Delphi in particular acted as a hub for colonial enterprises and networks of theoriai or sacred embassies, as well as for spectators and competitors in the games (61–2). 55 But see T. P. Wiseman, ‘Poetry and History’, in Clio’s Cosmetics, 143–53, for excellent observations on the aYnity of historiography, particularly that dealing with the mythical period, with the rariWed and erudite world of the Hellenistic poets. See also Murray, ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’, 203: ‘Herodotus was used extensively by Hellenistic poets.’ 56 Gabba, ‘True and False History in Classical Antiquity’, 54: ‘Antiquarian learning was understood as covering mythology, genealogical and heroic legends, geography and the material necessary for an understanding of Greek poetry.’ 57 Pace Thucydides 1.22.4 where he disparages those logographers who put pleasing their audience before the search for truth. 58 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 12 n. 23, includes in this category ‘stories regarding Œ Ø and ıªªØÆ, cults and ‘‘sacra’’ ’.


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out the diplomatic and political value that could be derived from using ancient traditions to support or justify contemporary claims. Furthermore, BoVo, in her important article on local historiography in the context of civic epigraphy, rightly argues that often in local history ‘erudizione e politica si intrinsecavano’.59 Fornara, like Gabba, allows Momigliano’s connection between antiquarian thinking and knowledge and local history to stand, but he tries to integrate it into a more clearly historiographical framework: ‘In horography we are witnessing the antiquarian expansion of state records begun in the scientiWc spirit already attested to in Hellanicus by his other works.’60 Fornara’s brushing aside of the conceptual diVerences between Hellanicus’ Priestesses of Hera at Argos and the Atthides would have found little or no sympathy from Jacoby, but the mention of Hellanicus does bring us back to that scholar, and to a consideration of his proposed model for the development of local historiography to replace the notion of a priestly chronicle. The proposition ‘that the ‘‘Atthis’’. . . was created in the lifetime of Thukydides by a learned man, the foreigner Hellanikos of Lesbos’ was revolutionary in its implications. That the local history of Athens might be written Wrst by a non-Athenian raises questions over whether we should really see patriotism and parochialism as motives for local historiography; even more importantly, the claim that the Atthis might be a creation of the late Wfth century and beyond raises questions over its chronological relationship with ‘great’ history. It is striking that the Wrst ‘native’ Atthidographer, Cleidemus, followed several decades after Hellanicus, suggesting that avid patriotism was not the principal stimulus for the development of this form, and leading Jacoby to wonder openly ‘why an Athenian just in the Wfties of the fourth century replaced Hellanikos’ book by a new work, the Wrst Athenian Atthis’.61 In a sense, Jacoby answers his own question by propounding the argument that ‘it was Great History that really give the incitement to local writings. Hekataios, Herodotos, Hellanikos, each in his time and with diVerent success, roused the historical sense and the interest in the history of the writers’ native towns. It is much less the absence of a political life of their own, or a romantic absorption in a greater past . . . that leads writers to the Local Chronicle in the Wfth century, than just this upspringing historical interest and the wish to secure for their native town a place in the Great History of the Greek people, both for the mythical time and for the more recent national contest against 59 L. BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta` greche: un espressione di storiograWa locale’, in E. Gabba (ed.), Studi di storia e storiograWa antiche (Como, 1988), 9–48 at 45–6: ‘learning and politics are intertwined’. 60 C. W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley and London, 1983), 21. He sees the development of the Atthis as a Xeshing out of annalistic records with antiquarian material, following the same scientiWc impulse as witnessed in Hippias of Elis’ Olympic victor lists or the Athenian archon lists (22). 61 Jacoby, Atthis, 69.

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Persia. These writers did not Wnd enough details about their native towns in the great historians, or they found wrong statements or even unfavourable opinions; the local chronicle was compiled to redress this grievance.’62 The origin of local historiography was thus for Jacoby not to be sought in the development of a literary form from a priestly chronicle, as Cicero asserted for Rome,63 but rather as a reaction on the part of individual poleis to the grand narrative of the combined achievements of the Greeks which formed the subject of ‘great’ history.64 We shall return to the relationship between the polis and the presentation of its past in the form of historiography, oratory, poetry, and so on, but for now it is the priority of ‘great’ historiography over the local which is of interest. The problematic and much discussed locus classicus for the opposite vision of the development of historiography is Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ De Thucydide 5, where he assesses the tradition before Thucydides and places before him those writers who ‘separated their enquiries by peoples and cities and brought them out individually’,65 with the aim of ‘bringing to the attention of the public traditions preserved among the local people or written records preserved in sacred or profane archives, just as they received them’. It is what he saw as a plain statement of the chronological priority of local over ‘great’ historiography against which Jacoby devoted so much energy, since, for him, local historiography must be a relatively late development with its origins in the historiographical tradition. The impetus to write about the polis thus came for Jacoby from a competitive desire to assert the city’s status and place in the grand narrative and on the larger stage, rather than from purely internal forces.66 Jacoby’s model is both full of promise and fraught with diYculty. Serious objections have been raised about his reading of Dionysius’ comments, most fully by Toye, who has argued that Dionysius’ ‘ancient historians’ were interested

62 Jacoby, Atthis, 289, n. 111 to chapter 1§3. For a diVerent formulation of Jacoby’s view, see N. Luraghi, ‘Introduction’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 1–15 at 5. Only after Herodotus, did local Greek communities ‘realize that their history too was interesting’. 63 See Cicero, De Oratore 2.52–3. 64 See Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome, 20, for the opposite view, namely that local historians do not propagate the claims of cities in the arena of ‘great history’ and that ‘the salient characteristic of horography is its parochiality’. 65 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Thucydide 5: ıªªæÆE ŒÆ Ł ŒÆd ºØ ØÆØæF a ƒ æÆ ŒÆd øæd Iºººø KŒæ fi. 66 But see Porciani, ‘Il problema della storia locale’, 175, who importantly questions the mechanism and practicalities by which this stimulation of the local by the Panhellenic narrative took place. She argues that ‘Per sollecitare qualcuno a comporre annali di Samo o di Lampsaco, infatti, la concezione storica di Erodoto doveva potersi dispiegare in tutta la sua grandezza’, rather than dispersed in the form of oral presentations.


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primarily in genealogies and mythical entertainment, and were not to be identiWed with Jacoby’s local chroniclers.67 Further serious criticism of his vision has come from Fowler in his important article on the intellectual milieu of Herodotus,68 and it is indeed this ‘great’ historian around whom most of the scholarly debate concerning the relationship between large-scale and local historiography revolves.69 Fowler points to several weaknesses in Jacoby’s arguments: the unduly schematic approach to the development of a historiographical form, dependent on a neat sequence of innovators—Hecataeus, Herodotus, Hellanicus;70 the consequential need to date other historians, such as Charon of Lampsacus, to a post-Herodotean phase, in spite of evidence to the contrary; the strong historical content in much early lyric poetry, which tells against the idea that local history needed to wait for Herodotus.71 Fowler’s analysis of Herodotus’ historiographical voice as being primarily characterized by the presentation of himself as preoccupied with the problem of how to assess sources is in many ways convincing, and it seems entirely plausible to suggest that he could have been engaged in some form of dialogue with contemporary writers.72 Indeed, Fowler presents an impressive array of parallels between Herodotus and the fragments of other historians revealing a shared interest in etymology, rationalization of myth, and so on. The thrust of the overall argument is compelling—that, if Herodotus was so concerned with the use of sources, he must have been working in a context where there were sources and where it was necessary to forge a distinct historiographical voice. It is, however, strange that Herodotus chooses not to cite local histories systematically, since they would have seemed so apposite to the region-byregion approach. A good deal of scholarly ink has been spilled over the 67 D. L. Toye, ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the First Greek Historians’, American Journal of Philology 106 (1995), 279–302. 68 R. L. Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996), 62–87. 69 In any case, Murray, ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’, argues that Herodotus was at least as inXuential as Thucydides on Greek historiography beyond the Wfth century. 70 This teleological mentality is similar to that of works like the Athenaion Politeia, which privilege the notion of inventor Wgures in the smooth development of institutions. 71 Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, 65, points to Xenophanes who wrote about the foundation of Colophon and colonization of Elea, Herodotus’ uncle (or cousin) who told the story in verse of the colonization of Ionia, a whole string of epic poems which told legendary local history—Corinthiaca, Meropis, Naupactia, Phoronis, Phocais, the lyric poetry of Pindar, for example, which shows a knowledge of local traditions, and Mimnermus who wrote historical verse in the seventh century. Orsi, ‘La storiograWa locale’, 156, notes that the mysterious Smyrneis of Mimnermus concerning the battle between the Smyrnians and Gyges’ Lydians may have been broader and incorporated the foundation of Smyrna and other historical events as well: ‘anche della fondazione di Smirne e di altri eventi storici’. 72 See Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, 69, where he proposes a ‘mutually beneWcial exchange of work and ideas’.

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question of what it means when a ‘great’ historian, such as Herodotus, writes ‘the Xs say’. Luraghi uses the question as his starting point for analysing local knowledge in Herodotus and stresses that Herodotus’ interest in local sources was largely derived from his wish to construct a history which based its authority in direct encounter with what he took to represent the shared tradition of a whole community.73 Giangiulio has examined Cyrene as a case study for the relationship between such local traditions and the ‘great’ narrative of Herodotus. As he points out, it is clear that Herodotus was doing more than just lifting local stories and joining them together, but the idea that great historiography not only saved local stories from oblivion, but ‘turned local memory into universal narrative’ suggests a striking transformation.74 If this vision is correct, then it appears to entail the priority of the local over the universal. However, as Giangiulio notes, it is not clear to what degree we should categorize local traditions as epichoric, and to what extent they were shaped by contact with other cities and Panhellenic centres.75 Furthermore, we should consider carefully whether the ‘local’ traditions, which are casually mentioned throughout the secondary literature, were actually written histories or oral traditions, and indeed whether that distinction matters in determining the priority of local and Panhellenic. I would venture to suggest that it does, and that by ‘local historiography’ in the context of our debate a written version is implied; in other words, that establishing that Herodotus used local traditions, if they are oral ones, is not enough in itself to refute Jacoby’s claim concerning the priority of ‘great’ historiography.76 The problem of orality and literacy is Wrmly embedded in any discussion of local historiography, since, although the extant texts are inevitably written versions, the context for presenting the past to the polis seems, from the epigraphic evidence, to have been a performative one. As we shall see (in chapter 6), it seems to have been common practice that a historian would come to a polis with a pre-prepared history in store, or ready to mould one appropriately depending on the results of on-site research, and then perform the history, often in poetic form. Particularly the 73 N. Luraghi, ‘Local Knowledge in Herodotus’ Histories’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 138–60. We shall return to the question of ‘community knowledge’ in ch. 6. 74 Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past’, 133. But see O. Murray, ‘Herodotus and Oral History’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 16–44 at 34, for the idea of Herodotus as heir to the tradition of oral logopoioi, whose writing down of the tales in relation to a new greater theme destroyed, rather than preserved, the tradition. 75 Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past’, 130. 76 Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, rightly makes much of Herodotus’ contribution being the establishment of critical tools for testing reliability (80) and the concepts of veriWability and falsiWability; in other words the discovery of the problem of sources, but this does not entail the use of written sources.


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latter of these patterns has clear implications for how Wxed and unchanging such a historiographical tradition could be. If the notion of the ‘possession for ever’ is not pertinent to local historiography in the way that Thucydides made it so for ‘great’ historiography,77 then judging the relative priority and posterity of local and universal versions of tales might also prove diYcult. Further, there is more to be said about the similarities and diVerences between poetic and prose manifestations of interest in the past. One detraction from Jacoby’s model is indeed the existence of such strong ‘historical’ elements in early poetry, and it is tempting to argue that local historiography had no need for an external spur in the form of Herodotus’ ‘great’ history to goad it into action. Rather, it had been in existence for centuries, performed at festivals, the subject matter for competition, and deeply embedded in society’s wish to hear the ‘famous deeds of men’ (ŒºÆ IæH). It has been shrewdly asserted that ‘the distinction is not between history and poetry per se, but between contemporary history, in the Thucydidean manner, and everything else’.78 Fowler explicitly sets the historical preoccupations of the early poets against the need for local historiography to wait for a Herodotus Wgure, and it is easy to see why. But the argument is hardly conclusive. To progress from the observation that poets had for centuries been telling local tales, and ones which gave the locality a place within the context of Panhellenic myth, to the statement that ‘a local history in prose before Herodotos would be in no way surprising’ is not a necessary move, though the proposition is in itself not implausible.79 But the question hinges also on some vexed and diYcult questions over how revolutionary the ‘prose revolution’ really was,80 and how radically 77 See Thucydides 1.22.4 for history as a Œ BÆ K ÆN. 78 Wiseman, ‘Poetry and History’, in Clio’s Cosmetics, 146. 79 Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, 65. But see Schepens, ‘Greek City Histories’, 17 with n. 41, on the clearly pre-Herodotean account of Chios by Ion (FGrH 392 f 1 ¼ Pausanias 7.4.8). As Schepens notes, this history was in all probability a prose work, although we cannot be absolutely sure. Pausanias uses the term ıªªæÆ, which is usually applied to prose, and not to poetry. Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 194, wrote with more certainty on the subject: ‘Der Prosacharakter der ı Œ Ø ist sicher.’ 80 S. Goldhill, The Invention of Prose (Oxford, 2002) discusses the way in which ‘prose is the medium in which the intellectual revolution of the enlightenment is enacted. And after the Wfth century, almost all serious philosophy, history, medicine, mathematics, theology—the sciences of authority—are conducted solely in prose.’ (4). Herodotus’ project was, then, part of a radical new way of thinking, not only about the past but also about the world: ‘The project of memorializing the great deeds of the past to provide not just a celebration of such grandeur but also a model for the present draws on the epic precedents of Homer and Hesiod, but constructs a quite diVerent image of the world and how to comprehend it.’ (27). In support of the view that poetry and prose really were distinct, see J. Marincola, ‘Herodotus and the Poetry of the Past’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge, 2006), 13–28 at 15, who makes interesting points about the diVerent authorial claims to truth and legitimacy in poetic and prose narratives, with the historian’s labours replacing the muses’ inspiration in the latter.

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diVerent a project that of Herodotus was made by its intellectual context of Ionian science and philosophy.81 Recent work on P.Oxy. 3965, Simonides’ encomiastic narrative elegy celebrating contemporary historical events, highlights quite how problematic the boundary between history and poetry is. As Hornblower points out, both Herodotus and Simonides dealt with the same event in the Plataea episode, and even the form was sometimes similar, with Herodotus breaking into Homeric metre: ‘So neither content nor form oVers a way of distinguishing between the two genres.’82 This formulation seems a little extreme, and indeed Hornblower proceeds to search for a distinction in terms of the use of epiphany, although, as he rightly claims, there is no reason in any case why we should not accept the presence of epic features in the work of a ‘real’ historian.83 Boedeker too has examined the Plataea elegy for insights into the relationship between epic, elegy, and historiography in the Wfth century.84 She stresses the poetic nature of Herodotus’ text in general, including the epic encounter at Marathon, the theme of kleos, and the many unmarked hexameters, and suggests that, even if Herodotus did not use the poem directly as a source,85 nevertheless it would have been inXuential in shaping popular memory of the event.86 The context of performance is of interest here, since one of the most compelling arguments against seeing the evolution of local historiography as internally motivated, and derived from the world of the lyric poets, is precisely the issue of audience. The world of aristocratic, family-based, symposiastic performance may seem far removed from the world of the polis in which I would wish to place the motivation and reception of the 81 On the intellectual milieu of Herodotus as the heartland of Ionian philosophy and cosmology, see R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge, 2000). 82 S. Hornblower, ‘Epic and Epiphanies: Herodotus and the ‘‘New Simonides’’ ’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire (Oxford, 2001), 135–47 at 135. 83 See Hornblower, ‘Epic and Epiphanies’, 137, for the use of the past in the present, which brought the worlds of epic poetry and of contemporary events together. It was ‘precisely the pervasiveness of syngeneia concepts which made it possible for Greeks to bridge the mythical and historical worlds in so apparently eVortless a way’. We shall return to the use of the past and particularly of kinship claims in ch. 6. 84 D. Boedeker, ‘Heroic Historiography: Simonides and Herodotus on Plataea’, in The New Simonides, 120–34. 85 She does not commit herself to a judgement on this, although she thinks it likely that Herodotus had heard the poem. However, as she concedes, there is a danger of circularity in searching for similarities and echoes, since Herodotus has been used in the reconstruction of the Simonides text (127). 86 But see J. Dillery, ‘ReconWguring the Past: Thyrea, Thermopylae and Narrative Patterns in Herodotus’, American Journal of Philology 117 (1996), 217–54, for the way in which Herodotus, like Simonides, reconWgures Thermopylae as a clear Spartan victory, but enhances this through the parallel with Thyrea, by contrast with Simonides’ exclusively heroic context.


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local histories, although, as I shall argue (in chapter 6), we may need to accommodate a multi- or at least bilocational context for some, if not all, local historiography. Boedeker in fact posits a very public festival context for the performance of the Simonides poem (133), and claims that considering the relationship between the accounts of Simonides and of Herodotus might give insight into ‘how public memory of the great events of the Persian War was shaped and transmitted during the Wfth century’ [my italics].87 Indeed Aloni suggests that the Simonides elegy was commissioned by the Spartans as the threnody for the public ceremony at which the tumuli were set up after Plataea, with the result that ‘the narrative of the proem would act as the aition for the ceremony, and the song would, at one and the same time, be a compensation for the death of the ancient heroes and of those who had just fallen in battle’.88 As with the question of orality and literacy, similarly that of poetry and prose is complex when considering local historiography, with the same contrast between the extant fragments and the epigraphic evidence for context—the former almost entirely in prose, the latter repeatedly referring to poetic performances. This relationship between poetry, prose, and local historiography, and the issue of performance context will be re-examined (in chapter 6) when considering the honoriWc inscriptions set up for historians by poleis around the Greek world. But the debate over the interface between poetry and ‘great’ historiography, such as that of Herodotus, does provide a backdrop against which we could go on to ask how close a link one should posit between the early poetic manifestations of historical interest and the local historiography of the fourth and third centuries;89 hence, precisely where on the spectrum between lyric poetry and scientiWc prose we should place the fragments of local history. The presence of poetic elements in Herodotus of course does not force us to recharacterize the work as less inXuenced by the scientiWc prose revolution than we thought, but simply provides yet another salutary reminder that stark contrasts and choices between radically diVerent models for the birth and development of literary forms are unlikely to prove satisfactory. As Bowie points out, the interpretative beneWts of studying these complex relationships are broad in scope. He argues in relation to poetic treatment of historical 87 Boedeker, ‘Heroic Historiography’, 121. 88 A. Aloni, ‘The Proem of Simonides’ Plataean Elegy and the Circumstances of its Performance’, in The New Simonides, 86–105 at 102. 89 On the vexed issue of the relationship between poetry, local historiography, and ‘great’ or Panhellenic historiography, see the remarks of E. Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography in Early Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 45–66. Bowie rightly stresses our lack of knowledge of the fragmentary poetic texts—for example, both length and form of Semonides’ Early History of the Samians are unknown to us—making comparison with another set of fragmentary texts, the local histories, precarious in the extreme.

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themes that, ‘whatever happened in prose works, the extant evidence for this sort of verse suggests movement from accounts of single poleis to an account putting together some sort of overarching narrative—of course we do not know what sort, and it could have been wholly mythographic—concerning several poleis’,90 suggesting that the verse trend was from local to Panhellenic. But it cannot be safely deduced from this that the same trend was true for prose, and, as Bowie concedes, even the apparent pattern of hexameters used to treat ‘Panhellenic’ myth, while elegiacs were used for the early or recent history of a polis, can easily be countered.91 Beyond some obviously shared elements between poetry and historiography,92 the precise relationship remains elusive, and it is quite possible that several forces coincided to produce the same eVect—a wish to promote the individual polis in response to the propagation of Panhellenic narratives, assisted by the pre-existing local traditions as expressed in verse in festival contexts. As Fowler judiciously comments: ‘the question whether local or great history came Wrst is ultimately unanswerable for want of evidence’,93 making it wisest not to assume the priority of one or the other. There was a strong sense of local history in the Greek poleis before Herodotus, in the form of poetry and local traditions; there was also a strong sense of Panhellenic history before Herodotus, as seen in the Xourishing of the Panhellenic sanctuaries. Fowler stresses the considerable overlaps between local historiography, universal historiography, ethnography, and mythography, both in content and in method. He is keen to blur boundaries: between oral and literate productions, through the notion of competitive contexts at which a historian such as Herodotus might have recited parts of his work before publishing the written version;94 and between the presentation of local and Panhellenic themes in the extant fragments of local historiography, which means that the history of Argos, for example, was told in the same way by Acusilaus of Argos and Hellanicus of Lesbos.95 This approach, which minimizes the diVerences, and thereby reduces the need for establishing an 90 Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography’, 50. 91 E. Bowie, ibid. 55 for the new Simonides, which presented the great theme of the Persian wars in elegiacs, and 58 for Archilochus’ historical narrative in trochaic tetrameters. See E. Bowie, ‘Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance of Narrative’, in A. Cavarzere, A. Aloni, and A. Barchiesi (eds.), Iambic Ideas: Essays on a Poetic Tradition from Archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire (Oxford, 2002), 1–27, for more discussion of the Xexibility of genre associated with particular poetic forms. 92 Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography’, 66, on the use of generations for chronology in Tyrtaeus 5.6. 93 R. Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 95–115 at 95. 94 Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, 107. 95 Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, 113.


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evolutionary timetable for diVerent forms of historiography, has much to commend it in terms of focusing on subtle cross-genre similarities, although it leaves aside issues of inXuence, imitation, and so on, which are dependent on a sense of priority no less than on one of interaction. An explanation for the development of local historiography which places it in the context of polis self-assertion in the wider world accommodates well some of the characteristic features of the extant fragments, not least the mixture of local and universal frames of reference (both mythological and chronological). A model which relies on the notion of a particular form of historiography being set in train by an external catalyst, rather than generated entirely from within, is not inherently implausible. But it is clear that Jacoby’s insistence on motivating the development of local historiography as part of a neat sequence of genres, each with its own inventor, is too prone to systematize and too quick to ignore other contexts within which local historiography operated. On the other hand, it would seem unfortunate to lose sight of all distinctions and deWnitions by refusing to observe the diVerence between prose and poetic expressions of local history, between diVerent contexts for production, between oral and literate traditions. A form of historiography which draws on and grows out of pre-existing local traditions is not incompatible with one which is galvanized into new forms by external factors such as the development of grand narratives and the wish to assert the importance of one’s own polis. One aspect of the debate over ‘great’ and local historiography which has so far been set aside is the diVerence in structure and chronological system. We have seen (in chapter 3) the way in which the ‘great’ history of Thucydides, but also much more systematically that of the ‘universal’ historians, gave rise to elaborate and careful attempts at synchronism, be it through the juxtaposition of diVerent temporal systems or through the subordination of a narrative to Panhellenic chronologies, such as those provided by the great Panhellenic marker posts of the Trojan War or the return of the Heraclidae, or for the historical period by the Olympiadic or magisterial systems. By contrast, the ‘great’ history undertaken by Herodotus has been seen by many as singularly unconcerned with presenting its stories within any kind of uniWed or coherent chronological framework.96 Rhodes observes that 96 See U. von Wilamowitz, Greek Historical Writing, and Apollo (Oxford, 1908), 6: ‘In his rejection of all chronology, he consciously sets himself in opposition to the impersonal chronicles, which he must have known.’ D. W. Prakken, Studies in Greek Genealogical Chronology (Lancaster, 1943) is a notable exception. He concludes that ‘from this survey of the chronological data in the work of Herodotus, it is evident that he had a deWnite system of chronology and that this system was founded on genealogical principles’ (47) and ‘Herodotus was a pioneer in historical chronology as well as in historiography’ (48). However, the gathered evidence rather gives the impression of an ad hoc and fragmented approach to indicating time in the narrative.

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Herodotus displays no systematic chronology even for the Babylonians; his synchronisms simply link one king to another in the non-Greek world, and ‘for the Greek world . . . Herodotus is not writing a systematic history of Greece or of any Greek state, and he does not have a systematic chronology.’97 There are, however, some traces of dating in Herodotus’ Athenian narratives, and the momentous event of Xerxes’ arrival in Athens is dated carefully using Athenian archon years.98 Even if his alleged lack of systematic chronology for the Babylonians was matched by a failure to master Egyptian chronology also, ‘his history oVers proofs that at least he tried.’99 For Sparta, Herodotus knows the royal genealogies, the two lines of which he can trace back to Heracles. His sense of relative time for the distant past is very much in line with that used by the universal writers; that is, he has a sense of the time intervals between key stepping stones such as the time of Dionysus (1,600 years ago), Heracles (900 years ago), and Pan (800 years ago), adding that this placed Pan at a time after the Trojan war. Homer and Hesiod could be placed roughly 400 years before Herodotus.100 It is made abundantly clear by Rhodes, and indeed emerges from any reading of the text of Herodotus, that the kind of elaborate chronological systems which were adopted and developed by the ‘universal’ historians, and even the concern expressed by Thucydides on a small scale over the problem of synchronism, are not prominent in Herodotus’ text. Rhodes concludes that Herodotus was a little too early to catch the great wave of interest in putting time, particularly past time, together in a systematic way: ‘By the time Herodotus wrote, the process of systematising the chronology of early Greece and its stories had begun—Herodotus’ Eurypontid genealogy for Sparta already includes the suspicious names Prytanis and Eunomus, who look as if they have been invented to make the Eurypontid line as long as the Agid— but it had not yet gone very far, and I agree with those who insist that it was not a process in which Herodotus himself was as interested as later chronographers were.’101 Rosalind Thomas has interestingly applied the notion of the ‘Xoating gap’ to Herodotus, namely the phenomenon whereby the very recent 97 P. J. Rhodes, ‘Herodotean Chronology Revisited’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, 2003), 58–72 at 65–6. 98 Herodotus 8.51.1. The event took place when Calliades was archon. 99 T. S. Brown, ‘The Greek Sense of Time in History as Suggested by their Accounts of Egypt’, Historia 11 (1962), 257–70 at 261. 100 See Herodotus 2.145.4; 2.53.2. R. Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Prose Predecessors’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge, 2006), 29–45 at 33, stresses the importance of genealogy as providing the narrative backbone of many compositions in the Herodotean intellectual milieu. 101 Rhodes, ‘Herodotean Chronology Revisited’, 68.

Time for local history: pacing the past

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and the very distant past are privileged both in memory and in historiography.102 She concludes, in line with Rhodes, that Herodotus was not interested in Wlling in the gaps to produce a continuous chronological system.103 Even if it turns out that the local historians were using sophisticated temporal systems, this still need not be seen as a plank in Jacoby’s argument for placing Herodotus prior to any local historiography. But it would suggest, in spite of Jacoby’s careful analysis of an integrated development of diVerent forms of historiography, that Herodotean historiography was truly distinctive in the way it chose to structure and calibrate its treatment of the past across a wide spatial scope.104 It is to be hoped that an exploration of the chronological strategies of the local historians of the Greek poleis might contribute a new angle on the vexed issue of the relationship, close or distant, between ‘great’ and local historiography.

3. TIME FOR LOCAL HISTORY: PACING THE PAST How did the composers of local histories denote the passage of time? This is the question which underpins this section. While work has been done on various aspects of local historiography, and also on formal calendars, it seems that there is room for the denotation of time and the creation of local, especially city, histories to be brought together and explored more systematically. In particular, more general questions concerning local historiography, such as the degree of parochialism or universality involved, or the variation in style and contents between accounts of diVerent regions and diVerent cities, may be additionally illuminated by a study of the temporal systems employed. The highly fragmentary nature of the evidence can be somewhat disorientating, and it is worth, therefore, giving a preliminary sense of who wrote about what and when. All of the usual caveats concerning fragmentary texts 102 R. Thomas, ‘Herodotus’ Histories and the Floating Gap’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 198–210. 103 See Thomas, ibid. 203–4, where she suggests that Herodotus uses other currency, such as vengeance, to create links across gaps. But see C. Calame, Myth and History in Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony (Princeton, 2003; Wrst publ. 1996), whose detailed study of a range of foundation stories for Cyrene leads to exactly the opposite conclusion (95): ‘in terms of chronology, the Herodotean narrative attempts to Wll in the gaps left by those of Pindar. The methods of nascent historiography contribute here.’ 104 Jacoby’s is a relatively isolated voice in claiming for Herodotus (Atthis, 382 n. 10) that ‘interest in chronology is obvious in all parts of his work, not for mythical times only, but for historical times, for which he gives epochs and dates of reign of the kings’. It clearly suits his wish to integrate Herodotus fully into the history of historiography that he should share the chronological interest of other historians.

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apply in large measure—the problem of delimiting a fragment, the problem of citation context and its inXuence over the words cited, the near impossibility of gauging a sense of original context or shape of works or date of production.105 Nevertheless, some 350 authors of local history emerge merely from the pages of Jacoby, and it is clear that they represent only the tip of a vast iceberg. They stretch from the very end of the Wfth century bc to the period of the High Roman empire, although it seems almost impossible to date the great majority of the fragments with any conWdence and we should exercise particular caution concerning Jacoby’s own cautious datings, likely as it is that he was heavily inXuenced by the exigencies of his own theory of the evolution of genres, which precluded the possibility that local histories could have predated Herodotus’ grand narrative. There appears to be a particular Xourishing in the fourth century bc and the Hellenistic period, but it is hard to say more than this in view of the uncertainty of dating. The geographical spread of places described is vast. Although, as is so often noted, the Atthides are heavily dominant, our fragments also take us around many of the poleis and wider areas of the Greek mainland, around many of the islands, with Crete and Rhodes Wguring large, as one might expect, down the coastal cities of Asia Minor such as Miletus, and Wnally to a vast section concerning Sicily and Magna Graecia. As we shall see, the dominance of Athens and Sicily in the evidence oVers opportunities for both distortion and insight. It is diYcult to assess whether patterns, which emerge from these more extensive fragments, both individually and collectively, can rightly be assumed across the whole corpus of more fragmentary and exiguous works, or whether each of these areas generated a rather unusual type of local historiography. Finally, the question of who wrote the works of which these fragments survive is, except in rare, high-proWle cases, rather unclear beyond the existence of a name to whom the citer refers as the author. In some cases we can be secure in assuming a native writer, since the work is entitled On his Native Land, and one might suppose, especially if Jacoby’s argument for the origin of local historiography as an assertion of local pride is correct, that this model accommodates the majority of local historiography. In many cases, we simply do not know, but it is worth keeping the question alive, not least since, as we shall see (in the Wnal chapter), there is epigraphic evidence to show that the range of people who could, with authority and credibility, tell the polis its past extended beyond the boundaries of that community, bringing ‘local’ historiography into wider Mediterranean networks.

105 As always, the locus classicus for this discussion remains P. A. Brunt, ‘On historical fragments and epitomes’, Classical Quarterly 30 (1980), 477–94.


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a) Telling the mythical past; counting the generations Having considered the temporal scope of universal historiography and particularly its attitude towards the mythical period, it seems logical to apply the same questions to the extant fragments of local historiography.106 We should recall straight away that taking the story back to the distant past entails a rather vague and less structured approach to time, since formal chronological systems were clearly not applicable to the mythical age. The point of interest here, then, is one of temporal extent at least as much as temporal structure. The small potted history of the city of Byzas, with which this chapter started, made much of the various foundation myths associated with the site, including those which used stories concerning the founding hero to provide an etymology for the name of the city. Schepens has rightly pointed out the importance of foundations (Œ Ø) in local historiography.107 Sometimes they occupied a share of a much longer account;108 sometimes they formed the sole focus, though being formulated in such a way as to encapsulate many of the essential features of the later life of the polis.109 Jacoby’s claim, then, that ‘the principle of giving the whole history of a city is so general for the Greek local chronicles . . . that we may set it up as being compulsory for all Atthides’,110 is overstated to the point of inaccuracy, but his insistence that the local historian would almost inevitably look back to the very earliest moments in the life of the polis was surely well founded.111 The extant fragments of local histories, of both the Greek and the non-Greek world, are littered with foundation stories. The writers on Rome and Italy were naturally preoccupied with the various foundation myths for Rome itself.112 106 I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present some of the following material and ideas in a conference at Columbia University, New York, in 2002 and at a seminar in Cambridge, also in 2002. I am most grateful to the respective organizers, William Harris and Robin Osborne, and to both audiences for their helpful and constructive insights and contributions. 107 Schepens, ‘Greek City History’, 20–1. I. Malkin, ‘ ‘‘Tradition’’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, 2003), 153–70, argues for the reinstatement of key notions such as colonization and moments of foundation in opposition to those who would dismiss them as anachronistically interpreted in terms of Classical models. The narratives concerning the origins of cities clearly made much of the moment of foundation and the involvement of key individuals therein. 108 Though Jacoby, Atthis, 113, notes the diYculty in assessing proportions, given the fragmentary nature of the works. 109 See Polybius 9.1.4 for ktisis literature as a major branch of historical writing. 110 Jacoby, Atthis, 106. 111 This, in spite of Thucydides’ warning that themes from the remote past were not great (P ªºÆ), 1.21. 112 See FGrH 809 Q. Fabius Pictor, 810 L. Cincius Alimentus, 813 C. Acilius, all native Roman writers; 817 Promathion, 818 Galitas, 821 Zenodotus of Troezen, all Greek authors writing about the foundation and early history of Rome.

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Many Greek authors oVered interesting alternatives to the standard menu of Romulus and Remus or the Trojan myth. Agathocles of Cyzicus relates that Aeneas’ granddaughter, Rhome, came to Italy and to the city, and dedicated a temple, thus oVering a new aetiology for the name of the city. This version was oVered in a competitive environment. Some claimed that Aeneas was buried in the city of Berecynthia, near the river Nolus, and that one of his descendants called Rhomus came to Italy and founded the city of Rome. Alcimus the Sicilian Greek claimed that Aeneas’ son, Romulus, was born in Tyrrhenia, that the daughter of Romulus was named Alba, and that her son, Rhomus, founded the city; while Callias of Syracuse stated that Rome, one of the Trojan women who came to Italy, married Latinus, by whom she had three sons, Romus, Romulus, and Telegonus . . . When they had built the city, they named it after their mother.113 But Rome was not the only city whose foundation mattered. Demosthenes of Bithynia, for example, wrote in his work on his native land about the founder of Tios, Patarus, who named the city after the worship of Zeus carried out there;114 Apollonius of Aphrodisias told of the foundation of the Carian city, Chrysaoris, which was later renamed Idrias, that of Tabai, a Lydian city, named after Tabus, and those of the cities of Cibyras and Tabas, founded by the brothers Cibyras and Marsyas.115 All of these small fragments are known from Stephanus of Byzantium and are cited in the context of his explanations of place names. What role they played in their original works we can only guess, but they at least indicate an interest in origins and foundations. Among the historians of the Greek poleis, the early fourth-century writer Aristophanes the Boeotian wrote about Chaeron, the founder of Chaeronea;116 Antiochus of Syracuse told of the foundations of a whole host of southern Italian cities—Elea, Rhegium, Croton, Metapontum, and Taras.117 In the same vein 113 For Agathocles of Cyzicus, see FGrH 472 f 5; Alcimus, FGrH 560 f 4, as Jacoby claims, the Wrst Sicilian treatment of the foundation of Rome; Callias of Syracuse, FGrH 564 f 5. E. Dench, Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian (Oxford, 2005) oVers a fascinating study of the way in which competing identities for Rome were forged in the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods. But the earlier history of Greek attempts to construct myths, histories, and identities for Rome acts as an important backdrop. 114 FGrH 699 f 9. 115 FGrH 740 f 8 and 9. 116 FGrH 379 f 3. As Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 161, notes, it is not clear whether this detail came in the context of a historical event, or whether it came from the account of the Boeotian migration. 117 See FGrH 555 f 8, 9, 10, 12, 13. It is interesting, though, that Antiochus’ foundation stories concern historical, rather than mythical, times. His cities are founded by groups of people rather than mythical individuals. See Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 493, for the point that, although others such as Herodotus (1.163) also told the story of the Eleatic foundation, Antiochus was the only one to name a historical leader.


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as Antiochus’ interest in the historical foundation of cities by colonists, we may note the comment that the Chians claimed to have Pelasgian founders, oikists, from Thessaly.118 A foundation story which could be validated by current practice was that of Phaselis, set up by Lacius, who paid for the land in smoked Wsh, rather than barley meal, at the request of Cylabras who shepherded his sheep there. The people of Phaselis were, apparently, still sacriWcing smoked Wsh to Calabras every year when Heropythos of Colophon wrote his account at the start of the fourth century.119 The earliest moment in a city’s existence was clearly an integral part of its history, and this could fall within either heroic or historical times. The tendency of local historians to blur this distinction is clearly in line with the practice of some writers of universal history (as discussed in chapter 3), but the fragmentary nature of the works makes it hard to assess what status such early tales held in the account. I shall discuss shortly the way in which heroic times might lend themselves to particular kinds of chronological calibration, but for now I assess these early phases in the local history of cities and regions from a diVerent perspective, namely the degree to which the most remote past was related within a local mythological frame of reference, and the degree to which the mythical or heroic period lent itself to a wider, more obviously Panhellenic, context which might in turn be reXected in the expressions of time adopted. The importance to a polis of having the right heroes in its armoury is amply illustrated in Herodotus’ Histories. Famous instances such as the translation of the ‘bones of Orestes’ to Sparta or those of Theseus by Cimon to Athens have been much discussed.120 However, the extant fragments of local historiography too oVer glimpses into the importance of both local heroes and mythologies, and those on a grander scale. Promathidas of Heraclea’s work On Heraclea clearly incorporated tales of very local heroes—in the Wrst fragment Titias is identiWed, a local hero (læø KªæØ) known to us from other authors;121 the second fragment tells of Idmon, another local 118 FGrH 395 f 2. 119 FGrH 448 f 1. SacriWces to Cylabras were known also to Callimachus and Philostephanus, but it is not clear what place Phaselis had in the annals of Colophon. 120 See D. Boedeker, ‘Hero Cult and Politics in Herodotus: The Bones of Orestes’, in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.), Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics (Oxford, 1998), 164–77, for an acute discussion of the way in which the Spartan appropriation should be seen not as a straightforward ‘theft’, but as a reassertion of Sparta’s true Achaean heritage. She distinguishes between the case of Orestes, which was for the beneWt of the polis at large and that of Theseus, whose appropriation was for the advancement of one family only (170). 121 FGrH 430 f 1. Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 257, notes the importance of indigenous heroes here: ‘Die Lokalgeschichte von Herakleia hat gewiß nicht mit der Nacherza¨hlung der griechischen Mythen begonnen, sondern mit der Reihe der einheimischen Urko¨nige.’

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hero, who was ‘struck by a pig’.122 Promathidas’ compatriot Nymphis wrote about the songs sung by the Mariandynians at a local festival for another ancient hero, Bormus, who disappeared when going to fetch water one day.123 And when we reach Callistratus in the Wrst century bc, the local heroic family tree of Heraclea begins to Wt together. From his On Heraclea we learn that Bormus, mourned by the Mariandynians, was one of the sons of Titias.124 The tempting conclusion would be that Heraclean local historiography was full of stories of its own parochial heroes, but caution is needed. The fragments of Heraclean historiography are dominated by scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes, which may distort the picture. Certainly for the later history of the area, the work of Memnon of Heraclea provides a counterexample, being structured, as it is, at least in Photius’ epitome, by Hellenistic monarchs and Roman intervention in the region.125 Indeed, the fragments of local historiography provide a good deal of evidence for their authors presenting the earliest periods of a city or region’s history in the context of a wider mythological network.126 Heracles, a naturally itinerant Wgure, was an obvious candidate to link the histories of otherwise isolated places into a wider framework, and a few examples will illustrate how geographically widespread his appearances are. In the Argolid, he turns up in the Argolica of Hagias-Dercylus with the cattle of Geryon; and in the Argolica of Deinias in connection with the Paphlagonians, and as the father of Megara’s children; he appears three times in the work of Socrates of Argos.127 He and the horse, Arion, are mentioned in the Arcadica of Ar(i)aethus of Tegea;128 and naturally in many of the works on Elis, not only in connection 122 FGrH 430 f 2. It is interesting, though probably not signiWcant, that Creophylus’ fourthcentury native account of the foundation of Ephesus also involves a pig. The founders were not sure of the correct location for the city, so they asked the god where they should build. The answer came that they should place the city where the Wsh and the wild pig showed them (FGrH 417 f 1). 123 FGrH 432 f 5b. 124 FGrH 433 f 3. The genealogy could be taken further still, since Mariandynus, who gave the people his name, was the father of Titias. 125 On Memnon, see L. M. Yarrow, Historiography at the End of the Republic: Provincial Perspectives on Roman Rule (Oxford, 2006). 126 An interesting parallel presents itself in the world of Anglo-Saxon saints. J. Blair, AngloSaxon Oxfordshire (Oxford, 1994) suggests that every minster probably had its own local saint (mostly from the seventh and eighth centuries: Birinus at Dorchester, Diuma at Charlbury, Osgyth at Aylesbury, Eadburgh at Bicester, Frideswide at Oxford, Beornwald at Bampton), who ‘would have been the focus of popular rituals, expressing both the centrality of the relic-holding churches and the coherence of their parochial communities.’ (76). However, the fact that the associated stories often involved itinerancy—the journeys of saints between named places—tied the individual parish into the wider Christian world. 127 Hagias-Dercylus (FGrH 305 f 1); Deinias (FGrH 306 f 1 and 8); Socrates (FGrH 310 f 9, 10, 15). 128 FGrH 316 f 5.


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with the Olympics, but also for his labours. Echephylidas (fourth–third century bc) seems to have collected many Heracles stories in his Eliaca.129 Heracles has a high proWle also outside the Peloponnese. Philochorus’ Attica involves him in the Theseus story;130 Aristophanes the Boeotian has him brought up by Rhadamanthus; Hegesippus of Mecyberna takes him north to Chalcidice, where he was involved in one version of the gigantomachy at Phlegra, given as the old name for Pallene.131 Writers on Italy and Sicily naturally involved him in a gigantomachy at a diVerent Phlegraian plain. Timaeus of Tauromenium related Heracles’ journey through Italy, via the battle between giants and gods, and on down to Sicily.132 A more inventive appropriation of the ‘Heracles fought the giants here’ theme is to be found in the third-century bc work on Cyzicus by Agathocles.133 The second fragment concerns the competitive creation of small islands near Cyzicus: one piled up by giants; one by Kore, on which she destroyed the remaining giants with that most Xexible hero, Heracles, at her side.134 The competition to appropriate major Panhellenic heroes for local accounts extended to Pelops.135 Istrus the Callimachean claimed that he was a Paphlagonian; while Autesion, an author of Achaica, said that he was an Achaean and from the city of Olenus.136 And the trump card was played by Pausanias, who related in his Argolica the story of the founder Phlias, who might have been the son of Dionysus and might have sailed on the Argo—a clear case where a local story is built into not just one, but two wider frames of reference.137 Malkin has connected the appropriation of mythical heroes by poleis around the Mediterranean with the need for relatively young colonies to assert a claim to antiquity and true Hellenism through alleged heroic involvement in their foundations. The pattern by which metropoleis had heroic founders and colonies human ones necessitated some creative meddling, 129 FGrH 409. 130 Philochorus (FGrH 328 f 18). The story is potentially negative with regard to Heracles, since it tells of the transfer to Heracles, the Dorian, of shrines to Theseus, the Attic hero. 131 Aristophanes (FGrH 379 f 8); Hegesippus (FGrH 391 f 1). 132 FGrH 566 f 89. But, as Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 577, notes, we have no idea whether Timaeus related the whole Heracles story, or at least this march, as a uniWed whole (‘als Einheit’) or whether it was scattered in diVerent places. 133 FGrH 472 f 2. 134 Other eastern Mediterranean claims to Heracles were to be found in the work by Andron of Teos on the Pontic region, in which he claimed that Heracles had a son by the daughter of Acheron in the land of the Mariandynians (FGrH 802 f 1); see also the work of Apollonius of Aphrodisias on Caria, in which he told of the city of Bargasa, named after the son of Barge and Heracles who was pursued by Lamos, the son of Omphale and Heracles (FGrH 740 f 2). 135 Theseus too was in demand. Menecrates rather implausibly claimed that Theseus was an integral part of the history of Nicaea in Bithynia (FGrH 701 f 1). 136 For the competing claims to Pelops, see FGrH 334 f 74. 137 FGrH 314 f 1.

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with the result that the Italiote city of Achaean Croton, for example, which had a good historical founder in the Wgure of Myscellus of Rhypae, started to strike coins declaring Heracles ktistes (‘Heracles the founder’), based on the story that Heracles had accidentally killed the eponymous hero, Croton.138 According to Malkin, the growing sense of Panhellenic identity meant that cities wanted to ‘become as old as their mother cities, thus sharing a time that was even more ancient than the Trojan War’.139 The idea of ‘sharing a time’ which was imbued with prestige neatly expresses the importance of time past in the self-image of communities, and the competitive nature of the creation of identity. This competitive impulse could lead to extreme measures. One author of a Thessalica, whose extant fragments are heavily dominated by a range of mythical Wgures, was criticized by Strabo for distorting his history and misappropriating more famous tales and prestige than the region really deserved, in order to please his audience. ‘Wanting to gratify the Thessalians with mythical stories’, says Strabo, ‘he says that the temple at Dodona was transferred there from part of Thessaly.’140 But Pausanias believed that the people of Troezen were the worst oVenders in terms of playing up local claims for the mythical and heroic heritage of their land. ‘They glorify their own country more than anyone else,’ he says. ‘They claim Orus was Wrst in their land, even though Orus is not a Greek name.’141 It is a neat but resonant coincidence that this comment falls right at the very end of over 750 pages of fragmentary local histories collected by Jacoby, since it evokes some of the issues that concern us here over the distinction between ‘great’ and local historiography and the need for local communities to give themselves a place in a wider Panhellenic world. This tension between local and Panhellenic emerges also if we consider the types of chronological patterning which lent themselves to the earliest times. Just as we shall see that kings could be used as dating devices as well as appearing as the actual narrative content of a work, so too family trees, whether human or divine, could both constitute a subject of interest in 138 Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, 64. S. Price, ‘Local Mythologies in the Greek East’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford, 2005), 115–24, discusses the use of mythical associations as a means of forming local identities within wider frameworks through the iconography on coinage. As he states, ‘local myths can situate a community in common narratives of the past’ (116), either because the place was founded by a great Wgure, or wandering heroes stopped there, or important episodes happened there rather than elsewhere. He points to two coins from Acmonia in Phrygia showing Acmon on horseback, that is, a founder Wgure from Greek mythology, but set in local scenery. 139 Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, 65. 140 FGrH 602 f 11. 141 FGrH 607 f 1.


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their own right and oVer a chronological framework for other events.142 Hellanicus of Lesbos, for example, reveals a strong interest in mythical genealogy in his Atthis, tying in the descent from Deucalion through his son Codrus and so on to the Heraclidae,143 and miraculously tracing the ancestry of the orator Andocides right back to Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, and Nausicaa.144 It is not, therefore, a surprise that he chooses to date the trial of Orestes on the Areopagus to nine generations after the trial of Ares and Poseidon over Halirrothius,145 and six generations after the trial of Cephalus, the son of Dioneus; or the trial of Clytemnestra for the murder of Agamemnon to three generations after the trial of Daedalus (f 22). Here we see not only generational time, but also the emergence of a time frame constructed from major trials—a chronology of justice. The relationship between generational time systems and the genealogical interests of many early historians is complex, and in some ways tangential to this study. As Murray points out, the use of generations in reckoning time does not in itself imply a genealogical interest,146 and it is far from clear how much conceptual distance we should place between Hecataeus’ innovation in his Genealogiai of genealogical chronology and the more extensive and radical attempt to construct a chronology for the spatium historicum, which would be the task of the historian.147 But it is a relationship to which we have already devoted a little attention in the context of universal historiography, and it is worth considering whether there was anything distinctively diVerent about the function and role of genealogy, and the use of generations, in a more local context. Fowler’s classic article on the conceptual underpinning of 142 The dominance of genealogical concerns in the local histories of Greece is striking and worthy of further attention. For some examples, see FGrH 310: Socrates of Argos; 316: Ar(i)aethus of Tegea; 451: Eumelus of Corinth; 457: Epimenides of Crete; 568: Hippostratus of Sicily; 595: Sosibius the Laconian. 143 FGrH 323a f 23. See Jacoby, Commentary IIIB Supplement 43–51, for an excellent discussion of the use of royal genealogies in the historiography of Athens. In particular, his analysis brings out the blurred distinction between genealogical and magisterial time, since, as the Parian Marble shows, the king list at Athens moved straight into the structuring of time by archons. There is, indeed, some suggestion that the transition was further blurred by the notion of kings being designated ‘archon for life’, making the shift one of tenure (from life to a Wxed period of oYce), rather than regal to magisterial. 144 FGrH 323a f 24. This was probably introduced at the Wrst appearance in the narrative of the Andocides concerned. 145 On Halirrothius as the son of Poseidon who died at hands of Ares having wronged his daughter Alcippe, see Philochorus (FGrH 328 f 3). 146 Murray, ‘Herodotus and Oral History’, 22. 147 See L. Bertelli, ‘Hecataeus: From Genealogy to Historiography’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 67–94. He questions Hecataeus’ novelty, asking to what extent Hecataeus’ work could be seen as simply a prose version of Hesiod’s (76), but concludes that Hecataeus does herald a major step towards the development of a historiography, since he introduces the element of rational underpinning and criticism (89).

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genealogical works takes as its starting point the scene in the Iliad where Nestor tells of how Peleus interrogated his visitors from the south about their ancestry and lineage in order to give himself a means to relate the unknown to the known: ‘Genealogy gives him his bearings. For those within the system a genealogy is a map. They can read its signs. To the names are attached stories, thousands of them; collectively they gave the listeners their sense of history and their place in the world.’148 But, as Fowler goes on to argue, the apparently compelling appeal of the universal structure oVered by a genealogical poem such as the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women149 would always be compromised by the independence of the cities, which ‘produced a centrifugal force counteracting the desire for unity under the name ‘‘Hellenic’’ ’.150 A new wave of scholarship on the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women has stressed the interplay between the local and the Panhellenic traditions. In particular, Rutherford has posited that poets employed ‘panhellenic poetics’, by which he refers not to a common system, but to deliberately generated connections through the Catalogue between myths and genealogical traditions from diVerent parts of Greece.151 D’Alessio reinforces this point, noting the important diVerence between lyric poetry, which was addressed to local audiences, although with Panhellenic overtones, and genealogical epic poetry, which was addressed to no speciWc or identiWable local audience, but designed from the start as a Panhellenic form, in spite of its focus on local traditions.152 This tension between the potential for a universal, or at least Panhellenic, genealogical structure and the constant promotion of variant stories asserting local identities, is paradigmatic for the ongoing complexity of macro- and micronarratives in the telling of history, whatever the priority of one form 148 R. Fowler, ‘Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation of the Hellenes’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44 (1998), 1–19 at 1. 149 Fowler, ibid. 15, argues that this is a production of the seventh century when the mythographical ‘creation of the Hellenes’ corresponded to a living reality of uniWed Greeks in a world of colonization and contact with other peoples, and the Thessalian amphictyony could rely on its transfer to Delphi in the early sixth century to lend authority to the message that the people of the South were likewise descended from Thessalian heroes. 150 Fowler, ibid. 16. But see I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Cambridge, MA and London, 2001), 9–12, for the complex relationship between genealogy and identity. Malkin observes that claims often seem to be to do with ‘intra-Hellenic identity’ (12) as in Euripides’ Ion and Isocrates’ Archidamus, rather than truly ‘ethnic’. He suggests that we should distinguish between ‘collective identity’ and a more speciWc notion of ethnicity. 151 I. Rutherford, ‘Mestra at Athens: Hesiod fr. 43 and the Poetics of Panhellenism’, in R. Hunter (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions (Cambridge, 2005), 99–117. The Panhellenic poetics would thus oVer a way in which the poem could conWgure not only time, but also space. 152 G. B. D’Alessio, ‘Ordered from the Catalogue: Pindar, Bacchylides, and Hesiodic Genealogical Poetry’, in The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 217–38 at 217. This is indeed an interesting proposition, given that the genealogy was essentially woven out of local traditions. One wonders what the motivation for such a work would be.


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over another. Finkelberg has pointed out the way in which the Wrst prose writings in Greek, the logographies, were concerned with analysing precisely this complexity and providing critical commentaries on the diVerent strands of heroic genealogy.153 But, by contrast with Fowler’s stress on the instability of the genealogical tradition and the power of individual poleis to present their own versions, Finkelberg is more impressed by the overwhelming dominance of an unassailable Panhellenic genealogical scheme, which was strengthened by its multifaceted and incorporative nature: ‘As a result, while individual and local genealogies could well Xuctuate, the Pan-Hellenic genealogical scheme largely remained untouched.’154 Finkelberg’s observation that being counted a Hellene did not entail descent from Hellen himself, but could involve simply ‘becoming reckoned among’ the Hellenes,155 allows for the ‘Panhellenic’ genealogy to be heterogeneous and ‘an aggregate of mutually unconnected stemmas, each of them traced to a separate progenitor of its own’;156 and this perhaps brings her vision closer to that of Fowler with his assertion of the independence of poleis to manipulate or reject the scheme. The same divergent reality could be seen either as reXecting a uniWed scheme which was itself heterogeneous, or as deviations from a central scheme by self-asserting cities, though these two scenarios clearly imply diVerent interpretations of the relationship between polis and tradition. We should, in any case, keep both of these perspectives in mind later when considering the question of the historian’s authority. Finkelberg comments that ‘contrary to what many are inclined to believe, even a falsiWcation of one’s genealogical position could not be carried out arbitrarily, that is, without making it consistent in terms of the universally agreed upon system’.157 In other words, she asserts parameters within which the teller of the past must remain if he wishes to win the credence of his audience. We shall return to these issues of authority and reception in more detail when discussing the orators (in chapter 5) and the historians (in chapter 6).158 153 M. Finkelberg, Greeks and Pre-Greeks: Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, 2005), 25. 154 Finkelberg, ibid. 29. 155 See Herodotus 5.57, for the acceptance of Phoenicians (originally from Gephyraei, but subsequently having settled in Boeotia) into the community on certain terms. Finkelberg suggests (37) that this incorporation of non-Hellenes into the Hellenic race might have happened at around the time of the establishment of the Panhellenic Olympic festival in the eighth century. 156 Finkelberg, ibid. 35. She notes, for example, the large number of mythological characters, who were not associated with the Hellen genealogy, not least the river Inachus and his son, Phoroneus, whose stemma includes such prominent and geographically widespread heroes as Io, Cadmus, Heracles, and Perseus (33–4). 157 Finkelberg, ibid. 28. 158 Price, ‘Local Mythologies in the Greek East’, has made the same point with reference to local identity expressed on coinage. He notes that the relocation of myths for the purposes of

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b) Human history: regal and dynastic time Just as with the universal historians, once we reach the realms of human history, a wide range of chronological systems comes into play in the fragments of local historiography. One relatively common means of denoting time is by reference to local kings and rulers. Ion of Chios (c.480–422 bc) in his Foundation of Chios notes the arrival of Carians on the island ‘during the reign of Oenopion’ (Kd B ˇNø ÆØºÆ).159 The case of the Megarians neatly illustrates the shift from mythical heroes to more systematic king lists, but also the way in which the continuity of generational thinking blurred the boundary between them. They said that their city received its name when Kar, the son of the mythical hero, Phoroneus, was king, and formulated their subsequent history in relation to this and successive reigns. They said that in the twelfth generation after Kar (øŒ Ø b o æ a ˚AæÆ e *æøø ªAØ), Lelex arrived from Egypt and became king, giving the Leleges their name. Furthermore, the capture of the city of Megara is dated to when Nisus was king, reinforcing the use of regal time.160 Or we may consider the Argolica of Deinias of Argos (third century bc), in which the Lacedaemonians were said to have worked in chains by the river Lachas as prisoners of war in Tegea, ‘when Perimeda was in power in Tegea’.161 The fourth-century bc work on Cyrene by Acesandrus mentioned Eurypylus, the king of Cyrene, son of Poseidon and of Celaene, the daughter of Atlas.162 The mention of a royal Wgure does not in itself indicate that the historian used regal time as a structuring device for his work. However, the same fragment also attributes to Acesandrus the claim that after Eurypylus, Cyrene, the daughter of Hypseus, ruled Libya. Although this particular example does not constitute a dynastic self-advancement ‘raises the question of the limits of the possible in such mythical elaborations’ (119) and that ‘competing claims had to be plausible within the logic of the myths (otherwise they would carry no weight with other Greek communities), and they had to rest on evidence (such as old oracles, decrees, and the writings of poets and historians), but there was no external authority (oracular or other) that could adjudicate between such claims’ (120). 159 FGrH 392 f 1. For a full discussion of the structuring and implications of Ion’s account, see Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 18–20. 160 FGrH 487 f 3. 161 FGrH 306 f 4: —æØÆ K ªÆØ ıÆ ı. But, as Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 29, notes, we cannot assume from the fact that a third-century Argive historian used a vague dynastic reference that Arcadia already had a local chronicle from very early on. For another example of ‘dynastic time’ see Timaeus FGrH 566 f 133 on the Eleatic contest, which he says was during Hieron’s rule in Sicily and at the time of Epicharmus the poet (ŒÆ a (æøÆ e #ØŒºÆ ı ŒÆd ¯Ææ e Ø c). The precise distinction between diVerent types of monarch—king, dynast, tyrant—is not of the essence here. 162 FGrH 469 f 3. There was clearly disagreement among ancient scholars over such fundamental details as the king’s name and genealogy. We are told that Phylarchus called him Eurytus, and said he was the brother of Lycaon.


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succession, the mention of the next ruler possibly might suggest that Acesandrus was marking out and articulating Cyrenian history through its royal leaders. Sometimes royal time was useful for locating important Wgures and events from outside the history of the place concerned. The Spartan history by Sosibius (c.200 bc) noted that Homer could be dated to the eighth year of the reign of Charillus, son of Polydectes, placing him Wrmly within the chronological framework of the Spartan kings.163 This particular case illustrates a phenomenon, to which we shall return, namely the sewing together of several diVerent time frames to form a more extensive or mutually supportive web. Charillus, we are told, reigned for sixty-four years, after which his son Nicandrus ruled for thirty-nine; the Wrst Olympiad occurred in the thirty-fourth year of the latter’s reign, allowing Sosibius to conclude that Homer could be dated to ninety years before the establishment of the Olympics. Here, then, not only do the Spartan kings form a dynastic chain, but they also oVer an important chronological stepping stone—from Homer to the Olympics, but via a local route.164 At Wrst glance it is striking to place what is apparently a piece of local historiography alongside the chronographical works discussed in the second chapter and to consider their similar concerns with establishing the relationship between key chronological markers, here placed appropriately against a local framework. However, a second look reveals the complexity of the task, and exempliWes one of the weaknesses of Jacoby’s arrangement of authors. Sosibius’ chronological passages here are explicitly attributed to an ostensibly chronographical work—Record of Dates or On Dates, although they appear in the volume on local histories, since Jacoby classiWed Sosibius as primarily a local historian. We simply have no idea to what degree these chronological interests were reXected in his works on various aspects of life in Laconia.165 163 FGrH 595 f 2. Sosibius is, unfortunately, one of those authors, like Phlegon of Tralles, about whom one might justiWably have suspicions, given that almost every citation is from a single source, Athenaeus, who was himself engaged in an elaborate display of erudition. Furthermore, it does not inspire conWdence in the real existence of this author that he is described by Plutarch (De Iside et Osimde 28 ¼ FGrH 595 t 2) as ºıºÆc ‘much-wandering’, almost too good to be true as an epithet for an author of Dorian stock (see Herodotus 1.56 for the description of the Dorians as always on the move). More positively on the fragments of Sosibius, see the excellent article by E. Le´vy, ‘Sosibius le Laconien’, in D. Lenfant (ed.), Atheńeé et les fragments d’historiens, Actes du colloque de Strasbourg 16–18 juin 2005 (Paris, forthcoming 2007). 164 Sosibius also provided an Olympiadic context for the local Spartan Carneia festival—Wrst won by Terpander and established in the twenty-sixth Olympiad (FGrH 595 f 3). 165 It must indeed be noted that the named works of Sosibius (On Spartan Festivals, On Alcman, On Imitations, and so on) are not concerned with the type of themes to require an elaborate chronological structure. The fragments, which excerptors have not attributed to particular works, involve a mixture of mythological and historical themes, suggesting that perhaps here the chronological interests of Sosibius might have come to the fore.

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As we have seen with the chronographers and will see further in the local histories, the fall of Troy was a contested date whose discussion elicited the full range of chronological systems. Amongst these were regal datings: Clement of Alexandria reported that Dionysius the Argive pinpointed the event to the eighteenth year of the rule of Agamemnon—not a surprising choice, given his relevance to the tale.166 Perhaps more surprising was the fact that Dionysius reinforced this dating by deWning it as happening when Demophon son of Theseus was king of Athens in his Wrst year, and on the twelfth day of the month of Thargelion. Both the general practice of ‘borrowing’ the time of other cities, and the common use of Athenian months, will be discussed later, but it is interesting to note the way in which the regal time of two cities could be synchronized for the purpose of more accurately or intelligibly denoting when an event took place.167 But of course it was more natural that those who wrote up the past of Athens itself should use its kings as chronological markers. It is clear from one of the few remaining fragments of Demon’s Atthis that there he dealt with the royal house of Athens, and furthermore that he used the reigns as a dating device for other historical events.168 The greater surviving extent of the Atthis of Philochorus gives a rare opportunity to glimpse how regal time might have formed a chronological framework for the early history of Athens. He dates the attack on Athens by Eumolpus, son of Poseidon, to ‘when Erechtheus was king’ ( ¯ æŁø ÆØº );169 he mentions the rule for thirteen years of the double Cecrops over what was then called Acte and is now Attica;170 he comments on the nature of armour ‘under Cecrops’ (Kd ˚Œæ), which had later changed.171 There is, of course, an important diVerence between identifying a point in time through reference to the current king and actually constructing a narrative which uses precise regnal dating within an organized and complete chronological structure. But the fragmentary nature of the evidence makes such distinctions impossible to exemplify and we are forced to infer that a historian such as Philochorus was indeed using a structured 166 FGrH 305 f 2. 167 It is interesting too that Lysimachus of Alexandria (c.200 bc) in his Nostoi (FGrH 382 f 13) concurred exactly with Dionysius on this date for the fall of Troy—the Wrst year of Demophon’s reign as king of Athens and on the twelfth of Thargelion—but with no mention of Agamemnon. Nevertheless, the repetition of the two other elements is striking. 168 FGrH 327 f 1 tells of how Aphidas, king of Athens, was assassinated by his younger illegitimate brother, Thymooetes, who then became king. During his reign, Melanthus of Messenia was exiled and found a new home in Eleusis through the Delphic oracle. 169 FGrH 328 f 13. The story is given as an aetiology for the festival of the Boedromia, so named after Ion’s rush to help the city in its distress. 170 FGrH 328 f 93. The king was apparently so called either because of his size, or because, being Egyptian, he knew two languages. 171 FGrH 328 f 98.


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regnal framework from his extensive and systematic use of a magisterial framework for later periods (on which see below in this chapter). The fact that regal time seemed particularly appropriate for marking out the history of a place is brought home by a fragment concerning accounts of the ancient events ( a IæÆØ Æ Æ) of Miletus, in which we learn that Miletus was known as Anactoria for two generations, while Anax and Asterius were kings.172 The name of the land and the city changed when Miletus himself arrived with an army of Cretans, Xeeing Minos. It is clear that the identity of the place, including its very name, was bound up with the royal house, and that its history would enter a very diVerent phase, a new temporally deWned era, when the ruler changed. It is worth recalling here the way in which cities might play to their dynastic rulers not only in the construction of the past, but also in their formulation of assertions concerning the present. Kushnir-Stein has studied Palestinian coinage and the way in which its dating systems reXected the changing status of the cities:173 Wrst reXecting their position under Ptolemaic control, then dating by Seleucid eras, and Wnally moving towards the assertion of individual city identities through the introduction of coinage which was dated in terms of their own eras of autonomy. Here, the commemoration of a crucial moment in the city’s history was simultaneously an expression of local independence, and the sense of a new beginning in history and the reconWguration of time, since the new situation was manifested in two ways at once: ‘The introduction of the eras of autonomy was accompanied by the adoption of an individual calendar by each city’.174 The suggestion that Palestinian cities used their organization of time to assert their identity might be tempered by Kushnir-Stein’s further comment that such displays of self-assertion could prove convenient to the ruling monarchs as well, since the Hellenistic monarchs liked the idea of having free cities in their kingdoms as a sign that the classical Greek polis had not died.175 Nevertheless, it still shows that individual cities might construct, through their adoption or rejection of dynastic eras in the dating of their coinage, their relationship with the relevant rulers. The focus on successive members of a dynasty naturally gave rise to a situation in which generations would be a recurrent unit of time, just as was the case in the genealogical structure of the heroic age. We have already seen (in chapter 1) that generational chronology is a common form of time measurement in any culture. However, the inaccuracies of such a system 172 See FGrH 496 f 2. 173 A. Kushnir-Stein, ‘City Eras on Palestinian Coinage’, in Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces, 157–61. 174 Kushnir-Stein, ibid. 157. 175 Kushnir-Stein, ibid. 160.

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require little elaboration. We have only to recall the passage of Herodotus (1.32) with which this book started to see the disputes that could arise over the span of even a single life. However, that passage also brings home the value of measuring time in human terms. Quite apart from its appealing simplicity, the rhetorical value of a dating system which attached the enumeration of time to a set of named individuals was considerable, not least in terms of its memorability. Ion of Chios, for example, in relating the early history of that island, dates Hector’s battle against the Abantes and Carians on the island and subsequent incorporation of the Chians into the world of the Panionium to ‘the fourth generation after Amphiclus’, who came to Chios from Euboea, in accordance with a Delphic oracle.176 We have already seen the way in which the people of Megara mapped out the time between the reign of Kar, when the city received its name, and the arrival of Lelex from Egypt and the start of his reign, as lasting for twelve generations.177 The appropriateness of generational counting in a regal context is clear,178 although the kingly component was by no means a prerequisite.179 The structuring of the distant past in terms of heroes was in some senses more complicated than the corresponding structuring of the historical period in terms of rulers, be they kings or magistrates, although we have seen that counting by generations played a role in blurring this distinction. Whereas the drive to construct a genealogical structure that would accommodate diVerent population groups, all claiming to be part of a ‘Hellenic’ race, made for a multifaceted and much contested account,180 the construction of a king list or a list of eponymous magistrates was on the whole a more obviously linear and local aVair. It is to the structuring of local history according to the latter of these simpler structures, the annual oYcials appointed by the polis, that we now turn.

c) Magisterial and priestly time; counting the years The impetus to structure and calibrate the past in terms of named individuals was clearly strong, but not all Greek cities had kings at any stage, and none except Sparta had them throughout their history. The use of local regal time 176 FGrH 392 f 1: Ie %Œºı æ Ø ªAØ. 177 FGrH 487 f 3: øŒ Ø b o æ a ˚AæÆ e *æøø ªAØ. 178 See again FGrH 496 f 2 and the Milesian accounts of their city’s short-lived existence as ‘Anactoria’ for the two generations (Kd ªa b ) while Anax and Asterius were kings. 179 See FGrH 555 f 4, where Hellanicus is cited on the disputed date for the crossing of the Sicels from Italy to Sicily. He denoted the date as ‘in the third generation before the events at Troy’ ( æ Ø ªAØ æ æ H æøØŒH). 180 See Fowler, ‘Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation of the Hellenes’, 18, for the point that writing down the Hesiodic Catalogue produced no abatement in the oVering of challenges by Hecataeus with the genealogy of Hellen and Deucalion, or by Acusilaus of Argos, who revised the Catalogue with an Argive slant.


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in delineating history stood alongside the use of other local administrative or political structures as temporal devices. Whereas most of the extant evidence for regal time is to be found in historiographical texts, many examples of the latter phenomenon are to be found not only in historiography, but also in inscribed public documents, making them clear expressions of the temporal structures adopted by and understood by a polis as a whole for structuring its past.181 We have already seen examples of magisterial time as a dating device in public documents (in chapter 1) and other instances abound in the pages of Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. An (admittedly imperial) inscription from Magnesia on the Maeander notes that ‘during the prytany of Acrodemus, son of Diotimus’ (Kd æı Æø %Œæı F ˜Ø ı), the demos sent some men to Delphi to ask the god about a sign which had occurred: namely, that a tree had been felled by the wind and inside was found an image of Dionysus.182 Clearly the local magistracy is being used as a dating device and was entirely appropriate for denoting the past of the polis in a public context. Or consider Demeas (300/250 bc?) whose honoriWc inscription on Paros relates that, besides writing about his country, he also wrote about his compatriot, Archilochus, and of his piety to the gods and commitment to his country.183 He recorded Archilochus’ achievements either ‘archon by archon’ or ‘year by year’, depending on how one reconstructs the text (ŒÆ ½¼æ Æ ŒÆ or ŒÆ ½KØÆı e ŒÆ ).184 In fact, either reading carries 181 Historians during and of the Principate would associate the king-by-king vision of history oVered by imperial biographies, but also embedded in more ostensibly non-biographical forms such as Tacitus used in his Annals, with secrecy and deliberate concealment, while the annalistic form of historiography which derived from the Republican practice of pinning up the pontiWcal record of the events under an annual magistracy was naturally associated with accountability and public approval (see Dio 53.19). But to assert that kingly history in Greece was private, by contrast with the public nature of magisterial history, would be to retroject a contrast that belongs to Roman historiography. 182 FGrH 482 f 5. Another city which seems to have mapped out time in terms of its local magistracy of prytanies is Pergamum. The anonymous marble chronicle notes that Archias persuaded them to choose prytanies year by year (ŒÆ ŒÆ ) and that there have been prytanies continuously from him until now (FGrH 506 ¼ OGIS 264). As A. Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften (Stuttgart, 1988), 70, notes, the Wrst section about the introduction of the prytany system was followed by a genealogy of Pergamene kings. This, then, oVers an interesting example of genealogical, regal, and magisterial concepts of time combined. 183 FGrH 502 f 1 ¼ IG 12 (5) 445. The inscription is to be contextualized within a much larger cult of Archilochus in his native Paros, to which we shall return in ch. 6. 184 In spite of IG 12(5), ŒÆ ¼æ Æ is the favoured reading, adopted not only by Jacoby but also by D. Clay, Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis (Cambridge, MA and London, 2004). The context makes plain why this is the right reading—since the inscription goes on to say that ‘he [sc. Demeas] began Wrst with the archon’ (qæŒ ÆØ Ie ¼æ æH ). Clay, 116, translates ‘the Wrst archon in the series’, but the æH does not seem to support this.

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the same annalistic implication. This latter example, as an inscription set up to celebrate a historian who in turn was celebrating a poet and his age, leads us from the world of the public document to that of historiography. However, the very fact that the historian is publicly honoured is a reminder both of the integral part that the historian had to play in the community and of the overlap between the conceptual frameworks used by the polis in its oYcial decrees and those used by the historian in telling the polis its past. Athens oVers the best opportunity to see how local historiography might be structured according to annual magistracies as well as reigns,185 neatly linking regal and magisterial time. The best example of how history was conWgured according to local political time is provided by Philochorus (340–263/2 bc), of whose works well over two hundred fragments survive, and who, in Jacoby’s eyes, held the status of ‘the last, and certainly the greatest, of the Atthidographers’.186 The list of his twenty-seven works reveals the scholarly nature of this Atthidographer, which perhaps explains some of the more recondite features of the extant fragments of his Atthis. His work of local historiography took as its scope the whole period from ‘primeval history’187 to his own day, almost certainly in an annalistic arrangement once it was possible to adhere to such a scheme. The extant fragments reveal that the historiographical genre was perfectly well able to incorporate the very public political time frames which we have already seen displayed on public monuments. As Jacoby says, ‘the Wrst business of the local historian was to create a chronological framework for his town’.188 The very earliest phase of Attic history was, however, prone to the kind of chaos which upset neat chronological schemes—after Ogygus, because of the destruction caused by the Xood, Attica was kingless ‘until Cecrops’.189 Hellanicus gives us more detail on this interregnum, noting that Attic chronography was worked out from Ogygus under whom took place the Wrst great Xood in Attica, when Phoroneus was king in Argos.190 Hellanicus puts the length of time of the washout between Ogygus and Cecrops as 189 years. But for most of the earliest period of Athenian history encompassed by Philochorus’ work, regal time was appropriate. The festival of Boedromia, for 185 For a non-Athenian parallel, see FGrH 536 f 3, Aethlius of Samos (Wfth to fourth centuries bc) whose Samian Horoi noted that the image of Hera on Samos used formerly to be a wooden board, but later ‘when Procles was archon, or ruler’ (—æŒºı ¼æ ), it was made anthropomorphic. 186 See Jacoby, Commentary IIIB Supplement 220. It is, however, unfortunately the case that we know virtually nothing of his biography. 187 Jacoby, ibid. Supplement 244. 188 Jacoby, ibid. Supplement 381. 189 FGrH 328 f 92. 190 FGrH 323a f 10. Note Phoroneus’ appearance as the father of Kar, under whose reign Megara got its name—this interlacing of apparently discrete stories is not uncommon.


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example, was named after the run made by Ion to help when Athens was attacked by Eumolpus, the son of Poseidon, ‘when Erechtheus was king’;191 as has already been mentioned, the style of armour ‘under Cecrops’ is noted, as well as the fact that it later changed.192 Philochorus thus seems regularly to have dated the early events in Attic and Athenian history by the king in power. But the kings did not last for ever, and there are very many instances in which Philochorus denotes when an event happened by reference to the current archonship using the formula Kd [name] ¼æ , or simply Kd ı, if the name has already been mentioned. This forms the temporal structure for the major part of Philochorus’ work—local historiography in the temporal framework provided by its subject matter, namely the political history of Athens in terms of its eponymous archons. A few examples will suYce to illustrate the pattern:193 F 31: IªæÆE ¯æB: o ø Kºª ½Z ; ŒÆd Iæı ˚æØ ¼æ ; ‰ Ææ ıæE *Øº æ K ª. Hermes Agoraios. Thus he was called, and his temple was set up when Cebris was archon, as Philochorus attests in Book 3. F 52: ØÆłØØ: K º Æ Æ b ØºŒ ÆØ æd H ØÆłø; ‰ ªª ÆØ Kd %æı ¼æ ; %æ ø K BØ % ŁØ ŒÆd *Øº æ K B % Ł. Voting by ballot. There has been a full discussion of voting by ballot, as was established in the archonship of Archias. Androtion in his Atthis and Philochorus in Book 6 of his Atthis. F 211: *Øº æ b a c ( øØŒc IØŒÆ [sc. d …æ MŒÆŒÆØ], Kd ¼æ %ŁØ %æı; H ( ºØÆŒH o æ Ø ŒÆ e OªŒ Æ. Philochorus says that Homer was at his height after the Ionian colonization, in the archonship of Archippus at Athens, and 180 years after the Trojan War.

The archonship thus provides the framework for Philochorus’ narrative, although it could be tied in with other chronological devices. The subject matter of the third fragment cited above makes it entirely unsurprising that the archonal structure is supplemented by references to Troy and another major migration which acted as a chronological anchor, the Ionian colonization. We shall come back to the use of calendar months by Philochorus and other local historians, but it is worth noting now the extraordinary similarity 191 FGrH 328 f 13: ¯æŁø ÆØº . 192 FGrH 328 f 98. 193 For a fuller list of archonal dating in Philochorus, see FGrH 328 f 31, 36, 41, 49–51, 52, 53–6, 119, 121, 122, 123, 129, 130, 131, 134, 138, 139, 140, 154, 157, 158, 160, 211. FGrH 328 f 37, where he dates the building of the Lyceum not to the time of Pisistratus, as Theopompus would argue, but to the leadership of Pericles (—æØŒºı . . . KØ Æ F ) is exceptional in its formulation.

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between the way in which Philochorus constructs his history of Athens and Attica within the linear framework of Wrst kings and then archons, and the way in which this is mirrored on the Parian Marble—an inscribed version of Greek history from the accession of King Cecrops in Athens to 264/3 bc.194 The document is fraught with problems and, in spite of its considerable interest, virtually neglected by modern scholarship. The reasons are to some degree obvious. ‘Mutilated and corrupted in text, of uncertain purpose and origin, arbitrary in scope and method, sometimes without parallel, often unorthodox, ranging in subject over the whole of Greek history and literature down to the third century b.c., the Parian Chronicle confronts its editor with problems of the utmost diYculty and variety.’ So Munro described the marble when reviewing Jacoby’s attempt at a text and commentary, early in his career.195 But the inscription is of great importance, not least for the insights it oVers into chronicle mentality. We shall return in more detail (in the Wnal chapter) to questions concerning the context and purpose of the chronicle. But relevant here is the formulaic nature of its entries—each ending with the number of years from that point in the past to the time of composition, and a note of which king was ruling, or later who the archon was. A f 23: I y ƒ ½ ‚ºº N æÆ K½ æ ı½Æ; ˙˙˙˙ ((((; ÆØº %Ł½H½!Łø æØŒÆØŒ ı ı. From when the [Helle]nes marched against Troy, 954 years, in the 13th year that [Men]estheus was king of Athe[ns]. A f 46: I y æd æH MªøÆ IæH; n (?) ØÆ 0 ØŒ › ÆºŒØf½ KŒ½Æ; ˙˙˜˜˜˜—( (?), ¼æ %ŁØ ¸ıÆª æı. From when choruses of men Wrst competed, which contest Hypo[di]cus the Chalcidian won as trainer, 246 years, when Lysagoras was archon at Athens.

The change from Athenian regal time to archonal time is itself worthy of an entry in the document, and indeed this (f 32) is the only fragment to anchor itself in time only by the number of years separating the speciWed event from the present. It reads ‘from when the annual archonship began, 420 years’,196 from which point on the usual formula—event, years distant from composition, king/magistrate—resumes. If nothing else, this suggests that the methods used by local historians for shaping and representing the past were 194 The marble was bought at Smyrna on behalf of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and brought to London in 1627. The top half was lost and is known only in a copy by Selden. The Oxford fragment was presented to the University in 1667, and a smaller fragment was found in Paros in 1897 and is in the museum there. 195 J. A. R. Munro, reviewing F. Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium (Berlin, 1904), in Classical Review 19 (1905), 267–9 at 267. 196 IG 12.5.444 (FGrH 239 f 32): I y ŒÆ KØÆı e qæ › ¼æø; ½ ˙˙˙˙˜˜.


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not so dissimilar from those used within the public arena—and perhaps this should not surprise us, given the public and performative nature of history telling. What is harder to explain is why an inscription which was set up on Paros, apparently for a Parian audience, should choose an Athenian chronological framework. Jacoby’s assumption that the author used an Atthis as one of his major sources (alongside Ephorus, a work on inventions, and Aristoxenus), might explain the chronological frame, but the use of an Atthis is stated rather than argued.197 An Athenian readership would seem perhaps a more obvious solution, but we have no evidence for that. Nor can it be assumed that Athenian conceptual frameworks imply Athenian audiences to match; they may tell us only about the aspirations of the author and his own, similarly aspiring, audience. But in the light of this evidence, both literary and epigraphic, it is not surprising that Jacoby felt able to make such strong assertions about the annalistic structure of local historiography in the Greek poleis: ‘The year of the Atthides, and of all local chronicles and chronicle-like products known to us, is the year of oYce of the oYcials of the city, and there is no diVerence in principle whether these oYcials are archons, kings, priests, or priestesses.’198 As Jacoby noted, local historiography was written annalistically wherever a list of eponymous oYcials existed, which tended to be in the Greek city states, a further support to the argument that local historiography really does need to be read in the context of the functioning of the polis. For Jacoby, it was Hellanicus’ creation of a list of Athenian eponymous oYcials at the end of the Wfth century, linking the regal period to that of archons, which provided the scaVolding for all future Athenian historiography, and oVered a local parallel for the list of priestesses which underpinned universal chronicles.199 ‘Hellanikos was the Wrst to narrate the history of this city-state . . . no matter whether or no the exegetai of the city kept a chronicle; and whoever narrated it after him could only do so ŒÆ a ÆØºE ŒÆd ¼æ Æ’ [‘according to kings and archons’—my translation].200 As Schepens eloquently expresses it, the 197 See Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium, p. xviii. The further point that for the smaller fragment, whose sources are less clear, ‘Der Verteilung auf attische Jahre ist Werk des Chronisten’, implies that in the larger Oxford fragment this chronological framework was simply imported via the Atthis. 198 Jacoby, Atthis, 87. The point is repeated again at 99: ‘they [sc. the Atthides] contain the history of Athens in the form of annals, i.e. in the sequence of eponymous kings and archons.’ 199 Jacoby, Atthis, 89. This is very clearly proposed as an alternative explanation to the derivation of such annalistic forms from pontiWcal records, which might seem at Wrst an obvious model to extract from the annalistic structure. 200 Ibid. 126. This is clearly picking up the explicit statement in the Suda to describe the arrangement of Philochorus’ work (FGrH 328 t 1), an interesting case of retrojection. For strong arguments against the annalistic reading of Hellanicus’ work, see Toye, ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the First Greek Historians’, concluding at 294: ‘The weight of the evidence from the fragments of Hellanicus’ Attic History and other works suggests that he did not compose annals but rather recounted heroic myths and genealogies.’

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continuous chronological line which linked past and present ‘further enhances the sense of coherence within a narrative already exhibiting a conceptual unity of place. The unity of both time and place confers upon city histories that very impression of oneness and wholeness that their writers wanted to impart to their local audiences in search for historical identity.’201 The concerns over accuracy which worried Thucydides seem not to have troubled the Atthidographers—for the majority of occasions, dating to a year was perfectly adequate, particularly when dealing with the longue dureé of the life of a polis. The annalistic framework provided by eponymous magistrates was clearly central to the construction of local histories. Jacoby nevertheless concedes that the annalistic framework was not the only one in operation in the Atthides,202 and I shall try to go further in showing that local historians used a wide range of chronological structures in their works. Before we move on to consider some of the chronological structures in local historiography which do not adhere to this dominance of ‘history according to kings and archons’, we should note another temporal indicator to which we shall return, but which deserves preliminary mention here in the context of time denoted through local magistracies and oYces, namely that of the priestess of Hera at Argos.203 Hellanicus is said to have dated the crossing of the Sicels from Italy to Sicily as happening ‘in the third generation before the events at Troy, during the twenty-sixth year of Alcyon being priestess at Argos’.204 The Lindos temple chronicle, an inscription dating from 99 bc and found near the theatre at the base of the Lindian acropolis, quite apart from the interest it holds as a local reconstruction of the island’s heroic past, an aspect to which we shall return (in chapter 6), also reveals the importance of local religious oYcials in structuring time, not only that of the annual cycle, but also that of the historical span.205 Here it is the holders of the local priesthoods who are the markers. The long description of the epiphany of the goddess at the time of Darius’ invasion of Europe ‘was previously preserved, but under the priesthood of Halius (Kd b F ƒæø F ÆP e OºıØÆ. See n. 227 above for Pindar’s dating of the famine in terms of Persian kings. 233 FGrH 556 f 2. The event in question is not clear. Maybe, suggests Jacoby in his commentary, it was a crucial moment in early Greek history, such as the start of colonization.

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by various ways in which they are conceived and formulated against broader chronological and mythical frameworks. However, the use or non-use of Olympiads is a good illustration of the fact that local and universal historiography did have their own distinctive ways of manipulating and expressing time. One of the very few appearances of dating by Olympiads in the local historiography of Greece turns out to be deceptive. Strabo’s extensive account of Rhodes is cited by Jacoby, presumably as a source for local traditions, and it dates the early voyages of the Rhodians to ‘even many years before the Olympic contest’.234 But we have no guarantee that the Olympic dating was present in his ‘local’ source. Strabo was a universal historian at heart and, as we have seen (in chapter 3), his conception of time and methods for calibrating it in his universal geography are naturally in line with his overall plan to provide a coherent vision of a uniWed world, even though he must impose this order on a set of separate city histories. This, then, does not oVer sound evidence for the use by local writers of Olympic chronology. Just as Persian War time was used to deWne not only the events of local history, but also the literary life of a historian himself (Cadmus of Miletus in n. 223 above), so too were authors of local history sometimes located in time by those who later cited their works in terms of Olympiads, the time frame which would come to be so crucial to facilitating not local, but universal historiography. The Wfth-century author, Ion of Chios, is said to have begun composing his tragedy ‘in the eighty-second Olympiad’ and to have been educated ‘at the time of Epaminon’s archonship in the fourth year of the eighty-seventh Olympiad’, neatly combining Athenian archon years with the Olympiadic structure.235 Istrus the Callimachean noted that Xenophon reached his height around the eighty-ninth Olympiad, together with other pupils of Socrates.236 We shall see that literary Wgures and the history of invention and intellectual achievement both oVer yet more ways of patterning and denoting time, in the same way as political Wgures or events. Given the attribution to Timaeus of Tauromenium of the ‘invention’ of Olympiadic time in historiography, it is no surprise to Wnd that he notes the synoecism of Camarina as having occurred in the forty-second Olympiad, and the foundation of Rome in the thirty-eighth year before the Wrst Olympiad.237 However, it is worth noting that, in each of these fragments, dating by Olympiads is set alongside another chronology: in the former, the capture of the city happened ‘at the time of the expedition of Darius, son of Hystaspes’, 234 FGrH 533 f 3 ¼ Strabo 14.2.5–12: ŒÆd æe B ˇºıØŒB Łø ıE Ø. 235 FGrH 392 t 1 and t 6: Kd ¯Æ ¼æ OºıØØ Ø . 236 FGrH 334 f 32. 237 FGrH 566 f 19; f 60: Oª øØ ŒÆd æØÆŒ HØ æ æ Ø B æ OºıØ. As will be discussed later in this chapter, Timaeus clearly does not know quite how to deWne this event.


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neatly combining Persian War time with Olympiadic; in the latter, the city’s foundation coincided with that of Carthage. The free-standing example of Olympiadic dating in a fragment (f 26) on preparations in Sicily before the arrival of Hannibal, turns out to be more complex than a straightforward piece of dating. The city of Acragas is singled out for the elaborate nature of its preparations, leading to a long description of the temples and city and of its amazing luxury. One manifestation of this was the magniWcent procession enjoyed by Exaenetus of Acragas when he won the stadion in the previous Olympiad, that is the ninety-second one. Thus the Olympiadic dating here is not merely a chronological device, but it is motivated also by the contents of the narrative. We shall return shortly to the frequent combination of diVerent times, sometimes including Olympiads, in the context of local historiography. However, there is still another Panhellenic temporal marker, which regularly appears in fragments of local historiography. The Trojan War, as a deWning moment of great importance for the whole Greek world,238 was a natural event in relation to which to place others. We have already seen in the previous chapter that this marker was used extensively by authors such as Strabo to create a broad brushstroke picture of the post-Trojan world in which the travels and foundations of so many heroes transformed the Mediterranean.239 Sometimes, the contents of local historiography too dictated the introduction of this marker. Istrus the Callimachean, for example, wrote about the fortunes of Telamon ‘after the capture of Troy’;240 Hegesippus of Mecyberna (c.350/00?) also included in his work on Pallene a discussion of Laodice whose son by Acamas, Mounitus, went home ‘after the capture of Troy’.241 Dieuchidas of Megara dated a quite unrelated event, the height of Lycurgus’ power, to ‘about two hundred and ninety years after the fall of Troy’,

238 In the fourth century it naturally took on a new signiWcance as a model for the East/West conXicts of the day. As we shall see in the next chapter, the Panhellenic campaigns directed against the East could be presented as retributive for the Persian campaigns against Greece, but were also seen as symptomatic of an ongoing hostility between East and West, which was Wrst played out at Troy. 239 The all-encompassing importance of this phase of itinerancy, whether real or imagined, is eloquently depicted by I. Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeley and London, 1998). As he says, ‘Faits de mentalite´ cannot be separated from faits accomplis; perceptions, concepts, and mythic images aVect both intention and interpretation. The nostoi mediated and informed cultural, ethnic, and political encounters among Greeks, in relation to non-Greeks, and in the relations of non-Greeks to Greeks.’ 240 FGrH 334 f 57. 241 FGrH 391 f 4. For the complexity of the traditions surrounding the dispersal of heroes after the Trojan war, see E. Dench, From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and Modern Perceptions of Peoples from the Central Apennines (Oxford, 1995), 33–8.

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bringing Spartan history into a wider frame of reference.242 Just as with Olympiads, Timaeus of Tauromenium is a key Wgure in the use of ‘Trojan time’, although, as will be discussed below, the status of Sicilian historiography as ‘local’ is debatable. He claimed that the Rhodians founded the Gymnesian islands ‘after the return from Troy’; and that Chersicrates, a relative of the Bacchiads, settled the island [it is not clear which] ‘six hundred years after the events at Troy’.243 As an event which had repercussions for the whole of the Greek world, the fall of Troy was the subject of much chronological dispute, and Trojan time, just as Olympiadic time, was prone to be aligned with other temporal systems. We have already seen that Lysimachus of Alexandria (c.200 bc) dated the event in terms of both Athenian regal time and the Attic calendar.244 Ion of Chios brought Trojan time and Athenian history into a diVerent kind of relationship. He noted Pericles’ pride over Samos and compared the time taken for its capture with the time taken for Troy to fall.245 Furthermore, there was another very obvious marker from the past, taken on this occasion from the world of Panhellenic literature, which was intimately linked to Trojan chronology and to the dispersal of heroes across the Mediterranean in ways which would alter the map of the Greek world and provide the aetiology and foundation story for so many Greek poleis. The acme of Homer was a hotly contested date, which attracted much scholarly attention, both in its own right and as a chronological anchor for other events.

g) Literary time and the history of discovery We have already seen that Sosibius the Laconian (c.250–150 bc) dated Homer to the eighth year of the reign of Charillus, the son of Polydectes, and used Spartan regal time to provide a local stepping stone from one major Panhellenic phenomenon, the acme of Homer, to another, the establishment of the 242 FGrH 485 f 4. The dating of Dieuchidas has received a certain amount of scholarly attention. See D. W. Prakken, ‘A Note on the Megarian Historian Dieuchidas,’ American Journal of Philology 62 (1941), 348–51, for the arguments which place him in the second half of the fourth century. A more interesting aspect of Prakken’s article is the consequent discussion about the relationship between Dieuchidas and his predecessor, Ephorus. Contra Jacoby, Prakken argues convincingly for Dieuchidas having used the same new, post-Hecataean, recension of the Spartan king list as Ephorus, either directly, or more likely through his universal forerunner: ‘Would not the unknown writer of Megara have been far more likely to borrow from the universal history of his famous predecessor for his own particular purposes?’ (351). 243 FGrH 566 f 65: a c KŒ æÆ ¼; f 80: a ÆŒ ØÆ H æøØŒH. 244 FGrH 382 f 13. The precise date in the month of Thargelion was itself subject to dispute. 245 FGrH 392 f 16. While it took ten years to capture a barbarian city, Pericles had taken the leading and strongest Ionians in nine months.


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Olympics.246 It is no surprise that a notorious chronographer, such as Timaeus or Sosibius, should draw together major chronological markers and attempt to relate them accurately to each other. It is, however, less easy to explain why the third-century work on Euboea, presumably a work of local history, by Archemachus should have left us a fragment concerning the acme of Homer and Hesiod, and one which relates that date to the fall of Troy. Archemachus placed the literary Wgures two hundred years after Troy fell, and it is furthermore interesting that he is cited in this view alongside Euthymenes, the author of Chronica.247 Clearly there was another group of scholars who would Wnd such chronological issues concerning Homer and other literary Wgures of interest, and those were writers of works speciWcally devoted to the history of literature and to its key players. Artemon of Clazomenae (fourth century bc), for example, in his work On Homer, noted the date of birth of the poet Arctinus, who was a pupil of Homer, and he did so in terms of Olympiads and the Trojan War, neatly linking these major dating devices with the age of Homer himself.248 Of course, Homer was the basis of Greek education, and the epics attributed to him also made famous the events at Troy.249 However, it is worth noting in passing that not only he but also other literary Wgures oVered a form of chronological framework which could be used for situating other events. The Homeric rhapsodes needed to be Wtted into the scheme.250 Hippostratus (third century bc) said that Cynaethus was the Wrst of these, and operated in Syracuse in the 69th Olympiad.251 Olympiadic time is used in combination with literary time by Persaeus of Citium (early third century), who gave details of a people who were at their height in the 130th Olympiad, ‘when Zeno was already old’.252 Timaeus brought literary time into his historiography, but 246 FGrH 595 f 2. Less predictably, Timaeus too linked Spartan time to that of Homer. In answer to a chronological problem, he conjectured that there were two men called Lycurgus at Sparta at diVerent times, the older one of whom was a near contemporary of Homer (FGrH 566 f 127). 247 FGrH 424 f 3. 248 FGrH 443 f 2: ŒÆ a c Ł OºıØÆ a ıØ H æøØŒH. 249 Strabo 8.3.3 and 8.3.23 on the importance of Homer. See D. Dueck, Strabo of Amasia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome (London, 2000), ch. 2, for Strabo’s engagement with the Greek literary tradition, with Homer at its head. See also M. Biraschi, ‘Strabo and Homer: A Chapter in Cultural History’, and D. Dueck, ‘Strabo’s Use of Poetry’, both in D. Dueck, H. Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia (Cambridge, 2005), 73–85 and 86–107, respectively. 250 I shall return in ch. 6 to the suggestion that rhapsodes might themselves oVer a close parallel for the phenomenon of itinerant local historians, whose expertise and ready versatility encourages a supposition of professionalism. 251 FGrH 568 f 5. Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 596, Wnds it implausible that this form of dating was in the original source, since there would have been ‘mehr und sichere lokale Daten u¨ber sizilische Dichter’. 252 FGrH 584 t 3.

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alongside local political time, claiming that the Eleatic contest took place ‘during Hieron’s rule in Sicily and at the time of Epicharmus the poet’.253 And the Sicyonian Record (c.400 bc), a local chronicle, was, according to Plutarch, used by Heraclides in his work on music in order to name ‘the priestesses in Argos and the poets and the musicians’, yet again bringing a more standard dating system, this time the priestess of Hera at Argos, into synchronism with the literary and artistic world.254 This local record neatly brings together the importance of literary and intellectual history in the chronological framework of a polis and the role of inventor Wgures in mapping out and structuring the past. The second and only other extant fragment of the Sicyonian Record refers to the recording there of Clonas as the inventor of the ‘composition in three diVerent modes’.255 We have already observed the attraction of mapping out the past in human terms, through the lives of individuals, and those who achieve in the Welds of cultural rather than political life are no exception. The patterns of pride over home-grown talent shown in the local records are quite striking. It is not surprising to Wnd that polis identity was to a degree enhanced and shaped by the claim to important discoveries on the part of citizens. It is also unsurprising to Wnd that this is a theme more prominent in publicly displayed epigraphic accounts of the city’s past than in local historiography produced for perhaps a more restricted audience. But it is striking that the history of invention and intellectual endeavour is perhaps even more common in the histories of non-Greek lands than in those of the Greek poleis. I shall consider (in chapter 6) the celebration by the poleis of living intellectuals, and particularly the emergence of local heroes in the form of historians themselves, but for now I shall focus on the appearances of other thinkers, literary Wgures, and inventors of institutions, who seem to have provided punctuation marks in the past of the city, and thereby constituted an (albeit local and fragmented) temporal system in their own right. The only clear examples of ‘the history of intellectual achievements’ appearing in the local historiography of Greece are those drawn from Diodorus Siculus and assumed to be based on local accounts. For example, Diodorus oVers a long and detailed account of what the Cretans say about their distant past, including information concerning the inventive king who came up with most of the features of civilization at a very early stage.256 253 FGrH 566 f 133: ŒÆ a (æøÆ e #ØŒºÆ ı ŒÆd ¯Ææ e Ø c. 254 FGrH 550 f 1: ƒæÆ a K 1`æªØ ŒÆd f Ø a ŒÆd f ıØŒf O Ø. 255 FGrH 550 f 2: K b BØ K #ØŒıHØ IÆªæÆBØ BØ æd H Ø H ˚ºA æ c IÆªªæÆ ÆØ F æØºF ı. For the meaning of æØº see M. L. West, Anciont Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), 177 n. 57. 256 FGrH 468 f 1 ¼ Diodorus 5.64–80.


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Diodorus’ account of the history of Samothrace is similarly a mixture of myths, the activities of the gods, and a series of inventions.257 When it comes to the island of Rhodes, Diodorus liberally sprinkles his account with signiWcant discoveries by the early inhabitants. The Telchines are described as ‘the inventors of certain arts’, who were the Wrst to fashion statues of the gods. The Heliadae, whose inventions include (signiWcantly in the context of this discussion) the division of the day into hours, were claimed by both Rhodes and Attica, each wishing for association with the innovators, and revealing a strong sense of local pride.258 This particular fragment is taken to represent the account given by Zeno of Rhodes, although not in a work of local history, but rather one of chronography. The fact that all of these ‘fragments’ come from Diodorus Siculus does raise a question over whether the interest in intellectual history is really his, rather than actually being a major preoccupation of the local historians.259 I have discussed (in chapter 3) the extraordinary levels of ‘alien wisdom’, not least in the Weld of chronology, to be found in the accounts by Greek writers of those parts of the world which were neither dominated culturally and politically nor articulated geographically by Greek poleis. But the history of invention was of considerable importance to the Greek poleis also in more publicly displayed conWgurations of the past. The Parian Marble oVers the most stunning demonstration of how the publicly inscribed past, measured out primarily in terms of political power—Wrst kings and then archons—could be heavily punctuated also by the history of invention and of intellectual or literary prowess, and I shall discuss this in some detail in the Wnal chapter.

h) Drawing together time across space: creating synchronisms The overall chronological structure of the Parian Marble, in spite of the dominance of Athenian kings and archons, is rather more complex than this suggests, as is neatly illustrated by the introductory entry: ‘[From all the records and general accounts] I have recorded [the previous times], beginning from Cecrops becoming Wrst king of Athens, until [_____] uanax

257 FGrH 548 f 1 ¼ Diodorus 5.47–9. 258 FGrH 523 f 1 ¼ Diodorus 5.55 for the Telchines; 5.57 for the Heliadae. Strabo, in his extensive account of the history of Rhodes, mentions the Heliadae as successors to the Telchines on the island. See FGrH 533 f 3 ¼ Strabo 14.2.5–12. 259 See K. Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden, 1999), 249–79 at 258–9, for the suggestion that Diodorus had a special interest in intellectuals and literary Wgures, not least as chronological articulators in his own work.

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was archon in Paros, and Diognetus in Athens.’260 The chronological span of the account is marked at one end by Athenian regal time, but at the other by a combination of Athenian and Parian magisterial time. Similarly, the attempt by historians to bring diVerent local times together was another means of creating themselves Panhellenic temporal systems, besides the use of Panhellenic events, such as the Trojan War or the development of the Olympic games. Indeed sometimes these very Panhellenic markers were carefully brought into chronological relationship with each other. Timaeus, for example, would explicitly link Trojan and Olympiadic time one to the other, calculating the gap between the two to 417 years.261 For Sosibius the Laconian, the interval was 595 years.262 Mostly, they were brought into some kind of synchronism with more local temporal systems. We have already noted Hellanicus’ attempt to deal with pre-Olympiadic time in his Atthis, working out an Attic chronography from Ogygus under whom the Wrst Xood in Attica took place, while Phoroneus was king of the Argives. Hellanicus calculated that it was 1,020 years from then until the Wrst Olympiad, and 189 years from the end of Ogygus’ reign to the accession of Cecrops.263 Thus Attic regal time could be set alongside the Panhellenic frame of Olympiadic time, and was found to exceed it. It was not only Athenian or Attic time which could be synchronized with the great Panhellenic markers. Pausanias places the arrangement of the games and the re-establishment of the Olympic festival and truce by Iphitus in the context of Spartan time by noting that Iphitus was ‘a contemporary of Lycurgus’ (ºØŒÆ b ŒÆ a ¸ıŒFæª), who drew up the Spartan law code. That this was an old and many-stranded story is suggested by the sources adduced by Pausanias—an inscription at Olympia calling Iphitus the son of Haemon, the version of ‘most Greeks’ who say that his father was Praxonides, and the support for the latter view oVered by ‘the ancient writings of the Eleans’.264 Nor was it only Olympiads which formed a broader backdrop against which more local time could be placed. We have already noted Clement of Alexandria’s citation of a variety of authors on the date of the fall of Troy, expressing this event in terms of Athenian regal and calendrical time,265 and Lysimachus 260 FGrH 239 f 1 ¼ IG 12.5.444: KŒ ıªªæÆ ø (?) Æ½ ø . . . . . . ø (?) IªæÆłÆ f I . . . . . . Iæ½ Ie ˚Œæ F æ ı ÆØºÆ ` ŁH ¥ ø ¼æ K —æøØ ½b {lacuna?}] [ . . . ]ıÆŒ ; ` ŁØ b ˜Øª ı. 261 FGrH 566 f 125. It is clear from Strabo 8.3.30 that the relationship between events at Troy and the establishment of the Olympic festivals was of continuing interest. In his account, the Aetolians set up the games with the returning Heraclidae. The whole episode was, for Strabo, demonstrably post-Trojan, since the Eleans, who presided over the Wrst to the twenty-sixth Olympiads, were not mentioned by Homer. 262 FGrH 595 f 1. 263 FGrH 323a f 10. 264 FGrH 416 f 1: a b ˙ºø ªæÆ Æ IæÆEÆ. 265 FGrH 305 f 2.


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of Alexandria revealing similarly formulated synchronisms, which unite the Panhellenic event with the local time frame.266 We may, as so often when dealing with fragmentary sources, approach these with an open mind as to whether the chronological arrangement is a major concern of the original authors or indicative of the preoccupations of the Alexandrian scholars. It is certainly the case that the latter group was engaged in attempts to bring together the disparate and confusing variety of temporal schemes and chronological discrepancies. Aristodemus of Thebes (working in Alexandria), for example, in the Wrst century bc, discussed in his On Pindar the problems of achieving synchronisms—bringing Halirrothius and Heracles into line was in his view impossible.267 That the game of putting diVerent local times together was not only a pastime of Hellenistic scholars, but a genuine concern on the part of local communities is shown by a publicly displayed inscription from Magnesia-onthe-Maeander about an oracle concerning the worship of Pythian Apollo and Artemis Leucophryene, which was given ‘in the stephanephorate of Zenodotus, when Thrasyph[on] was archon in Athens, when [ . . . ] the Boeotian was the victorious lyre singer [at the Pythian games] in the previous year, and in the following year Hagesidamus the Messenian was victorious [for the third time] in the pankration at the Olympic games in the [one hundred] and fortieth Olympiad’. . .268 Here we have the time of festival victories mixed with Athenian archonal time, Delphic time, and Olympiadic time. The obvious comparandum for this piling up of diVerent dating systems is, of course, Thucydides 2.2.1, discussed in the previous chapter, where he dates the attack on Plataea to when ‘Chrysis was in the forty-eighth year of her term as priestess of Argos, and when Aenesias was ephor at Sparta and Pythodorus still had two months of his archonship at Athens to run, six months after the battle at Potidaea and at the start of spring.’269 One perhaps unexpected conclusion that such a parallel might lead us towards is that the local and the universal historiographical enterprises were less diVerent than we might have imagined, as local communities and their historians from time to time 266 FGrH 382 f 13. 267 FGrH 383 f 12. See also Hellanicus, FGrH 323a f 22 and Philochorus, FGrH 328 f 3 for mentions of Halirrothius in Atthides. 268 FGrH 482 f 2. I have adopted the translation in R. S. Bagnall and P. Derow (eds.), The Hellenistic Period: Historical Sources in Translation (Oxford, 2003; new edition), no. 153. The huge dossier of documents, relating to the major diplomatic campaign of 208 bc to establish this Panhellenic festival and send ambassadors through the Greek world to obtain recognition for the festival and for the inviolability of the city and its territory, is discussed by A. Erskine, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou? Tales of Kinship and Diplomacy’, in D. Ogden (ed.), The Hellenistic World: New Perspectives (London, 2002), 97–115 at 98. For Erskine, the inscription oVers a striking use of kinship terms as the language of diplomacy and shows the vitality of local traditions in the Hellenistic world, whereby cities exploit the mythical past to form bonds (107). 269 See p. 90–1 for discussion of this passage.

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showed their concern not only to express the past in terms distinctive to their own poleis but also to bind those histories into wider frameworks, just as they seem to have done in mythological terms.270 Jacoby’s insistence on the annalistic framework for local historiography, derived from the kings and magistrates of the polis, runs the risk of closing our eyes to the ways in which local historians used non-polis chronological frames to set the past of each city into a larger historical context. Furthermore, a consideration of the construction of time in the fragments of local historiography provides ammunition against Momigliano’s determination to Wnd the local histories parochial. His rather grudging assessment is that ‘we can hardly underrate the cumulative importance of this ‘‘minor’’ historiography compiled on behalf of local pride and prejudice. But it was always exposed to the damaging confrontation with the greater historiography.’271 Such a view carries less weight if we can read ‘local pride’ in the context of presenting a polis as an integral part of a wider world, rather than as an expression of inward-looking complacency. It is, however, important to distinguish between isolated synchronisms and the systematic and extensive use of a universal or Panhellenic temporal framework, such as the Olympiadic one, which we have seen is rare in the extant fragments of local historiography. As I shall show in the next section, a closer look at precisely where these wider temporal frameworks come into play, outside the world of universal historiography, can oVer new insights into the status of some of the most discussed and disputed fragments of ‘local’ historiography, those concerning Sicily.

4. BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN LO CAL AND UNIVERSAL

a) The stepping stone of Sicily The historiography of Sicily has already been mentioned several times as one which invites treatment as a special case, and indeed the combination of diVerent temporal systems is particularly prominent in some of the more famous Sicilian historians. The importance of the fourth- to third-century historian Timaeus of Tauromenium in the development of Olympiadic 270 See Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 5, on the tension between the local pull and the global stage: ‘On the one hand, every single polis is characterised by the urge for independence: freedom, autonomy and autarchy are the foundations of the political system of the polis. On the other hand, no polis can escape the necessity to coexist, and to some extent also to cooperate, with other city-states.’ 271 A. Momigliano, ‘Tradition and the Classical Historian’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford, 1977), 161–77 at 171.

Bridging local and universal

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chronology for use in historiography has already been discussed, and is clearly in line with his practice of using synchronisms liberally as a means of broadening the context for his narrative beyond the purely local. The scope of his Histories did indeed extend beyond the ‘local’, encompassing the early history of Sicily and Italy, of Sicily alone, and of Sicily in relation to Greece from the earliest times to the Wrst Punic War. We have already seen (in chapter 3) the way in which Timaeus famously ‘compared the dates of the ephors with those of the kings of Lacedaemon from the earliest times, and the lists of Athenian archons and priestesses of Hera at Argos with those of victors at Olympia’, developing a historiographical structure which brought this array of both local and Panhellenic dating systems into synchronism.272 It is worth noting that he also made wide use of Wxed chronological markers as well as synchronisms and Olympiadic structures. The testimonia and the extant fragments indicate that Timaeus covered the mythical period,273 and that of colonies and foundations,274 as well as the more strictly ‘historical period’, and it is clear that he dealt with the chronological vagueness of these early times in similar ways to those used by writers such as Ephorus. The Trojan era provided a useful benchmark for distant events, such as the Rhodian foundation of the Gymnesian islands ‘after their return from Troy’,275 or even not so distant events, such as the settlement of Chersicrates ‘six hundred years after the events at Troy’.276 The return of the Heraclidae was another well-known point in the remote past, to which other events could be anchored.277 Timaeus also used well-known markers from the historical period in order to indicate when the events of his narrative took place, whether it be, as has already been noted, the entry of Corinthian prostitutes into the temple of Aphrodite to pray for the Greeks ‘when the Persian invaded Greece’,278 or, again in connection with the Persian wars, the foundation of Massilia which took place ‘120 years before the battle of Salamis’.279 272 FGrH 566 t 10. 273 See FGrH 566 f 83 on Daphnis, the son of Hermes, and his exploits in Sicily or f 89 on Heracles’ travels through Italy, culminating in the huge battle between gods and giants. 274 See FGrH 566 t 7 on the inclusion in the earlier part of his work of ‘colonies and foundations and ties of kinship’ ( a IØŒÆ ŒÆd Œ Ø ŒÆd ıªªÆ). See also f 92 on the holding of Acragas by the ancestors of Theron, which gives rise to a comment on how the Acragantines were colonists from Gela. 275 FGrH 566 f 65. 276 FGrH 566 f 80. 277 See, for example, FGrH 566 f 126, where Timaeus is said to claim that from the return of the Heraclidae to the archonship of Euaenetus, under which happened Alexander’s invasion of Asia, was eight hundred years. 278 FGrH 566 f 10: ‹ c Kd c ¯ººÆ c æÆ Æ qª › —æ. 279 FGrH 566 f 71: æe B B K #ÆºÆEØ ª Ø æ æ; u ÆØ; ŒÆ e YŒØ.

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But perhaps most striking, even from the limited amount of extant text, is the intricacy with which he builds up a chronological network against which to place a wide-ranging narrative. This is done partly through explicit synchronisms of a rather diVerent kind from the synchronization generally reconstructed for Ephorus’ history. This was not just a case of drawing diVerent locations into a single narrative structure, but of noting precise and extraordinary moments at which the history of the world seemed to Xow in unison. He noted, for example, that the birth of Euripides happened on the same day as the Hellenes fought at Salamis against the Medes, and that his death fell on the day of the year on which Dionysius, the oldest of the Sicilian tyrants, was born.280 This provides a wonderful example of the way in which literary time could be brought into line with the time of political and military events, as we see illustrated on the Parian Marble. Here, however, the life span of the literary Wgure is used as a bridge to join, through the synchronisms at start and Wnish, the history of the Persian wars, which were themselves such an important temporal marker for mapping out the past of Greek cities, to the local history of Sicily itself. Or, take the more intricate example of Timaean synchronism oVered by a fragment relating the fortunes of the bronze statue of Apollo snatched by Himilco from Gela after his storming of Acragas.281 The statue was taken to Tyre and subjected to further abuse, but punishment came when Alexander took the city of Tyre on the day with the same name and at the same hour as when the Carthaginians had snatched the statue from Gela.282 Here the clear sense of retribution is enhanced by the striking chronological coincidence, or perhaps rather more accurately, partial repetition. Here it is not the life of a poet, but that of an art object, which acts as the linchpin. Although the passage has the eVect of establishing a link between the history of Carthaginian plunder in Sicily and that of Alexander’s abuses in the Carthaginians’ mother cities in the Levant, in fact the primary interest is not in using this link to establish a comprehensive time frame. Indeed, this would be impossible, since, unlike in the case of the life of Euripides above, we have no idea at all how long the statue’s life in Tyre was. Rather, the interest lies at the level of microchronology. Timaeus is not bringing together disparate events which occurred at the same time; these two episodes in the life of one object clearly did not. Rather he is using chronological detail, at the level of particular days and particular times of day, to point out the extraordinary nature of the object and its history. It is not only that there is intellectual satisfaction in noting astonishing historical coincidences.283 The Alexander episode appears as a 280 FGrH 566 f 105. 281 FGrH 566 f 106. 282 FGrH 566 f 106: ŒÆ a c ›ı æÆ ŒÆd c ÆP c uæÆ. 283 Diodorus, our source for this fragment, notes that although these events happened at diVerent times, it was not inappropriate to place them alongside each other because of the


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precise re-enactment of the Carthaginian plunder, almost as though the clock had been turned back and the same day was being rerun a second time around—interesting in terms of temporal manipulation in historiography, but also signiWcant for the implicit commentary which the parallel oVers in terms of Timaeus’ historical interpretation.284 Furthermore, Timaeus’ version of the foundation of Rome claimed that it occurred at the same time as that of Carthage, namely in the thirty-eighth year before the Wrst Olympiad.285 This relatively small fragment is rich in resonance. Firstly, the synchronism of two local histories needs to be located in relation to another Wxed point—pre-Olympiadic time oVers an eVective way of achieving this for very early events, while preserving the increasingly universal associations of the Olympiadic system that was appropriate for the foundations of two cities which would enjoy such geographically widespread power. The history of the two great rivals for power over the western Mediterranean is hereby inextricably linked in a universal framework from their very inception.286 The theme would be vividly expressed in the Augustan period through, for example, Dido’s curse of eternal hatred between Carthage and Rome at Aeneid 4.621–9, and it is worth noting that this fragment of Timaeus comes to us through another Augustan author, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. It might be tempting to suggest that we are seeing an Augustan preoccupation retrojected on to Timaeus, and partly inXuenced in its construction of the past by a renewed triumphalism and Roman pride in its extinction of rivals, past and present. But we do not need to seek an Augustan explanation for the fact that an author who spanned the mid-third to mid-second centuries might note the remarkable symbiosis of these two great cities. The series of open conXicts between Rome and Carthage which culminated in the destruction of the latter in 146 bc was precipitated by Carthaginian intervention at Messina in 264 bc, precisely the date towards the end of Timaeus’ life at which he broke oV his account, for Polybius to pick up.287 astonishing nature of the event: ÆF Æ b s; ŒÆæ K ¼ººØ æÆŁ Æ æ Ø; PŒ IØ Ø ªŁÆ Ææ ¼ºººÆ ŁEÆØ Øa e Ææ (13.108.5). 284 Alternatively, we could consider this in the context of ‘ominous days’, as discussed in ch. 1, whose bad or good luck was embedded in the date after a bad, or good, event had once happened then. 285 FGrH 566 f 60: Oª øØ ŒÆd æØÆŒ HØ æ æ Ø B æ OºıØ. 286 On the rivalry for Mediterranean power of Rome with Carthage and Corinth, symbolically both destroyed in the same year, see N. Purcell, ‘On the Sacking of Carthage and Corinth’, in D. Innes, H. Hine, and C. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Oxford, 1995), 133–48. 287 See A. Momigliano, ‘Athens in the Third Century b.c. and the Discovery of Rome in the Histories of Timaeus of Tauromenium’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford, 1977), 37–66 at 54, for the point that the precise moment when Timaeus conceived the

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But there is the further point of interest that it is not entirely clear (either to Dionysius or to Timaeus—the fragment is not explicit) precisely what is meant by looking for a ‘foundation date’ for Rome. Some kind of incarnation for the city, ‘its settling, or its foundation, or whatever it should be called’ (NŒØe j Œ Ø j ‹ Ø æc ŒÆºE) could be synchronized with the foundation of Carthage (–Æ ˚Ææ Ø Œ Ø Ø ªŁÆØ) (the same deWnitional problem does not apparently arise here—this is a Œ Ø), but the ambiguity over when a city actually comes into being is worth noting, given the considerable interest in moments of foundation in the context of local historiography. The precise synchronisms of a chronographer were not necessarily the most helpful tool in creating a convincing local historiography.288 Dionysius of Halicarnassus expresses uncertainty over what chronological system led Timaeus to his synchronism between the foundations of Rome and Carthage (PŒ r ‹ øØ ŒÆ Ø æ).289 But the suggestion is clearly that a chronographically minded historian would have recourse to established tables which set events alongside each other and against broader timescales. The number of synchronisms in the fragments of Timaeus does seem to support this extensive and systematic use of such material, and we should not assume that Timaeus was utterly exceptional.290 It is possible that Timaean synchronisms are simply cited more frequently than those in the works of other historians. Again, the overlap between formal chronography and practised historiography is at the fore. Just like the Trojan War and the acme of Homer, key events in Sicilian history needed to be given a chronological context, however hotly contested the dates might be. The crossing of the Sicels from Italy to Sicily was a much fought-over date, and historians, just as chronographers, used every possible device to establish the authoritative version. According to Hellanicus it happened ‘in the third generation before the Trojan War, and in the

synchronism between Rome and Carthage determined whether the relationship would be one of hatred or friendship. 288 Timaeus’ synchronism for Rome and Carthage was, of course, implicitly challenged by the narrative structure of the Aeneid, in which Carthage was already being built, and indeed could be visited by Aeneas, long before the story would enable him even to arrive in Italy and visit the site of the future city. In a sense, the ambiguity in what was meant by ‘foundation’ could be useful for achieving association without strict accuracy. Aeneas is cast in the Aeneid as ‘founder of a Roman nation’ even if not of the city itself. In the context of creating an adequately illustrious past for Rome, this was perhaps suYcient. 289 FGrH 566 f 60 ¼ Dionysius 1.74.1. 290 Indeed, although Timaeus wrote an explicitly chronographical work—the Chronica—so too did many local historians. Hippys of Rhegium wrote a Chronica as well as a work on Sicily and one on the foundation of Italy.


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twenty-sixth year of the priesthood of Alcyone at Argos’;291 for Philistus of Syracuse the crossing was in the eightieth year before the Trojan War, and the people were not Ausonians or Elymians, but Ligurians led by Sicelus, who was son of Italus.292 It is interesting to note the various strategies here for locating the crossing of the Sicels. Of course, since the fall of Troy was itself a contested date, placing the crossing of the Sicels or any other more local event in relation to the Trojan episode could be only that, a relative placing, and it is interesting to note yet again here the use of generations as a means of counting out the gap between one Wxed marker and another. This system provided at the crudest level a means of ‘getting things in the right order’. Using the oYce of the priestesses of Hera at Argos was a rather diVerent proposition, since it oVered not a single chronological marker, but a continuous sequence or scale against which other events could be placed. The preoccupation of historians of Sicily with synchronisms seems to go hand in hand with their interest in forging links between their local history and geography and those of the wider Mediterranean world. Hippys of Rhegium (c.300 bc) linked local events in Sicily to Athenian regal time and to the Olympiadic framework in a clear illustration of how a very localized and idiosyncratic event (the establishment of a building at Palici in Sicily, in which people who went and reclined would die, but those who kept walking survived) could be set in a much broader context, ‘when Epaenetus was king in Athens, and in the thirty-sixth Olympiad, when Arytamas the Laconian won the stadion’.293 Just as we have seen Athenian and Argive time and history brought together, so too does Sicilian historiography link itself up to the Greek mainland through the Olympiadic system as well as literally through stories about its geography. Timaeus claims that the fountain of Arethusa in Syracuse takes its source from the Alpheus, which runs past Arcadia and Olympia, divides, goes underground and reappears four thousand stades away under the sea in Syracuse. Proof was oVered by the story that after Xoods at Olympia, Arethusa threw up dung from the sacriWcial victims and a gold bowl from the festival.294 This is not just a Timaean oddity. Lycus of Rhegium in his fourthcentury On Sicily says, in the context of discussing other unusual springs in 291 FGrH 555 f 4: æ Ø ªAØ æ æ H æøØŒH %ºŒı ƒæø K 1`æªØ ŒÆ a e Œ ŒÆd NŒ e . 292 FGrH 556 f 46. 293 FGrH 554 f 3: K %ŁÆØ Kd ÆØºø ¯ ÆØ ı; OºıØ Œ ŒÆd æØÆŒ B; K wØ %æı Æ ¸Œø ØŒAØ Ø. 294 FGrH 566 f 41. The story is closely paralleled by an episode which Strabo (2.3.4) preserves from Posidonius in which Eudoxus of Cyzicus made various attempts to circumnavigate Africa, and on his second attempt found Wgureheads from Gades oV the east coast, thereby proving that Africa was circumnavigable. Here again, as in Timaeus, an object proved the geographical connection.

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Sicily,295 that the Arethusa in Syracuse had its spring in the Alpheus in Elis. His proof is almost word for word the same as that given by Timaeus—maybe Timaeus had borrowed it from Lycus, or maybe it was simply a well-known tale.296 So Sicily, though an island, was tied to the mainland, not of Italy but of Greece, both physically and through its historiographical frameworks. The Greekness of the Olympiadic system seems absolutely key here, and it is perhaps no surprise that the historian who made it fundamental to the writing of history on a large scale should have spent much of his life in exile in Athens itself. Although Timaeus is famous for his awareness of the growing power of Rome and has been widely seen as the Wrst great historian of the western Mediterranean, he chose to develop a chronological structure for the writing of history which was Wrmly founded on the Olympic festival, participation in which had originally been the most compelling proof of Greek identity. By doing so, Timaeus manifested a set of aspirations which many of his compatriots seem to have shared. When Pindar wanted to Xatter Hiero of Syracuse, he did so by integrating Sicily into the world of Greece, drawing Syracuse into the framework of Greek myth (in Pythian 2.1–8) and comparing the battle of Himera between Sicily and Carthage in 480 bc with the contemporary battles of the Persian wars on the Greek mainland, speciWcally Salamis and Plataea (Pythian 1.75–80).297 We have already seen the way in which Diodorus Siculus, at a time when the world could hardly have been more patently Roman in political terms, laid claim again to Sicily’s Hellenism, like Timaeus, using his choice of chronological frameworks to create a Sicilian historiography with aspirations to Greekness. Examining subtle diVerences in the structuring of time adopted by writers of a single genre of ‘local history’ enables us to make progress with understanding more precisely the claims and aspirations of diVerent historical works within that sweeping genre. The integration of diVerent time systems in an attempt to bring the local into a wider, less parochial, frame of reference, opens up the possibility that the local historians of Greece might bring the past of their cities on to the Panhellenic stage, but it is also important to note diVerences of emphasis and approach, such as the relative absence of Olympiads as a form of systematic chronology in local accounts.298 By contrast, the 295 For a Xavour of the account, so to speak, one of these springs was said to Xow with vinegar which was used on meat and other food and another Xowed with olive oil. 296 The latter is implied by the source, Antigonus, Mirabilia ¼ FGrH 570 f 9: uæ ƒ ºØ ÆØ ‘as those who remain say’. 297 I owe this point to Chris Pelling. 298 See Jacoby, Commentary IIIB, Supplement 382, for further problems in the interpretation of chronology in local historiography. As he asks, ‘are the local chronicles dependent on their own system for local dates, or on universal systems?’, in the light of the supposition that universal chronography preceded local systems.


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presence of Olympiadic dating in the historiography of Sicily is an important element in our characterization of Sicilian historians and their works as aspiring to rise above the local, and, more speciWcally, to deWne themselves as belonging to the Greek world. Issues of chronological approach are signiWcant not only for the status of the local historians as skilled tellers of the past, but also for the question of audience and reception, that is the real context for the creation of these narratives, to which we shall return (in chapter 6). I have already adduced the famous Thucydidean parallel for the accumulation of multiple temporal systems in deWning the precise timing of an event. But, as discussed above, there are examples of ‘local’ historians performing the same kind of chronographical feat. The distinction between ‘local’ historiography and ‘great’ historiography, as has often been assumed by scholars, both ancient and modern, may need some modiWcation. The notion that ‘great’ history should be ‘Panhellenic’, not local, is given an interesting twist by the observation that Panhellenic chronological frameworks and markers are sometimes used in local historiography, but we would surely not be expecting neat dichotomies in any case, but rather gradations and degrees. Of course, local frameworks need not imply local audiences any more than Panhellenic ones require a broad reception. The place of Sicilian historiography on this scale has been the subject of some dispute, and is of considerable interest, since it encompasses some of the most striking examples of ‘Panhellenic’ thinking. In one of the best-known methodological sections of Polybius’ Histories, in the course of his extended critique of the work and methods of Timaeus, Polybius comments on Timaeus’ excessive elevation of Timoleon: ‘Timaeus thought that if Timoleon, who had sought fame in Sicily, as if in a mere tea-cup,299 could be shown to be worthy of comparison with the most illustrious heroes, then Timaeus, who treated only Italy and Sicily, could claim comparison with writers whose works dealt with the whole world and with universal history.’ The charge of blowing the subject matter out of proportion for the purpose of self-aggrandizement carries the clear implication that, in Polybius’ view, Sicilian historiography was a small-scale and rather unimportant aVair. But it is somewhat unfortunate that the Wrst writer to synthesize the history of the West, and one who strove to set his work in so ecumenical a chronological framework, should have been handed down to us largely through Polybius’ critique, with his accusations of parochialism, especially when he devised the Olympiadic framework for historiography, which Polybius himself would use. Timaeus clearly took himself seriously as an investigative 299 Polybius 12.23.7: LSJ points out that Oı refers, in fact, to a shallow vinegar saucer.

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historian, stressing the amount of polypragmosyne (‘investigative eVort’) which he put into Wnding out about, for example, the Ligurians and Iberians.300 Furthermore, Nepos thought Timaeus’ views were of some signiWcance, and cited him alongside Thucydides and Theopompus on the subject of Alcibiades (f 99), and it is worth noting how often the Sicilian historians are cited by later critics alongside the ‘great’ historians.301 This divergence of views on the status of Sicilian historiography encourages an investigation into whether it displayed any distinctive and unique characteristics, which might explain its apparently interstitial position. It is hard to gauge the position of one particular type of local historiography alongside others when so much more of it has survived. However, some patterns may be observed. We have already seen that the Heraclidae feature as an important chronological marker in universal works. Yet, in spite of the potential of their return to the Peloponnese as a broadly applicable temporal marker for use in local historiography too, the Heraclidae, like the Olympiads, are notable for their almost complete absence from the extant material. Besides a fragment of Hellanicus in which there are glimpses of genealogical work involving the Heraclidae (FGrH 323a f 23), and a mention of the Heraclidae for their honouring of Eurytione in so far as they were on the same side in the return to the Peloponnese,302 the Heraclidae seem to turn up as a dating device only in the fragments of Timaeus. He notes that from the return of the Heraclidae to the archonship of Euaenetus, when Alexander crossed to Asia, was eight hundred years.303 It is interesting and signiWcant that Hippostratus and Timaeus, both of whom mention the Heraclidae, should share the attribute of being a Sicilian historian. It could be that Timaeus was instrumental in promoting the place of the Heraclidae in Sicilian historiography with no less a political purpose than in his development of Olympiadic dating, stressing the Dorian background of Sicily as part of its claim to Greekness.304

300 FGrH 566 f 7. See Polybius 12.27.6 for his own view that polypragmosyne is the most important element in history. 301 See FGrH 556 t 16b for the criticism by Dionysius of Halicarnassus that the subject of Philistus was monochrome and local (Æ ŒÆd ØŒ) by contrast with that of Thucydides; but he set Philistus alongside Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, and Theopompus as one of the best historians at mimesis (t 15a). According to Plutarch, when Alexander asked for additional reading beyond the Iliad to be sent to him on campaign, Harpalus sent him the works of Philistus, along with the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, and the dithyrambs of Telestus and Philoxenus (t 22). 302 See FGrH 568 f 6 for this fragment of Hippostratus. 303 FGrH 566 f 126: Ie ı [sc. B ˙æÆŒºØH ŒÆŁ ı Kd ¯PÆ ¼æ Æ; K y ÆØ `ºÆæ N c `Æ ØÆBÆØ. 304 See Thucydides 7.57 for the Dorian ancestry of Syracuse. The south coast of the island was dotted with Dorian colonies from Syracuse to Selinus.


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Furthermore, it is striking that, whereas in the case of most polis history we have very little in the way of extant narrative, or even a frame of sequential episodes, this is not true of Sicily and southern Italy, or of Athens.305 Of course, this could be mere accident of survival, and we should distinguish here, in any case, between the strong arguments for assuming a careful annalistic structure for most local histories, expressed through magistracies, and the phenomenon here discussed, namely the development of a narrative structured by indicators of relative time. Antiochus of Syracuse says that the foundation of Rhegium involved Zancleans (from Messina in Sicily), who sent for the Chalcidians and appointed Antimnestus as their founder (NŒØ ), joined by refugees of Peloponnesian Messenia.306 ‘Previously’ ( e ÆºÆØe), the Siceli and the Morgetes had inhabited the whole area, but they had later crossed to Sicily, ejected by the Oenotrians. A simple enough story, but the feature of interest here is the relative order of events, marked out by the vague indicator ( e ÆºÆØe). Or take the foundation of Metapontum, again told by Antiochus.307 He links this into the foundations of Tarentum and Sybaris, among others. Antiochus relates that the city was called Metabum at Wrst (æ æ) and was later slightly altered—another very vaguely expressed relative chronology. Or Wnally from Antiochus, we have a fragment on how the present-day territory of Italy was previously called Oenotria;308 and how the country of the Tarentini is inhabited by Iapyges, but even earlier ( Ø I æ), the names of both Italians and Iapyges were applied only to those living in very speciWc areas, only to be subsequently extended. This sense of development across time, denoted by general relative temporal expressions, is rare in the whole corpus of fragmentary local histories. One small fragment of Malacus’ Siphnian Horoi notes the lapse between the arrival of the group of Samian slaves who would go on to settle Ephesus at a mountain on the island and their departure ‘in the sixth year after this’.309 Furthermore, there are isolated examples of general temporal expressions with elements of relative chronology beyond the simple past-present dichotomy. Philochorus notes that prodigals and those who lived beyond their means were in antiquity ( e ÆºÆØe) brought before the Areopagites and punished;310 and Callias of Syracuse in his account of Agathocles observed that the city of Eryx was in the past ( e ÆºÆØe) a city of the Sicels and of those called Delli.311 Timaeus also employs these vague general and relative

305 We will return to the special case of Athens later in this chapter. 306 See FGrH 555 f 9. 307 FGrH 555 f 12. 308 FGrH 555 f 3. 309 See FGrH 552 f 1. 310 FGrH 328 f 196. 311 FGrH 564 f 1.

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temporal expressions in order to enhance the chronological structuring of his narrative. A fragment on the luxurious habits of the people of Siris, which matched that of the Sybarites, mentions the relative phases of incoming settlers for the former city—Wrst from Troy and later from Colophon;312 and, more generally still, he comments on stories about Pithecussae told ‘by the ancients’ (e H ÆºÆØH) (f 58) and how it was not customary ‘in ancient times’ for Greeks to be served by bought slaves, but instead younger members of the family waited on the older ones (f 11). These general or relative temporal expressions, like the Panhellenic markers of the return of the Heraclidae and Olympiads, are very commonly found in the universal works of Diodorus and of the historian and geographer Strabo, as I have mentioned before and discussed at length elsewhere.313 Setting out the past of an individual polis in a fairly systematic and coherent way, but not necessarily with any concern for precise datings, but rather the establishment of a relative chronology of key stages in the life cycle of the place, is, I have argued elsewhere, an extremely common pattern in Strabo.314 But interpreting the evidence is fraught with diYculty. On the one hand, we might argue that these features shared between the Sicilians and the universal writers suggest a diVerent status for Sicilian historiography from that enjoyed by local historiography. The suggestion could be supported by a rather diVerent comparison, that with Thucydides. His Sicilian archaeology at the start of book six (6.1–5) presents an account of foundations and the early history of the island which is structured by exactly the same kind of relative chronological expressions and markers as we Wnd in the local Sicilian historians. He notes the series of diVerent settlers and the various city foundations. Some dates are given—the people of Gela founded Acragas 108 years after the foundation of their own city,315 but this, like other examples in the passage, is a relative chronology and not Wxed to local regal or magisterial time as we Wnd in the smaller local histories. The Sicilian foundations are set in an internally coherent system by Thucydides, resembling his internally intelligible chronology for the narration of the Peloponnesian War. Here in the Sicilian archaeology we learn that Acrae and Casmenae were 312 FGrH 566 f 51. 313 See K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (Oxford, 1999), 255–6. 314 I would, therefore, disagree with the assertion of A. Momigliano, ‘Time in Ancient Historiography’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford, 1977), 179–204 at 190, that ‘No ancient historian, as far as I can remember, ever wrote the history of a state in terms of births and rebirths. Isolated metaphors do not make historical interpretations.’ There is, of course, no need to see the use of biological or biographical metaphors as synonymous with cyclical history. 315 See Thucydides 6.4.4: Ø b Kªª Æ Æ OŒ g ŒÆd ŒÆ e a c æÆ YŒØØ.


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founded by Syracusans, Acrae seventy years after Syracuse,316 and Casmenae nearly twenty years after Acrae. Camerina was Wrst founded by Syracusans one hundred and thirty-Wve years after the foundation of Syracuse.317 But if the Sicilian histories seem to bear resemblance to the chronological structure oVered by Thucydides and Strabo in ways which are not shared by local histories on a smaller scale, what does this allow us to conclude? If we look a little more closely at the fragments of Sicilian historiography by Antiochus and Timaeus, cited above, they turn out to be drawn largely from either Strabo himself or Athenaeus, another synthetic writer. It is necessary to question yet again whether we are witnessing in the Sicilian fragments nothing more than the preoccupations of the source, or conversely to wonder whether Strabo drew on these authors precisely because they oVered the kind of general, more universal, relative chronology which suited his composition. The fact that Strabo’s use of city narratives, which are chronologically imprecise but give a sense of development over time, is by no means conWned to Sicily strongly suggests either that this really is an imposition of his own, or that his sources, the local histories themselves, were more uniformly endowed with this kind of material than our fragments reveal. It seems that there can be no conclusive answer to whether the Sicilian historians were substantially diVerent from other local historians in this respect, but the patterns are visible nonetheless. In spite of the methodological diYculties involved in assessing the nature of Sicilian historiography from fragments which may tell us more about the sources than about the originals, modern scholarship has expressed some conWdent views as to its status. The place of Sicilian historiography in relation to both local and universal models has been seen as unusual among geographically determined accounts, if not unique. Momigliano stated that ‘If the historians of Sicily are considered real historians (as the mention of Philistus [sc. by Quintilian] shows), it is because Sicily was a world in itself, and the conXicts between Greeks and Carthaginians were of general political importance. The historians of Sicily were more than local historians’.318 Elsewhere, Momigliano made a rather diVerent point concerning the broader horizons of Sicilian and especially Timaean historiography, noting that, although Sicily was the centre of his narrative, he also included the whole political and cultural history of the Western Greeks, oVering a geographical-ethnographical description of Italy, Gaul, Spain, Britain, Corsica, Libya, Sardinia, and the smaller islands.319 This lack of parochialism is very much in line with some of 316 317 318 319

See Thucydides 6.5.2. Thucydides 6.5.3. Momigliano, ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, 59. Momigliano, ‘Athens in the Third Century b.c. and the Discovery of Rome’, 48.

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our observations concerning the way in which Timaeus and other Sicilian historians carefully tied their narratives both historiographically and geographically into the wider context of the Mediterranean world. The point seems to have been that, though an island, Sicily was far from insular. But if Sicily elicited a form of historiography which exceeded the conceptual scope of even the most universally embedded and aspirational local history, staking its claim to be part of the Panhellenic discourse, then was it simply further up the same scale, or qualitatively diVerent? The form of historiography identiWed as Hellenica, the continuous sequence of historians writing Zeitgeschichte as successors to Thucydides, including both military and political history, has been adduced as a parallel by several scholars.320 Walbank sees this as a signiWcant observation for the status and genre of Sicilian historiography and its historians. The fact that Timaeus’ predecessors in Sicily, Antiochus and Philistus, had written works which could be seen not as a form of Greek local historiography, but as a parallel for the Hellenica, raised the status of that project.321 Fornara also has been keen to stress that the Sicelica should be accorded special status amongst the local historiography of Greece, but his reading of Jacoby is interestingly at variance with that of Walbank, since he stresses Jacoby’s classiWcation of Sicelica as ethnographic texts, as the title suggests. Furthermore, he sees Jacoby as asserting an essential diVerence between Hellenica, which had a relatively recent start date, and Sicelica, which enjoyed a long prehistory.322 It seems that the chronological angle can contribute to this debate since, if Sicilian historians used temporal frameworks which were deliberately and self-consciously Greek, as opposed to being more generally universal, then the notion of a western Hellenica gains weight. The confusion over precisely how to read the fragments of Sicilian historiography is not surprising, given that Jacoby’s thoughts are themselves somewhat contradictory: on the one hand, he states that ‘Sicilian history was written by Sicilians in resemblance to all local history’, on the other he claims that Antiochus of Syracuse at the end of the Wfth century was writing not a local history, but a supplement to Herodotus for the West.323 As we have seen, approaching the material with an eye to the temporal frameworks reveals that the writings on Sicily bear other characteristics which set them apart from the majority of ‘local’ historiography, thus contributing a new angle to this 320 See Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 480–1, for this parallel. He goes further still in suggesting that ‘Antiochos der sizilische Herodot ist und Philistus der sizilische Thukydides’ (481). 321 F. W. Walbank, ‘Timaeus’ Views on the Past’, in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and ReXections (Cambridge, 2002), 165–77 at 167. 322 Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome, 37. 323 Jacoby, Atthis, 118, for both statements.


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question. The sense of ‘narrative’ developed across time does seem to align these works more closely with the Hellenica, although, as patterns in Strabo and other citers suggest, this may have been a feature of much local historiography. A more distinctive feature of Sicilian historiography, which strengthens the link to Hellenica and clearly belonged to the original sources themselves, was the use of chronological systems such as Olympiads and the Heraclidae, which oVer a striking illustration of political agenda inXuencing the development of historiography.324

b) ‘All things considered, I declare that our city is an education to Greece’325 Pericles’ paradoxical and blatantly propagandistic presentation of Athens, in his funeral oration at the end of the Wrst year of the Peloponnesian War, as an exceptional paradigm nevertheless neatly expresses Jacoby’s view of its historiography. The typicality of Atthidography, just as of Sicilian historiography, is hard to gauge. Jacoby’s opinion that the works of Sicelica and Macedonica were more like Atthidography than like ‘great’ history,326 but with a strong ethnographic element, suggests that the historiography of Athens did not stand entirely alone. Indeed, I have been using Athenian and Attic evidence straightforwardly alongside that from other Greek poleis deliberately in order to test whether these accounts reveal the same kinds of patterns and preoccupations as those across the Greek world. It seems so far that, by and large, they do. Not only could the Atthides, Sicelica, and Macedonica stand together, but the premise which underpinned Jacoby’s study in Atthis of a single type of local historiography, as though it could stand for the whole genre, held true—constructing the past of Athens was not so very diVerent from performing this task for any other polis. But that must be a provisional and tentative suggestion, since it is simply the case that we have vastly divergent quantities of evidence from place to place, making comparisons diYcult. We have already seen some features of Sicilian and Attic historiography which make them stand out from the crowd 324 For the notion that Sicilian historiography was not alone in failing to fall neatly into a historiographical category, see P. Funke, ‘æØŒÆd ı Ø ŒÆd ƒ æÆØ: Die rhodische Historiographie in hellenistischer Zeit’, Klio 76 (1994), 255–62, who explores the interesting status of Rhodian historiography as going beyond the conWnes of the local and extending onto a broader canvas: ‘Sie zeichnen sich durch das Bemu¨hen aus, die rhodische Geschichte in die ‘‘gro¨ßere’’ Geschichte der o¨stlichen Mittelmeerwelt miteinzubeziehen’ (261). 325 Thucydides 2.41.1: ıº ºªø AÆ ºØ B ¯ºº ÆıØ r ÆØ. 326 See also Orsi, ‘La storiograWa locale’, 173, for the comparability of Attic and Sicilian historiography in terms of volume and style.

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through their use of more complex temporal sequences in their narratives and a greater interest in ‘buying into’ Panhellenic frameworks. But it is striking that the two sets of regional or local accounts which might be considered ‘unusual’—the Sicelica and the Atthides—are by far the largest bodies of material. This may be either a symptom of their exceptional nature or a cause of that perception. There is a further way in which our analyses and opportunities concerning a city such as Athens are atypical. We not only have more substantial fragments of its historiography to assess, which may or may not oVer a distorted vision of how its past was formulated in that medium alongside that of other cities. But, even if Atthidography were to look more typical if we possessed the local historiography of the Greek poleis in a more fully extant state, Athens also oVers exceptional opportunities to the modern scholar by virtue of its range of evidence. In a sense it is perverse not to exploit the greater evidence which springs from a polis such as Athens, and to use it as a test case for how the past of a place could be constructed through diVerent media. I shall, therefore, move on to examine the presentation of the Athenian past through the very public context of its oratory. Athens will thereby act as a bridge between our study of local historiography, for which our evidence is fragmentary but widespread, and our consideration of a range of portrayals of the same place and its past.

V Persuasion and plausibility: history and rhetoric in the polis 1 . PAR A M E T E R S O F P L AU S I B I L I T Y Æƒ b ªaæ æØ Æƒ æªªÆØ ŒØÆd AØ E ŒÆ ºŁÆ; e K ŒÆØæfiH Æ ÆØ ŒÆ ÆæÆŁÆØ ŒÆd a æŒ Æ æd Œ KŁıŁBÆØ ŒÆd E O ÆØ s ØÆŁŁÆØ H s æ ø YØ K Ø. For the deeds which had been carried out in the past were handed down as shared possessions for us all; but to make proper use of them at the appropriate time, to conceive Wtting sentiments about each one of them, and to set them forth in polished language, is the particular talent of right-thinking men.1

The fragments of local historiography allow glimpses into the narrative strategies and structures adopted by authors, but so far little has been said about the recipients of such accounts of the community’s past. Now it is time to shift the focus away from the author in isolation and towards an exploration of reception, audience, and the relationship—authoritative, collusive, or didactic—between those who composed history or histories of the polis, and those for whom they were intended. I shall return (in chapter 6) to a consideration of the value of time, and especially that of time past, in the polis and to the evidence for the status and reception of the historian in this context. But, at least for the simultaneously exceptional and paradigmatic city of Athens, we have multiple media through which to glimpse the construction of, and attitudes towards, the past—oratory, theatrical productions, and considerable amounts of material evidence—to set alongside the more explicitly ‘historical’ evidence in the form of local histories produced not only for Athens, but also for cities all over the Greek world. If we focus on issues of reception, authority, and credibility, then it becomes all the more clear that the overtly persuasive medium of public oratory might oVer revealing insights into which versions of the past carried weight with a broad sweep of the community at large.2 Indeed, the very 1 Isocrates, Panegyricus 9. 2 The argument is naturally dependent on a meaningful relationship between the orator’s words and the comprehension of the audience. See M. Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire par les

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History and rhetoric in the polis

presence of ‘history’ in speeches which were designed to serve an immediate need in the present is itself testimony to the value of the past to the audience. Isocrates’ explicit acknowledgement of the coexistence of two notions—Wrst, that of a commonly shared inheritance of knowledge about the past, and secondly, the recognition that its eVectiveness lies in its selective deployment by those of good sense—neatly encapsulates the interests and control exercised by the audience and by the composer. Both elements of Isocrates’ claim are important for understanding the way in which the orators of fourthcentury Athens constructed a past or pasts for the city and its people, which they could use in the service of their primary goal—competitive persuasion.3 The fact that Isocrates explicitly raises the issue of how the past of the polis might best be presented, together with a proliferation of explicitly ‘historical’ material in the extant speeches by fourth-century Attic orators, suggests that it might be proWtable to examine Attic oratory speciWcally with regard to this theme, not least to consider the extent of common ground between the presentation of the past of Athens and Attica here and in the local histories. As Hamilton notes, ‘in addition to formal histories, the works of the orators are full of historical allusions and examples and provide an intriguing body of material’.4 Furthermore, unless Athens was entirely unique in its treatment of the past (and a comparison of local historiography across the Greek world suggests that this was not the case), then an exploration of the orators’ view of time past and its presentation to their immediate audience should enhance our interpretation of the creation, reception, and underlying assumptions not only of the Atthides, but also more generally of works across the range of local historiography. It is precisely by reading the ‘past’ of the Attic orators against the backdrop of ‘common knowledge’ oVered by the local historians, as orateurs attiques (Paris, 1982), 37: ‘le niveau historique de ses exemples a des chances de correspondre au niveau moyen de culture des spectateurs’, just as one assumes that words spoken and jokes made in the comic theatre meant something to their audiences in order for victory in competition to ensue: ‘il est bien e´vident qu’il e´tait compris de tous, chacun connaissant bien les reálisations de The´mistocle, comme les noms de Marathon et de Salamine, deux victoires qu’Aristophane e´voque par ailleurs avec un certain recul’ (38). 3 J. H. D’Arms, ‘Pro Murena 16 and Cicero’s Use of Historical Exempla’, Phoenix 26 (1972), 82–4, notes the importance of careful and appropriate use of exempla, citing Cicero, Topica 44 for the theoretical stance witnessed in practice in his extant speeches: commemoratio exemplorum valuit (borne out by Crassus’ defence of Curius, when many parallels were cited to good eVect). There is, of course, a huge literature on the subject of exempla in oratory, both Greek and Roman. 4 C. D. Hamilton, ‘Greek Rhetoric and History: the Case of Isocrates’, in G. W. Bowersock and W. Burkert (eds.), Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox (Berlin, 1979), 290–8 at 290. Hamilton distinguishes helpfully between mere ‘interest in the past’ and ‘historical sense’, which involves periodization, a sense of development and change, an interest in sources of knowledge and critical principles in approaching material, and uses theme or purpose to give signiWcance to the past. It is this more rigorous ‘historical sense’ which he identiWes in the Attic orators.

Parameters of plausibility

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opposed to ‘great historians’, inscriptions, and the funeral oration, for example, that I hope to contribute something to a Weld which has been so excellently and comprehensively studied by Nouhaud in his work on L’Utilisation de l’histoire par les orateurs attiques.5 Isocrates’ idea that the events of the past are ‘shared’ or ‘common to all’ is itself an important, but complex, claim. In what sense are they ‘shared’ (ŒØÆ)? Interpretation here is of obvious signiWcance for any wider discussion of knowledge, perception, and use of the past in the Greek poleis. If Isocrates means simply that the citizens of Athens, or at least many of them, participated in the same or similar set of past events, that is hardly contestable. However, this kind of ‘shared experience’ has a stringent temporal limit—events further back than those in recent decades can be known to the present-day citizens only through report.6 Have they all heard the same version? Do they all really know the same past? Is it meaningful to group together the listeners as a single ‘audience’ and impute to them a uniform level of historical knowledge? To what degree does Isocrates’ comment point to the existence of a particular polis version of its past, taught to its citizens, reinforced by the local historians, the playwrights, the artists, and the orators? As Rosalind Thomas has convincingly shown, such a picture of an uncontested, oYcial, version of the past is not supported by the evidence.7 Her claim that complexity was built into traditions concerning the Athenian past can be supported for other poleis by looking at the historiographical material across the Greek world. DiVerent versions of the past were told by diVerent local historians, contradicting each other both within and between poleis, making it far from clear to what extent the events could be described as ‘common’.8 However, the idea that the orator, no less than the historian, relied on his public presentation of the past in order to support his authority with the audience, suggests interesting parallels between these two Wgures in terms of the parameters within which any of their versions must fall in order to win approbation. The active nature of the orator’s interaction with the past, as 5 Nouhaud oVers a superb, thorough, and interesting survey of use and abuse of historical themes. There is also much here of more theoretical interest concerning the use of history, combined with an alertness to context and audience expectation. 6 That Isocrates is referring to events in which the audience have not themselves participated is, in any case, clearly suggested by the verb ŒÆ ºŁÆ. 7 See R. Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989). 8 This variation within parameters seems clearly distinguishable from the making of factual errors or confusions which we occasionally see in the extant speeches. See, for example, Andocides, On the Mysteries 106, where he confuses the battle of Pallene and the battle of Sigeum. On the other hand, as Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 105, points out, without a clear picture of the likely level of historical knowledge of orators, we cannot assess ‘dans quelle mesure leur de´formation de la reálite´ historique est consciente ou inconsciente.’

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described by Isocrates, places him very Wrmly in the role of historian.9 Isocrates’ stress on the suitable nature of his use of the past, the fact that he must make use of past events ‘at the right moment’ (K ŒÆØæfiH) and conceive of thoughts that are ‘Wtting’ ( a æŒ Æ) echoes the inscriptions which honour local historians for their ‘appropriate’ accounts of the past.10 It is clear also from this that, while the orator, like the historian, selects and fashions certain elements of the past, he does not have unlimited freedom to shape it as he likes.11 Making correct use of the past in oratory, as in historiography, involves a mixture of constriction and creativity, if credibility is to be maintained. The past is shared in so far as certain events or at least certain elements in its narration are commonly accepted as being ‘true’. Claims to truth in history may be unfashionable for the modern reader, but it is worth noting that Syriscus of Cheronnesus, whose account of the epiphanies of the Parthenos and kindly deeds towards the cities was made ‘Wttingly’, was praised also for having related these events ‘truthfully’ (ƒ æ IºÆŁØ½H). Isocrates’ claim that past events were ‘shared’ clearly did not preclude their creative deployment and presentation. A good deal of attention has been devoted in recent years to considering the complex power relations which existed between orators and audiences in the Roman Republic, partly in response to the reassertion of the democratic nature of that system and the claim that speakers addressing the populus Romanus must necessarily tailor their words to the audience’s demands.12 The idea of oratory as a form of 9 The tradition that Isocrates was the mentor to Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chios further reinforces the view that the ideas on the past of at least this orator may be of some relevance for enhancing our understanding of historiography. But see Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 56, for the view that the orator never fulWls the same role as the historian: ‘Meˆme lorsqu’il s’agit de comparer le pre´sent au passe´, l’orateur ne se transforme pas pour la circonstance en historien.’ 10 See SGDI 3086 (FGrH 807 t 1), an inscription celebrating Syriscus of Cherronesus, who was honoured with a golden crown for ‘he recorded the kindly deeds performed towards the cities Wttingly for the demos’ ( ½Ł æÆ Æ ½ØjºŁæøÆ d a ºØ ƒ ½ jæ KØØŒø HØ ðÞø½Ø). 11 Demosthenes, On the Crown 225, gives some insight into the potentially misleading eVects of the competitive recreation of the past. He attacks Aeschines for exploiting the time lapse between events and his speech to make a careful selection of old dates and decrees, some for slanderous purposes, and for transposing dates ( ªŒ Æ f æ ı) and making up Wctitious causes. 12 The importance of persuading the polis as a whole has, of course, been explored in detail by J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (New Jersey, 1989). For the Roman counterpart, see F. G. B. Millar, ‘Politics, Persuasion and People before the Social War (150–90 bc)’, Journal of Roman Studies 76 (1986), 1–11 and The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor, 1998). But see R. Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2004), especially 14–18, arguing primarily for a more theoretical approach to the exercise of political power, or rather the


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discourse in which the speaker does not simply pick up on ‘public opinion’, but actively shapes it at the same time, in other words, the notion that oratory, like historiography, draws its persuasive force from a subtle combination of description and prescription,13 and relates no less to the Greek than to the Roman world, and no less to the past than to the present. Perhaps it would be fair to say that the orator needed both to ‘buy in’ to recognizable elements of the ‘shared past’ which his audience knew from their general education, their attendance at public festivals, and theatrical performances and other rhetorical displays, and, having won their allegiance as fellow sharers in this past, to manipulate their thoughts either about his client or, more relevantly here, about the polis itself and its foreign relations, through careful deployment of exempla and past experience.14 It is this latter process that Isocrates describes as ‘thorough use’ (ŒÆ ÆæÆŁÆØ)—no mere relation of an uncontested past, but an active and ruthless exploitation and manipulation of history in the service both of a particular argument or case and of the longer-term authority of the orator. An examination of some of the more prominent political speeches and discourses should, therefore, oVer an opportunity to glimpse at least two angles on the past. First, the ‘shared’ past of a polis, the ‘generally accepted’ stories about Athenian and Attic history, which we might expect to be relatively uniform across the diVerent orators and closely correlated with the ‘shared’ past revealed in the Atthides.15 Secondly, through the use by diVerent orators of particular historical events and exempla, a more selective and unique reading of the past, deployed in support of particular arguments. process of political negotiation, than those which he sees oVered by Ober and Millar. The criticisms of Ober (43) for his oversimpliWcation of Aristotelean ideas of ethos (whereby the orator should accommodate himself to his audience’s way of thinking, character, and selfperception, as outlined in the Rhetorica) and again (44) for statements such as ‘the orator had to conform to his audience’s ideology or face the consequences’, seem entirely justiWed. 13 The precise proportions of each remain unclear. Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 111, clearly implies that orators were at the forefront of ‘teaching’ the audience their history (‘connaissant principalement l’histoire par les orateurs’), which would suggest that they took a leading role in creating the ‘shared past’, into which they then bought, a rather circular and unsurprisingly successful tactic. 14 L. Pearson, ‘Historical Allusions in the Attic Orators’, Classical Philology 36 (1941), 209–29 at 217–19, makes the important point that it would be a poor rhetorical strategy to alienate the audience with displays of excessive erudition. 15 See M. I. Finley, ‘Myth, Memory and History’, in The Use and Abuse of History (London, 1975), 11–33 at 29, for a view which is based on relatively tight parameters for the orator in terms of both themes and freedom to elaborate or recast: ‘In Athens, the Solonian codiWcation, the tyrannicides, Marathon were the stock allusions of political orators and pamphleteers, and everyone knew all that anyone needed to know about them.’ By contrast, see Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 112, for the accepting nature by the audience of whatever ‘history’, however inconsistent or contradictory, the orator presented.

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At the same time, it is worth asking to what degree the Attic orators were concerned to construct a coherent and continuous version of Athenian history, or whether they were simply ‘dipping in’ to a narrative or at least a series of selected highlights, whose outline, or details, or dates, they could assume to be known to the audience. Did they show any concern over dates, and if so how were they expressed? To what extent did their arguments depend on continuity between past and present, and to what extent on change over time? One question to bear in mind is that of from where the orators themselves ‘learned’ their history. As Nouhaud notes, not a single orator cites the name of a historian, still less the title of a work,16 and, although one may assume the same range of ‘non-historiographical’ sources of information— decrees, oral tradition, the comic theatre, and so on—as would be available to all citizens, it is not clear what privileged historical insight lends authority to the orator’s view of the past. The extant fragments of local historiography strongly suggest that, even in ostensibly ‘historical’ accounts, not all periods received equal coverage. We are, of course, severely hampered in taking this assertion too far by the limited nature of the evidence and the idiosyncratic nature of the sources. It would be rash, in the absence of complete works, to state that local historians showed no interest in creating a complete and continuous account of the past, preferring instead to focus on discrete and signiWcant moments in time. Indeed, in cases where more than a handful of fragments have survived from the work of individual authors, as for example with Philochorus, there are clear indications that the account was arranged by annual magistracies (in this case, the archonship), suggesting an attempt to achieve a relatively comprehensive treatment across time.17 However, comprehensiveness does not entail uniformity, and, unless we have been entirely misled by the preoccupations of our sources, our extant fragments of local historiography do suggest a predilection for the distant and mythical past.18 Even if it seemed safe to say nothing more than that the distant past constituted a major element in the story constructed by local historiography, this still oVers a 16 See Nouhaud, ibid. 121. 17 Pace A. Momigliano, ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, in The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley, 1990), 54–79 at 61, who distinguishes local ‘antiquarianism’ from serious historiography by its characteristic systematic, rather than chronological, treatment of the past. For Momigliano, any chronological ordering to be found in the local historians was incidental, rather than essential to their organizing strategy. By contrast, we may recall the conWdent assertion of F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949), 87 and 99, of the strongly annalistic nature of local historiography, mapped out by eponymous magistrates wherever possible. 18 Of course, some of the major sources are clearly predisposed to preserve the mythical elements of the original histories—Stephanus of Byzantium, for example, with his place-name aetiologies, looms large in any study of foundation myths.


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point of comparison against which to place the attitude of the Attic orators to past time. On reading the political speeches and discourses of some of the major orators of fourth-century Athens against this background, one is immediately struck by the emergence of a very diVerent range of Athenian pasts from those constructed by the Atthidographers. The distant and mythical past which is so important in the construction of local history in the extant historiographical record is much less dominant in the past constructed by the orators,19 sitting as it does alongside other more recent events in the service of the argument in point. But simply to assert that the orators, just like the historians, construct a selective picture, a deliberate and careful ediWce, is merely to state a commonplace. More proWtable is to consider which periods and events are favoured, how and why these may diVer from those emphasized in other media, and how these issues relate to the broader questions of audience, reception, and the attitude of the polis as a whole to the passage of time and the past. One obvious observation is to note that the extant ‘private’ speeches given in the course of non-political trials are almost entirely devoid of historical references, conWrming that the appeal to history was part of the political discourse rather than simply a feature of any attempt to persuade an audience. It would, however, clearly be erroneous to treat even Attic oratory which concerns political themes as though it were a monochrome entity, or to be insensitive to the variations between orators and between diVerent compositions and performances by the same speaker. Although the audiences of diVerent types of speech must necessarily have overlapped, whether they were sitting as jurors in the courts, as voters in the assembly, or as citizens at a public occasion, such as a funeral oration,20 the diVerent needs of forensic, symbouleutic, and epideictic oratory may have played a part in determining which episodes in the past were presented, and in what ways.21

19 Except, as we shall see, in some forms of epideictic oratory, such as the funeral oration. See Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 8–9, on the much greater recourse to the historical rather than mythic past in oratory, though he notes the diYculty of demarcation at both ends of the ‘historical’ spectrum—where history and the present meet (9) and conversely where ‘pour les orateurs, le mythe se distingue de l’histoire par une plus grande anciennete´’, 8. 20 The importance of the epitaphios in the presentation of particular versions of the past to the community at large can scarcely be overemphasized. I shall, however, for precisely this reason, treat it as a predominantly civic occasion and reserve most of my comments for the next chapter. 21 Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 37, may thus be blurring distinctions that mattered by adducing funeral orations and the comic theatre in one sweep to establish ‘une Wxite´ qui semble te´moigner d’une tradition bien e´tablie’ in Wfth-century Athens concerning audience expectation and knowledge of the past.

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History and rhetoric in the polis 2 . A D D R E S S IN G AT H E N S : P R E S E N T I N G T H E PA S T

a) Demosthenes Demosthenes regularly refers to, and takes his exempla from, the extremely recent past.22 In On the Chersonese, he focuses heavily on the present, supporting his arguments with examples from Philip’s behaviour in recent campaigns. Oreus, Pherae, Olynthus, and Phocis are the recurrent themes (for example at 59), and these are again cited as a group (Philippic 3.10–12), as states which Philip has denied attacking, while being virtually at the gate.23 The expedition to Euboea in 357 bc in order to recover it from the Thebans is another commonplace—as an opportunity on which Athens failed to capitalize (Olynthiac 1.8), as a warning to Philip that Athens was indeed capable of striking out (Philippic 1.17), and as a positive example of persuasion backed up by action (On the Chersonese 74–5).24 This case provides a neat illustration of the way in which the same recent event could be used as both a positive and a negative exemplar—the malleable nature of the shared past, appropriately deployed as Isocrates demanded. This apparent inconsistency in presentation is elsewhere explicitly depicted as a positive feature of Athenian behaviour regarding the event itself. In For the People of Megalopolis (14), Demosthenes makes the Athenian defence of Euboea against Thebes, where previously she had supported Thebes against Sparta (in 378 bc), into a deliberate change of allegiance made in the cause of victims of injustice, again reinforcing the way in which the presentation of the past was continually evolving depending on context. Most of Demosthenes’ relation of fourth-century events is naturally connected to his arguments concerning Philip, and Athens’ appropriate response to him. The failure to capitalize on the situation in Euboea (Olynthiac 1.8 above) is part of a list of fourth-century examples—Pydna (357), Potidaea (356), Methone (354), and Pagasae (352)—designed to demonstrate that quick action in the past might have averted trouble with Philip now. Similar 22 The same strategy is adopted by Deinarchus, Against Demosthenes 37, where he explicitly rejects the heroes of even the Wfth century, such as Themistocles and Aristides as ‘those ancient Wgures’ ( f IæÆı KŒı) for whom he has no time, before focusing attention on what was done ‘shortly before our time’ (ØŒæe æe B æÆ ºØŒÆ: 38). The strategy is not precisely borne out by the speech, since, although he adduces early fourth-century Wgures such as Conon, Iphicrates, Chabrias, and Timotheus (75), he also refers to mythical tales such as the trial by Poseidon of Ares for the murder of Halirrothius (87) and the tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton (102). 23 See also Philippics 3.56 Olynthus; 3.59 Oreus; 3.57 Eretria. Philippic 4 (if genuine) oVers more instances of this theme, e.g. at §61; see also the repeated list of Athenian mistakes at Serrium and Doriscus in §§8 and 65. 24 The episode reappears as an example of Athenian benefaction at On the Crown 99.

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lists of recent events are included to encourage Athens to follow its own example in assisting other poleis against aggressors, and thereby to warn Philip not to rely on their apathy—Haliartus (where in 395 they helped the Thebans to defeat Lysander),25 Corinth (in 394 against Sparta),26 and Thermopylae (where in 352 Philip was stopped on his march from Thessaly to Phocis).27 These are arguments based not so much on the past, but on near-contemporary examples of Athenian behaviour, from which the immediate future can be predicted. On the whole, Demosthenes’ allusion to fourth-century events is exhortatory in tone. Athens is encouraged to particular courses of action through conWdence that its present capacity is more than adequate, as illustrated by recent actions. In other words, the ‘decline theory’, which we shall see deployed in other contexts, is not universally applied. Demosthenes can Wnd fourth-century heroes, such as Chabrias, as well as more distant ones, with whom to inspire the Athenians to action.28 The Wfth century receives a quite extensive coverage in Demosthenes’ public speeches, but it is focused on particular episodes and phases. The later part of the century (including the very earliest part of the fourth century) is represented partly through reference to the rule of the Thirty,29 and partly through the exemplary events surrounding certain individuals, all adduced in Against Leptines: Epicerdes of Cyrene, who was correctly granted immunity from liturgy for his benefactions to the Athenians held prisoner in Sicily during the ill-fated expedition of 415–413 bc (41–2); the Thasian supporters of Ecphantus, who handed over Thasos to Athens by expelling the Spartan guard and admitting Thrasybulus (59);30 and Conon, who restored the Long Walls after destroying the Spartan Xeet oV Cnidus in 394 bc (68–72). The period of the Persian wars and Athenian resistance at the head of Greece receives more frequent mention for obvious exemplary reasons in the context of Demosthenes’ orations and his stance against Philip.31 Some instances oVer general contrasts between past and present Athenian mores, to which 25 Philippic 1.17; On the Crown 96. 26 On the Crown 96. 27 Philippic 1.17. 28 See, for example, On Organization 22; Against Leptines 75–8, where the amazing exploits of Chabrias are related at length. 29 For the Liberty of the Rhodians 22; Against Leptines 11—both references are Xeeting. 30 The date is disputed (between 408 and 407 bc) owing to discrepancies between the two main sources, Xenophon and Diodorus. 31 The dominance of the Persian War period in Greek oratory of the fourth century is well attested also in the less commonly read and fragmentary texts. See, for example, Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 80 for the taking of the ephebic oath before Plataea, 104 for Marathon, 108 on the Spartans at Thermopylae, 122 for the execution of Lycidas after Salamis; Hyperides, Against Athenogenes 31 on Athenian help to Troezen in return for Troezen’s safe haven for Athenian women and children in the run-up to Salamis. Even right at the start of the fourth century (399 bc), Athenian unity in the aftermath of the war against Persia is adduced by Andocides, On the Mysteries 107–9, as a model for civic harmony.

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we shall return.32 The Wgure of Themistocles is presented on several occasions as a model for emulation—described in Against Leptines (73) as the most famous man of all his contemporaries (› H ŒÆŁ Æı e ± ø IæH K Æ ); and the well-known battles of the Persian wars, a very clear part of the audience’s ‘shared knowledge’, are regularly evoked.33 Most memorably in On the Crown (208), where Demosthenes is defending decisions which have turned out disastrously for Athens, he calls on his audience to be proud of their bravery in staving oV Philip through what turned out to be an ill-fated alliance with Thebes, and famously swears an oath to this by the Athenian ancestors who fought at Marathon, Plataea, Artemisium, and Salamis.34 References to more distant periods of Athenian history are similarly focused around signiWcant episodes and individuals, as we might expect. Solon and his laws loom large in several speeches,35 but particularly in On the False Embassy, where Demosthenes enters into polemic against Aeschines for his use of precisely this Wgure. We shall come back to the competitive use of the past, between opposing orators, but it is worth noting here that Solon’s signiWcance was more than simply as a symbol of Athenian justice. In On the False Embassy (251), Aeschines is attacked for having alluded to the statue of Solon, represented with his hands folded and robe drawn around himself as the epitome of the self-restraint (øæ ÆæØªÆ) of the orators of a previous generation, by contrast with the present. According to Demosthenes, the statue is said by the Salaminians to be less than Wfty years old, and is therefore no kind of evidence for Aeschines’ point. But Demosthenes then goes on (at 255) to use Solon himself, this time in his role as a poet. Substantial passages of Solon’s elegiacs are adduced as enshrining timeless truths about the city. This particular individual from the past, then, encapsulates both change and continuity, and is multifaceted in his relevance as a Wgure in the polis, though strikingly not cast in his role as agrarian and political reformer.36 32 See Philippic 3.36–7 on Athenian hatred of bribery; On the Crown 203–6, especially 203 and 205, for lack of servility. 33 See On Organization 21, for the lack of ostentatious bronze statues set up to Themistocles for Salamis and to Miltiades for Marathon. 34 S. Usher, Greek Oratory : Tradition and Originality (Oxford, 1999), 271, notes the ‘quasireligious solemnity’ of this speech, which is clearly reXected in the taking of this oath. 35 See Against Leptines 90; 93–4; 102–4 for appeals to his legislative procedures; On the Crown 6 appealing to the spirit of justice demanded by Solon’s laws. 36 See Pearson, ‘Historical Allusions in the Attic Orators’, 221–4, for the convenient way in which Solon had already been packaged in the late Wfth century as the originator of democratic institutions and the embodiment of the patrios politeia. C. Mosse´, ‘How a Political Myth Takes Shape: Solon, ‘‘Founding Father’’ of the Athenian Democracy?’, in P. J. Rhodes (ed.), Athenian Democracy (Edinburgh, 2004), 242–59, oVers more insights into the motivations for reading or ‘creating’ Wgures from the past to meet particular political needs. M. I. Finley, ‘The Ancestral Constitution’, in The Use and Abuse of History (London, 1975), 34–59, notes the importance of shared Wgureheads from the past in creating a sense of community. See 50 for the point that Solon gradually eclipsed his rival, Cleisthenes, for such a role.


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The overthrow of the Pisistratid tyranny is a moment in Athenian history to which Demosthenes refers on several occasions, although one might have expected that the theme of tyrannicide would prove even more dominant than is the case, given its exemplary force in the rhetoric of opposition to Philip. However, the Philippics themselves are devoid of references to the model tyrannicide, and it is the speech Against Leptines which exploits the theme in two separate contexts:37 Wrstly, on the question of exemption from liturgies, the point is made (at 18) that some liturgies were compulsory for everyone, even the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The force of this is clearly that it would be impossible to imagine a more distinguished ancestry in the polis of Athens than that of the tyrannicides, but even so this did not bring exemption from civic duty for their descendants. At this point Demosthenes comments that Leptines had particularly named the tyrannicides in his own speech, presumably in support of an opposing point. As in the case of Solon, Wgures and events from the past were notoriously malleable, being used creatively to serve the needs of the present argument. Later in Against Leptines, Harmodius and Aristogeiton return as doubly removed exempla for the honouring of civic benefactors. Conon, himself brought in as a model for the grant of immunity and of a bronze statue for his actions against Sparta, was the Wrst to be so honoured since Harmodius and Aristogeiton (68–70), since his stand against Spartan imperialism was deemed a form of tyrannicide (ªF ªaæ P ØŒæa ıæÆÆ ŒÆd F . . . ÆıŒÆØ). It is interesting that the famous tyrannicides are here being adduced as models for the highest civic honour, whereas a few chapters earlier they are models for moderation in such rewards for benefaction. The Xexibility of the past could be exploited not only by opposing speakers, but even within a single speech, neatly illustrating the tension revealed by Isocrates’ comments with which I opened. The ‘deeds from the past which are common to all’ (æØ Æƒ æªªÆØ ŒØÆd AØ) are here the well-known ‘facts’ about Athens’ delivery from tyranny. But this happens to be a case where we know from Rosalind Thomas’s close and detailed study quite how complex were the traditions surrounding these events in Athenian history.38 Even so, there were enough ‘shared elements’ in the story for the allusion to have some force for the audience as a whole. The tale was not so hotly contested that Demosthenes’ reference would be ambiguous; but at the same time it was not so Wxed that it could not be manipulated and deployed to suit present needs. 37 See also On the Treaty with Alexander 3, on how resistant Athens would be to restoring the Pisistratids. 38 See Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens, 238–82.

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The mythical past of foundations and heroes, which is so prominent in the fragmentary remains of Greek local historiography, including the many Atthides, is largely absent from Demosthenes’ public speeches, in spite of the obvious value that constructing such a picture of the polis might have had in the service of fostering opposition to the threat of Philip. In fact, the mythical past of Athens, its heroic founders such as Theseus, and its claims to autochthony, do not appear at all. Instead, the one reference to the distant past which I can Wnd in the public orations relates more closely to Thebes than to Athens. In On the Crown (186), Demosthenes’ decree proposing to send help to Thebes against Philip relies heavily on appeals to the distant links between Athens and Thebes, going right back to the time of the Heraclidae: ‘They remember the services of their own ancestors to the ancestors of the Thebans, since, when the sons of Heracles were deprived by the Peloponnesians of their ancestral rule, they restored them . . . and we sheltered Oedipus and those who were banished with him’. Demosthenes, then, clearly focuses his attention on the relatively recent past, particularly when he is warning or advising about political or military strategy for the present crisis. His exhortatory speeches require positive models of behaviour which are suYciently recent to be plausibly imitable, relying on continuity rather than change through time. His appeals to the more distant Athenian past are focused on predictable and appropriate Wgures for emulation, such as Themistocles and the tyrannicides; or on characters such as Solon, who embody and epitomize qualities which might be claimed as timelessly Athenian. It is not surprising that the picture of the more distant past which one might draw from Demosthenes’ public speeches is far less detailed than his picture of the fourth century. His use of the past in the service of convincing an Athenian audience takes its eVectiveness from its simplicity, picking up on the ‘shared’ knowledge of certain key Wgures and events, and deploying them with considerable freedom and selectivity.39

b) Aeschines Since Demosthenes and Aeschines were notorious adversaries, who have conveniently left to us opposing speeches,40 containing Demosthenes’ explicit 39 The need for simplicity in historical allusion is stressed by R. D. Milns, ‘Historical Paradigms in Demosthenes’ Public Speeches’, Electronic Antiquity: Communicating the Classics 2.5 (1995) , although his comment that ‘pride and patriotism are the essence of historical examples, which are meant to be edifying and to provoke emulation’ seems to miss some of the complexity and subtlety of the technique. 40 For Aeschines’ employment of rhetorical techniques such as explicit ordering of points in order to discredit Demosthenes, see C. W. Wooten, ‘Clarity and Obscurity in the Speeches of


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criticisms of Aeschines’ use of the past and Aeschines’ response, it is of particular interest to compare Aeschines’ treatment of Athenian history with that of Demosthenes. According to Demosthenes, Aeschines urged the Athenians not to draw on the past, but to forget their ancestors (‰ h H æª ø A BŁÆØ Ø).41 However, all three extant speeches of Aeschines are heavily laden with references to Athenian history; and in general, it is a much more distant past than the one evoked by Demosthenes. Historical events of the fourth century, besides the ones which actually form the subject of the speeches, are virtually absent. In On the Embassy (164), Aeschines’ list of examples of Athenian inconsistency in its dealings with other states ranges across the Wfth and fourth centuries—Athens fought Sparta, but then helped it after Leuctra; restored the Theban exiles, but then fought them at Mantinea; fought Themison and Eretria, but then saved them later. In Against Ctesiphon (243), where he is arguing in 330 bc for the last time against Ctesiphon’s proposal to award Demosthenes the crown for his services to the state, he compares Demosthenes unfavourably to Wgures from recent history who more richly deserved the honours granted to them— Chabrias, Iphicrates, and Timotheus—in a direct attempt to undermine the positive associations which Demosthenes had claimed for himself and for Athens with the great Wgures of the Wfth century.42 The Wfth century is rather better represented, especially, as in Demosthenes’ speeches, in relation to the Persian wars. In Against Ctesiphon, Aeschines illustrates his point about the reversal of fortunes by reference to the fate of the king of Persia, who went so far as to assault Athos and bridge the Hellespont, but to no avail.43 The great Wgures of the polis at that time oVer models for comparison with contemporary individuals, to the detriment of the latter. Demosthenes is unfavourably set alongside Themistocles, Miltiades, and Aristides the Just (181). But it is not only the prospective honorand who is diminished by the comparison. The behaviour of the polis too is at stake. Those who conquered the Medes at the river Strymon were honoured with inscriptions not to individuals, but to the demos as a whole (183); the Stoa Poikile in the Athenian agora was Wlled with memorials of Wne deeds, but the Athenians resisted Miltiades’ request for individual commemoration for his Aeschines’, American Journal of Philology 109 (1988), 40–3, especially 40–1; A. R. Dyck, ‘The Function and Persuasive Power of Demosthenes’ Portrait of Aeschines in the Speech On the Crown’, Greece & Rome 32 (1985), 42–8, focuses instead on the character assassination performed by Demosthenes on Aeschines. 41 On the False Embassy 16; cf. also the same allegation at 307: H æª ø BŁÆØ; 311: c æª ø BŁÆØ. 42 See Demosthenes, On Organization 22; Against Leptines 75–8, for Chabrias’ prominence in fourth-century history. 43 See 132; at 133, the later examples of Sparta and Thebes are introduced.

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role at Marathon, instead preferring to celebrate the collective achievement. Here, then, we Wnd an interesting twist on the use of the Wfth century as an exemplary period. There is still an appeal to the audience’s shared knowledge of great events and great Wgures. But the focus on the individual as exemplum is subordinated to model behaviour on the part of the whole polis in its treatment of individuals. This is of course no surprise given the purpose of the speech to deny an individual a special honour for his actions and advice on behalf of the polis as a whole, providing yet another example of the way in which familiar elements from the Athenian past could be exploited in the service of a particular cause. As in Demosthenes’ public speeches, Solon is regularly evoked by Aeschines too, and again it is as a lawgiver and a wise man, rather than an agrarian or political reformer, that he appears. He is particularly prominent in Against Timarchus, where he is adduced as having written ‘in an old-fashioned and solemn manner’ (IæÆø ŒÆd H) on the subject of women (183). It is Against Timarchus to which Demosthenes clearly refers in his criticism of Aeschines’ use of the statue of Solon in the agora in Salamis as evidence for the former restraint of orators. Aeschines does indeed (at 25) allude to the pose of this statue in support of the view that orators such as Pericles, Themistocles, and Aristeides were more decorous than the likes of Timarchus. As we saw in the case of the tyrannicides in Demosthenes’ Against Leptines, here is possibly another example of double layering of exempla, since a statue of Solon cannot reasonably be adduced as proof for the behaviour of Wfthcentury orators unless either Aeschines is completely negligent over chronology,44 or Solon is being assumed as an earlier model for later ones. But it is interesting in any case to see Solon cast in the role of paradigmatic orator. It is, however, no surprise to Wnd Solon evoked near the start of this speech as ‘the ancient lawgiver’ (› ÆºÆØe Ł ) together with Draco and other lawgivers from that time (6). Timarchus, argues Aeschines, has contravened the laws which were handed over by these early lawgivers to the Athenian people as their guardians (ºÆŒÆ: 7), presumably to be retained unchanged over time. The power of Aeschines’ argument derives from his allusion to the originator of the law in question, drawing on the shared vision of Solon as crucial benefactor and paradigm of the Athenian self-image. Aeschines directly addresses Demosthenes’ criticisms of his use, or rather neglect, of the past in On the Embassy, Xatly denying that he pays no attention ‘to those who speak of the battles and trophies of their ancestors’ ( E a 44 It is noteworthy that the Wfth-century orators are here described as ‘those ancient orators’ (ƒ IæÆEØ KŒEØ Þ æ), perhaps in an attempt to blur the gap of over a century between them and Solon.


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Æ ŒÆd a H æª ø ºªıØ æ ÆØÆ) (63). It is clear from the three extant speeches of Aeschines that his rebuttal is to some extent justiWed. The past, often the distant past, plays an important part in his oratory.45 Furthermore, Aeschines claims to have used the mythical past to good rhetorical eVect not only when addressing Athenian audiences, but also when on the embassy to Philip. He claims at On the Embassy 115 to have told the story of the founding of the Delphic shrine ( c Œ Ø F ƒæF) and of the Wrst meeting of the Amphictyons, and also to have read oaths in which ‘men of ancient times’ swore that they would not raze the cities of the Amphictyonic states. Earlier he had oVered proof of the Athenian ownership of Amphipolis through telling about the original acquisition of the land (æd . . . B K IæB Œ ø B æÆ) and the story of the sons of Theseus, one of whom, Acamas, is said to have received the district as a dowry for his wife (31). Here we Wnd Aeschines speaking to the Athenians about the way in which he has used allusions to the distant and mythical past to convince another audience on Athens’ behalf, just as we shall see (in chapter 6) the diplomatic use made of the past in inter-polis negotiations. It is part of his rhetorical strategy to build up his authority with his current audience, that he was adept at doing what Demosthenes accused him of neglecting, namely arguing on the basis of past events. Aeschines goes still further here in claiming to have combined proofs resting on ancient tales and those resting on contemporary events to good eVect (31). Perhaps goaded by Demosthenes’ taunts about his failure to make good use of the past in the way that Isocrates says a wise man should, Aeschines seems particularly keen to display his prowess in constructing diVerent frameworks for persuasion. We have seen the way in which he claims to have combined exempla from diVerent periods. In Against Timarchus (180–2), he sets up another pair of comparative contexts: Wrst he contrasts Athenian behaviour with Spartan condemnation of immorality, and notes the value of models across space, claiming that ‘it is a Wne thing to imitate even foreign virtues’ (ŒÆºe K d ŒÆd a ØŒa Iæ a ØEŁÆØ). But he then follows this with 45 A remote example comes in Against Ctesiphon, where Aeschines is discussing the alleged impiety of Demosthenes at Delphi and makes extensive use of a story about the ancient oracle which required the land to be dedicated and not cultivated. The Amphictyons voted to put this into practice on the advice of Solon; the Locrians subsequently broke the agreement, but bribed Demosthenes to secure his silence on the matter (107–13). But see also Against Timarchus 132–3 for references to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and even Patroclus and Achilles. These are admittedly the allusions attributed to an imaginary interlocutor, but their presence is still signiWcant. I owe to Sarah Cottle, however, the point that, since Timarchus is being accused on the understanding that his sexual behaviour is uncitizenly, the references become less surprising, and furthermore that, since Thucydides too mentions Harmodius and Aristogeiton (6.53), highlighting their pederastic relationship, the topos seems to have been widespread and natural.

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a model drawn across time from the Athenians’ own ancestors (ŒÆd H æø æª ø ŁÆØ), since he does not wish to Xatter the Spartans unduly. But returning to On the Embassy, it is here that we Wnd the most sustained defence by Aeschines of his attitude to and use of the past. It may be convenient for Demosthenes’ attack on him, he argues, to confuse the dates (96),46 but it is best for Aeschines himself to get events in the right order ( ÆæØ f æ ı; Kd KB ºªØ). Aeschines does not urge disregard of the past, as the prosecution claims; far from it. Although he believes that the orator should oVer advice which suits the present situation (165), this does not mean ignoring past experiences and exempla. Rather, as Isocrates might have agreed, it entails a selective and discerning approach to history. Those speakers who urge their audience simply to consider the Propylaea and ‘to remember the sea battle at Salamis and the tombs and trophies of their ancestors’ ( B K #ÆºÆEØ ÆıÆÆ BŁÆØ; ŒÆd H ø H æª ø ŒÆd H æÆø) do not have the safety of the state at heart (74). This sounds as though Aeschines is rejecting the ‘shared’ highlights of Wfth-century history, the famous events and Wgures to which the orators, including himself, so regularly make appeal. However, he goes on to reWne this apparent rejection of the past, encouraging the Athenians to imitate the good models and beware the bad (75–8).47 And his point is repeated towards the end of the speech, namely that he is not forbidding the imitation of the ancestors, as Demosthenes alleges, but simply urging that the Athenians should be discerning, and emulate only good policies (171). Aeschines’ boldest attempt to turn the tables on his opponent comes towards the end of his speech Against Ctesiphon. Here, he not only displays his willingness to play with the most familiar Wgures from the Athenian past, the ‘shared’ ancestors who were so important to the image of the polis, trespassing on to rhetorical ground which Demosthenes has suggested is his alone, but Aeschines does so in ways which are designed speciWcally to backWre on his opponent. Far from merely citing the great Wgures of Athens—Solon, 46 The reckoning of the precise chronology of events was a crucial part of Demosthenes’ case against Aeschines, as On the False Embassy makes clear, with Demosthenes so conWdent that he oVered the defence part of his own time allocation in which to disprove his chronological calculations (57–60). 47 ‘Good’ examples are Plataea, Salamis, and Artemisium or the generalship of Tolmides; ‘bad’ examples are the Sicilian expedition sent to help Leontini when Athens’ own territory was already occupied by the enemy, or Athens’ actions on being oVered peace terms by Sparta, which led to the rule of the Thirty. Plutarch, Precepts of Statescraft 814a–c, similarly makes the point that the exhortation by those in power of the general populace to emulate the past indiscriminately and without thought for whether a model is appropriate now, is of danger to the state. He interestingly rules out some of the standard classical topoi, such as Plataea and Marathon, as paradigms which please the mob but should be left to the sophists (814c).


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Aristeides, Themistocles, the dead of Marathon and Plataea, the tombs of the ancestors—as exemplary models from the past, Aeschines imaginatively brings them back to life, transporting them from their own place in time into the present and depicting their horror at Demosthenes’ proposed crown. Demosthenes’ favourite characters from the past, whom he accuses Aeschines of ignoring, are shown deriding their greatest admirer (257–9); and in so doing they are made to embody the refutation of his allegations.48 Thus, the appropriation and use of the ‘right’ elements of the past become tools in the competition to persuade the polis.

c) Isocrates Isocrates provides us with a slightly diVerent case study from those of the long-standing and very public political opponents, Demosthenes and Aeschines. His long life started several decades before either of the others was born; and he shunned the public performative context of the law courts and the assemblies in favour of published political treatises. The lack of an immediate purpose in terms of inXuencing particular military or political decisions leads to a more discursive and digressive style. It is also, perhaps because of this, responsible for the relative lack of focus on recent events. Instead, Isocrates’ discourses, just like other examples of epideictic oratory such as the funeral oration, which we shall consider in more detail in the next chapter, reveal a quite diVerent picture of the Athenian past, much more similar to that found in the historiographical record. The stress is on a past which is strongly tied into the mythical period, and relies for its rhetorical force on the assumption of innate and timeless characteristics of the Athenians and their polis.49 Firstly, however, it is worth considering the instances where Isocrates does refer to fourth- and Wfth-century events. The theme of the reversal of fortunes involving spectacular achievements against the odds is illustrated in To Philip by a long list of examples (KŒ ººH ÆæÆØª ø) from the relatively recent past—Alcibiades’ various periods of exile and return, Conon’s demise and subsequent restoration, and Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, who rose to power from nowhere (57–65); or if one wanted a non-Greek and earlier example, there was always Cyrus himself, who was picked up as an abandoned 48 The image is particularly vivid: Aeschines imagines even the tombs of the ancestors groaning aloud when they see what honours are being proposed for Demosthenes: ŒÆd ÆP f f ı f H æª ø PŒ YŁ Ø (259). 49 We might recall the association of the universal historian, Ephorus, with Isocrates (as his pupil) when considering the more extensive scope of Isocrates’ speeches than those of Demosthenes and Aeschines.

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child and came to rule all Asia. The rise and fall of cities, rather than that of individuals, is taken up in the Areopagiticus,50 and again illustrated by examples from the Wfth and fourth centuries—Athens grew because of its caution after the Persian wars, but then declined after the Peloponnesian War; Sparta expanded and took over Greece after the Peloponnesian War, but then declined (after Leuctra).51 The message is explicit: that no state should be too conWdent, since its fortunes could change at any time, as Athens’ own history showed.52 A related and recurrent theme, the apparent inconsistency in interstate relations,53 is again illustrated by relatively recent examples.54 Another context in which Isocrates draws heavily on recent history is the Archidamus, where he puts into the mouth of Archidamus arguments for why Sparta should resist surrendering Messene. As Archidamus points out, he cannot Wnd examples for resistance from Sparta’s own past since it does not have a history of coming under attack. However, he can adduce parallels from other states.55 The examples of resistance which Isocrates puts into Archidamus’ mouth are deliberately drawn from the recent past, since the speaker claims that mentioning the repulsion of the Amazons or the Thracians or the Peloponnesians under Eurystheus might lay him open to the charge of talking about things which are ancient, and too far removed from the present circumstances.56 This is a strange claim to Wnd in a speech written by Isocrates, given his exceptionally extensive use of ancient examples, including these very ones disclaimed here. We must, presumably, attribute the inconsistency to his characterization of the dramatic Wgure of Archidamus, whose eponymous discourse is strikingly free of references to the distant past. Here, instead, he adduces a string of relatively recent examples from various states: the Athenian resistance during the Persian wars, Dionysius besieged by the Carthaginians, Amyntas of Macedon’s repulsion of invaders in the early fourth century, many examples of individual Spartans who have helped allied 50 Isocrates here explicitly addresses the interesting notion that cities, like people, could be analysed in biographical terms, as we have already seen in chs 1 and 4. He could illustrate his theme with examples from individual instances, but whole cities oVered more signiWcant examples. See Areopagiticus 14 for the biographical model repeated: ‘constitution’ (ºØ Æ) ruling ‘city’ ( ºØ) as ‘the mind in the body’ (K Æ Ø æ Ø). 51 Areopagiticus 6 and 7. See Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 132–3, for the same theme. 52 At 12, Isocrates reiterates the labile nature of power—Athens was strong after the victory of Conon and the campaign of Timotheus, but soon lost its power in the Social War. 53 For the same theme see Aeschines, On the Embassy 164. 54 See To Philip 42 on enmity followed by cooperation between the Spartans and Xerxes. Or 43–4 for more recent examples: Athens was harmed by Sparta and Thebes during the Peloponnesian War, but later helped Thebes against Sparta and then Sparta against the rest of the Peloponnese. 55 Note Aeschines, Against Timarchus 180–2, where models across space and time are similarly juxtaposed. 56 42: Yø IæÆEÆ ŒÆd ææø H F Ææ ø ºªØ i Œ.


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cities under siege—all in the service of the argument that the Spartans should stand up for their own city now (43–53).57 As if this were not enough, even more examples are stacked up later in the speech—the stand at Dipaea against the Arcadians in 471, at Thyrea against Argos in 542, and Wnally at Thermopylae (99–100). The logic that recent examples are more likely to prove persuasive than ancient ones strongly echoes the arguments adduced by the Athenians when they were disputing leadership of the troops with Tegea before the battle of Plataea.58 After the Tegeans have made their claims on the basis of events at the time of the Heraclidae, and the Athenians have retorted with precedents of their own behaviour in the same period, as well as their exploits against the Amazons, they dismiss ancient examples in favour of more recent ones. ‘There is not much point in recalling all these things, since people who were brave in the past might easily have deteriorated today, in the same way that people who were nothing to speak of in the past might now have come up in the world.’ The shifting fortunes of states is a familiar topos, but oratory rests its appeal to past exempla on the premise of continuity, which makes episodes from the past rhetorically compelling in the present. Thus Archidamus’ words are potentially undermining of the genre of oratory, especially Isocrates’ oratory with its preference for the remote past. The Wfth-century fortunes of Sparta and Athens are, however, also alluded to in several of Isocrates’ speeches, predictably with Athens being the more positively portrayed, although the degree to which this is the case varies between speeches. In the Panegyricus, the argument that Athens should be granted leadership of a united Greece against Persia is largely based on its past success in this role during the Persian wars (66–7). However, Athens’ status as leader of the Greek states was enhanced by the quality of the other poleis. As Isocrates argues, it showed the level of Athens’ superiority that it could help and give orders to the greatest states of the day—Argos, Thebes, and Lacedaemon (Panegyricus 64). The Persian wars further aVected the standing of both Athens and Sparta by encouraging rivalry between them over their response to the external threat (85; 87).59 It is only later in the speech and later in the history of Greece that Spartan brutality—at Mantinea (383), Thebes (383), and more recently still Olynthus and Phlius—is contrasted 57 This is further subdivided into a list of examples: Pedaritus who helped Chios in 412; Brasidas who helped Amphipolis in 422; Gylippus who helped the Syracusans in 414. 58 See Herodotus 9.27. The sentiment is strongly reminiscent of Herodotus 1.5 on the changes of fortune which make it important to include small states as well as large ones in historiography. 59 Of course, in To Philip 40, where Isocrates is urging Philip to take on the leadership of Greece, these arguments concerning the past conduct of Athens and Sparta are directly overturned. Their rivalry for valour now becomes a negative attribute and a hindrance to leadership.

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with the more moderate behaviour of the Athenians when they were in power. In To Philip also, the theme of the Persian wars is relatively prominent for its obvious rhetorical value in convincing Philip to assume leadership of a united Hellas against the new Persian threat. The enticement of glory is supported by reference to the Wfth-century precedents of both Athens and Sparta, who won their celebrated status for their exploits against Persia at Marathon and Thermopylae respectively (146–8). But in the Panathenaicus, where Athens is praised largely through contrast with Sparta, the Wfth-century conduct of each polis is presented more starkly. Now, in direct contradiction to Philip 146, the Persian wars appear not as a glorious period for both cities, but as the moment when they distinguished themselves one from the other, with Sparta contributing little and Athens a great deal to the safety of Greece (49–50). Furthermore, the subsequent imperial ambitions of the two states are brought into sharp contrast. Athens strengthened the whole of Hellas, Sparta only itself (47); Sparta’s attempt at thalassocracy was far more deleterious than that of Athens (54); Athens’ superiority in ruling Hellas was clearly attested by the far greater length of its duration (56) and by its speedier recovery from collapse (58). Isocrates fears that, in spite of Athens’ clear superiority, people might give a false account of the past in painting a negative picture of that city as an imperial power (63).60 But Sparta’s poor conduct towards other states could be attested through the Wfth century and on into the fourth—mistreating Messene and then the Plataeans in 427, in spite of their record against the Persians (91–3), and Wnishing oV a string of misdeeds during and after the Peloponnesian War with the shameful Peace of Antalcidas (102–5). Isocrates’ treatment of the Wfth century, then, reveals very clearly how adaptable the ‘stock ingredients’ were. Given the way in which the presentation of the Wfth-century past here is, as elsewhere, dictated by the rhetorical needs of the moment, Isocrates’ criticism of others’ manipulation of Athenian history must be either ironic or hypocritical. However, it is the earlier periods of Athenian history which are most strikingly exploited by Isocrates, by contrast with the relative paucity of references in Demosthenes and Aeschines.61 Solon, who appears in Demosthenes and Aeschines as an orator and lawgiver, features in Isocrates’ Areopagiticus as a

60 This is interesting in the light of On the Peace 86, where Isocrates himself claims that there were more disasters in the time of the empire than in the whole of the rest of Athenian history ( H K –Æ Ø fiH æ fiø fi B ºØ ªªø). 61 See Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 20, for the claim that ‘Isocrate est . . . pratiquement le seul qui s’interesse quelque peu a` l’intervalle qui les [sc. myth and the Persian wars] se´pare, a` la Gre`ce archaı¨que’.


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much more overtly political reformer. Isocrates’ purpose, to convince the audience of the superiority of the early phase of Athenian democracy over its Wfth-century form, is extensively supported by a description of the constitution at that time (ŒÆ KŒE e æ )—that is, the time of Solon and Cleisthenes (20–8), and the whole topic is introduced with a warning that the only way to avert future dangers is ‘to restore the democracy which Solon, the most popular leader, established and which Cleisthenes restored’.62 The exposition of Athenian mores, guided and guarded by the Areopagites, leads Isocrates to discuss the relative merits of Athenian past generations, with a strong preference for the age of Solon and Cleisthenes.63 Furthermore, it is the preponderance of references to the mythical past which distinguishes Isocrates’ discourses even more starkly from the speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines.64 The theme of Athens’ repulsion of invaders,65 which we have already seen in the other orators and indeed in Isocrates himself exempliWed by its stance in the Persian wars, is illustrated by Isocrates with much more ancient models. In spite of the rejection of ancient exempla in Archidamus (42),66 Athens’ defence in the mythical period is a topos of the Panegyricus. The Persian wars may provide the best example of Athenian resistance, claims Isocrates, but there is no less evidence in ancient achievements (P c Kº ø ŒæØÆ a ÆºÆØa H æªø: 68); and he goes on to cite the invasions of Attica by the Thracians led by Eumolpus, son of Poseidon, and by the Scythians, led by the Amazons, daughters of Ares. Their defeat represented the curtailment of a broader threat to Greece, allowing Athens in the mythical period, as in the period of the Persian wars, to style itself in the role of saviour of all Hellas.67 The same theme is used again in the Panathenaicus in support of the point that Athens was able and willing to stand as defender of Greece against the onslaught of barbarians. Here, however, in a discourse whose praise of Athens is largely 62 16: KŒ c ŒæÆ Æ IÆºÆE; m # ºø b › ØŒ Æ ª KŁ ; ˚ºØŁ b . . . ŒÆ . 63 The distinguishing between diVerent periods of the past for imitation or rejection is a theme to which we shall return. But note here a counterexample to the point made by Finley that Solon eclipsed other democratic reformers as the paradigmatic Wgure (see n. 36). 64 See Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 19, for the extraordinary disparity between Isocrates and every other fully or partially extant orator on this count, which Nouhaud puts down primarily to the inXuence of sophistic teachers (Prodicus, Gorgias, and Teisias) on Isocrates. 65 Of clear relevance in the fourth century, when the issue of eastern threats to Greece was very much alive. 66 This is something of a standard praeteritio in which Isocrates is able both to reject the mythical examples and in so doing to mention them. 67 See J. de Romilly, ‘Isocrates and Europe’, Greece & Rome 39 (1992), 2–13, at 8 for the view that the Thracian and Scythian expeditions were seen clearly by Isocrates as attempts on the hegemony of Europe as a whole.

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derived from comparisons with Sparta, the Thracians with Eumolpus and the Scythians with the Amazons are joined by the Peloponnesian invaders led by Eurystheus (188–98), nicely illustrating yet again the way in which the construction of the past could be matched to the rhetorical needs of the moment.68 The importance of the Eumolpus story in the wider Athenian consciousness is brought out by Lycurgus’ introduction of the episode in his speech against Leocrates (98–100), since here he cites a sizeable section (55 lines) of Euripides’ Erechtheus in support of his presentation of Eurystheus’ patriotic example whereby he sacriWced his daughter to save the state. Not only does this act as an interesting instance of the use of poetic evidence in oratory, but it also oVers a further insight into the ‘shared’ nature of the past deployed by the orators, this time seen by the gathered polis in the tragic theatre.69 Another conXict which receives a certain amount of coverage in Isocrates, but not in the other two orators considered, is the Trojan War.70 Rather oddly, given the prominence of the Peloponnese among the Greek forces in the Trojan expedition, this particular conXict is brought out in the two most Athenocentric discourses, the Panegyricus and the Panathenaicus. In the latter, the contribution of Peloponnesian states to the Greek expedition in the form of some of the most renowned heroes—Nestor, Menelaus, and Agamemnon—is adduced as an exacerbating factor in Sparta’s crushing of these states in the more recent past (71–2). The notion that the conduct of states in the period of the Trojan War might determine behaviour towards them in perpetuity relies on a rather strained interpretation of historical continuity. Furthermore, it is followed by an extensive digression on the services of Agamemnon to Greece (74–87), which itself evokes an apology for Isocrates’ loss of the thread of argument due to old age (88).71 68 Here, as at Areopagiticus 75, the three mythical examples are followed by mention of the Wfth-century Persian invaders, revealing a seamless transition between spatium mythicum and spatium historicum. The use of mythical exempla in the service of historical arguments is barely noticed. In fact at Panegyricus 30, Isocrates anticipates those who might disparage his stories ‘because they are old’ (‰ IæÆø Z ø) by claiming (it is not clear according to what logic) that their antiquity acts as proof of their truth. 69 Here the importance of education is also raised. The audience not only know the play from their theatregoing in the polis, but, as Lycurgus says, ‘on these verses your fathers were brought up (KÆı)’ (101). For a later parallel, see Strabo, Geography 8.3.3, on the fundamental importance of Homer in one’s education and therefore perceptions through life. 70 Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 62, uses the Trojan War in a quite diVerent way, focusing not on the Greek eVort against an eastern foe, but rather on drawing a hypothetical parallel between the destruction of that city and the enslavement of Athens under the Thirty. His point is that destruction and temporary loss of liberty are quite diVerent things, but it is interesting that the conceptual frame is one of comparison rather than contrast. 71 See W. H. Race, ‘Panathenaicus 74–90: The Rhetoric of Isocrates’ Digression on Agamemnon’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 108 (1978), 175–85, for the suggestion that the self-presentation of the orator and the presentation of Agamemnon as saviour of Greece


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The use of the Trojan War theme in the Panegyricus is more rationally grounded. Rather than being a source of criticism of Sparta for its abuse of ‘heroic’ states, here it forms part of a comparative framework, also involving the Persian wars, by which Athenian leadership of Greece against eastern foes may be enhanced. Those who fought the Persians were even greater than the Greeks who took ten years to capture the one city of Troy, argues Isocrates (83). The fact that the Greeks of the Trojan period fought all that time for the sake of one woman should inspire the Hellenes now to unite for the sake of all Greece (181). The same kind of glory awaits those who now take on the new Persian threat, with the praise that was accorded those who took a single city becoming all the greater for those who would defeat the whole of Asia (186). The set of moves which Isocrates makes is cleverly designed to link Athens to the glory of the Trojan expedition, in spite of the fact that the Peloponnese was far more prominent in the Homeric epics. The Trojan and Persian conXicts are set alongside each other as two examples of East-West confrontation; Athens was a leading force against Persia; and through this route it gains some of the reXected glory from the Trojan period. The use of the generic East-West conXict for rhetorical purposes is reinforced (at 159) by the comment that the Homeric epics were popular among the Athenians of previous generations (that is, those of the Persian War period) because of its theme of Greeks versus barbarians. And this linking of the two conXicts recurs yet again where Isocrates claims that hostility to Persia is so ingrained that the Athenians prefer to hear stories of the Trojan and Persian wars;72 wars like these against barbarians inspired hymns for festivals, those against the Hellenes inspired dirges for miserable occasions. However, Isocrates’ interest in the past of Athens and other Greek poleis goes further back even than the Trojan War. It is somewhat disingenuous of him to claim in the Panathenaicus (1–3) that only now, when nearing his centenary, is he turning to indulge his interest in myths ( f ıŁØ) and marvels, and the ancient deeds ( a ÆºÆØa æØ) and wars of the Hellenes, as though ancient history and myth were not integral to his whole rhetorical strategy. In the Panegyricus, he stresses the importance of exploring the most remote phase of the past in order to support the notion that Athens should lead Greece now. The further back into the past one goes, he claims, the clearer it is that Athens should lead Greece (23), and it is generally agreed are rhetorically and ideologically linked. Race sees the section as a showpiece designed to attest to the orator’s personal skill and character and to set forth a model for constructive political action (185). Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 16, sees the correspondences as still more complicated, asking whether we should see Agamemnon as mapping on to Philip himself or onto his antithesis. 72 Panegyricus 158: u ŒÆd H Łø lØ Æ ıØÆ æ E æøØŒE ŒÆd —æØŒE.

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that Athens is the oldest and greatest polis (IæÆØ r ÆØ ŒÆd ª ). In other words, the cumulative weight of history provides the legitimacy for present policy. Anyone who wishes to compete for leadership ‘by recalling their ancestral achievements on a regular basis’ ( H Æ æø ººŒØ ı), would need to show that they have as impressive an origin for their race as does Athens (25). The contest, then, is in a sense determined by the foundation stories that can be told about each place. For Isocrates, at least in this speech, the outcome is inevitable—who could oVer a leadership ‘more embedded in the past’ (Æ æØø æÆ) than that of Athens, which started its hegemonic trail before most cities in Greece were even founded (37)?73 The priority of Athens, its laws, culture, and constitution (ºØ Æ) is a theme which Isocrates exploits throughout the Panegyricus. The notion of the polis as the great inventor makes it worthy of celebration from the most distant times to the present day.74 Athens’ responsibility for giving the world all the most important aspects of civilized life involves a story which Isocrates admits has become ‘mythical’ (ıŁ), but which is nevertheless fundamental to his claim for its present leadership.75 He then proceeds to relate the gifts granted to Athens by Demeter when wandering after the rape of Kore (28). Thus, from the very beginning, Athenian actions were such as to win from the gods rewards, which would beneWt all mankind. The importance of the story continued to be reiterated through a ritual enacted ‘every year’ (ŒÆŁ ŒÆ e KØÆı e), and was also attested by the fact that most Hellenic cities sent the Wrst fruits of their harvest to Athens ‘in memory of the ancient benefaction’ ( Æ B ÆºÆØA PæªÆ) (31). So, the myth of Demeter supported Athenian fourth-century claims to leadership; but in turn current ritual practice legitimized the myth. But Athens, in Isocrates’ picture, was also the Wrst to send out colonies (35), and the Wrst polis to lay down laws and to establish a constitution (æ ªaæ ŒÆd ı Ł ŒÆd ºØ Æ ŒÆ Æ ) (39). It was the inventor of arts 73 On the Peace 89 shows by counterexample the importance of honouring the original foundation through its direct descendants. Athens, Isocrates laments, has almost entirely changed its composition. But the good state is not the one which draws people in, but the one which saves ‘the race of those who founded the polis in the Wrst place’ ( e ª H K IæB c ºØ NŒØ ø). 74 It incidentally turns Athens as a polis into an honoriWc Wgure in its own right, just like the inventor Wgures such as Orpheus and Moses, who appear in local histories of the Hellenistic period. Thus the possibilities for analysing the city as a biographical entity are further enhanced. We have already seen (in chapters 1 and 4) the way in which the history of invention was a common feature in local historiography. 75 For Hamilton, ‘Greek Rhetoric and History: the Case of Isocrates’, this passage, together with Panegyricus 158, makes plain that Isocrates’ understanding of the distinction between FŁ and º ª is not one of antithesis or of claims to veracity, but concerns the way in which certain stories have ‘come to have a special fame and function in the Greek tradition’ (293).


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(40); it initiated the importance of the Piraeus as trade centre of Greece (42); it oVered spectacles and festivals (44). The very earliest phase of Athenian history is thus depicted as one which underpins its present claim to superiority over the other Greek poleis. In the Panathenaicus, the theme of the ‘inventor polis’ is given a neat twist in line with the strategy of that discourse, namely to add to Athens’ prestige by comparison with Sparta. Here, Sparta’s claims as competitor for the role as inventor city are challenged. Not only are there chronological problems to overcome for those who say that the Spartans invented the best way of life, since the heroic age of the Trojan War, Heracles, Minos, Theseus, and Rhadamanthus was long before the Spartans came to the Peloponnese (204–7), but Isocrates also counters the much-repeated claim for innovation on the part of Lycurgus by saying that he simply imitated the best inventions of the Athenians’ ancestors.76 Isocrates’ denigration of potential Spartan claims to be inventors of civilization because of the chronology of their migration is not, in the Panathenaicus, brought into direct contrast with the claims to autochthony which Athens could wield. We shall see later how this theme was manifested in other media within the polis (in chapter 6). However, the autochthony of the Athenians certainly does form an important theme in that discourse when Isocrates turns, as promised, to the earliest times (119). The claim of the Athenians to be sprung from the gods; their role as inventors of civilization in the form of the polis and its laws; their claim to be unique in their autochthony— all of these are part of Isocrates’ idealized picture of the origins of Athens (124). It is striking to what degree Athens’ superiority is based on its uniqueness, and the way in which not only its origins but also its subsequent history diVer from those of other states. It was, according to Isocrates, the only polis to enjoy the rule of several generations of kings in the same dynasty—from Erichthonius, son of Hephaestus and Earth, who took over from Cecrops, and then handed power down in succession towards Theseus (126).77 Telling the early history of Athens was, in Isocrates’ rhetoric, a very diVerent story from telling that of any other polis.78 76 Panathenaicus 153: ‰ ØÆı c ØŒØ ‰ ıÆ e ¼æØ Æ c H æª ø H æø. 77 The regal history of Athens is relatively absent from most of the extant speeches, but see Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 84, for the Peloponnesian invasion of Attica ‘in the reign of Codrus’ (Kd ˚ æı). Lycurgus goes on to provide an extensive account of Codrus’ self-sacriWce in order to render impossible the oracle which promised the Peloponnesians success as long as they did not kill Codrus. Lycurgus also in the same speech (98) refers to the invasion of Attica by Eumolpus ‘when Erechtheus happened to be king’ ( ıE . . . ÆØº Æ ¯æŁÆ). 78 This cuts quite a contrast with the historiographical evidence, in which Athens’ special status may be seen to derive simply from the greater volume of extant material rather than in substantial and qualitative diVerences from the works concerning other poleis.

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The notion that the Athenians have always been there in the same place aVords a whole range of interesting perspectives on the issue of time, continuity, change and so on, to which we shall return. However, for the moment it is worth simply observing the importance of the autochthony myth for Athens and Attica in Isocrates’ depiction of the past. The theme is predictably present in the Panegyricus, since it is Athens’ proud boast that ‘throughout all time we have possessed the same soil, since we are autochthonous’.79 The fact that the failure of Athens to make the most of this uniquely privileged position is lamented in On the Peace—‘we claim autochthony and Wrst foundation and should be an example to others,80 but we are not’—is indicative of the assumption that extreme antiquity and autochthony are guarantors of excellence and paradigmatic status. In spite of the importance of Athenian foundation myths in the political discourses of Isocrates, there is also extensive coverage of ‘non-Athenian’ myths. Of course, to some degree this is predictable since, by contrast with the extant political speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines, which were delivered before an Athenian audience, Isocrates’ discourses seem designed for a broader Hellenic context, and indeed several involve dramatic scenarios which are speciWcally non-Athenian, such as the Archidamus. It is not surprising that, where the Panegyricus moves into the mythical world beyond Athens, it is nevertheless designed to enhance Athens’ own image. So, Athens’ power is exempliWed by the many appeals which have conWdently been made to its help in the past,81 as when the sons of Heracles Xed from Eurystheus, and shortly before them Adrastus, Talaus’ son, king of Argos sought refuge on his return from the expedition against Thebes (54–5). Sparta is deemed ungrateful ever to have harmed Athens, which started its long history of assistance towards Sparta by helping the Heracleidae, who then became ‘ancestors’ (æ ªØ) of the Spartans, having returned to the Peloponnese and taken over Argos, Lacedaemon, and Messene (61–2). Similarly in the Plataı¨cus, Athens’ exemplary dealings with suppliants in the distant past 79 Panegyricus 24: Æ –Æ Æ e æ ØÆ ºF; ÆP Ł Z . Other examples of the theme in a variety of genres reveal how widespread the ideology was. See Euripides, Ion 589–90: r Æ ÆØ a ÆP ŁÆ ŒºØa %ŁÆ PŒ KÆŒ ª; Aristophanes, Wasps 1076: % ØŒd Ø ØŒÆø KªªE ÆP Ł. Thucydides 1.2.5 is regularly cited alongside these passages stating that in Attica ¼ŁæøØ fiþŒı ƒ ÆP d ÆN. Hornblower’s commentary naturally links this to claims to autochthony myths, although this is not precisely what Thucydides claims. There is, however, a logical connection between never having migrated (the anti-Dorian element) and being sprung from one’s native soil, provided that one must come from somewhere. Possibly Thucydides’ omission of the outright claim for the people of Attica to be ‘earth-born’ is a reXection of a rationalizing tendency. 80 On the Peace 49: ¥ Ø ÆP Ł b r Æ Æ ŒÆd c ºØ Æ æ æÆ NŒØŁBÆØ H ¼ººø; æBŒ A –ÆØ r ÆØ ÆæØªÆ. 81 Isocrates here explicitly prefers the distant past over more recent examples.


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are illustrated by the case of the Argives who wanted burial for the dead at the foot of the Cadmea. Athens’ response won glory not only for the immediate present, but for all time (N –Æ Æ e æ , 53). However, it is predictably in To Philip and the Archidamus that we see more sustained allusion to the mythical period outside Athens. The rhetorical purpose of the Archidamus, to persuade the Corinthian delegation that Sparta has the right to Messene as well as to Lacedaemon, is supported by recourse to the mythical period and the story of how the third-generation (Kd b æ ªA) descendants of the Heraclidae received an oracle from Delphi urging them to seek their ancestral land. When the mythological claims were investigated, they revealed that the descendants of Heracles were owed Argos, Lacedaemon, and Messene (17–21).82 It is as a descendant of Heracles himself (ªªg b I ˙æÆŒºı), as well as the king’s son, that Archidamus sees it as his duty to strive to save the territory allotted by the oracle (8). We have already seen (in chapter 4), the almost universal appeal of Heracles as a Wgure for poleis to appropriate, and the myth of Heracles and his descendants is of considerable importance in Isocrates’ attempts to argue in To Philip for Panhellenic unity under the leadership of Macedon.83 Athens, with its own unique myth of autochthony, was in a sense a special case, but it was also crucially linked to other Greek poleis through the Heracles story, and Isocrates cleverly uses inter-polis myths to defend his present recommendations. Philip is urged to reconcile the prime Greek states of Argos, Lacedaemon, Thebes, and Athens under his leadership on the basis of the mythical past, in the case of the last three through shared association with Heracles. ‘Argos is for you an ancestral land (Ø Æ æ),84 the Thebans honour the founder of your race ( e Iæªe F ªı H) . . . the Spartans have given his descendants the kingship and command for all time, and the Athenians, according to those whom we believe in matters of ancient history (æd H ÆºÆØH), helped Heracles win immortality and helped his children save their lives’ (32–4). 82 The land of the Messenians was granted by Apollo to the ancestors of the Spartans as punishment for their slaying of Cresphontes, founder of the race and descendant of Heracles (22). 83 See S. Perlman, ‘Isocrates’ ‘‘Philippus’’ and Panhellenism’, Historia 18 (1969), 370–4, for an examination of the Heracles and Heraclidae myths in the Panhellenic discourse of Isocrates. He argues that the stories form a crucial plank in the argument for homonoia between the four leading Greek states, but with a special place reserved for Athens, particularly in relation to Philip’s leadership. The idea that Athens might need special pleading, given Sparta’s prominence from the late Wfth century onwards, is put forward by M. Flower, ‘From Simonides to Isocrates: The FifthCentury Origins of Fourth-Century Panhellenism’, Classical Antiquity 19 (2000), 65–101, at 94. Flower’s article provides a helpful antidote to the view that Isocrates invented Panhellenism, by illustrating the long history of the idea from the time of the Persian wars onwards. 84 Perdiccas I, who founded the Argive dynasty in Macedonia, was a descendant of the Argive hero, Temenus. Thus Philip’s claim to lead Argos is as a result of heroic ancestry rather than through an Argive connection to Heracles.

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Later in the speech, Isocrates returns extensively to the Heracles story, this time so that the demigod may emerge as an exemplum for Philip himself— Philip is explicitly exhorted (at 113–15) to follow the example of the mythical founder of his race. Heracles’ reconciliation of Greek states and the expedition against Troy set the example for Panhellenic action against the East (111).85 Other descendants of Heracles may stick to their own states, but Philip, as direct inheritor of his race, can follow his example and take all Hellas as his fatherland (Æ æ) (127). The contrast between the Panhellenic force envisaged for the present campaign and the eastern opponents is formulated in terms of distant ancestors, and here again the mythic lineage of the Greeks is brought into play, since it is seen by Isocrates as disgraceful that the descendants of Cyrus, a mere mortal and an abandoned child at that, should be known as ‘great king’ while the descendants of Heracles suVered lowlier status (132). The glory of the mythic past should ensure the same for Greece in the present. The blurring between past and present is vividly brought into force in the form of imaginary advisers to Philip who span the generations right back to the mythic founder of the race. Isocrates urges Philip that his advice is the same as would be oVered by his father (Amyntas II) and the founder of the kingdom (Perdiccas I) and the founder of the race (Heracles), were it lawful for Heracles and possible for the others to appear (105). The importance of these three major themes from the distant past in Isocrates’ discourses—the Trojan War, the early history of Athens and its Wrst dynasty descended from Erichthonius, and the myths surrounding Heracles— is neatly encapsulated in one comment towards the end of To Philip. If we were to speak of the distant past, claims Isocrates, no one would praise Tantalus, Pelops, or Eurystheus, but everyone would praise, next to the unrivalled excellence of Heracles and the goodness of Theseus, those who marched against Troy (144). Theseus, Heracles, and the participants in the Trojan expedition are clearly seen as the most exemplary characters in the Greek past, and therefore the most relevant to be adduced in the service of Isocrates’ exhortatory rhetoric. In spite of a certain homogeneity in the selection of past events and Wgures which are favoured for citation by these three orators, there is also considerable variation in their use and presentation of the past, neatly illustrating the principle of Xexibility within parameters which are plausibly consistent with the ‘shared knowledge’ of the audience. Certain elements in the story are recurrent, but the contexts in which each orator performed clearly had a 85 Here the ‘false’ example of Jason of Pherae is interestingly introduced. He won renown for just talking about making an expedition against the king of Persia, without actually putting it into practice (119).


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bearing on his persuasive purpose and his appropriate use of the past. Both the diVerent generic requirements of epideictic as opposed to forensic or symbouleutic oratory and the probable Panhellenic readership of Isocrates’ discourses provide a partial explanation for the nature of his exploitation and presentation of the past—one in which the timeless continuities loom larger than particular and recent models for action; one in which the stories told are not so closely focused on Athens alone, but include also the more broadly Hellenic myths of Heracles and the Trojan War. There is, by contrast, a high level of reference to very recent events in Demosthenes’ speeches, and to slightly less recent history in those of Aeschines. But here too, we may detect variation according to the needs of the occasion. The highest density of recent and contemporary allusion and exemplary models in Demosthenes falls in those speeches, such as the Philippics, the Olynthiacs, and On the Chersonese, which have a speciWc and very immediate persuasive goal with regard to action. On Organization and Against Leptines are much more Wrmly based on arguments of longer-term continuity between the more distant past and the present, on national character and behaviour. As we have seen, the speeches of Aeschines, like those of Demosthenes, tend to make slightly diVerent selections for each occasion from the relatively coherent set of ‘stock examples’ which might be seen as the ‘shared past’ of the polis, rather than each time oVering an indiscriminate melange which reXects a complete or continuous account of the past.86 The two extant sets of paired speeches between Demosthenes and Aeschines make an interesting case study for the degree to which the use of the past was motivated not only by the needs of the present situation, but also by direct interplay and competition with opposing speakers. Both pairs, of course, make much of chronological disputes as part of their case. But when it comes to dealing with past time, a few interesting patterns emerge. In Demosthenes’ On the Crown, he makes a great deal of timeless virtues and the character of the polis, but also alludes to the world of Themistocles and the Persian War period as the exemplary stage in Athenian history, to which its present citizens should aspire (204; 208). In Aeschines’ speech on the same subject, Against Ctesiphon, besides making more explicit reference to particular Wgures (Phrynondas and Eurybatus as traitors worse than Demosthenes at 137; Chabrias, Iphicrates, and Timotheus as more deserving of reward than Demosthenes at 243), he too brings the Persian War period into play. But for Aeschines, here too it is Demosthenes who is brought into comparison with the superior Wgures of the past—compared with Themistocles, Miltiades, and Aristeides (181), and rebuked for his crown by Themistocles and the dead of 86 There are, in any case, some extremely striking omissions from the array of standard topics— we Wnd very little interest in, for example, the Wfth-century democracy and the Wgure of Pericles.

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Marathon and Plataea (259). Thus, both orators use the same historical exempla, but very diVerently to suit their opposing arguments. Similarly in the speeches On the Embassy and On the False Embassy, Demosthenes and Aeschines clash over their use of the same historical allusions to the Persian War period, as I shall discuss in more detail below. It is clear that the ways in which fourth-century orators exploited the past were dictated partly by the expectations of the audience, partly by the rhetorical needs of the moment, and partly by their opponents. They were by no means engaged in a crude display of knowledge, but, as we might expect, tailored their use of the past to the requirements of each occasion.

3. ‘LEARNING FROM HISTORY’: MODELS F RO M T H E PA ST 8 7 The considerable extent to which the fourth-century Attic orators include references to the past in their speeches, which were primarily designed for an immediate persuasive purpose,88 naturally elicits the question ‘why?’ In what ways did historical allusions contribute to the persuasive power of the oration? or to the authority of the orator? What light do such references to the past shed on the underlying temporal concepts of the speaker and the audience? By what logic does past time inXuence the present and future? The importance of learning, in general vicariously, from experience is adduced by Demosthenes on several occasions in the context of historical references.89 In Olynthiac 1, he urges the Athenians not to make the same mistakes as in the past by failing to capitalize on opportunities (8); in the third Olynthiac he explicitly exhorts the audience to recall these things 87 See R. B. Rutherford, ‘Learning from History: Categories and Case-Studies’, in R. G. Osborne and S. Hornblower (eds.), Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts presented to David Lewis (Oxford, 1994), 53–68. Rutherford’s discussion of Thucydides helpfully distinguishes between learning with a view to action and learning in terms of enhanced understanding. He includes some revealing discussion of parallels in the use of historical paradigms between speakers in Thucydides and the Attic orators (59–60). 88 It is salutary to remember with Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 56, that rhetoric was the driving force here, rather than historical explanation: ‘c’est donc la rhe´torique qui impose ses lois et ses choix.’ 89 The topos is exceptionally common in historiography. Indeed, the didactic element is regularly adduced as the primary raison d’eˆtre for the investigation and presentation of the past. The value of preserving good and bad exempla for imitation and avoidance respectively was picked up and developed by the Roman historians. See, for example, Livy, Praefatio 9–10 and Diodorus Siculus 1.1–4. As has already been observed, the overlap in persona and persuasive strategy between the historian and the orator is considerable.

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(sc. from the past) so that they do not make the same mistake again (ŒÆd æd ø KŁ; ¥ Æ c ÆP a Ł : 6); in For the People of Megalopolis he expresses surprise that the audience should have forgotten the practical lesson learned from the past; namely, that the Thebans always use enemies of Sparta as allies against Sparta, whereas Sparta uses such people against Athens (29). In On the Crown he formulates the proposition that persuasive force is a tool for the immediate moment drawn from past exempla.90 In discussing the way in which powerful men mistreat those who gave them their power, he exhorts the audience: ‘Look at these instances, because, even though the appropriate time to act has gone by, it is always the right time for wise men to learn from such things’.91 The implication is that, after learning, they will vote him the crown or allow its granting to be legal. A similar idea can be projected forward to encompass future time also. In On the False Embassy, Demosthenes warns his jury of the importance of legal precedents in dictating future decisions: ‘Today, you are not only judging this case, but legislating for all future time’,92 making very clear the way in which models operate across time. That this topos was familiar to those who frequented the courts is strongly suggested by the fact that Lycurgus in his Against Leocrates similarly claims that the current trial is itself paradigmatic and will transcend time through its verdict and implications.93 For Lycurgus, the responsibility of the jury to make the right decision is connected explicitly to their didactic role in discerning between diVerent competing models for future emulation—he argues (at 110) that, if the jury acquits Leocrates, their descendants will be encouraged to imitate Leocrates in place of the virtuous ancestral models of the past.94

90 See Andocides, On the Peace with Sparta 29, for a similar principle: ‘it is only through recalling the past that we make good policies’ (æc ªaæ IÆŁ Æ a ªªÆ ŒÆºH ıºÆŁÆØ). He then proceeds to adduce earlier Wfth-century examples to illustrate Athens’ propensity towards erroneously abandoning strong friends in favour of weak ones. It should, however, be noted, that the explosion of historical examples in oratory occurs in the fourth, rather than the Wfth, century. See Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 52: ‘le de´but du IVe sie`cle est marque´ dans la rhe´torique par une multiplication des allusions emprunteés a` l’histoire’. 91 On the Crown 48: ŒE : ŒÆd ªaæ N ÆæººıŁ › H æÆª ø ŒÆØæ ; › F ª NÆØ a ØÆF Æ ŒÆØæe Id æ Ø E s æFØ. 92 On the False Embassy 232: ŒÆd ŁŁ N –Æ Æ e a ÆF Æ æ . 93 Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 7: ‘This contest is not concerned with some small element of political life, nor with a fragment of time (P K Oºª æ ), but with the whole city and, for those to come, it will leave a judgement to be remembered for the whole of time (ŒÆ a Æ e F ÆNH).’ See Cicero, In Verrem 1.46–9, for the parallel notion of a show trial, in this case a test of eYcacy of the equestrian courts, in which ‘just as you [sc. the jurors] will pass verdict on the defendant, so too will the populus Romanus pass verdict on you’ (47). 94 Deinarchus, Against Aristogeiton 16, extends the notion of ‘didactic listeners’ by setting the audience in parallel to the early lawgivers. While the latter created laws in order to regulate the behaviour of speakers in the assembly, the former must do the same by their reaction as an audience.

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Learning from history thus not only requires a belief in continuity and constancy of character, behaviour, and principles; it also entails some selfawareness of one’s own place in the longue dureé.95 Nowhere is the selfconscious sense of history more explicitly formulated than by Aeschines in Against Ctesiphon. In the context of outlining the strangeness of the times and the unpredictability of fortune, Aeschines claims for himself and his audience ‘we have not lived the life of humans, but we were born to be a marvellous tale for those after us’:96 not a paradigm in this case, since the whole point of the paradoxology is precisely that it is unexpected, surprising, and determined by the mutability rather than the stability of circumstance over time. But more often it is the continuity between past, present, and future which underpins the notion of a self-conscious sequence of models. Isocrates in the Archidamus makes the character of that name encourage support by claiming that if the Spartans succeed they will be more admired than their ancestors and unsurpassed by their descendants. They, then, will be the most exemplary generation of all and held up as such in the future (105).97 And if Sparta could produce a model which was exceptional across time, Athens, according to Demosthenes, was exceptional in relation to other places. In its dealing with traitors, it was the only nation which could Wnd examples to imitate in its own history.98 Athens was, in other words, uniquely well equipped to use the past to enhance the present, and through clever manipulation of its history to bridge the temporal gap. The way in which poleis used their own previous generations as models for emulation or avoidance above those of other places, thereby creating a polis consciousness across time, emerges very clearly from the orators. Alluding to the past was not merely a matter of mentioning certain events above others or of noting the most famous political and military Wgures in the past. It also 95 See, for example, Isocrates, To Philip 153, where he urges the reader to bear in mind the opinion of future generations. 96 Against Ctesiphon 132: P ªaæ ª E IŁæØ ØŒÆ; Iºº N ÆæÆºªÆ E Ł A ı. The locus classicus for this theme is Iliad 6.357–8, where Helen reveals to Hector her self-consciousness of the fact that she and Paris will be the poetic subject for men in the future: ‘Zeus assigned us a bad fate, so that even in the future we shall be sung about by men’ (x Ø Kd ˘f ŁBŒ ŒÆŒe æ; ‰ ŒÆd Oø IŁæØØ ºŁ IØØ KØØ). 97 The idea of producing a model, which will not be surpassed, was famously used to strong exhortatory eVect by Winston Churchill in a speech delivered to the House of Commons on 18th June 1940. Having claimed the highest stakes for the outcome of the imminent Battle of Britain, in which defeat would entail a return to a Dark Age, Churchill urged the people of Britain to behave in such a way that their glory reached a pinnacle which even their own descendants could not exceed: ‘if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘‘This was their Wnest hour’’.’ 98 On the False Embassy 269: ‘the only ones of all men to use home-grown examples’ (æd ø Ø H ø IŁæø NŒØ æBŁÆØ ÆæÆªÆØ).


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involved evoking a less speciWc ‘ancestral’ tradition, against which the polis community could be encouraged to set its present behaviour. There are, of course, many ways of exploiting this link between past and present, some of which rely on continuity across time and others on change. Very commonly previous generations are evoked as superior to their descendants. The rhetorical strategy is one based on a theory of decline; the purpose of the allusion is to encourage a return to the superior standards of achievement, eVort, and behaviour of former times. A brief glance through the three orators under consideration will reveal how common this phenomenon is. Demosthenes encourages a comparison between the present Athenians and their ancestors in the third Olynthiac, particularly in the context of their proneness to Xattery by orators.99 The Athenians of previous generations were not only more outstanding in their achievements (23), but their command over the Greeks for forty-Wve years, their accumulation of more than 10,000 talents in the Acropolis, and their subjugation of King Perdiccas of Macedon were all connected to their refusal to be Xattered by public speakers (24).100 In On the False Embassy he contrasts the importance of justice in Athens of the past ( ) with the disregard shown for it now (F) and illustrates the point with the example of the inscription set up to condemn Arthmius of Zelea, an enemy of Athens, not just anywhere, but at the right hand of the statue of Athene on the Acropolis; but, in adducing this example, he draws another implied contrast with the fear of bribery shown by the Athenians of old, which made them consider Arthmius an enemy (271–2). Or in On Organization (21–2), he contrasts the modesty of past generations (Kd H æª ø), when great Wgures such as Themistocles and Miltiades failed to have bronze statues set up to them, but saw their achievements as those of the whole polis, with the individual glory won in more recent times by Timotheus at Corcyra (376 bc), Iphicrates against the Spartans (390 bc), and Chabrias oV Naxos (376 bc).101 99 At On the Navy Boards 1, the point is made that no praise of later generations can really do justice to the achievements of the past. The greatest testimony is simply the length of time during which they have not been surpassed (‘I consider time to be the greatest praise’: ÆØ e æ ªFÆØ ªØ ). 100 Exactly the same points are made in On Organization 26, but with the added idea that the ancestors deliberately created models for imitation, a point to which we shall return. The authenticity of this speech, which has been much disputed, is propounded by J. Trevett, ‘Demosthenes’ Speech On Organization (Dem. 13)’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 35 (1994), 179–93. Parallels with other speeches on the issue of use of the past, as with regard to other themes, strongly support Trevett’s conclusions. 101 The theme of glory for the community as opposed to individuals is later reinforced by the contrast between lavish public buildings and the modest private houses of Themistocles, Cimon, and Aristeides, a situation reversed at the present time (On Organization 28–9). See also Demosthenes, Olynthiac 3.25 V. on the restraint of Miltiades’ and Aristeides’ homes; Isocrates, Areopagiticus 52 on the moderate lifestyle of former times.

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It is interesting to Wnd Demosthenes’ great opponent, Aeschines, employing exactly the same tactics in his Against Ctesiphon. He notes that the city of Athens was more glorious in previous times, but fewer honours were given, thereby increasing the symbolic value of each (178). One complication in this apparently neat contrast between the superior ancestors and their inferior descendants is that the past cannot always be seen as a monochrome entity. The existence of many layers of the past, which are all seen as being relevant to the present, is clear from our survey of the occasions on which these three orators allude to historical events and Wgures. Frequently, when it comes to mentioning the more nebulous ‘ancestors’, the distinctions between these layers are blurred. However, there are speeches in which we Wnd explicit and direct contrast between diVerent generations of ancestors. The polis, at least in the depiction presented by the orators, is too discerning simply to emulate its ancestors en bloc.102 The hierarchy among diVerent past generations is particularly strong in the discourses of Isocrates. In the Panathenaicus he extols the system of government, and methods for dealing with important matters, employed by the ancestors (that is the distant ancestors) of the Athenians by contrast with those after the Persian wars (161–2). The Areopagiticus takes as one of its major themes the contrast not between past and present, but between the ‘old’ democracy (KŒ c ŒæÆ Æ) which Solon established and Cleisthenes restored (16) and the ‘new’ democracy, established not by the present generation, but by those a little before (Oºªfiø æe H), that is Ephialtes and the founders of the radical democracy (50). The more careful diVerentiation between each stage in the history of democracy beneWts the present generation too. Their government may be inferior to that established by Solon, but it comes out well from a comparison not with the old democracy but with the rule of the Thirty (62). However, it is in On the Peace that Isocrates most fully exploits the topos. He does rely to some degree on straight comparison between the superior past and the inferior present, contrasting the current use of mercenaries with the ancestors’ customs of Wghting in person (47–8) and the previous coincidence between soldiers and politicians with the present distinction in roles (54–5). The democratic government, under which ‘the ancestors’ (ƒ æ ªØ) lived, resulted in their being the happiest of the Hellenes (64). However, as in the 102 See, however, Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 14, for an undiVerentiated appeal to ‘the deeds of your ancestors’ ( a H æª ø H æø) which contrast favourably with the behaviour of Leocrates. Leocrates’ disregard for the past is encapsulated in his extraction of the ancestral images ( a ƒæa a Æ æfiHÆ) from their native land and sending them to Megara (25). This not only shows disrespect to the ancestral images, but also to the ancestors themselves whose practice was to revere their ‘custom, country, and sacred images’ (26).


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Areopagiticus, here too Isocrates stresses that this ideal state for Athens was destroyed by the imperial sea power, and that the generation of his audience’s fathers brought degeneration and took over Greece with mercenaries (79). As in the Panathenaicus, here in On the Peace Isocrates identiWes the Persian wars as a watershed.103 The Athenians at the time of the Persian wars behaved well as an imperial power, he argues, but those who came afterwards conducted not an empire, but a tyranny (PŒ ¼æØ Iººa ıæÆE) (91).104 Thus, when people urge the Athenians to emulate their ancestors, he claims, the question arises which ancestors? Those at the time of the Persian wars or those who governed the city before the Decelean war? (36–7). In voicing these questions, Isocrates is challenging any crude theory of decline, while reWning, rather than necessarily rejecting, the use of exempla. Isocrates’ discernment between diVerent generations of ancestors, some more worthy of emulation than others, echoes Aeschines’ rebuttals of Demosthenes’ frequent attacks on his apparent neglect of the past. I have already noted Demosthenes’ claims that Aeschines miscalculates dates, thereby producing a distorted view of Athenian history, and that he misuses evidence, as in the case of the statue of Solon at Salamis. I have also mentioned the ongoing dispute between these opposing orators concerning Aeschines’ attitude to ancestral models. Demosthenes alleges in On the False Embassy that Aeschines urges the Athenians to forget the achievements of their forefathers (‰ h H æª ø A BŁÆØ Ø) (16).105 Demosthenes, by contrast, exhorts them to emulate their ancestors ( f æª ı Øıı) not just in one respect, but in every way (273). But for Aeschines, and perhaps for Isocrates too, this blanket adulation and imitation of the past is Xawed. We have already seen the way in which Aeschines in On the Embassy denies Demosthenes’ accusations that he does not heed those who talk of their ancestors’ battles and trophies, but nevertheless goes on to reject the bland appeals to glorious moments of the past which are made by popular speakers, who urge the Athenians to remember Salamis and tombs and trophies of 103 Of course this neatly echoes the importance of the Persian War period in more speciWc allusions to the past, its exemplary Wgures and events. This period was clearly not only important in providing models of Panhellenic unity which might prove helpful in a fourthcentury context, but it was also seen as a pivotal moment in the good or bad government of democratic Athens itself. 104 A. N. Michelini, ‘Isocrates’ Civic Invective: Acharnians and On the Peace’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 128 (1998), 115–33, interestingly discusses the revisionist version of Athenian history oVered in this speech in parallel with Aristophanes’ Acharnians, and considers the implications for audience reception. Is Isocrates making a serious political point, and, if so, for whom? Or is he displaying his skill as an orator, able to manipulate his material to Wt his theme? 105 See On the False Embassy 307 for the recurrence of the allegation; also 311.

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ancestors (63 and 74).106 Aeschines instead advocates a discerning use of the past (75–8); and at the end of the speech he returns to Demosthenes’ allegation, again refuting it emphatically and stressing that he does not forbid the imitation of the ancestors, but simply begs that the Athenians show discernment and emulate only the good policies of the past (171). This unfavourable comparison of the present generation with their predecessors is made, as has already emerged, in the service of a wider persuasive strategy. Reminding the audience of its inferiority would presumably soon prove counterproductive if it were not accompanied by an exhortation to emulate the better actions of the past. Careful and discerning emulation is what Aeschines urges and Isocrates implies. Demosthenes is no less keen that his audience, through hearing the great and exemplary behaviour of Wgures from the past, should be inspired to great achievements.107 In On the False Embassy he declares that Athens is uniquely well equipped to Wnd paradigms in its own history (269). In On the Crown he appeals extensively to ancestral precedent in urging the Athenians to send help to the Thebans against Philip. The Athenians, he claims, perhaps more prescriptively than descriptively, see themselves as linked to Thebans through ancestral ties: ‘They remember the services rendered by their ancestors to the ancestors of Thebans, since, when the sons of Heracles were dispossessed by the Peloponnesians of their paternal dominion, they restored them . . . we harboured Oedipus and his family when they were banished’ (186). What we observed earlier as an extraordinarily distant allusion to the mythical past is not merely that, but also a good example of an argument from ancestral links.108 The same kind of distant ancestral allusion is used by Isocrates in the Archidamus. The speaker of that name is made to appeal to the example of his mythical ancestor, Heracles (ªªg b I ˙æÆŒºı), as the reason for his attempt to save his territory (8). But it is not only the mythical ancestry here which counts. Archidamus also urges his audience to imitate their ancestors (ØÆŁÆØ f æª ı) who founded Sparta with a small army by winning it back with force (82). This theme of not simply admiring 106 Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 68–9, oVers another example of how the Persian War past could be misused. Leocrates’ supporters adduced as a historical parallel for his abandonment of the city the fact that the Athenians crossed from the city to Salamis during the war against Xerxes. As Lycurgus comments, this was not desertion of Athens, but simply ‘changing the scene’ ( e ººÆÆ). As he goes on to remind the audience, Salamis was one of the glorious moments in Athenian history, not one of its disgraces (70). 107 In On the Crown, some of the most famous models are listed. Athens is right to have gone to war for the sake of liberty, he says, as they swear by their ancestors at Marathon, Plataea, Salamis, and Artemisium, and by all brave men in public tombs (208). 108 See also Isocrates, To Philip 32–5, and the arguments that Philip should take heed of Argos, Thebes, Sparta, and Athens on the grounds of distant and sometimes mythical ancestry.


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one’s ancestors, but positively emulating their virtues is strongly embedded in the public oratory of the period. Isocrates ends his Areopagiticus with an exhortation to the Athenians to imitate their ancestors (j ØŁÆ f æª ı) in order to save themselves and the Hellenes (84). In On the Peace he voices through the Wgure of an imaginary visitor to the polis the idea that it would be odd to be proud of one’s ancestors, but not to imitate them (41). The past is not there merely for display by the orator, but is to serve a useful purpose. The process of ancestral emulation is sometimes seen not simply as a matter for the later generations, but a phenomenon self-consciously instigated by the ancestors themselves. Demosthenes reminds his audience in For the Liberty of the Rhodians that the trophies of their ancestors were set up ‘not so that you could gaze at them and marvel, but so that you could imitate the virtues of those who set them up’.109 The self-conscious production of models for the future, indeed the deliberate fashioning of oneself as such, attributes to the generations of the past, whether or not they would have subscribed to this view of themselves, a positive and active role in the history and development of the polis. In temporal terms, the projection of one’s present into the future oVers a slightly diVerent vision of polis identity. This self-conscious sense of one’s place in history is neatly expressed in the Archidamus, where the speaker reminds his audience that if they succeed, they will be more admired than their ancestors, and will be unsurpassed by their descendants,110 suggesting a place for their achievements in the context of both past and future (105). Or see To Philip, where the promise of immortality through reputation and ‘memory which keeps pace with time’ is held out, in spite of the mortality of the body.111 We can see the same deliberate claim of the past generations on the consciousness of their descendants in On the Peace, where the ancestors are depicted as having left to their descendants a most prosperous city, an immortal memorial of their goodness—IŁÆ c (94). The notion that one’s ancestors might have been actively plotting to turn themselves into models for emulation is given a further dimension and intensity by the surprisingly common tactic of imaginatively bringing them back to life and actually allowing them to cross the temporal gap and step into the present. I have already noted the extraordinary image evoked by Aeschines 109 For the Liberty of the Rhodians 35: P ¥ Æ ŁÆı ÆP a ŁøæF ; Iºº ¥ Æ ŒÆd ØBŁ a H IÆŁ ø Iæ . Exactly the same sentiment is voiced in On Organization 26, where Demosthenes again asserts that the trophies for victories were set up not for later generations to wonder at, but ‘so that we would imitate the virtues of those who erected them’ (¥ Æ ŒÆd ØŁÆ a H IÆŁ ø Iæ ). 110 These two aspects are importantly not identical with each other, since one concerns positive reception by comparison with Wgures from the past, whereas the other implies unsuccessful emulation by Wgures from the future. 111 To Philip 134: c c fiH æ fiø ıÆæÆŒºıŁFÆ.

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in Against Ctesiphon, where he reawakens Themistocles and the dead of Marathon and Plataea, and even makes the viviWed tombs of the ancestors about to groan ( Ø) at the present actions of the Athenians (259). Immediately before this, he brings Solon on to the platform and imagines Aristides’ indignation at Demosthenes’ receipt of the crown, in spite of his propensity to take bribes (257–8). The eVect is to evoke the Athenians of the past, not as passive models for emulation, the static embodiment of the city’s best conduct, but, by mingling the generations, to allow the Wgures of the past to return as active participants in the present-day polis.112 The strategy recurs several times in the discourses of Isocrates. In To Philip he urges Philip that his advice is the same as would be oVered by not only Philip’s father, but also the founder of the kingdom (Perdiccas I) and the founder of the race (Heracles), were they to appear. Here the theme of ancestral adviser from the past covers family members, state ancestors, and mythical predecessors (105). In the Plataı¨cus, Isocrates argues that the audience should show piety (PØÆ) to their ancestors and imagine that they might be watching their decisions and actions (61).113 The idea of cross-generational advice through the live and active involvement of ancestral Wgures in the present-day polis oVers a diVerent way of conWguring the various temporal layers. Rather than being evoked as distant and superior models, separated from the present by the passage of time and contrasted with that present, here the ancestors are symbols of continuity; not mere repositories of past virtues, but bridges between past achievement and present improvement. Demosthenes’ exhortation to the Athenians in On the Crown to see themselves as superior to Philip on the grounds that, by contrast with his undistinguished origins, they are from Athens, and see, every day, reminders of the virtue of their ancestors ( B H æª ø Iæ B ÆŁ ) (68), hints at an innate and unchanging polis virtue which naturally spans the generations. The special status held by one’s own ancestors as more persuasive models than random Wgures from the past derives from the notion that they embody the particular identity and character of the polis. 112 The scene is reminiscent of the Roman practice of using imagines to collapse time and ‘to allow the ancestors to be represented as living and breathing Roman magistrates at the height of their careers, who had reappeared in the city to accompany their newly-dead descendant on his last journey. On this occasion they welcomed and received him as one of their number.’ See H. I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1993), 91. The collapsing of time through the impersonation of Wgures from diVerent periods is memorably exempliWed by Cicero in Pro Caelio 34–6, where he takes on the character of members of Clodia’s family in turn, beginning with Appius Claudius Caecus, censor of 312 bc and builder of the Appian Way, in order to castigate her for her behaviour. 113 See also Demosthenes, On the False Embassy 66, asking what the Athenians’ ancestors would say about destroying the Phocians, who had helped Athens in the past. The revival of past generations implies that obligations from the past can never be forgotten.


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So, alongside the role of ancestors as representatives of a better past, from which the city has now declined, we need to instate them as Wgures of continuity. It is continuity of behaviour which entitles Philip to assume that the Athenians are the only Greeks who will stand up to him, both from a consideration of the present and from a reckoning of the past (P N a Ææ Ł ›æH; Iººa ŒÆd a æe ø ºªØ ), judging from what the Athenians’ ancestors said when they refused to become the greatest power in Greece at the price of submission to the Great King (Phil. 2.10). Very many such attempts to persuade on the grounds that ‘things have always been so’ or perhaps ‘should always be so’ appear in the speeches under discussion. In On Organization Demosthenes points out that the Athenians still put out grand decrees in accordance with the tradition of the city, but run the risk of not matching this continuity of intent with continuity of action (33). Again in this speech, he appeals to the need for Athens to live up to its actions from the past, in other words to maintain a continuity of behaviour across time, urging them that they cannot simply opt out like a small state, but must live up to the many exploits which have been achieved from the earliest times (ººa ªaæ E KŒ Æ e F æ ı æÆŒ ÆØ) (35). Isocrates too relies heavily on arguments from continuity. In the Panegyricus he bases Athens’ just claims to current (F) hegemony on its previous (ŒÆd æ æ) thalassocracy (20). The further back into the past one looks, he claims, the more clearly one can see that Athens should lead Greece now (23), turning the cumulative weight of Athenian history and past behaviour into the legitimator of present strategy.114 Hegemony in the present war against Persia should go to those who have distinguished themselves in past conXict, and who founded the most Hellenic cities in the past (99). The logic is, it seems, not simply based on rewarding past services to Greece, but rather on the presumption that those who have proved themselves in the past will retain the same virtues in the present.115 Or again in the Plataı¨cus, Isocrates makes the speaker deploy a similar form of argument in his plea for Athenian assistance. Athens has helped people in the past (1), he claims, and therefore might reasonably be expected to help in the present. The expectation of continuity is made explicit later, where the speaker cites the case of the Argives who wanted to bury their dead at the foot of the Cadmea as an example of Athenian pity for suppliants (53). The action won glory at the time, but also 114 The point is formulated again at 54, where he asserts that Athens’ present power can be judged by the appeals to its help which have been made in the past. This is reinforced later by the explicit claim for the continuity of Athenian and Spartan power throughout the whole of history ( e –Æ Æ æ ), by contrast with the recent strength of Persia (178). 115 Panegyricus 71 repeats the argument that one would expect the descendants of those who fought Darius and Xerxes to behave in a similar way.

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‘for the rest of time’ (N –Æ Æ e æ ). The implication that Athens’ behaviour and consequent reputation in the past binds the city to the same behaviour in perpetuity is made even more plain in the comment that the Athenians should not show pride in their ancestors, but then act in the opposite way. Again, the ancestors are seen as exerting a constraint on future generations, providing models from which they will Wnd it hard to deviate.116 The Plataean appeal to Athenian ‘ancestral tradition’ ( æØ E K Ø) to fear not danger but dishonour (39) as the guiding principle in their present policy provides yet further illustration of the way in which the persuasive strategy of this speech is based on continuity and unchanging polis values. Demosthenes’ Against Leptines makes much of the theme of the innate Athenian character and its unchanging nature. Ratifying the law proposed would, he argues, run completely counter to their national character (P K d ‹ºø . . . F XŁı F æı), as he proceeds to illustrate from the Athenians’ conduct in the past (11). The point is doubly determined: resting both on the assumption that the Athenians will emulate their predecessors and on the belief in a naturally occurring modus vivendi. Later in the speech both exemplary and continuous modes of argument return. ‘If no one can cite an instance in the whole of our history, then why should such a precedent be set in our generation?’ asks Demosthenes.117 The usual topos of imitating the ancestors is given a negative twist: if there are no examples from the past, then why create them now? But alongside this exemplary gap we can set the positive and ongoing qualities which have been responsible for Athens’ reputation throughout all time, its ‘national character’, which Demosthenes urges the audience to preserve (142). In the Areopagiticus Isocrates depicts continuity and the preservation of custom as itself part of the ancestral exemplary model. The sole concern of previous generations was not to destroy any institution of their fathers, and to introduce nothing that was not approved by custom.118 This model of conservatism is the one which present-day Athenians should follow. In this discourse, continuity plays a major rhetorical role. Isocrates argues that in matters relating to the Areopagus one can judge past practice from present practice since it is an institution uniquely governed by tradition (38). But later he alludes to the natural greatness of Athens (perhaps derived from the 116 Ancestral conduct aVects both sides. The Plataeans claim justice for their pleas on the exaggerated, though not entirely untruthful, grounds that their own ancestors were the only Greeks to help Athens in the Persian wars (57). 117 Against Leptines 117: N b i x K –Æ Ø fiH æ fiø F Ø EÆØ ªª ; ¥ Œ K H æH ŒÆ ÆØŁfi B ØF æª; 118 Areopagiticus 30: b H Æ æø ŒÆ ÆºıØ ø H Ø ø æŁıØ.


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Athenians’ claims to autochthony), as the land which bears the most gifted men (74). This seems to derive its force from a rather diVerent logical base: the claim here is not for the continued greatness of the Athenians because their custom is to preserve ancestral tradition, but rather because their innate character is unchanging due to their autochthony.119 If the Athenians have always come from the same land, then, unless one rejects environmental determinism out of hand, they should remain broadly uniform in their behaviour. Furthermore, Isocrates illustrates the unchanging nature of the innate value of the Athenians by a series of examples spanning from mythical times: their struggles against the Amazons, Thracians, Peloponnesians, and Persians (75), again allowing individual paradigms to illuminate the underlying continuity. The appeal to an unchanging national character is thus brought into play alongside the discontinuous citation of exempla as a form of rhetorical double-determination. Isocrates neatly juxtaposes the two modes of argument in the Panathenaicus, where he justiWes an exposition of the most distant periods of Athenian history on the grounds both that distinguished peoples should be so continuously right from the start and that he should mention individuals who governed so excellently (120). Demosthenes sees it as a part of the innate Athenian character to be concerned with, and proud of, ancestral achievements and their active celebration in the present-day polis. At the end of For the Liberty of the Rhodians he rebukes the audience—they should act in a way which is worthy of the city (æ Ø ¼ØÆ B ºø), remembering how delighted they are to hear a speaker praising their ancestors, describing their exploits and enumerating trophies.120 Maintaining the characteristic and ingrained behaviour of the polis goes hand in hand with ancestral praise and, as the Wnal words of the speech go on to stress, active emulation. Similarly, in On the Crown, the Athenians’ refusal to submit to the rule of others is seen as eternal (KŒ Æ e F æ ı), constant ( Æ e ÆNHÆ), and so innate to their character (æŒ Æ E æØ XŁØ), that they still praise those of their ancestors who most vehemently put it into practice (u ŒÆd H æª ø f ÆF Æ æÆ Æ ºØ KÆØE , 203–4). Here the link between constant and innate qualities and the praise 119 It is interesting in the light of this that de Romilly, ‘Isocrates and Europe’, 6, sees Isocrates’ view of European (that is Greek) superiority as being culturally and educationally based, rather than reliant on race or birth. A rather diVerent kind of continuity which stemmed from autochthonous claims, could be posited to stretch not across time but across the citizen body, unifying it through a single myth of descent. As Hyperides, Epitaphios 4, notes, ‘from one who speaks of Athenians, born of their own country and sharing a lineage (x ŒØc ªØ ÆP ŁØ sØ), praise of the descent of each must be superXuous.’ 120 For the Liberty of the Rhodians 35: ‹ Æ Ø KÆØfi B f æª ı H ŒÆd a æÆª KŒØ Øfi ŒÆd a æ ÆØÆ ºªfi.

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and imitation of exemplary ancestral models is a causal one. In other words, the exemplary periods of the Athenian past, the Wgures and events which held the most prominent place in the survey with which I started, might be seen simply as those which best exempliWed the underlying, innate, unchanging strengths brought to the Athenians by their extraordinary and authochthonous origins and preserved through their subsequent lineage. The theme of stability within the polis and in its behaviour over time is brought out perhaps most eVectively in the speeches of Aeschines. In Against Timarchus he alludes to Solon, Draco, and other lawgivers, who made the laws, inscribed them and handed them over as guardians (ºÆŒÆ) to the Athenians (7). These are the unchanging laws of Athens, Wxed in stone, which Timarchus has contravened. We shall return to the importance of inscriptions as evidence, but here note simply one of the ways in which the rules for behaviour prescribed in the past are made to transcend time, and remain equally valid in the present. In Against Ctesiphon the theme of stability, particularly in the form of legal continuity, is again prominent. For Demosthenes ‘the demos is the most unstable and capricious thing of all, like on the sea a wave which is made restless by the breeze, moving at random’.121 But against this we may set Aeschines’ image of a rock of stability provided by the preservation of public acts—a Wne thing, he claims, since it stays unchanged for the demos, even when the politicians change their views.122

4. ESCAPING THE RAVAGES O F TIME: THE PRESERVATION OF HISTORY The importance of continuity and stability through time, and the evocation of the past, naturally raises the issue of the preservation of that past. We have already seen both the way in which past and present generations might selfconsciously project themselves and their values into the future, as deliberate models for imitation, or at least be presented in this way by later generations. We have also seen the way in which certain aspects of polis identity are adduced by the orators as unchanged and unchanging. Some qualities are viewed as innate, attributed to autochthony in the case of Athens, and to ancestral lineage in the case of both that and other poleis; others are secured 121 On the False Embassy 136: › b B K Ø I ÆŁ Æ æAªÆ H ø ŒÆd IıŁ Æ . . .‰ i fi; ŒØ. Of course this is somewhat at odds with his view of the stability of Athens which Demosthenes regularly exploits for the sake of argument. 122 Against Ctesiphon 75: ŒÆºe; t ¼æ `ŁÆEØ; ŒÆºe H ø ªæÆ ø ıºÆŒ· IŒ ªæ K Ø. Note the same language of ‘guardianship’ as in Against Timarchus.

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more artiWcially, through tradition, memory, and the written record. It is worth considering the appeal which the orators make to these media through which the destructive forces of time are overcome. The immortality which memory can confer on individuals and their actions is celebrated by Aeschines in Against Ctesiphon, where he claims that the great Wgures of the past such as Themistocles and Miltiades ‘did not think that they should be recorded in written words, but in the memory of those who have beneWted, since this has remained continuously in existence from that time right up to this day’.123 This preference for immortality through reputation and memory is echoed in Isocrates’ To Philip, where he contrasts the fact that ‘we all have a body which is mortal’, with the fact that ‘through goodwill, praise, reputation, and memory, which keeps pace with time, we enjoy a share in immortality’.124 The preservation of ideas, events, and reputations opens up many interesting angles on the central theme of time. One possibility, on which I shall focus here, is to investigate the relative merits and various problems, as perceived by the orators, of the diVerent media through which they can escape the dictates of time and bring the past into the present. The two citations oVered above, illustrating the importance of memory in preserving the good reputations of Wgures from the past, neatly complement the rhetorical strategy already discussed, whereby great names, such as Themistocles, are allowed to defy time, to gain immortality, and step into the present as advisory Wgures. Clearly the whole rhetorical process of evoking past events and individuals in speeches, either as discrete exempla for imitation or as encapsulating the eternal characteristics of the polis, is a way of commemorating and immortalizing the past. One initially surprising medium which the orators use as a bridge between past and present, and as a form of evidence, is poetry.125 Demosthenes in On the False Embassy asks for Solon’s elegiacs to be read aloud at length on the grounds that they embody eternal truths for the city (256). The poetry of Solon is seen as epitomizing the kinds of innate and ongoing characteristics which are glimpsed through the actions of particularly exemplary individuals. It is clear from the passages which precede this and from the extant speeches of Aeschines that the citation of poetry in the evocation of the past was a major point of contention between him and Demosthenes. Demosthenes, 123 Ibid. 182: P ªaæ fiþ E K E ªæÆØ ØAŁÆØ; Iºº K fi B fi H s Ł ø; m I KŒı F æ ı æØ B B æÆ IŁÆ sÆ ØÆØ. 124 To Philip 134: e b HÆ Ł e –Æ ; ŒÆ a b c hØÆ ŒÆd f KÆı ŒÆd c ŒÆd c c fiH æ fiø ıÆæÆŒºıŁFÆ IŁÆÆÆ ÆºÆ. 125 The practice was clearly widespread among the fourth-century speakers in Athens. Lycurgus, Against Leocrates cites not only Euripides’ Eurystheus (at 100), but also Homer (103), Tyrtaeus (107), and Simonides (109), all at considerable length.

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prior to his own citation of Solon, oVers an extensive critique of Aeschines’ use of poetry in the support of his arguments. For lack of witnesses, according to Demosthenes, Aeschines had quoted verses of Hesiod, followed by some iambics,126 which Demosthenes cleverly turns against Aeschines himself. He then turns his attack to the issue of Aeschines’ acting career, weaving his criticisms of Aeschines’ citations of tragic dramas, especially Sophocles’ Antigone, into a slight on his background. As in the case of Demosthenes’ attacks on his use of historical exempla, where Aeschines Wghts back within the context of the same trial and defends his methodology, which he considers simply more carefully selective than the allusions to the past made by opposing orators, so too in the use of poetic citations does Aeschines explicitly address Demosthenes’ criticisms. In Against Timarchus, Aeschines directly discusses the quotation of poetry. One purpose is, he concedes, the simple display of knowledge. In this sense, we might assume for poetic citation the same function as for historical allusion, namely to enhance the authority of the orator. In the service of this cause, Aeschines proceeds to outdo Demosthenes in his extensive showpiece on the way in which Homer distinguishes honourable love from lustful passion. The theme is, of course, designed to relate to the case in hand, but the length and detail of the exposition, in the course of which the audience is treated to an impressive array of passages cited from Homer and the tragedians, are clearly intended to establish Aeschines as a highly educated and knowledgeable authority (141V.). But there is also a more intricate mode of argument in play. When Aeschines comes to the passage of Euripides’ Phoenix, to which Demosthenes refers in On the False Embassy, he explicitly justiWes the citation, not as a means of establishing his own credibility, but as the source of a model for the jurors of the present case. For the passage concerns the judgement of cases on the basis of character, not witness reports, and, as Aeschines’ argues, that is exactly the position in which his audience Wnds themselves. They should, then, follow Euripides’ reasoning in judging Timarchus (152–3). Here the poetic, rather than the historical, past is made to oVer an exemplum for the judicial present. The same rationale for the citation of ancient poetry in attempts at persuasion in the present is oVered by Aeschines in Against Ctesiphon. He introduces his citation of poetry with an explicit explanation: ‘I will recite the verses since this is why, I believe, when we are children, we commit to memory the opinions of the poets, so that we may use them when we are men.’127 But 126 These were said by Demosthenes to be from Euripides’ Phoenix (246). 127 Against Ctesiphon 135: Øa F ªaæ r ÆØ ÆEÆ Z Æ A a H Ø H ªÆ KŒÆŁØ; ¥ ¼æ Z ÆP ÆE æŁÆ.


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he then goes on to expand further on how the underlying concept of poetic works can be allowed to bridge the temporal gap between past and present. If one disregards the metre, he argues, and looks only at the thought, what he is citing is not a poem of Hesiod, but an oracle against the politics of Demosthenes (136). Here, then, we have a very diVerent defence for the exploitation of poetry from the past in the rhetoric of the present: not because the prestige of the medium and of the learning it represents bolsters the Wgure of the orator, but because the lessons and examples to be found in poetry are of relevance in the same way as are those in historical events and individuals. One of the issues under discussion is the nature of the audience, their ‘shared knowledge’ of the past, and the degree to which the orators could exploit the notion that, as Isocrates claimed, the events of the past were ‘common’ (ŒØÆ). The citation of poetry, by authors such as Homer and Hesiod, and by those whose works were performed in the theatre, is of considerable importance in addressing this question. The kind of past which was constructed by or for the polis in the context of public dramatic festivals or was learned from a knowledge of the epic poems, for example, might seem to be far removed from the ‘historical’ past which the local or universal historians might create. The evidence of Attic oratory supports the instinctive sense that this was not the case. We have already seen that the mythic period is by no means excluded from the temporal span alluded to by the orators. It is reasonable to hold up Heracles as an exemplary Wgure, just as one might do Themistocles; and it is defensible to cite Euripides or Hesiod as relevant to the decisions being made in the present. As argued above, in temporal terms, just as the past can provide both discrete models and the origin of characteristics which have a continuous life through to the present, so too does the poetic material cited by the orators oVer both discrete exempla and eternal truths. It would, of course, be misleading to equate ‘poetic’ with ‘mythic’, but there is clearly considerable overlap between the two categories, in so far as many of the stories of the most distant past were related and known through tragedy, epic, and lyric poetry. Isocrates claims to put some limit on the degree to which he can indulge in mythical material in the Archidamus, ‘since the time available does not allow me to tell myths’ (› ªaæ Ææg ŒÆØæe PŒ Kfi A ıŁºªE: 24), but this comes after an extremely discursive treatment of the myth of Heracles and the Peloponnesian states, designed to show that Sparta rightly rules over Lacedaemon and Messene by virtue of the oracle. In the context, then, the recusatio seem very much a rhetorical topos at odds with Isocrates’ practice elsewhere. He prefaces his extensive description of the gifts of civilization bestowed on Athens in the mythic period with the comment that, even

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though his speech has taken a mythical turn, it deserves telling.128 And in the Panathenaicus, Isocrates takes his evidence for the nature of Athens and other poleis directly from the mythic context of the tragic stage. Other states may be full of incest and infanticide, as seen on the stage, he claims, but Athens is not in the least like this (121–2). This seems an extraordinary way to argue. He not only allows the most distant past, as depicted on the contemporary stage, to stand as representative of present-day Athens, in a complicated example of temporal continuity. He also allows the world of the tragic stage to stand as a paradigm for ‘real life’, as though the mores of the polis can be read from the evidence of the theatre. The implications for the relationship between the ‘shared knowledge’ of the polis about the past, assumed and manipulated by the historians and orators, and the occasions on which that polis gathered at the theatre, are further heightened by Isocrates’ comments later in the same discourse on Athenian benefactions to the other Greeks. Examples of these are, he claims, known from the tragedies performed at the Great Dionysia, such as the story of Adrastus of Thebes, who had not been allowed to bury his troops, but came as a suppliant to Athens at the time of Theseus, who intervened to assist Adrastus (168–71). Again, we have a mythical example used to illustrate Athens’ current standing in Greece; again, it is the tragic stage and the context of polis festivals which provides the example as part of the city’s collective understanding of the past. It is perhaps not surprising to Wnd that Isocrates, in whose discourses we have already noted the far greater prominence of references to the distant and mythic past than in Demosthenes or Aeschines, makes correspondingly little use of public records and epigraphic evidence in the form of decrees. Rather, for example in the Panegyricus, he relies on the evidence of ritual and memory as bridges across time. As we have seen, his story of the gift of civilization to Athens is veriWed by the fact that the Athenians still carry out a particular ritual ‘every year’ (ŒÆŁ ŒÆ e KØÆı ) to reveal the benefaction to the initiates (29). Ritual, as a form of re-enactment, recreates the past in the present. And the other Greeks in turn authenticate this version of the past by sending the Wrst fruits of their harvest to Athens ‘in memory of the ancient benefaction’ ( Æ B ÆºÆØA PæªÆ) (31). Again, present practice, assuming that the ritual has remained unchanging over time, may be allowed to exemplify the past. The practice of adducing poetic, dramatic, or ritual evidence in order to verify argumentative points, or to provide exempla from the past, is mirrored by the citing of oYcial, often inscribed, documents. In Philippic 3 Demosthenes proves the diVerence between past and present (freedom as opposed to 128 Panegyricus 28: ŒÆd ªaæ N ıŁ › º ª ªª.


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slavery; and the way in which the Greeks of the past stood up against the wealth of Persia, being free from bribery and corruption) by reference to an inscription on a bronze pillar which the Athenian ancestors had set up on the Acropolis (41). This oVers quite an interesting example of how the pastpresent contrast, which we have already considered in relation to the comparison of diVerent generations of ancestors and their descendants, might be enhanced by the authentication of the ancient side of the comparison through its being physically Wxed to remain constant through time.129 In Against Leptines, Demosthenes cites decree after decree as proof that he is justiWed in listing so many examples of people honoured in the past by Athens for services rendered.130 The deeds may be temporally separated from the present, but they are doubly linked to the present: through the public record, which remains as an immortal embodiment of the act, and through the continuity of practice which that record allows Demosthenes to verify.131 After such a lengthy display of public documentation cited in support of his case, Demosthenes makes explicit his claim for the value of epigraphic evidence in the discovery of the past. Some of the people concerned, he says, are now dead, but their deeds survive. ‘It is right to allow the inscriptions to hold good for all time ( a ºÆ Æ Æ ŒıæÆ KA e Æ æ ) so that the men, while alive, suVer no wrong, and when they die the inscriptions be a memorial of our national character (KŒEÆØ F B ºø XŁı E tØ) and proofs (ÆæÆªÆŁ ) to those who wish to do service that we reward this’ (64). Inscriptions, seen in this way, are a crucial support to the technique of persuasion through exemplary reference to the past. They immortalize both the underlying continuities in the character of the polis, and also the exemplary deeds of individual Wgures.132 They back up the orator perfectly in providing an indelible proof that the version of the past which he 129 An interesting variation is oVered by Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 117–19, where he notes that the ancient Athenians punished the wrongdoer, Hipparchus, by obliterating his memory in melting down his statue and turning it into a pillar on which the names of traitors were inscribed. Thus, one indestructible monument was paradoxically reformed into another, as judgements on good and bad behaviour were reassessed. The speech is punctuated in its latter stages with the citation of inscribed decrees—in 118 the list of traitors, in 122 the decree relating to those executed at Salamis, in 125 the list of those believed to be contemplating tyranny—all memorials (Æ Æ ŒÆd ÆæÆªÆ Æ) of the ancestral treatment of criminals (127). The commemoration of punishment (the bronze pillar on the Acropolis concerning Arthmius, son of Pithonax) is referred to also by Deinarchus, Against Aristogeiton 24. 130 He sums up the strategy at 11; namely, that he appeals to both decrees and arguments to show that the Athenians’ ancestors honoured benefactors just as in the present day. 131 It is worth remembering that constancy of the Athenian character and behaviour is one of the major underpinnings for Demosthenes’ argument in this speech. 132 Against Ctesiphon 183 oVers an example where it is explicitly the achievements of the demos as a whole which are commemorated (for their victory over the Medes at the River Strymon), as opposed to those of individuals.

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alludes to for rhetorical purposes in his speech is indeed the authentic one, approved by the exemplary polis of the past itself.133 However, For the People of Megalopolis provides an interesting counterexample to the notion that inscribed monuments can perfectly defy the ravages of time. Here the suggestion is made that the Megalopolitans should destroy the pillars recording their treaty with Thebans if they are to be the Athenians’ trusted allies, revealing that even the past which has been inscribed on stone or bronze is not immune from obliteration or change. Isocrates too in the Panegyricus describes the treaties which guaranteed the independence of the islands and the cities of Europe as long destroyed. Thus, he claims, the letters on the stelae were in vain ( ) (176). The permanence of even the epigraphic record and its ability to confer immortality on past events and individuals and bring them into the present was by no means guaranteed. And, although this does not in itself cast doubt on the authenticity of the documents which do survive, it calls into question the completeness of the picture derived from this type of evidence. Nevertheless, Demosthenes and Aeschines in particular make extensive use of documentary evidence in support of their cases. In contradiction to the uncertainty over such evidence discussed above, in On the Embassy Aeschines praises the fact that the deWance of time by the polis through the process of state record-keeping aVords a guarantee of justice for all. ‘It is helpful to victims of slander that you preserve for all time in the public archives your decrees, with the dates and the names of the oYcials.’134 He uses various types of documentary evidence, not only decrees of the polis, but citing, for example, the ancient oaths containing promises that the cities of the Amphictyonic states would not be razed (115). But it is primarily the public records of Athens, cited by both Aeschines and Demosthenes in defence of their arguments, which are mostly about the recent past. In both extant sets of paired speeches (On the False Embassy and On the Embassy; On the Crown and Against Ctesiphon) there is extensive use of these records.135 In temporal terms, these are of little interest for the 133 As elsewhere, some interesting insights may be drawn from work on Roman Republican oratory. See Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power, 92–107, for the mutually reinforcing nature of oratory and the monumental display of the past around the city, which, like coinage, theatre, and so on, provided yet more opportunities which were not dependent on literacy for the people at large to absorb particular versions of the past (and present). 134 On the Embassy 89: ŒÆd ªaæ f æ ı ŒÆd a łÆ Æ ŒÆd f KØłÆ Æ K E Ø ªæÆØ e –Æ Æ æ ıº . We may recall in the light of this hint at democratic equality Aeschines’ comment at Against Ctesiphon 75 on the democratic nature of public record-keeping ( H ø ªæÆ ø ıºÆŒ), since it remains the same while politicians change their minds and therefore is independent of their caprices. 135 See, for example, On the Embassy 32, where Aeschines takes his proof that Amyntas voted to help Athens to recover Amphipolis ‘from the public records’ (KŒ H ø ªæÆ ø).

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preservation and immortalization of the past, since the bridge between past and present here is minimal. However, they raise a rather diVerent kind of temporal issue, since the documents are largely cited in support of chronological arguments. In other words, they oVer an insight into the awareness and formulation of the reckoning of time in the present rather than the past. In Against Ctesiphon, for example, Aeschines’ proof that Demosthenes was subject to audit at the time when Ctesiphon brought the motion for the crown to be awarded is taken from the public records. Aeschines can ask to have read out in court ‘under what archon and in what month and even on what day’ (Kd ¼æ ŒÆd ı e ŒÆd K Ø æfi Æ) Demosthenes was elected in charge of the theoric funds (24). Or in On the Embassy, he uses public records to prove his case on the grounds of dates, since by using the dates when ambassadors were chosen, he can prove who was where when the peace was being negotiated (58). But Demosthenes is a more than adequate opponent in his use of public records to back his arguments concerning dates and chronology. In On the False Embassy, he devotes a considerable amount of time to reckoning crucial dates to prove his case that the defendants had cooperated with Philip (57–60).136 In On the Crown he refers to many decrees in support of his chronological case. He asks, for example, for the dates of various transactions to be read out—all when Aeschines was spokesman of the congress of Thermopylae (155). These oYcial documents oVer, then, a diVerent kind of shared knowledge about the past, which is agreed by the members of the polis. And they move us also in the direction of a more obviously practical angle to this consideration of time in the Attic orators, namely the way in which the polis conceived, calibrated, and formulated the time not of its past, but of its present.

5. M AR KI N G T IM E I have explored some of the ways in which the polis may have enjoyed a ‘shared knowledge’ of the past, reinforced through dramatic productions, historical accounts, and rhetorical performances. Anyone wishing to persuade an audience with recourse to historical exempla and appeals to continuous character traits of the polis had certain parameters within which to work, but a certain degree of room for creativity in constructing the past. But when it came to indicating time in the present, precision was fundamental to the authority of the speaker. 136 The dates are carefully calculated in terms of Athenian months.

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The care and precision with which Athenian decrees were dated has already been mentioned (in chapter 1) and this is reXected in the decrees which Demosthenes cites in On the Crown, consistently denoting date in terms of Athenian archonships and Athenian months. A few examples will reveal the pattern: the decree proposing the embassy to Philip is dated to ‘the archonship of Mnesiphilus and on the 30th of Hecatombaion’ (Kd ¼æ !Øºı; ŒÆ ÆØH fi ŒÆd fi Æ, 29); the decree of Callisthenes to ‘the archonship of Mnesiphilus and on the 21st day of Maimacterion’ (37);137 the indictment is described as being read out ‘in the archonship of Chaerondas, on the sixth day of Elaphebolion . . .’ (54); the XPONOI which Demosthenes asks to have read out are dated to ‘the archonship of Mnesithides, on the 16th day of Anthesterion’ (155). Aeschines’ heavy reliance on chronological arguments in his opposing speech, Against Ctesiphon, means that, like Demosthenes, part of his authority derives from his precise command of the dates. His proof that Demosthenes was indeed in oYce at the crucial time is very speciWc in its use of dates, pointing out as it does that ‘in the archonship of Chaerondas, on the last day but one of Thargelion’ (Kd ªaæ ÆØæı ¼æ ; ¨ÆæªºØH e ı æfi Æ Ł . . .), Demosthenes proposed that on the second and third days of Scirophorion the assemblies of the tribes should be held (27).138 Aeschines’ speciWc formulations of what happened when, make Demosthenes’ accusations of deliberate manipulation of important chronologies seem all the more personally motivated.139 In On the Crown, Demosthenes claims that Aeschines exploits the time-lapse between events and his speech in order to select from a large number of old dates and decrees some for slanderous purposes, transposes dates ( ªŒ Æ f æ ı), and makes up Wctitious causes (225). Aeschines’ response to such accusations comes in On the Embassy: it may be helpful for Demosthenes to attack him over the confusion of dates, but it is very much to Aeschines’ advantage to get them right, since his arguments are largely reliant on establishing correct and precise chronologies (96). This is explicitly a battle over who is more in command of time. But there are also implicit questions of authority at stake. The issue of deliberate distortion or straightforward inaccuracy, in so far as it relates to the 137 For more examples, see On the Crown 73, 75, 84, 105, 115 (with a slightly diVerent formula—no Kd, but simply ¼æø ˜ ØŒ), 118, 137, 164, 165, 181. 138 See also Against Ctesiphon 67 for Demosthenes’ Wxing of the assembly for 8th Elaphebolion, the day of sacriWce to Asclepius, and 68 for his Wxing of the assembly concerning the alliance to immediately after the City Dionysia on the 18th and 19th of the month. 139 See Against Timarchus 109: Timarchus became a member of the boule in the archonship of Nicophemus (Kd ¼æ ˝ØŒı); and On the Embassy 90: Philip took Hieron Oros on 24th Elaphebolion ( ¯ºÆºØH e fi Ł ) and Demosthenes was presiding in the assembly on 25th.

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more distant past, is related to the degree to which the past was open to retelling, and to what extent the story was already Wxed.140 That is, whether or not Aeschines could have ‘mistold’ the story without alienating the audience whom he was trying to persuade brings us back to the question of how ‘common’ (ŒØÆ) the events of the past really were. The large number of precise dates, together with the accusations of manipulation, does suggest that the question of ‘common knowledge’ might be worth asking also with regard to the calibration of time in the present. In On Halonessus, Demosthenes claims that Philip has violated the treaties, as one can tell from the calendar (IæØŁe æH). ‘For we all know in what month and on what day the peace was made, and we also know in what month and on what day Fort Serreum and Ergisce and the Sacred Mount were captured’.141 This striking statement forces us to ask to what degree Demosthenes is simply engaging in rhetorical hyperbole, and whether the Athenians at large did indeed know the precise dating of recent events. One interesting complication in the dating systems referred to by the Attic orators is the introduction of non-Athenian systems. In On the Crown, Demosthenes cites a decree of the Byzantines, honouring Athens because of Demosthenes’ policy to help them against Philip. The decree is dated, not to archonships and Attic months, but to ‘the recordership of Bosporichus’ (Kd ƒæ ´æø), naturally using a local dating-system (90). In the same speech he cites a decree of the Amphictyons, dated to ‘the priesthood of Cleinagoras, at the spring session . . .’ (Kd ƒæø ˚ºØÆª æı; KÆæØB ıºÆÆ, 154).142 Of course, the use of non-Athenian dating devices in nonAthenian decrees is hardly a surprise, but we might still ask what meaning dates formulated in this way held for the Athenian audience. How local was their sense of time and its expression? Hand in hand with that issue we are drawn back to the relationship between the reference to and formulation of time, past and present, and the social functioning of the polis as a community, where the past is a partly Wxed, partly contested story, which is presented for validation and authentication by the polis by historians, by orators, by artists, and at the dramatic festivals; and where those very festivals form one element

140 As C. Pelling, Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (London, 2000), 28–9, notes, the topos of the ‘truth universally acknowledged’ was a compelling (and potentially dangerous) one for orators to employ, since their audiences were unlikely to claim not to know or to have forgotten any element of the ‘shared past’, however remote. 141 On Halonessus 36: –Æ ªaæ Y Ø d ŒÆd Ø æfi Æ Næ Kª . 142 Aeschines provides an interesting combination of Athenian archonal and religious dating in Against Ctesiphon 115: ‘In the archonship of Theophrastus (Kd ªaæ ¨æ ı ¼æ ), with Diognetus as hieromnemon, and as Pylagori were elected Midias of Anagyrus, Thrasycles of Oeum, and myself.’

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in the relatively local set of structures within which time present is consciously acted out. We have already seen that political opponents competed in their correct and appropriate treatment of time past. In addition to contesting each other’s chronological calculations of time present, they also seem to have exploited the measurement and allocation of present time in court to assert their oratorical superiority. The throwing away of ‘judicial time’, measured out by the clepsydra, by those who did not need their full allocation, so certain were they of victory, was something of a rhetorical topos.143 Aeschines discusses the apportioning of the day into sections: the Wrst water was for the accuser, the laws, and the democracy; the second for the defendant; and the third for the discussion of penalty, after the judgement had been given (Against Ctesiphon 197). He claims in On the Embassy (126) that there was plenty of time for slaves to be tortured, since he had been allocated eleven hours for his defence in the apportionment of the day (K ØÆ æfi fi B æfi Æ). But Demosthenes can go one better. He is so conWdent of the rightness of his cause that he can aVord to throw away the judicial time allocated to him and hand it to the other side.144 In his speech opposing Aeschines, On the False Embassy, he calls upon the defendants to challenge his reckoning of the crucial dates of the case, using the time allocated to the prosecution: ‘let him stand up and speak in my time’ (IÆ a K fiH KfiH oÆ Ø N ø, 57). Aeschines may feel that he has suYcient time for his slaves to be crossexamined, but Demosthenes has enough to give away. The same sentiment is expressed by Demosthenes in On the Crown, so conWdent that no one will be able to think of proWtable acts carried out by Aeschines for the city that he will oVer them his judicial time in which to list them (139). The fact that both the pair of speeches on the embassy and the pair on the award of the golden crown to Demosthenes contain allusions to the apportionment of judicial time on the part of both speakers suggests that this formed a useful rhetorical trope in the competitive world of judicial speaking.145 143 See D. Allen, ‘A Schedule of Boundaries: An Exploration, Launched from the Water-clock, of Athenian Time’, Greece & Rome 43 (1996), 157–68. Her stress on the element of compulsion and necessity associated with time pressure in court (citing Hesychius’ gloss on IªŒ as ØŒÆ c ŒºłæÆ) further reinforces the rhetorical eVect of donating one’s own time in court to the opposing side. 144 Allen, ‘A Schedule of Boundaries’, 159, argues that the restricted time available led Athenians to confess to an imperfect and fallible legal system. However, Demosthenes’ implicit claim here seems to be that good orators with just causes do not need much time in which to prove themselves right. Therefore, justice is not compromised by the clepsydra. 145 That the topos reached beyond Demosthenes and Aeschines is conWrmed by Deinarchus, Against Aristogeiton 6–7, who raises the issue of whether there is a positive correlation between using one’s full time in court and the justice of the outcome.

Past, present, and persuasion in the polis

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6 . PAS T, PR E S E N T, A N D P E R S UA S IO N IN T H E POLIS The pivotal character in the conWguration of the past and the present is the orator himself. We have already observed some of the similarities in the methods of the historian and the orator in formulating a version of the past which both accords with some kind of shared expectations on the part of the audience and oVers its own nuances, in the case of the public oratory in order to inXuence particular political or judicial actions. The freedom and creativity of the orator, granted the existence of some parameters in the form of audience expectation, is neatly expressed by Isocrates. It might, he claims, seem rather boring to be dealing with the same themes as one’s predecessors, but oratory makes it possible to say the same thing in diVerent ways and ‘to recount old things in a new way’ ( ÆºÆØa ŒÆØH ØºŁE) or ‘to speak about things that have happened more recently in an old-fashioned way’ (æd H ø d ªªø IæÆø NE). So, one should not shun old topics, but speak about them better than one’s predecessors have (Panegyricus 8). The element of rhetorical competition extends both to contemporary opponents and to previous generations of speakers, making the history of oratory itself a self-referential theme for the orators. We have already seen ways in which opposing speakers might oVer diVerent versions of the past, and also how their calculations of contemporary chronology could be the subject of competition. Furthermore, just as certain periods of the Athenian past were superior to the present and provided exempla which were worth adducing for emulation now, so too was the decline in oratory something of a topos. Aeschines contrasts Timarchus’ indecorous behaviour with the modesty of the orators of old, such as Pericles, Themistocles, and Aristeides, who did not speak making lavish gestures with their arm outside their cloak (Against Timarchus 25). His proof, namely the decorous statue of Solon in the agora in Salamis, does, as we have seen, come under attack from Demosthenes, who points out that the statue was far more recent than the time of Solon himself and therefore constituted poor evidence.146 But Demosthenes 146 On the False Embassy 251. See N. Worman, ‘Insults and Oral Excess in the Disputes between Aeschines and Demosthenes’, American Journal of Philology 125 (2004), 1–25, for an excellent discussion of oratorical performance styles as a rhetorical weapon in the clashes between Demosthenes and Aeschines. Demosthenes’ argument against adducing the statue of Solon is that the orator should focus on content rather than physical disposition. But we may recall the comments made about the Wfth-century demagogue Cleon and his noisy and overdramatic performances (Ath. Pol. 28.3; Plutarch, Nicias 8; Aristophanes, Knights, passim) to gauge the sensitivity over style and presentation. For Cleon’s notoriety as a showy speaker, see J. Hall, ‘Cicero and Quintilian on the Oratorical Use of Hand Gestures’, Classical Quarterly 54 (2004), 143–60 at 149, noting the claim (Quintilian, Institutio 11.3.123) that Cleon was the Wrst

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too alludes to the decline in rhetorical standards and integrity in the third Olynthiac, where he claims only to be speaking at all because the welfare of the state is more important than that of the orator. Speakers of the past, such as Aristeides, Nicias, Demosthenes, and Pericles, adopted this view, but since then there has been a descent into Xattery.147 Demosthenes sees himself, then, as embodying a return to the golden age of Attic oratory, the rhetorical equivalent to following the Athenian political models of the Persian War period, such as Themistocles, and recreating the great days of the past in the present. There appears to be something of a contradiction when Demosthenes urges his audience in On the Crown to compare him with the orators of his own day and not of the past, just as athletes compete only against their contemporaries (318–19).148 But it is clear from other comments in the same speech that Demosthenes does consider himself the worthy heir of the great oratorical legacy of Athens. There were, he says, many distinguished orators in the city in the past—Callistratus, Aristophon, Cephalus, Thrasybulus—but none was more unremittingly devoted to public service than Demosthenes himself (219). By contrast, his long-standing opponent Aeschines held a quite diVerent distinction in the history of oratory, namely having produced the most disgraceful speech of all time.149 The Wgure of the teller of the past is evoked at the end of Isocrates’ Panegyricus in a way which neatly encapsulates some of the themes embraced by this discussion. Isocrates urges Athens to lead Greece against the Persian threat by referring to the Trojan War as paradigm, reinforcing the exemplary importance of that particular event in the mythic past. Great praise was accorded, he says, to those who captured a single city; all the greater praise awaits those who will defeat the whole of Asia. Thus the Athenians are to see their actions as competitive with those of the distant past, reversing the to institute the gesture of slapping the thigh at moments of intense emotion. Aeschines clearly wishes to be seen as a restrained Solonic rather than a melodramatic Cleonic Wgure, but Demosthenes claims some of the same intellectual ground by professing to prefer content to form. The associations are further complicated by Thucydides 3.38 and Cleon’s own description of himself as straight-talking as opposed to his over-elaborate opponents. 147 The idea that Demosthenes can right the wrongs of other orators is made explicit in Philippic 1, where he claims to be speaking because other speakers have given bad advice in the past, leading to Athens’ present trouble (1). But I owe to Sarah Cottle the further point that Demosthenes says he dares to open the debate because the topic is so hackneyed that no one else has useful ideas to add. Description of the old style of Athenian leadership, immune to Xattery and willing to put the state’s interests above the popularity of the leader, is put into Pericles’ own mouth by Thucydides (2.64.2). 148 Aeschines picks up the past-present context for comparison in Against Ctesiphon 189, but argues that the plea there is to be rejected, since the crown under discussion is an absolute standard, not a straight competition. One wonders how appropriate this comment would be also to the competitive oratory referred to by Demosthenes. 149 On the False Embassy 312.


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general trend of decline. And the deeds will be such as to attract the skills of the historian or the orator, who will want to ‘leave behind a memorial for all time of his own genius and of their valour’.150 The relater of the past thus immortalizes not only his subjects, but also himself, defying the destructive forces of time and inserting himself and his theme into the exemplary catalogue. The quotation from Isocrates’ Panegyricus, with which I started, raised the issue of reception and audience expectation with its reference to shared knowledge about the past. It is now time to return to this issue, and to formulate some concluding thoughts on what the intervening exploration has revealed about the relationship between past and present, the role of the orator as historian, and the place of his construction of and allusion to the past in the present identity and functioning of the polis. Demosthenes, in On the Navy Boards, forcefully expresses the view that the essence of the polis lies in its past. ‘The war against the barbarian is about nothing other than our country, our life, our habits, our freedom, and all such things . . . Who, then, is so desperate that he will sacriWce himself, his ancestors, his sepulchres, and his native land for sake of a meagre proWt?’151 The Wgures and events of the past and their memorials lie at the heart of the polis, neatly echoing the view that ‘city is history incarnate’, and there are many occasions and many media through which they are negotiated and reinforced. One important such occasion was the moment when a citizen became part of the past himself, and a Wgure for public commemoration and emulation, namely at the public funerals of those outstanding Wgures of the polis who became its exempla.152 Here the polis could gather, reiterate the essential features of its present,153 and express its hope for the future through reference to its past. It is, for Isocrates, symptomatic of the malfunctioning of Athens during its imperial phase that the ritual of the epitaphios became a laughing stock at which 150 Panegyricus 186: ıº –Æ B Ł Æ F ØÆÆ ŒÆd B KŒø Iæ B E N –Æ Æ e æ ŒÆ ÆºØE. 151 On the Navy Boards 32: s o ø ı ı K Ø ‹ Ø Æı ; ªÆ; ı; Æ æ ŒÆ Œæı æÆ æŁÆØ ıº ÆØ; 152 N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans. A. Sheridan (Cambridge, MA and London, 1986), oVers the most extensive and sophisticated treatment of this subject. 153 See Hyperides, Epitaphios 35–9, for the key highlights of the past brought together—the Trojan expedition, the Persian wars, and the tyrannicides oVer a roll call of the elements which most deserved celebration, but here they are interestingly imagined in their current setting of the underworld, ready to greet Athens’ newest hero, Leosthenes. Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 22, notes the striking way in which Hyperides, alone of the orators, risks denigrating the heroes of the past through comparison with his hero, Leosthenes: ‘Hype´ride se risque a` les [sc. the tyrannicides] faire descendre de leur pie´destal’; see also 65: ‘Cette surenche`re reste exceptionnelle’.

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foreigners would rejoice at the misfortune of the polis, rather than marvelling at the polis’s best display of itself to its own members and to outsiders.154 The orator, like the historian or the dramatist, played a vital role in helping the polis to formulate a past which was relevant to the present through its presentation both of exemplary Wgures and events and of characteristics, which remained constant across time. The epitaphios provided one forum for the expression of such sentiments; the civic festivals, with their dramatic productions, provided yet another opportunity for the gathered polis to reassert and renegotiate its collective history.155 As for the orator, we have seen that making speeches, both those delivered in the law courts and those delivered in the assemblies in order to inXuence political decisions, placed him, like the historian, in the position of needing to manipulate the past and its links to the present for his current persuasive purpose, but within the parameters of plausibility which would enable him to retain his authority.156 The self-consciousness of the orator and his place in the polis is manifested in various ways, and particularly through his control and manipulation of time: his self-referential comments about the time available for making his case using the clepsydra reXect his role in the playing out of justice appropriately for the democratic city;157 the ostensible accuracy and transparency of 154 On the Peace 87: It was routine at that time ‘to hold public funerals on an annual basis, at which many of our neighbours and of the other Greeks would appear not to join us in grieving for the dead, but to rejoice together at our misfortunes’. As Michelini, ‘Isocrates’ Civic Invective: Acharnians and On the Peace’, points out, the strategy of this speech itself involves demolishing the basic theme of Athenian patriotism—the celebration of its autochthonous origins and ancestral solidarity, as celebrated in the epitaphios. 155 These two forms of civic self-expression are brought together in Against Ctesiphon 154, where Aeschines alludes to the practice whereby orphans of the war dead would be brought in to the theatre, as tragedies were about to be performed. But S. Goldhill, ‘The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology’, in J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to do with Dionysus? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 97–129, examines the Great Dionysia as a showcase of Athens to the world, but also notes (124) that ‘tragedy seems deliberately to make diYcult the assumption of the values of the civic discourse.’ Thus, in spite of the presence of war orphans, there is a fundamental diVerence between the disturbing performances of the Great Dionysia and the uplifting civic rhetoric of the epitaphios. For a more straightforward form of civic commemoration of particular episodes from the past, see R. Osborne, ‘Competitive Festivals and the Polis: A Context for Dramatic Festivals at Athens’, in P. J. Rhodes (ed.), Athenian Democracy (Edinburgh, 2004), 207–24 at 208, for the celebration, by the addition of games to the Theseia, of Cimon’s return of the bones of Theseus from Scyros in the 470s and 212 for the introduction of games at the Aianteia festival after the victory at Salamis. 156 For a very stimulating discussion of how the construction of the mythical past in the Attic orators might be read in the context of not only other civic occasions, such as the public funeral, but also the philosophical works of the period, as manifestations of a fourth-century need to reformulate and relegitimate the past, see K. A. Morgan, ‘Designer History: Plato’s Atlantis Story and Fourth-Century Ideology’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998), 101–18. 157 It is perhaps signiWcant here that lawgivers are prominent in the exemplary past of the polis. Justice is an important area through which the city deWnes its past and present, as


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his calculation of chronology, using the city’s own calendars for the calibration of time present, together with his careful and selective presentation of the highlights of its past supported by oYcial records, implicitly makes the claim that he reXects the city’s own sense of itself and its place in history; the fact that there is considerable overlap between the three orators in their selective depiction of the past, suggests that they might indeed fairly claim to be chiming in with a relatively coherent and broadly consensual version of which parts of the past best serve the present identity of the polis;158 and the orator’s own position in the history of public speaking, including competition with his predecessors and contemporaries, may be seen as paradigmatic for the broader patterns of decline, continuity, and emulation which constitute such a large part of his exposition and which underpin his attempts to persuade the polis about matters of current policy. It seems, then, that we are justiWed in Wnding some version of the polis’s own construction of its past and manipulation of time in the speeches of its orators, particularly given their need to gain persuasive authority with their audience. Isocrates, however, forces us to consider a rather more complicated scenario, both in terms of written as opposed to performed speeches, and in terms of composition of the audience. Although his pieces are presented as orations, it is fairly clear that they were not necessarily delivered, and functioned more as political pamphlets. This is particularly striking given that Isocrates himself in To Philip acknowledges the diVerence in persuasive power between speeches read and speeches delivered.159 Whether this is actually problematic for our understanding of the relationship between these compositions and the sense of a common past and present identity held by the polis is debatable.160 The case has been made for other authors in other contexts that the fact of whether or not a speech was delivered does not prevent its form and contents from indicating to us what was considered plausible and persuasive for a delivered version of the speech.161 To Philip witnessed most dramatically in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, in which the mythical aetiology for the Areopagus homicide court is presented on stage in the trial of Orestes. 158 See above, though, for the way in which diVerent orators selected diVerently from the same basic set of historical highlights in order to meet their immediate rhetorical needs. 159 To Philip 25: ŒÆ Ø P ººŁ ‹ ØÆæıØ H º ªø N e ŁØ ƒ ºª Ø H IÆªØªøŒø. 160 Similar debates have, of course, been articulated in greater number regarding the speeches of Cicero and the controversies surrounding delivered and published versions. Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power, 25–30, oVers a very sane and balanced account of the principles involved in this Weld of study. 161 The issue has notoriously run through Ciceronian scholarship. But one might question whether the parallel is absolutely precise. Whereas the published versions of, say, Cicero’s second Philippic or second Verrine oration are full of references to the actual delivery of the speech, although we know that they were not in fact delivered, Isocrates’ ‘speeches’ are more like disquisitions.

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oVers many interesting insights into the process of composition. Isocrates writes of how, in the face of criticism at the project to address his discourse to Philip, he responded by oVering to show the result to the group of critics for prior approval. They were, he claims, entirely convinced on reading the speech (22–3). This rather odd form of peer pressure suggests that there were alternative fora, besides public performance within the polis, where the views expressed by an orator might be tested for compatibility alongside those of others citizens. But the rather more serious threat to the close relationship between the construction of the past oVered by the orator and that shared by the collective polis derives from the Panhellenic breadth of some of Isocrates’ discourses, and the possibility that, rather than not being delivered at all, they might have been designed for and delivered in the supra-polis context and audience of the Panhellenic festivals, as epideictic showpieces.162 This clearly raises some of the same issues as does the production of local historiography and the question of its audiences and performance contexts. To whom the world and the past evoked by the orator made sense and were signiWcant may prove to produce no less interesting and variegated an answer than when the same questions are asked of the historian. Isocrates opened this exploration with an optimistic expression of how the past might be skilfully and eVectively exploited by men of good sense, no doubt including himself, the orator. In To Philip, he oVers a considerably gloomier picture of the orator’s role in the polis. He claims to be addressing the discourse to Philip himself to show that ‘to burden our assemblies with oratory and to speak to all the people who gather there is really to address no one at all’ (‹ Ø e b ÆE ÆªæØ KºE ŒÆd æe –Æ Æ ºªØ f ı æ Æ K ÆP ÆE æe PÆ ºªØ K ); that such speeches are just as ineVective as the laws and constitutions drawn up by the sophists (Iºº ›ø ƒ ØF Ø H º ªø ¼ŒıæØ ıªıØ Z E Ø ŒÆd ÆE ºØ ÆØ ÆE e H Ø H ªªæÆÆØ); and that anyone who actually wants not to chatter in vain, but to serve some practical purpose (Iººa æhæªı Ø ØE) must allow others to speak at public gatherings and themselves Wnd someone with power to champion the cause (12–13). It would be hard to imagine a much more downbeat vision of the possibilities for rhetorical persuasion within the fourth-century polis. However, Isocrates’ view expressed here is so clearly at odds with the vibrant and sophisticated attempts at persuasion which we have seen made by all three orators under 162 G. Norlin’s introduction to the Loeb translation discusses at some length the broadly Panhellenic perspective oVered by Isocrates, seeing him as a loyal Athenian but with a sympathy for all Greece and its freedom. He was thus able to transport the reader from the parochial view of the poleis to the wider world (p. xxxii).


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discussion that it cannot be allowed too much weight. It is, in any case, perhaps to be dismissed as an array of the arguments one would make before a tyrant rather than a democratic polis. The relationship between oratory and the polis was clearly very much alive; the orators acted as crucial bridges through time, selecting, manipulating, and presenting a past that would accord with shared expectations, and bolster whatever collective identity the polis enjoyed, at the same time as supporting particular courses of action for the present and future. It is to the value which the polis itself placed on the appropriate telling of its past that I now turn.

VI Time for the polis: audiences and contexts 1 . TH E CITY OF TH E S UN DIAL ½æe b æÆ ‰æº ªØ :½ . . . : : ½. . . . . . : ŒÆ Ł uæÆ KØººØ Œ ½ c ŒØa e lºØ½ . . . ƒ ½Æf b ı ÆæŒ Æ Ø½Ø ŒÆd F ¼ æØ ÆØ ½Ø æøØ ŒÆd øØ· ½Œº ÆP½ a ÆŒæa ŒÆºFØ PŒ Iº ½ªø Kºº½ªØ Æ Æ Z Æ Øa ð?Þ B ¯Pæ . . . ¨ < ø > æª ºØ½ . . . To the south is a sundial . . . and the sun indicates each hour by its shadow . . . The forty stades between here [sc. the Piraeus] and the town are surrounded by walls to north and south. These ‘limbs’ are called long, not without reason, since they are the most renowned throughout Europe . . . the city is the achievement of Theseus . . . 1

The author of this partially preserved periegetic work found in Athens a remarkable city. Even its long walls linking the city with the harbour were exceptional. The notion of Athens as a ‘European capital’ is hinted at here alone to my knowledge, and is in itself remarkable given the relative lack of interest shown in continental divisions in antiquity, except by the scientiWc geographers.2 In the light of the importance of foundations and mythical Wgures in the formulation of a city’s past (as considered in chapter 4), the appearance of Theseus as creator of this magniWcent city seems particularly apposite. Athens is splendidly contextualized by the anonymous periegete in both time and space. It is given a supreme status vis-a`-vis other European cities—its superiority places it at centre stage. Furthermore, it has a history which goes right back to the mythical hero, Theseus. Its signiWcance spreads out along several axes. 1 P.Haw. 80/1 (FGrH 369 f 1). This Greek literary papyrus dates from the Wrst or second century ad and was Wrst published by Wilcken in 1910. 2 There are, however, notable exceptions, such as Polybius, who on several occasions adduces a continental model in his work, most extensively at 3.37.2–8, where he maps the three continents against four celestial quadrants. Strabo at 2.2.1–3.8 discusses various divisions of the earth attributed to important predecessors, such as Eratosthenes and Posidonius, including continental divisions. While Strabo himself prefers divisions according to natural boundaries, he does adopt the continental strategy to some extent, using it to deWne which parts of the world Rome rules in the penultimate chapter of his work (17.3.24). For glimpses of continental mentality in periplus texts, see K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (Oxford, 1999), 205.

The city of the sundial

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But of course the prime point of interest here in the context of this book is that Athens, this polis par excellence, should be seen to take time seriously. Athens, with its walls which surpass all those in Europe, and with a history which incorporates one of the greatest heroes, is also the city of the sundial, a suYciently prominent feature to be remarked upon by the traveller. Although the competitive analysis of formal time systems may be the preserve of the chronographer, we have seen that an understanding of, and interest in, time is inherent in any society’s attempt to formulate a past. Whether or not the time concerned was coherent and continuous or patchy and confused, we are led back to considering the conWguration of time as being of more public concern, a social phenomenon in its own right, which might give us important insights into a community, its preoccupations, and its interaction with the world outside. I turn Wrst here to a range of extant mentions of publicly displayed time pieces and evidence for an explicit public consciousness of the passing and measurement of time in order to explore further the interface between the conWguration of time and the social conduct of the polis. The mention of the Athenian sundial by the Hellenistic traveller is by no means unique. It is interesting that Athens should feature so dominantly among Greek poleis in the sources as the home of public timepieces, but the evidence is so slight as to render the statistics meaningless. We have already seen (in chapter 1) multiple explorations before the Athenian audience in the plays of Aristophanes of the comic potential inherent in diVerent types of ‘time management’, be it the manipulation of the lunar cycle to avoid the arrival of debt repayment day, or the diVerent uses to which the water clock, symbol of the fair allocation of judicial time in the democratic polis, could be put. The scholia to Aristophanes’ plays provide an unexpectedly rich pool of references to timepieces being part of the everyday Athenian landscape. But it is also interesting that the sources which the scholiasts use to support their interpretation of the Aristophanic texts are often the local historians whom we have considered in some detail in their own right. This evidence from fragmentary historians thus incidentally brings together time as a subject for historiography and the everyday organization of time for the citizens—the former being used by later scholars to elucidate the latter. When the chorus in Aristophanes’ Birds sings of a place ‘near the water clock’ which is the home of the ‘Tongue-bellied’ tribe,3 it elicits from modern commentators such as Dunbar, the observation that the name, literally ‘waterconcealer’, was given to springs across Greece which experienced seasonal variation in their water supply, and that in Athens the so-called spring was at

3 See Aristophanes, Birds 1694–6: Ø K *ÆÆEØ æe fi B jŒºłæfi Æ ÆFæª Kªj ªºø ªÆ æø ª.

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Time for the polis

the foot of the cliV at the north-west angle of the Acropolis.4 Furthermore, she notes the double associations for the audience, since the name would also, of course, evoke the measurement of time in the law courts, setting the tone for a legal interpretation of the whole scene. But it is interesting that ancient commentators elucidate the passage by reference to Istrus the Callimachean, who drew on the historians ( E ıªªæÆFØ). He relates a description of how the spring gained its name from its function as a natural water clock, Wlling up when the Etesian winds began and abating when they stopped, just like the Nile.5 Thus even the landscape of Athens was predisposed to the calibration of time, and able with its own naturally occurring water clock to compete with the miraculous Nile. In connection with the same Aristophanic play, another Athenian historian is brought in by the scholiasts to illuminate a disputed claim concerning Athens’ publicly displayed time. Philochorus is cited by a scholiast in connection with the claim that Meton, ‘the best astronomer and geometer’ in Greece (¼æØ I æ ŒÆd ªø æ), set up an astrological instrument (IŁ Ø . . . I æºªØŒ ) in Colonus.6 In what appears to be a piece of local rivalry, Philochorus makes the additional claim that Meton also set up a sundial (ºØ æ Ø) in Athens in what was now the assembly in front of the wall on the Pnyx. We have another example of a public timepiece, this time set up in one of the prime locations of democratic Athens—the place where the assembly met; and we may recall the debates surrounding references in the Attic orators to the use of the clepsydra in the law courts and its possibly democratic associations. Is this sundial another instance of ‘time for all’, the democratization of time itself, the ostentatious revelation to the people at large of how time could be conWgured and manipulated? Of course, here we are talking about the time of a single day rather than that of the city’s history. A clock is a rather diVerent proposition from a calendar, let alone that of a whole historiographical scheme. But Philochorus’ expression for the date at which Meton set up his Athenian sundial provides a neat link for us, if not for the original audience, between the measurement of and interest in short-term, everyday time and long-term, historiographical time. He dates this important event for the timekeeping of Athens to ‘the archonship of Apseudes, who came before Pythodorus’.7 Thus, a development 4 See N. Dunbar, Aristophanes Birds (Oxford, 1995), ad loc. 5 FGrH 334 f 6. 6 FGrH 328 f 122. See Aristophanes, Birds 997–8. Dunbar’s commentary ad loc. interestingly makes the suggestion that Meton and his technical expertise might have been in the public eye that year (433/2), since he is also mentioned in a fragment of Phrynichus’ Monotropos (f 22), produced at the same festival as the Birds, this time as › a ŒæÆ ¼ªø (‘the one drawing the springs’), suggesting some improvement to the city’s water supply. 7 Kd `łı b < F >æe —ıŁæı.


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in the public concern with diurnal time in Athens is given a place in its longterm history, denoted in just the same way as other major political events. We may note that the traYc between diVerent scales of time went in both directions—not only highlights from the past telescoped into the annually recurring cycle of the calendar, but also innovations in small-scale time being recorded as events which take their place in large-scale history. Furthermore, we shall see the way in which the public monument of the Parian Marble created a history of invention mapped out against the magisterial oYce of the kings and archons. Here, the keeping of time itself becomes one of the inventions, and, as we saw with the anonymous periegete, Athens is outstanding in this respect as in others—the inventor of the sundial, placed at the heart of the democratic polis in the heyday of the city’s intellectual life, is none other than the best in Greece. We have already seen the way in which the Wgure of the orator straddled the reality of the present and the construction of time past in his use of history in the pursuit of persuasion. In some respects, the orator’s focus on particular moments in the relatively recent history of the city contrasts quite markedly with the dominance of the mythical past and the world of heroic foundations in the fragments of local history. Although it is hazardous to argue from silence about the fragmentary historical works, which may well have comprised a continuous history of the city from its foundation to the recent past, the complete works of the Attic orators allow us to observe a thinning of interest at the remote end of the temporal spectrum. We have, however, already observed variation between authors on this point, since Isocrates’ interest in the mythological origins of the city contrasts dramatically with the more recent focus of Demosthenes and Aeschines. But the playing up by all of them of relatively recent, or at least historical, moments of glory for the polis, particularly those of the Persian wars, and the recurrent topos of the decline theory, with a stress on the good old days of former generations by contrast with the degenerate present (as we saw in chapter 5), creates a strong link between the works which the orators delivered to the polis of Athens and the plays presented to the same audience by poets such as Aristophanes.8 Sometimes the comic dynamics demand that the standard topoi of recent history—liberation from tyranny and the victory over Persia—are presented by Aristophanes in ways which seem to undermine the glory of the Athenian 8 See M. Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire par les orateurs attiques (Paris, 1982), 40, for the close foreshadowing of the dominant themes of Attic oratory in the comic theatre of the preceding century: ‘Aristophane, par les allusions au passe´ qu’il introduit dans son theáˆtre, pre´Wgure les orateurs du IVe sie`cle.’ Nouhaud identiWes these themes as patriotic episodes, the contrast between past virtue and vice, and the evocation of benefactions performed by the ancestors.

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audience. In Lysistrata, we Wnd references to the Spartan intervention in the tyrannicide (1150–6), and to Spartan victories in the Persian wars, at Artemisium and Thermopylae (1250–3). But presumably the audience all took for granted that Aristophanes was presenting the truer and more important version of the past in the Knights with references to Marathon and Salamis, Aristeides and Miltiades, and Harmodius the Liberator.9 In the Wasps, the theme of Athenian performance in the Persian wars is linked explicitly to that of generational decline, since the superiority and greater utility of the older generation, represented by the old wasps in the play, is directly attested by their role in Wghting back the Persians.10 And Clouds throughout exploits the comic potential of the contrast between the ‘good old days’ and the degenerate present.11 The same play makes much also of the temporal conWguration of a single life, describing old age as a second childhood (d ÆE ƒ ªæ ), to suggest interesting possibilities for a person’s lifetime to be reversible, or a mirror image of itself, or cyclical.12 But Birds reinforces the truth that human life is transient and unidirectional, and that the generations therefore follow naturally one after the other.13 The comic contrast is with the superior status of the chorus of birds, which transcend the impact of time by being immortal, eternal, and ageless.14 Here the chorus oVers a bird-oriented construction of natural time, insisting on their importance for telling the seasons. Furthermore, they provide a parallel account of the creation myth, in which the birds predate the gods and are the ancient rulers of Persia (cock), Greece (kite), Egypt and Phoenicia (cuckoo).15 Thus, the mythical period, for which the historians would produce genealogical structures, could be mapped out in terms of the races of birds. Both the orators and the comic theatre seem to suggest that presenting the past to the polis, in Athens at any rate, meant focusing on a fairly restricted range of glorious topics from recent history and using them, through comparison with the present more degenerate state of the polis, as an exhortation to action or as a form of didacticism. When set alongside the extensive temporal range of the fragments of local historiography, with their blurring 9 See Knights 781, 785, 1325, and 786, respectively. 10 Wasps 1071–90. It is interesting that the autochthony theme appears strongly here to back the wasps’ claim to true Athenian behaviour. They describe themselves as ‘the only truly native and autochthonous Athenians’: % ØŒd Ø ØŒÆø KªªE ÆP Ł (1076). 11 See Clouds 961–83; cf. Peace 571–80, on the peaceful and plentiful nature of the ancient life. 12 Clouds 1417. As Sommerstein notes, the proverb was commonly cited by a range of tragedians and by Plato. See A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Clouds (Warminster, 1982), ad loc. 13 See Birds 685: ¼ª ; Ø ¼æ IÆıæ ØØ; ººø ªfi A æ ØØ, recalling Homer, Il. 6.146. 14 See Birds 693–702, with Dunbar, Aristophanes Birds, ad loc. 15 See Birds 471–536.


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between mythical and historical periods, and their concern to combine local frameworks with more Panhellenic ones, they have the eVect of making historiography stand out as a diVerently formulated and diVerently expressed form, with a distinctive set of preoccupations. The kind of past which was set before the citizens of Athens, in particular, is, to some degree, but only to some degree, supported by the particular form of speech delivered at state funerals, the epitaphios.16 This has already been given a great deal of scholarly attention for its presentation of the polis in an idealized form incorporating both the recent exploits of the city, which provide the context for the speech itself, and the more distant past, which oVers the foundational qualities from which the city has been built. The imaginative recreation in the epitaphios of the role played by the polis in key Panhellenic ventures, particularly during the Persian wars, has naturally attracted analysis.17 As Waters argues, the genre of the epitaphios was characterized by a historical analysis which was ‘universally lop-sided and chauvinistic’, but even so the opportunities for this view to be challenged were strangely manifold in the case of Marathon, since not only some historiographical sources but also, much more publicly and visibly, the paintings on the Stoa Poikile presented Plataea as Wghting alongside Athens.18 ‘Both versions were known and both versions were oYcial’, Waters concludes.19 We will come back to the issue of complicity on the part of the citizens in particular ‘oYcial’ versions of the past, but for now simply observe the focus on the same historical themes and periods as we saw dominating the oratory. But I should like to argue for the integration of historiography into this picture, for its value to the polis, and for a reduction of the gap between the preoccupations and scope of works of local history, which took the whole life of the city as their theme, and those which were of more immediate concern to the polis in other contexts and through other media. In spite of the focus on the more recent past revealed through some Attic oratory and through Aristophanes’ glimpses into the Athenian historical imagination, 16 The contrast between Athens, which used a collective funeral as the forum for expressing the past, present, and future of the city, and Rome, where such presentation of the past is carried out by individual aristocratic families in their own terms, emerges from H. I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1993), 117 and 126. It is, however, an ambiguous contrast, if Flower (127) is correct to see the eVect of individual aristocratic funerals being to create a sense of community and a shared past. 17 See K. R. Waters, ‘ ‘‘We Fought Alone at Marathon’’: Historical FalsiWcation in the Attic Funeral Oration’, Rheinisches Museum fu¨r Philologie 124 (1981), 204–11, for the contentious way in which Athens wrote Plataea’s role at Marathon out of the story. 18 Waters, ibid. 205 and 207. 19 Waters, ibid. 211.

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other evidence makes very plain the importance of the remote and heroic past in the city’s sense of itself. The tragic theatre provides a prime example of the way in which the legendary past could be used to oVer malleable aetiologies for the civic institutions and practices of the present.20 In sculptural relief, the Parthenon friezes oVered a backdrop of mythical scenes for the enactment of contemporary ritual, thereby suggesting thematic or conceptual connections across the intervening time. In another medium still, the paintings at the Stoa Poikile may have included a presentation of relatively recent moments in Athenian history, or rather of Athenian participation on the Panhellenic stage, but they also included scenes of the Amazonomachy and of the Trojan War. As Boedeker points out, this promotion of the mythical and heroic past of Athens was prevalent in the visual arts, which juxtaposed scenes from the distant past with those of recent history.21 Her point that ‘Athens was not unique, just more proliWc, in using the heroic past to represent, and even to shape, its civic identity,’ may be somewhat determined by the survival of evidence, but nevertheless the observation that Athens did combine the remote with the recent past in its visual arts must surely be right.22 But Boedeker nevertheless draws a strong distinction between the visual and historiographic evidence on this point, arguing that ‘the city uses its ‘‘past’’ in public art in ways directly at odds with practices of Wfth-century narrative historiography’.23 She sees the convenient and resonant juxtaposition of remote and recent events as being antithetical to the development of explanatory narrative of a Thucydidean type; the creation of a continuous, connected, logically coherent history as less congenial to the city’s selfpromotion than the discontinuous, timeless, analogous forms of art and poetry; the public nature of the latter, Wnanced by and accountable to the democracy as more prone to produce an ‘acceptable’ view of the past than the great prose histories written for a more private audience.24 20 S. Said, ‘Le mythe de l’Areópage avant la Constitution d’Athe`nes’, in M. Pie´rart (ed.), Aristote et Athe`nes (Fribourg, 1993), 155–81, has examined the way in which the myth of the Areopagus, famously turned into a political aetiology in 458 bc in Aeschylus’ Eumenides in ways which would legitimate current reforms, could be entirely recast a century later by Isocrates in the Areopagiticus. But see also S. Goldhill, ‘The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology’, in J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to do with Dionysus? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton, NJ, 1990), 97–129, examining the tension between the festival of drama as a civic institution and the messages of tragic texts, which ‘seems deliberately to make diYcult the assumption of the values of the civic discourse’ (124). 21 See D. Boedeker, ‘Presenting the Past in Fifth-Century Athens’, in D. Boedeker and K. A. RaaXaub (eds.), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens (Cambridge, MA and London, 1998), 185–202. 22 Boedeker, ibid. 190. 23 Boedeker, ibid. 185–6. 24 Boedeker, ibid. 199–200. There were, however, some clearly overlapping elements between public and private visions of the Athenian past. H. A. Shapiro, ‘Autochthony and the Visual Arts


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But if Thucydides and others sought to challenge the ‘hegemony of civic ideology’,25 which was formulated primarily through public speech, and undermined key foundations of civic ideology such as the tale of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, this should not be taken as a basis for claiming that historiography tout court was alien to the prevalent traditions of the polis. Rosalind Thomas has taught us all to think in much more sophisticated ways about the notion of ‘tradition’, and particularly of ‘oYcial’ or ‘civic tradition’.26 But, while resisting the tendency to oversimplify the notion of ‘collective memory’, a notoriously overused and ill-deWned term, she does nevertheless identify ways in which the polis could crystallize and propagate certain views of itself, which were intimately connected to a particular reading of selected highlights of its past.27 Like many other scholars, she sees this as being most extremely and strictly formulated and expressed in the epitaphios, which oVered an idealized vision of Athenian history: ‘the epitaphios forms a coherent expression of Athenian oYcial ‘‘ideology’’.’28 The ‘history’ oVered by the epitaphios was designed to answer the question ‘what made Athens great?’, which entailed mention of the Amazonomachy, the Heraclids, Marathon, Salamis, in Fifth-Century Athens’, in Boedeker and RaaXaub (eds.), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens, 127–51, discusses the way in which the civic theme of autochthony, alluded to on the Parthenon friezes, was already a popular topic for the more private genre of vase painting in the Archaic period. For the same kind of overlap, see Flower, Ancestor Masks, 65 and 69, discussing the display of the aristocratic past to the non-history-reading Roman electorate in public memorials, as well as in the more enclosed setting of the atria of their homes. 25 J. Ober, ‘Civic Ideology and Counterhegemonic Discourse: Thucydides on the Sicilian Debate’, in A. L. Boegehold and A. C. Scafuro (eds.), Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (Baltimore, 1994), 102–26 at 105. 26 R. Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989). M. Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past: Colonial Traditions and the Writing of History. The Case of Cyrene’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford, 2001), 116–37 at 137 makes a similar point about the diYculty of deWning ‘local traditions’ in relation to Herodotus’ practice of collecting up stories. As he points out, ‘the Cyrenaeans say’ does not imply an oYcial version, nor one shared by the whole community, since Herodotus does not distinguish between what he is told by individuals and what by the community—how the latter actually could impart a view is not clear. The same point that Herodotus presents logoi as belonging to whole communities rather than individuals within them is stressed by N. Luraghi, ‘Local Knowledge in Herodotus’ Histories’, in Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft, 138–60. 27 I. Malkin, ‘‘‘Tradition’’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, 2003), 153–70 at 156, notes that ‘the major historical outline becomes part of the collective memory, applicable to various genres of social and religious behaviour. Its frameworkelements are not Xexible and Xuid.’ See E. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Tradition’, in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 1–14 at 12, for the idea that ‘all invented traditions, so far as possible, use history as a legitimator of action and cement of group cohesion’. 28 Thomas, Oral Tradition, 200.

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and the claim to autochthony.29 It thus spanned both mythical and historical periods, and was, within that scope, highly selective in the episodes it treated, rendering ‘much of Athens’ history irrelevant’, concentrating on the legendary origins of Athens, and presenting ‘a fragmentary and timeless catalogue of achievements, despite the roughly chronological structure.’30 For Thomas, this fragmentary and timeless presentation of the past in the epitaphios, the ‘oYcial’ tradition, is not to be set in direct contrast with the historiographic version. As she says, the fragmented vision of the epitaphios was not wholly ahistorical; indeed, for some it may have oVered the prime opportunity to hear Athenian history set out in rough chronological order. Furthermore, she importantly raises the question over the relationship between the telescoped, selective past embodied in the epitaphios and that set out by the Atthidographers, which may have bought into the same range of polis ideals.31 Still further, she brings oratory more generally into the same frame as the local historians. Oratory naturally enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the ‘oYcial tradition’ of the demos, both inXuencing and being determined by it, as we have seen (in chapter 5), with the result that ‘the vision of Athenian history presented in oratory must express what orators and demos know’.32 But it also stood closely alongside the Atthides, and it is this relationship between local historiography and the ‘oYcial’ tradition, on which I should like to focus now. While Boedeker might be correct to insist upon a certain dissonance between the past which pleased the polis and that which the ‘great’ analytical historians such as Thucydides oVered, she fails to bring the local historians into the frame. This is a form of historiography which seems to Wt much more neatly, for obvious reasons, within the polis context, and naturally fulWls many of the same functions as oratory and works of art in both forming and playing to the self-image of the polis. It is important to acknowledge the methodological problems inherent in the attempt to characterize local historical works 29 The combination of the legendary past and the present political world was very visibly on display in the agora through the monument of the eponymous heroes, which provided a striking illustration of the foundation myth for the tribal system. See T. L. Shear, ‘The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes in the Athenian Agora’, Hesperia 39 (1970), 145–222 at 145: ‘In their persons, they linked historical present with immemorial past, the realities of government with the legends of remote antiquity. In their cults, they perpetuated that ancient marriage of ancestral religion and practical politics which formed so characteristic a feature of the Greek polis.’ 30 Thomas, Oral Tradition, 197 and 231. See also N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans. A. Sheridan (Cambridge, MA and London, 1986), 134, for the chronologically discontinuous nature of the epitaphios, by contrast with historiography, and in spite of the language of temporal succession which it adopts. 31 Thomas, Oral Tradition, 235–6. 32 Thomas, ibid. 202.

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as conforming to some of the patterns which we have just noted as being associated with ‘oYcial’ polis tradition. The most glaring weakness concerns the tension between the selective, discrete, unconnected highlights which characterize the past of this polis tradition and what Boedeker identiWes as the ‘development of a more abstract sense of history in early-Wfth-century Athens and elsewhere’,33 which manifested itself in the creation of continuous counting systems, such as victor lists, priestesses, and so on, thereby Wlling in Thomas’ Xoating gap in the hour-glass structure of collective memory. It is an inescapable problem of studying local historiography that its extremely fragmentary nature naturally tends to give the impression that these works were focused on selective highlights. In fact, in this respect, the supposition that local historiography, regardless of its connection or otherwise to chronicles and oYcial records, nevertheless followed an annalistic structure, might be seen rather to bring it closely into line with the continuous sense of time which has been seen as antithetical to the episodic way in which the polis tended to present its past in oratory, particularly the epitaphios, and art.

2. VALUING T HE PAST: PRO MOTI NG THE POLIS But if local historiography may have failed to adhere to certain aspects of the polis tradition and its version of the past, in other respects it was clearly aligned with, rather than hostile to and critical of, the dominant self-image of the city. The charge of patriotism, in the form of parochialism, which has been imputed to writers of local history, is to a degree belied by their sporadic use of broader frameworks, both temporal and otherwise. However, as I have already noted, the concentration of Olympiads, extensive synchronisms, and Panhellenic conceptual frames in the works of authors on or from Sicily is very striking and, just as this practice may say something about their aspirations to Hellenic identity, so too may its relative absence in the majority of local historiographical fragments, if not simply a function of their more exiguous state, say something about their lack of aspiration to play on the wider stage. It may equally say nothing more than that they already knew they were counted as Greek and had nothing further to prove on the subject, neither through the way in which they articulated their past nor in any other mode. However, whatever precise deWnition we wish to assign to ‘parochialism’ 33 Boedeker, ‘Presenting the Past in Fifth-Century Athens’, 198. Boedeker points, in particular, to Pherecydes’ genealogies (c.460s bc) which, while not a historiographical work, nevertheless helped to stabilize and promulgate ancestral catalogues, to systematize Athenian mythology (197).

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or ‘patriotism’, we can surely still join Schepens in observing that, ‘in a culture as agonistic as Greek society, it is evident that the author of a city history presented the best side of the polis, whether he was a citizen himself or a travelling professional historian, working on commission’.34 Furthermore, it is important to note that, where we do Wnd the history of individual poleis brought within a wider network, this can be seen as simultaneously a form of promotion for that polis on the Panhellenic stage and a playing to its own inward-looking concerns. Local histories which reach their antennae out into the world beyond may nevertheless be ‘for the polis’, since breadth of conceptual framework need imply nothing about breadth of audience.35 We have already alluded to the political and diplomatic capital that could be drawn from the appropriation of heroes. Both the huge number of city histories and their geographical and temporal dispersal ‘point to the individual polis as a fertile and omnipresent breeding ground holding a great attraction for historical writing’.36 The connection between historiography and the polis has been summarized even more forcefully by Orsi: ‘Per quel che riguarda le citta` greche, va detto che non esiste forse localita` per la quale non sia attestata l’esistenza di un’opera che ne descrivesse la storia.’37 The values of the past to the polis were clearly not conWned to diplomatic encounters, although these oVer some striking instances. The territorial conXict between Samos and Priene at the beginning of the second century bc was adjudicated by Rhodes on the basis of no fewer than seven city histories, submitted by each party.38 Having scrutinized passages of these concerning the history of 34 G. Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories: Self-DeWnition through History Writing’, in K. Demoen (ed.), The Greek City from Antiquity to the Present: Historical Reality, Ideological Construction, Literary Representation (Leuven, Paris, Sterling, Virginia, 2001), 3–25 at 23. 35 We are familiar with the notion in our own times that local historiography, say the history of a small village, routinely presents its subject in a more glorious light by highlighting its achievements in and connections to the outside world, as well as tying the key events in its own past to those of world history, such as the experiences of or honours won by its citizens during the world wars. But none of this ‘buying in’ to the world outside makes the story of interest to that world; rather, the primary audience will always be the inhabitants of the village. 36 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 10. 37 ‘As far as the Greek cities are concerned, it should be said that there is perhaps not one lacking evidence for the existence of a work describing its history’, D. P. Orsi, ‘La storiograWa locale’, in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, D. Lanza (eds.), Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica iii 1 (Rome, 1994), 149–79 at 162. 38 See O. Curty, ‘L’historiographie helleńistique et l’inscription no. 37 des Inschriften von Priene’, in M. Pie´rart and O. Curty (eds.), Historia testis Me´langes d’e´pigraphie, d’histoire ancienne et de philologie oVerts a` Tadeusz Zawadzki (Fribourg, 1989), 21–35. See also OGIS 13 for further evidence of this dispute, a letter from King Lysimachus, to whom the issue was brought in 283/2 bc. Here too Priene used ‘histories and other testimonials and documents’ that the land belonged to them. See R. S. Bagnall and P. Derow (eds.), The Hellenistic Period: Historical Sources in Translation (Oxford, 2003; new edition), 26–7, for discussion of the inscription from Priene.


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the territory (ll. 118–19: ŁøæF f ªæłÆ Æ . . . c ØÆæØ A æÆ), and checked the evidence, the jurors voted in favour of Priene. We shall see more examples of the use of the past in order to promote the claims of the polis within the context of diplomacy, when considering the Wgure of the historian as inter-polis negotiator. Even when not deployed in disputational contexts, city histories provided for their respective poleis a heightened sense of identity by recollecting the shared past and particularly by recounting myths of origin. As Zeitlin eloquently states, myths of origin ‘authorize a version of cultural history that justiWes retrospectively the identity of a given society, and, more importantly, expresses what its members want or imagine themselves to be’.39 We shall consider shortly the value that diVerent poleis derived, in an ever more competitive environment, from claiming either autochthony or migration as their point of departure. But sometimes it might be enough simply to have something distinctive to characterize one’s polis. Ephorus, in his local history of his own hometown, Cyme, relates that the Athenians took pride in maritime power, the Thessalians in equestrian skill, the Boeotians in the care they took over their physical condition, the Cyrenaeans in skill at racing, and the Cymaeans in their well organized laws.40 And, of course, it is worth remembering that the malleable past could be used not only in inter-polis contexts, but also in intra-polis disagreements and rivalries. Jacoby, in particular, notes the way in which Atthidography, as ‘the local history of an important city with political aspirations, was political by its very nature, arising as a weapon in party strife’.41 The idea that the past could be appropriated, moulded, and used by diVerent interest groups within a polis, competing for the assent of the citizens to a particular reading, was of course notably illustrated in the late Wfth century in the constantly shifting claims made to the patrios politeia, the ‘ancestral constitution’.42 Finley observed that the appropriation of a particular version of the patrios politeia was a way of strengthening the unity of the group: ‘in a variety of groups, bonds within the group are reinforced by a sense of continuity that comes from a shared knowledge (or pretended knowledge) of key Wgures and incidents in its past. And so too with the political unit.’43 39 F. Zeitlin, ‘Foreword’ in N. Loraux, The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes, trans. C. Levine (Princeton, 1993), p. xii. 40 FGrH 70 f 97. 41 F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949), 79. 42 See M. I. Finley, ‘The Ancestral Constitution’, in The Use and Abuse of History (London, 1975), 34–59, for the way in which appeals to the ancestral constitution were made throughout history, but particularly at times of crisis when the past might provide guidance or legitimacy. The claims to a shared ancestry are implicitly transferred to whole sub-communities or interest groups to replace or supplement the cult of ancestors which belonged to individual families (48). 43 Finley, ibid. 49.

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But, unlike Jacoby, Finley saw the Atthidographers as extremely slow to engage in such competition over ownership of the past, with Hellanicus’ Atthis remaining unchallenged for Wfty years. Harding too has challenged Jacoby’s view that the Atthides were used as weapons in the political strife of the mid-fourth century, noting that the theory rests on the evidence of only two Atthidographers—Cleidemus and Androtion, neither of whom can be shown to be ideologically motivated, and that the outburst of Atthidography at this time is better explained by rivalry than by political strife.44 Harding valuably draws attention to the fact that the political angle was only one of many strands of interest in the Atthis as a form of local history; it was not a description of a politeia. It seems that Jacoby’s proposition confuses the intention and the reception of these works—Atthides which could be used in order to assist in the propagation of particular political views, need not be designed with that purpose in mind. Furthermore, Jacoby’s extremely helpful, indeed fundamental, notion that local history demanded an explanation and an aetiology that placed it at the heart of the functioning polis, rather than in the world of priestly records, does not entail that it be reduced to the level of a political pamphlet. But the value of the malleable past to the polis at large was undeniable. Higbie has taken as a test case Athens’ attempt to win Salamis from Megara in the sixth century through appeal to a Xexibly constructed history. As she concludes: ‘Greeks of the Wfth century and later accepted, as they applied the power of literacy to their investigation of the past, that the recovery of precise details of events, Wgures, and chronology of the distant past was impossible, so diVerent cities retained diVerent reconstructions of the past and argued for their validity.’45 So, while the local historians of Megara promoted their local claims,46 Athens Wnally won the struggle through Solon’s policy of ‘submitting the question to arbitration and arguing the case persuasively on the grounds of Athenian history, burial customs, and genealogy, or by using military force, backed by an oracle from Delphi’.47 The former method, that is persuasion through manipulation of the past, is suggested by Plutarch’s Life of Solon, in which the protagonist secures Athens’ claims by inventing Homeric lines at his convenience, asserting etymological and genealogical links, and claiming shared burial customs, besides appropriating the support of Delphi. 44 See P. Harding, ‘Atthis and Politeia’, Historia 26 (1977), 148–60 at 149, 158, and 151. 45 C. Higbie, ‘The Bones of a Hero, The Ashes of a Politician: Athens, Salamis, and the Usable Past’, Classical Antiquity 16 (1997), 279–308 at 306. 46 On these, see D. W. Prakken, ‘On the date of Hereas, the Megarian Historian’, Classical Weekly 37 (1943–4), 1–2, and the claim that ‘Hereas was undoubtedly the historical voice of Megara at the end of the fourth century and carried on the literary and historical polemic of Megara against Athens’. (2). 47 Higbie, ‘The Bones of a Hero’, 281.


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As Higbie rightly notes, there was nothing exceptional about this struggle between Athens and Megara being formulated in terms of claims based on mythical ancestry and the appropriation of heroes. The mysterious Attic genos of the Salaminii, attested only in epigraphic evidence, certainly provided a useful link between Athens and the island, but it is possible that it also stepped up its activities at the time of the struggle for Salamis. The responsibilities of the Salaminii, as reXected in an early-to-mid fourth-century inscription, are a mixture of duties to the genos and its own heroes and gods, and of duties to the city of Athens, notably the Oschophoria, which was one of the major festivals in the Attic calendar. Thus the current behaviour of the polis was both bolstered by and reciprocally supportive of the cult activity, which was predicated on and reXective of a particular claim to ancestral kinship. Higbie sees the gaps in mythical geography as the perfect opportunity for poleis to make their own claims to wandering heroes according to present need, and to interpret and present the past and its genealogical networks in whatever way would be most advantageous. It is, indeed, in this context that she adduces the eponymous heroes of Attica, whose monumental commemoration in the Athenian agora we have already noted.48 But Athens did have a distinctive foundation myth, not linked to the wanderings of heroes, but to a more self-contained claim of autochthony,49 disconnected from the wider Panhellenic framework. We have already seen with the Attic orators how the self-image of this particular polis and its construction of the past made this isolating myth into a strong element of its claim to uniqueness and superiority, rather than emphasizing its integral place in the world of interconnected heroes. The myth of Attic autochthony has been discussed fully by others,50 but it is worth noting here, in the context of examining the stake that the polis held in the construction of its history, and the mileage that it could thereby gain, that Athens seems to have chosen such a diVerent route.51 Perhaps its former glory meant that, at the time when small states were insistently claiming their place in the larger narrative of

48 Higbie, ibid. 296. 49 As N. Loraux, ‘Autochthony: An Athenian Topic’, in The Children of Athena, 37–71 at 37, notes, the Athenian claim to autochthony was in fact twofold, since it included both direct autochthony and the derived autochthony claimed from Erichthonius, whose birth from the earth on the Acropolis was celebrated on pots. 50 See, for example, V. J. Rosivach, ‘Autochthony and the Athenians’, Classical Quarterly 37 (1987), 294–306, and N. Loraux, ‘Autochthony and the Athenian imaginary’ and ‘Autochthony: An Athenian Topic’, in The Children of Athena, 3–22 and 37–71. 51 One explanation might lie in the problem of having a virgin goddess as one’s tutelary deity. In this case, it would not be possible to express the city’s legitimation through a straightforward tale of divine progeny.

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Mediterranean history, alongside the pride they expressed in more local (and locally formulated) traditions, Athens resisted this imperative.52 I have, however, argued (in chapter 4) that Athenian historiography is in certain respects remarkably similar to that of other poleis and, in fact, on this very point it cuts a striking contrast with the vision of the Athenian past drawn by the orators and the epitaphios. Other than Antiochus-Pherecydes’ Autochthonous Histories,53 which seem to have told an account of Athenian autochthony, we have only a Spartan claim to the autochthonous hero, Lelex, in the extant fragments of city histories.54 It is worth keeping in mind the possibility that the dominance of excerptors such as Stephanus of Byzantium, with their interest in place names, explains this dominance in the fragments, even of Atthides, of stories which relate to the wider world over those which stress isolation. The pattern is nevertheless striking. Furthermore, Gotteland has analysed the use made by Athenian sources of myths of origin for other poleis, with interesting results.55 She notes the way in which autochthony and migration could both be deployed as myths of origin to good eVect, depending on context. When Athens was deWning itself against other poleis it tended to do so by focusing on its unique status as an autochthonous polis, and presenting a uniform myth of migration and consequent lack of homogeneity to characterize all the other poleis.56 There were, however, also contexts and audiences for whom the myths of origin of other cities could be used beneWcially to connect Athens into the wider Panhellenic world and legitimize its expansion. When other cities were treated in their own right, rather than as foils to Athens, the melange became a positive feature, especially in Athenian colonies: ‘C’est justement pour leurs origines immigreés que ces nouvelles cite´s sont ce´le´breés.’57 The positive slant that could be brought to myths of migration does not, of course, amount to the claim that Athens itself wished to appropriate such a myth in preference to its own particular story. But the suggestion that it was prepared to use the 52 And see Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 22, for the idea that local historiography was particularly crucial in states which did not have a continuous history, but a more patchy set of origins in diVerent phases and starting from diVerent locations, which needed to be embedded in other narratives. For the dominance of such local stories of the life cycle of cities in Strabo’s Geography, see Clarke, Between Geography and History, 250. 53 For which, see FGrH 333 t 1. 54 FGrH 596 f 9. 55 See S. Gotteland, ‘L’Origine des cite´s grecques dans les discours atheńiens’, in V. Fromentin and S. Gotteland (eds.), Origines Gentium (Bordeaux, 2001), 79–93. 56 Gotteland, ibid. 80. The lack of homogeneity had further consequences which set Athens apart—its claim to equality among all citizens was clearly related to the myth of shared and identical origin, while, according to Plato, Menexenus 238e: ‘other cities are made up of men who are from all over the place and unequal’ (83). 57 Gotteland, ibid. 86: ‘It is precisely for their immigrant origins that these new cities are famous.’


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migration myths of other poleis as part of its portfolio is very much in line with the picture which the historiographical fragments present, of an Athens which was not only concerned with its own story but also with its place in the Panhellenic world. The ‘political’ value of local historiography, not in terms of the appropriation of the past by diVerent competing groups within the city, as Jacoby suggested, but in the sense of its use in creating an identity for the polis as a whole, can be amply demonstrated in epigraphy. When Apollonia on the Rhyndakos sent an embassy in the second century bc to Miletus concerning the renewal of the kinship which existed between their demos and Miletus, the natural response on the part of the Milesians was to examine the relevant histories (KØŒłØ a æd ø ƒ æÆ) which revealed that the claim to metropolis-colony relations was genuine.58 The whole episode was publicly inscribed for the polis to see. Sometimes, history itself formed the subject of the inscription. Magnesia on the Maeander, for example, went to enormous lengths to display its dossier of documents which stressed the status of the place through reference to the past.59 As BoVo points out, in her fundamental article on local historiography in the epigraphy of Greek cities, its claims, like that of Apollonia, were based on syngeneia or oikeiotes, relying on the historical or mythical past, as when Magnesia helped the Panhellenic sanctuary of Delphi against the Gauls in 279/8 bc.60 The decree for Callias of Sphettus (270/69 bc) was set up in the Athenian agora to immortalize a particular historical episode of importance to the polis, namely the Athenian revolt against Demetrius Poliorcetes in 287/6 bc, a piece of civic history seen through one man’s life.61 But, as BoVo points out, ‘historical epigraphy’ was clearly not the sole preserve of the ‘big cities’, but is also attested for much smaller poleis, such as Aigiale on the island of Amorgos, which set up an inscription in the late third century bc to honour Hegesippus and Antipappus for their help against the pirates.62 The marble chronicle from Pergamum oVers further evidence that local history might Wnd its way into the public epigraphic record of the town.63 It presents a potted and 58 See Milet 6 (1) 155 (cf. McCabe, Miletos 27.9–10). 59 See Syll.3 560, a decree of the boule and demos of Epidamnus in response to the request of the Magnesians for recognition of the festival of Artemis Leukophryene. 60 L. BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta` greche: un espressione di storiograWa locale’, in E. Gabba (ed.), Studi di storia e storiograWa antiche (Como, 1988), 9–48 at 28. 61 T. L. Shear, ‘Kallias von Sphettos and the Revolt of Athens in 286 b.c.’, Hesperia Supplement 17 (Princeton, NJ, 1978) (with Bulle´tin e´pigraphique 94 (1981)), 230. 62 BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta` greche’, 15, discussing IG 12 (7) 386 (Syll.3 521). See A. Bielman, Retour a` la liberte´: Libe´ration et sauvetage des prisonniers en Gre`ce ancienne. Recueil d’inscriptions honorant des sauveteurs et analyse critique (Lausanne, 1994), 141–4. 63 OGIS 264 (FGrH 506 f 1). See ch. 4 p. 209 for discussion of the use of dating by local magistracies in this inscription.

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fragmentary city history, telling of the way in which Orontes, son of Artasurus, a Bactrian by descent, revolted from Artaxerxes, king of Persia [362/1?], ruled over the Pergamenes, and moved them back to their old city. Orontes then handed the city over to Artaxerxes before dying. The story continues with an episode concerning Euippus and Dascylus, Paphlagonians by race . . . and after that (ŒÆd ½ a ÆF ½Æ) progresses to Eumenes, who shared power in life with his brother Attalus, and left it when he died to his son, also called Attalus. This public display of history in the epigraphy of the polis oVers yet another manifestation of the general historical awareness alluded to by Isocrates when he referred to the ‘deeds carried out in the past and handed down as shared possessions for us all’.64 It was this general awareness of the past which dictated the parameters for those who would ‘create’ history for the citizens, whether they were orators, artists, or historians. BoVo has furthermore claimed that ‘linguaggio letterario e linguaggio epigraWco erano identiWcabili’, wishing to stress the close relationship between history told by historians and history told in inscriptions.65 It is interesting that the list, which she draws from Robert, of historians whose works are echoed in epigraphic narratives are the ‘great’ historians of Panhellenic narrative—Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon—whereas the link that she proceeds to make for these epigraphic narratives is actually with local historiography. She considers that their public nature is evidence for the importance of city deWnition, and that the epigraphic narratives, just as those of local historiography, manifest an awareness of the relationship between local and Panhellenic events in an attempt to link the individual, the polis, and the wider Greek world.66 BoVo’s mention here of the individual is of some interest. We shall return in this chapter to the commemoration of a particular kind of individual, who might be publicly celebrated in the epigraphy of the polis, namely the local historian himself; but the propensity of inscriptions to tell the story of individual citizens oVers a neat link between private memory and collective memory, the prosperity of the polis deriving from the benefactions of its citizens, the creation of an ‘oYcial’ civic history, publicly celebrated but based on the achievements of individuals and their families in the service of the polis.67 64 Panegyricus 9. 65 BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta` greche’, 21: ‘literary language and epigraphic language were the same’. 66 BoVo, ibid. We could observe in addition the similar patterning of commemoration in epigraphy and in the extant fragments of local historiography, namely the focus on particular highlights in the lives of individuals. 67 BoVo, ibid. 24. Thomas, Oral Tradition, discusses a similar, but perhaps more extreme, phenomenon in her chapter on ‘The Nobility of the Demos’, where she notes the subordination of individual aristocratic ancestries and achievements to the ‘noble’ democratic polis. As she says (220), there was no need for individual ancestries since each success was simply another manifestation of Athenian areteˆ.


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One community which intertwined culture and politics in using its past to bolster its prestige and status within the wider Greek world was Lindos on the island of Rhodes. We have already noted (in chapter 4) the way in which socalled Lindian temple chronicle uses local oYcials, in this case priests, to structure the island’s heroic past, but here it is relevant also to view it as the product of a particular community, which had a real stake in its construction and publication. The date of the inscription (99 bc) places it somewhat later than much of the evidence which I have been considering,68 but the motivation of the polis to assert itself and its role in the wider world by publicly claiming the prestige and heritage of its famous sanctuary from the mythic period onwards is clearly recognizable.69 As Dillery comments, ‘as a brand of historiography, it [sc. the chronicle] puts Lindos and its cult at the center of the oikoumene’.70 The document takes the form of a list of votives to the goddess and epiphanies of that goddess,71 a form of reconstructed history for the sanctuary, ostensibly decreed to recapture and reassert some of the glory accruing to the place through time, but whose record had been diminished precisely through the passage of that time. ‘Since the temple of Lindian Athene, being most ancient (IæÆØ Æ ) and most honoured, has been decorated with many beautiful dedications from the most ancient times (½KŒ ÆºÆØ ø æ ø) because of the epiphany of the goddess, but most of the dedications with their inscriptions have been destroyed by time (Øa e æ KŁæŁÆØ), they decided to replace . . . using letters and public records and other evidence relating to the dedications and the epiphanies of the goddess.’72 BoVo is in no doubt that the intended eVect was motivated by 68 See C. Higbie, ‘Homeric Athena in the Chronicle of Lindos’, in S. Deacy and A. Willing (eds.), Athena in the Classical World (Leiden, 2001), 105–125 at 107, for the Wxing of the date by the list of priests of Athene. 69 The importance of the temple of Athene as the prime location for the polis to showcase itself to visitors is brought out by another inscription, IG 12 (1) 761.45–7: ŁØ K e ƒæe A %ŁÆ½; ‹ø AØ E KØªØØ Ææe qØ; ‹ Ø ¸ØØ H IªÆŁH IæH Æ ØF ÆØ K e –Æ Æ æ (‘place it in the sanctuary of Athena, so that it may be visible to all who come after, that the Lindians preserve the memory of the noble men for all time to come’). 70 J. Dillery, ‘Greek Sacred History’, American Journal of Philology 126 (2005), 505–26 at 519. 71 For the text, see Blinkenberg, Lindos 2 (cf. FGrH 532; Syll:3 725). The combination of epiphanies with oVerings to the goddess may seem exceptional, but a partial parallel can be found in the honoriWc inscription for the local historian, Syriscus of Chersonesus, SGDI 3086 (FGrH 807 t 1), who wrote of the epiphanies and benefactions of the goddess to his local communities—this time not a reciprocal arrangement, but two types of gift from a divinity to humans. 72 Blinkenberg, Lindos 2 ll. 2–8. The problem of reconstruction must have been acute, since the temple was destroyed by Wre in the late fourth century and the whole Acropolis rebuilt in the Hellenistic period. But the loss of the early votives which proved the antiquity and prestige of the sanctuary clearly needed some kind of substitution as the community claimed its place on the rapidly changing Mediterranean stage.

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patriotism: ‘Nel pubblico recupero delle memorie le ragioni della politica— volte alla riaVermazione dell’importanza del centro di culto lindio nel mondo greco-romano—convenivano cogli interessi degli studiosi locali: l’ideale ultimo era pur sempre la maggior gloria patria.’73 The inscription has already been extensively analysed by Higbie, but it is still worth noting some of the ways in which it illustrates the value to the community of constructing (or creating, in Higbie’s terminology) the past in particular ways to which all can adhere.74 The catalogue of votives oVers a striking framework through which not only to cement the goodwill of the patron deity to the polis through a reminder of past gifts, but also to construct a past for the polis which is distinguished, heroic, and reveals far-reaching connections with the Panhellenic world. This ‘city history’, then, is expressed through the gifts brought predominantly by the outside world in honour of its patron goddess, and temporally articulated by the donors and their place in time past.75 As in so many city histories, the sequence starts with the eponymous hero of the place, Lindos himself, before launching into a roll call of famous names, both local ones and those of wider appeal. There is an exceptionally high level of source citation, ranging from local historians to priestly letters, and illustrating what Higbie describes as the unusually strong ‘document-mindedness’ of the chronicle.76 It may, of course, have been conventional to authenticate one’s claims when the past, and its visible remains, were such hotly contested commodities,77 and yet even a single entry gives a Xavour of the extreme degree of citation:78 73 ‘Public memorialization united political motives, which were intended to reaYrm the importance of the centre of Lindian cult in the Greco-Roman world, with the interests of local scholars: the goal was always the greater glory of the homeland.’ BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta` greche’, 40–1. As she points out at 27, the Wre had destroyed the material evidence of Athene’s pronoia, which needed to be re-established. 74 C. Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle and the Greek Creation of their Past (Oxford, 2003). 75 A neat parallel is oVered by the temple of Apollo at Sicyon, which was adorned with the weapons of Agamemnon, Teucer, and other heroes, and the oars used by the Argonauts; in another account, the spear with which Meleager slew the boar and the pipes of Marsyas are mentioned (FGrH 551 f 3a and b). All the dedications were, in this case also, conveniently destroyed when the temple burned down, rendering veriWcation impossible. 76 Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 188. 77 See ch. 4 for the competitive appropriation by diVerent poleis of heroes. Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 193, comments on the high premium placed on Trojan relics—both the Argive Heraion and the temple of Apollo at Didyma claimed Euphorbus’ shield from Menelaus—although none of the Lindian dedications seem to have been claimed elsewhere. For the relic mentality we need look no further than the history of the early Christian church. The remains of the third-century martyr, Polycarp, were venerated (Martyrdom of Polycarp 18.2); and Acts of the Apostles 19.11–12 claims that Paul’s handkerchiefs were imbued with God’s healing power. 78 Blinkenberg, Lindos 2, Col. B, lines 18–22. Or see the following entry, Col. B, lines 23–36, where the two wicker shields dedicated by Heracles are attested both by epigraphic evidence and by a whole panoply of authors: Xenagoras in Book 1 of the Chronica syntaxis; Gorgon in Book 1 of On Rhodes; Nicasylus in Book 3 of Chronica syntaxis, Hegesias in Encomium of Rhodes,


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!ø Iæªæ æØ; K y KªªæÆ · !ø ` ŁÆØ —ºØØ ŒÆd ˜Ød —ºØE; u Æ Ø ˛Æª æÆ K AØ Æ A æØŒA ı Ø ˆ æªø K AØ Æ A æd . ı; ˆæªŁ K AØ KØ ºAØ; (æ ıº K AØ KØ ºAØ. Minos: a silver drinking cup, on which was written: ‘Minos to Athena Polias and Zeus Polieus’, as Xenagoras writes in the Wrst book of his Chronographical Work and Gorgon in the Wrst book of his On Rhodes and Gorgosthenes in his letter and Hierobulus in his letter.

Although the list of donors is given in predominantly chronological order, forming a seamless sequence from the mythical to the historical periods, our investigation into the value of a constructed past, displayed in a public place to the polis, is perhaps better appreciated by considering the donors according to type. Among the mythical donors, some are clearly of local importance,79 while others, such as Heracles (two wicker shields), Cadmus (a bronze cauldron inscribed with Phoenician letters), Minos (a silver drinking cup),80 and Wgures from the Trojan War,81 bring the world of Lindian Athene into the Panhellenic network. Similarly, the historical donors include a range of local Wgures—some oVering spoils from campaigns,82 others who had acted as colonists and built up connections for Lindos in the wider world,83 and a whole range of Wgures of stature from the Panhellenic context and beyond.84 The connections of Lindos extended as far as Egypt, with the dedication of a breastplate by Amasis,85 many gifts from Artaphernes, the Aeelurus in On War against the Exagiades, Phaennus in About Lindos, Gorgosthenes and Hierobulus in their letters. Complexity is indicated by the explicit mention of conXicting accounts, as over Menelaus’ dedication—a helmet, but also a dagger according to Theotimus in Book 1 of Against Aeelurus. 79 See, for example, the Telchines and the eponymous hero, Lindos. 80 His connections around the Mediterranean were legendary—see Thucydides 1.4 for Minos as the Wrst thalassocrat. 81 Included are the oVerings from Tlapolemus and independently from his army (who gave nine each of shields, spears, helmets, pairs of greaves), Telephus, Rhesus, Menelaus, Helen, Canopus (the helmsman of Menelaus), Teucer, and Meriones, for whom the inscription is cited ‘spoils of those from Troy’: IŒæŁØÆ H KŒ æ½Æ. 82 For example, those who sailed with the Lindian tyrant Cleobulus against Lycia dedicated their spoils, as did the Lindians who dedicated a tithe of the spoils from Crete, and a thankoVering for victory; the demos itself oVered many gifts from Artaxerxes, king of Persia, and a shield in anticipation of victory in the current war against Ptolemy Philadelphus. 83 For example, the Lindians who with the children of Pancis founded Cyrene with Battus or Deinomenes, father of Gelon, Hieron, Thrasybulus, and Polyzalus, who were originally Lindians, but joined in synoecizing Gela with Antiphamus. 84 The people of Phaselis led by their founder Lacius, the people of Gela, visitors from Sybaris, Phalaris of Acragas, and separately his people, all made dedications. 85 The dedication is veriWed by a range of sources, including Herodotus and an inscription stating that ‘the king of Egypt renowned far and wide, Amasis, made a ceremonial presentation’

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general of Darius I, a phiale from the people of Soli, even a thank-oVering from Alexander for the defeat of Darius III.86 And the reXection of Lindian success in the wider world through diplomatic, military, or commercial channels continues with dedications from king Ptolemy, king Pyrrhus,87 Hieron, and Philip V. As Higbie notes, the dedications suggest ‘a Panhellenic nature to the sanctuary of this era and claim[ing] an importance in the world of politics and commerce’.88 The way in which the polis of Lindos is built into broader frameworks through the inscribed record of the dedications made at its sanctuary, a record which was recreated afresh at the turn of the second and Wrst centuries bc, is interestingly devoid of any mention of Roman visitors and donors. Of course, the incomplete nature of the document may be enough to account for this omission. Higbie’s suggestion that this represents an early foreshadowing of ‘Second Sophistic’ mentality—‘If the past was important to the Greek imagination as a time of freedom and power, then the presence of Romans in the list of votives would simply emphasize what the Lindians felt had been lost or curtailed’—is rightly tentative.89 She does, however, seem at times in danger of assuming the correctness of this depiction, positing that the stele was erected to direct attention at a carefully focused version of the past in order to deXect the gaze from the present.90 I shall discuss later the context of Roman expansionism, within which many of the local histories of Greek poleis were composed. Furthermore, Higbie’s concluding focus on the document as being of interest to visitors, antiquarians, and intellectuals seems to me to play down unduly its value to the Lindians themselves in terms of propagating a particular identity through the presentation of the past. We need to consider (`Nª ı ÆØº½f ºŒºı þÆ @ÆØ), accompanied by a version in hieratic script. Higbie posits a tentative link with Cleobulus, the tyrant of Lindos. The fact that the dedication by Amasis is of a corselet with 360 threads, representing the days of the pre-intercalary year, epitomizes Egyptian supremacy in the calibration of time. 86 The source for this dedication is, unusually, the public records of the Lindians ( ½d ¸Ø½ø æÆ Ø). 87 The dedication of king Pyrrhus is described as being made in accordance with an oracle at Dodona, providing yet another means of building Lindos into a broader context, this time through the network of major sanctuaries. 88 Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 186. M. Heltzer, ‘The Persepolis Documents, the Lindos Chronicle and the Book of Judith’, La Parola del Passato 44 (1989), 81–101, further stresses the interconnected world revealed by the Lindos chronicle. He notes close parallels between this document, the Persepolis inscriptions, the Book of Judith (in the epiphany about the drought), and concludes that there were both diplomatic and literary contacts between Greeks, Persians, and Jews at the time of the Xourishing of the sanctuary. 89 Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 168 and 204. 90 Higbie, ibid. 242.


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again for what constituency such local history was designed. Clearly, the polis had a good deal to gain from a record of its past which was populated by not only local but also Panhellenic dignitaries making dedications to its patron goddess. But it is true that it could derive maximum beneWt only if the audience for the record included visitors from outside. The stress on documentation and proof suggests that this was a demanding audience who would not accept unsubstantiated claims. We shall again encounter this world of scholarly research and heavily documented claims in the creation of the past when we consider the honoriWc inscriptions set up by poleis to itinerant historians. With all the visible proof of the sanctuary’s distinguished past destroyed by Wre, the evidence of literary sources and inscriptions would be vital. At the same time, the Xourishing of the Greek East, and not least Rhodes itself, as a centre for scholarship in the Hellenistic period provided the necessary fuel. In particular, as Higbie discusses, the scholarly veriWcation of epic works, and the patchy nature of the heroic adventures of their protagonists, seems to have oVered a perfect opportunity to those who would put their own town ‘on the map’. It must surely be right that ‘opportunities for antiquarians and local historians were provided by the narrative patterns, gaps, and contradictory versions of the epic stories’,91 although similar parameters of credibility presumably applied no less to the composers of the Lindian chronicle than to the fourth-century orators. Again in Higbie’s words, ‘This scholarly tradition of interest in the past coexisted and developed along with the desire of communities to preserve their history: sometimes the two traditions complemented each other and at other times researchers pointed out the lack of evidence or even the foolishness of certain cherished beliefs which a community held about its past.’92 A far more complicated example of the public display of the past is oVered by the Parian Marble, in particular in terms of its audience and geographical scope. We have already observed various aspects of this inscription and its presentation of the past: its strongly linear framework, which is structured and calibrated by the progression of Athenian kings and archons, and which notes as an entry in its own right the transition from regal to magisterial time;93 its use of Parian as well as Athenian time, at least in its framing of the whole scope of its remit; its focus on intellectual history and the history of 91 Higbie, ibid. 210. Strabo 1.2.31–5 notes that the journey taken by Menelaus was hotly debated from the second century bc onwards. As Higbie says (217): ‘If Menelaos’ itinerary attracted this amount of scholarly attention, it is no surprise to discover antiquarians making use of the ambiguities and holes in the epics to develop versions which were suitable to their towns and sanctuaries.’ 92 Higbie, ibid. 259. 93 FGrH 239 f 32.

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invention, which so strongly echoes the preoccupations of many local historians. It is with this last point that we shall start. The Parian Marble oVers the most stunning demonstration of how the inscribed past, measured out primarily in terms of political power—Wrst kings and then archons—could be heavily punctuated also by the history of invention and that of intellectual or literary prowess. The prevalence of this phenomenon throughout the inscription can best be conveyed by summarizing all the instances: The Oxford fragment f 9: The Wrst penteconter sails from Egypt to Greece. f 10: The Wrst Panathenaea; Erichthonius invents chariot racing; Hyagnis the Phrygian invents the Phrygian Xute and Wrst plays the music called ‘Phrygian’. f 11: Iron is discovered in Ida, by Celmis [and Damnameneus] of the Idaean Dactyls. f 12: Demeter, coming to Athens, [invents] the seed corn, and the [Wrst festival of ploughing time is celebrated, under the instruction of T]riptolemus, son of Celeus and Neaira. f 15: Eumolpus institutes the mysteries in Eleusis and makes known the works of the [father of M]usaeus. f 20: Theseus synoecizes Athens and institutes government and democracy; establishes Isthmian games. f 22: Establishment of Nemean games by Argives. f 28: Appearance of Hesiod. f 29: Appearance of Homer. f 30: Invention of weights and measures, and silver coinage in Aegina by Pheidon of Argos. f 34: Innovations by Terpander the Lesbian, son of Derdenes, in conventions of [lyre playing]. f 36: Sappho sails from Mytilene to Sicily. f 37: Gymnastic contest set up with money prize from spoils after Am[phict]yons defeat Cyrrha. f 38: Contest [for the wr]eath established [at Delphi] again. f 39: In Ath[en]s [chorus of] comic [actors] instituted, which the Icarians [Wrst set up] and Susarion invented, and a prize was Wrst set of a basket of Wgs and a measure of wine. f 42: Hipponax the iambic poet [lived] about this time. f 43: Thespis the poet, who brought out a play in the city, was Wrst to [speak in dialogue], and [the prize] of a goat was established. f 46: Choruses of men Wrst compete, which contest Hypo[di]cus the Chalcidian won as trainer. f 47: Me[lan]ippid[es] of M[elos won] at Athens. f 48: Athenians Wght at Marathon against Persians . . . Aeschylus the poet Wghts in this battle, aged 35.


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f 49: Simonides the grandfather of Simonides the poet, himself a poet too, takes prize at Athens. f 50: Aeschylus the poet Wrst wins with a tragedy, and Euripides the poet born, and Stesichorus the poet [arrives] in Greece. f 54: Simonides of Cos, son of Leoprepes, and who invented a system of mnemonics, trains actors and wins a prize at Athens. f 55: Epicharmus the poet was about this time. f 56: Sophocles of Colonus, son of Sophilus, wins with a tragedy at the age of 28. f 57: Simonides the poet dies at the age of 90. f 59: Aeschylus the poet, having lived for 69 years, dies in [Gel]a in Sicily. f 60: Euripides Wrst wins with a tragedy at the age of 44. Socrates and Anaxagoras live about the time of Euripides. f 63: Euripides dies [having lived for 7- years]. f 64: Sophocles the poet dies, having lived 92 years. f 65: Telestes of Selinus wins at Athens. f 66: Socrates the philosopher dies at 70 years of age. f 67: Ar[i]sto[nous_____ wins] at Athens. f 68: Polyidus of Selymbria wins with a dithyramb at Athens, 1[__] years. f 69: Philoxenus the dithyrambist dies, aged 55. f 70: Anaxandrides the comic [playwright wins at Athens. f 71: Astydamas wins at Athens. f 73: Stesichorus the second, of Himera, wins at Athens. The Paros fragment f 6: From when Callippus demonstrates astrology. f 7: Philemon the comic dramatist wins. f 11: Aristotle the sophist aged 50. f 14: Menander the comic dramatist Wrst wins the prize at Athens then. f 15: Sosiphanes poet dies [aged] 45, 49 years, when Theophrastus was archon at Athens. f 22: Sosiphanes the poet is [born and _____ ]

It is worth noting Wrst of all the part played by political and religious institutions in patterning the past of the polis. The moments at which certain forms of government, oYces, and festivals became part of the way in which the city conducted itself provide markers in its history and development. Theseus’ synoecism of Athens and his establishment of government and democracy are noted;94 the entry (f 30) which spans the so-called ‘lost fragment’ and the Oxford fragment concerns the introduction of public measures and weights by Pheidon of Argos and his minting of silver coinage 94 f 20: a ŒÆ ºØ N e ÆP e ıØŒØ ŒÆd ºØ Æ ŒÆd c ŒæÆ Æ Ææø½Œ. The sense in which Theseus was a myth-historical prototype for the political reforms of Solon may have been quite deeply embedded in the Athenian self-perception. The attribution of measures to Theseus as given here in the Parian marble text matches that in Plutarch 24.1 and the assumed lost beginning of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia.

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in Aegina; Demetrius of Phaleron’s legislative programme in Athens in 317/6 bc was clearly not an innovation for the city—there had been Athenian nomothetai before—but it was nevertheless suYciently radical and extensive to be considered formative (Paros f 13).95 Besides these more overtly political institutions and developments, the establishment of festivals and religious institutions was still more prominent. Here, of course, there is a further layer of signiWcance, since the religious festival calendar would prove so crucial in patterning annual time both for individual poleis, and for the whole of the Greek world in the case of Olympiads.96 But the longer sweep of history could itself be structured by the institution of those very festivals. It is perhaps no coincidence that Theseus, whose political measures were noted above, appears in the same fragment in his role as the institutor of the Isthmian games. Some of these moments of discovery concern Athens directly—Erichthonius’ invention of chariot racing took place on the occasion of the Wrst Panathenaea and, just as signiWcantly for the identity of the emergent polis, at the time when he gave the Athenians their name.97 Athens was also the cradle for the invention of seed corn by Demeter, and again this was tied in to the Wrst celebration of a festival that would become part of the temporal structuring of the city.98 But some institutions mentioned in the inscription were either altogether external to Athens or at least held a far wider signiWcance than for that polis alone. Eumolpus’ institution of the mysteries at Eleusis (f 15) or the rather vague reference to when ‘the puriWcation (ŒÆŁÆæ ) Wrst happened’ (f 16) are events which stretched only marginally beyond Athens. But the establishment of the gymnastic contest at Delphi with prize money taken from the spoils of the defeat of Cyrrha (f 37) and the founding of the Nemean games by the Argives after their march against Thebes with Adrastus (f 22) oVer strong examples. The relationship between Athens as reXected in this document, its past (including its innovations), its institutions, its festivals, and those elsewhere is of clear interest in terms of audience and universal or local relevance. Higbie draws a clear distinction between the Lindian chronicle, which records the past of a particular sanctuary in a way which enhances the prestige of a particular polis, and the Parian Marble, which is not devoted to the past of a single place, but oVers a compilation of past events across the Greek world, arranged chronologically.99 Chaniotis classiWed the marble as a form of 95 Demetrius had been made absolute governor at Athens for ten years by Cassander. His reforms included limiting military and other service, anti-luxury measures, tightening up on contracts and property regulations, and the establishment of nomophylakes. 96 Note also the celebration of another Panhellenic sanctuary site and its festival in f 38, where the contest for the wreath is re-established at Delphi. 97 f 10: ŒÆd %ŁÆı ½T ½Æ. 98 f 12: ˜ æ IØŒ N %ŁÆ ŒÆæe K½Fæ; ŒÆd æ½æÆ Kæ½Ł æ . 99 Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 271.


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‘Universalgeschichte’,100 and it is noticeable that the history of invention and intellectual achievement which the Parian Marble tells is by no means a story of exclusively Athenian heroes, although they do feature increasingly heavily. The very Wrst invention mentioned in the document emanates from Egypt; namely, the Wrst penteconter, which sailed from Egypt to Greece with Danaus and his daughters.101 I have already noted the introduction of weights and measures, and of silver coinage for Aegina by Pheidon of Argos (f 30). We might add the Phrygian inventions of various musical styles at the same time as the initiation of the Panathenaea in Athens (f 10) or the innovations in lyre playing made by Terpander the Lesbian (f 34). The history of invention was clearly not solely an Athenian aVair. It is nevertheless striking that the non-Athenian achievements are clustered at the start of the document. As time moves on, Athens quickly becomes the inventive polis par excellence; that city and its festival cycle provide the context in which all achievements take place, with the result that Athens is enhanced by association, even if it does not always produce native talent. The complex relationship between Athens and the outside world, as constructed in this account of the past, is neatly encapsulated in the entry concerning the discovery of iron in Ida by Celmis and Damnameneus of the Ictaean Dactyls.102 The incongruity of other foreign inventions being placed in the chronological framework of Athenian regal and archonal time is here both heightened and explicable. The entry is framed by two diVerent forms of dating—Wrstly by the reign of Minos in Crete and his settlement of Apollonia, and secondly by the reign of Pandion in Athens. The important discovery of iron on Crete provides the obvious context for chronology involving the Cretan king. But the whole document uses Athenian time as its backbone, thereby creating a synchronism between Cretan and Athenian regal time. BoVo’s interesting discussion oVers a further angle to the question of audience and the value of the document to a particular polis.103 She sets the 100 A. Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften (Stuttgart, 1988), 87–9. 101 f 9. The formula is interesting for its distinction between the action involving the new invention—the voyage from Egypt—and the naming of the object (ŒÆd TŁ Œ æ). See Erichthonius’ naming of the Athenians in f 10. The building up of a vocabulary for the newly discovered trappings of civilization itself makes up an important strand of the chronological structure. Note the mention here of the foundation of the temple of Athene on Lindos bringing this document and the Lindian chronicle temporarily and subconsciously into contact. 102 This is an unusual entry among the primarily institutional and artistic inventions. The Idaean Dactyls clearly featured importantly in the local stories surrounding Crete (FGrH 468 f 1) and in the epic cycle (M. Davies, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Go¨ttingen, 1988), f 2). Their appearance here in a document of primarily Athenian history for an audience on Paros does raise some intriguing questions concerning sources, intelligibility, and relevance. 103 BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta` greche’, 39.

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Parian Marble in partial contrast with the self-promotion of individual poleis through their part in the shared history of Greece, and characterizes it instead as a broad ‘epigraphic history’ of political and cultural moments of the ancient world from Cecrops to 263 bc. The chronicle, she argues, reXected the interests of a private circle who met in the Archilocheion of the family of Mnesiepes on Paros, and the text was inscribed on its wall together with chronicle of the foundation of the building, a history of the poetic calling of Archilochus, and a long citation of a poem about the war with Naxos. We shall return to the poetic associations of this context, but here it is the setting which is at issue. The original location of both the Parian Marble and the various inscriptions relating to Archilochus on Paros is diYcult to gauge, owing to the dispersal and reuse of the stones. The so-called Sosthenes inscription,104 set up in the Wrst century bc, but referring to Demeas’ third-century account of Archilochus, his times, and the historical content of his poetry, is of unknown provenance and does not directly refer to a cult of the poet, although one of the two blocks was described in the original publication as belonging to a wall which formed part of an ‘Archilocheion’.105 Pieces of the so-called Mnesiepes inscription, concerning the poetic inspiration of Archilochus and the establishment of his cult, were found near to the river Elitas close to the modern town of Paros, and talk directly of an Archilocheion, a building dedicated to the cult of the poet. It is presumably the similarity between the letter forms on the Mnesiepes inscription and those of the Parian Marble,106 which leads to the assumption that the Parian Marble might also have been located within this context. Certainly the third-century date of the Mnesiepes inscriptions, suggested by the letter forms, suits the dating of the Parian Marble, and adds weight to the proposition that the Archilocheion was indeed the location of the latter inscription. The implications of this proposition in terms of the relationship between poetry and historiography will be discussed later. 104 See IG 12 (5) 445 (FGrH 502 f 1) for the account by Demeas of the literary career of Archilochus, ‘archon by archon’ (ŒÆ ½¼æ Æ ŒÆ ), beginning from the Wrst archonship of Eur[ . . . ] up to when a Milesian penteconter bringing ambassadors to Paros from Miletus was destroyed in the Naxian strait and one survived who was called Coeranus and was saved by a dolphin and put in at a cave, which still bears his name. There were also snippets concerning Thracians and Pisistratus . . . Glaucus and Thasus. Demeas, however, combined a history of the poet with an account of the events treated in his poems. See A. P. Burnett, Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho (London, 1983), 16 n. 3, on this inscription. 105 H. von Gaertringen in IG 12 (5). E. Bowie, ‘Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance of Narrative’, in A. Cavarzere, A. Aloni, and A. Barchiesi (eds.), Iambic Ideas: Essays on a Poetic Tradition from Archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire (Oxford, 2002), 1–27 at 2 n. 3, adds his voice to this view of the placing of the Sosthenes inscription ‘probably also in the Archilocheion’. 106 As noted by D. Clay, Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis (Cambridge, MA and London, 2004), 11.


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But this location would also have implications for the supposed audience. The possibility that the history presented by the Parian Marble was not for the polis as a whole, but for an elite group, may tell against Jacoby’s model of local historiography as the product of a need for poleis to assert themselves. But this might in turn support the notion that the history of the Parian Marble is not really ‘local’ history at all. BoVo focuses on the neglect of the local history of the island and, like Higbie, on the great variety of events reported for each period. Maybe, then, what we have here is not an example of a polis creating a past which would show it in its best possible light, but simply the whims and fancies of an elite family and its circle of friends and visitors.107 The complex range of contexts within which history might be told, particularly in poetry, covering both aristocratic gatherings and performances for the polis as a whole, is an issue to which we shall return. It is interesting that the two major extant fragments are rather diVerently focused. In terms of political and military history, there is little to distinguish between them. The Paros fragment, dealing with the period 336–298 bc, naturally has entries concerning the accession of Alexander and his career (f 1–7), and the trials and tribulations of the successors (f 8–end). It is by no means devoid of either intellectual Wgures—Callippus the astrologer (f 6), Philemon the comic dramatist (f 7), the Wrst success at Athens of Menander the comic dramatist (f 14), and the death of Sosiphanes the poet (f 15)108— or natural phenomena—an eclipse of the sun (f 16), earthquakes in Ionia (f 24), and the appearance of a comet (f 25). However, the emphasis is strongly on political history and particularly that of the wider Hellenistic world. The Oxford fragment too stretches broadly across the Mediterranean world in its coverage of political history. It shows some interest in foundations;109 it mentions both the expedition against and the capture of Troy (f 23 and f 24), the reign of Alyattes over Lydia (f 35), Croesus (f 41), Cyrus (f 42), the accession of Darius (f 44); the Persian wars feature several times, linking the East with the history of the Greek mainland,110 a link which is reinforced 107 A further possibility is that the family chose to put up a private copy of a public document, which would complicate our reading of the relationship between content and audience. Burnett, Three Archaic Poets, 17, describes the cult as ‘public’. This cannot be more than a guess, but, if well founded, it raises fresh questions over the nature of the audience for the contents of the Archilocheion. 108 And the birth of another poet of the same name (F22). 109 See f 26 for Teucer’s foundation in Cyprus, f 27 for Neleus’ colonization of Miletus and the rest of Ionia, and the establishment of the Panionian games, f 31 for Archias’ foundation of Syracuse from Corinth. 110 See f 48 for the battle of Marathon, fought in by Aeschylus; f 51 for Xerxes’ bridge over the Hellespont, the digging of the Athos canal, and the battle of Salamis; f 52 for the battle of Plataea, resulting in Athenian success.

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with the growing power of Macedonia;111 and non-Athenian Greek history recurs throughout, but especially in the earlier part.112 The western Mediterranean is not ignored, with a whole sequence of Syracusan tyrants mentioned—Gelon (f 53), Hieron (f 55), and the elder and younger Dionysius (f 62 and 74). Its presentation of Athenian history, it could be argued, is no more prominent than that of other poleis and other powers; indeed much of it focuses on the early period—the famine under Aegeus (f 19), the reign of Theseus (f 20) under whom the Amazons invaded Attica (f 21), the beginning of Pisistratus’ tyranny (f 40). But the larger Oxford fragment becomes increasingly dominated by Athenian cultural achievements. Whereas the Paros fragment lacks an Athenocentric perspective to the point where Athens needs to be speciWed, rather than assumed, as the location for Menander’s comic success (f 14), no such qualiWcations are needed in the Oxford fragment with its relentless presentation of Athenian intellectual and cultural success. It seems to me perfectly possible that this is a document for the polis of Athens no less than for a rareWed and aristocratic family on Paros. We have already noted the way in which Athenian regal and magisterial time is used to structure the whole scope of world history from Cecrops to the mid-third century bc. The crucial date of the fall of Troy is dated still more speciWcally and locally to the second year of Menestheus’ reign in Athens and the seventh day before the end of the month Thargelion (f 24). Furthermore, the document bears extraordinarily close resemblances not only to the chronological frameworks established by chronographers and used by the Atthidographers, but also to their contents. In particular, the earliest period treated by the document, with its tales of the dispute between Ares and Poseidon because of the latter’s son, Halirrhothius (f 3), the Xood at the time of Deucalion (f 4), the establishment of the eponymous Amphictyony by one of the sons of Deucalion and the naming of the Hellenes after another of his sons, Hellen (f 5 and 6) could all be taken directly from the fragments of the Atthides.113 All of this points to the possibility that this document belonged to the world of the polis of Athens, presenting its history within the context of the wider Mediterranean world, and particularly stressing its supremacy in intellectual and civic innovation, the 111 See f 58 for the accession of Perdiccas, f 61 for the succession to Archelaus, and f 77 for that of Philip, son of Amyntas. The role of Macedonia as bridge between East and West is strengthened at this point by the coincidence of the accession of Ochus, son of Artaxerxes in Persia. 112 f 7 notes the arrival of Cadmus in Thebes and the establishment of the Cadmea, f 22 is concerned with the Argive march against Thebes with Adrastus and the founding of the Nemean games, f 72 records the battle of Leuctra between Thebes and Sparta. 113 See Philochorus, FGrH 328 f 3 for Halirrhothius, Hellanicus of Lesbos, FGrH 323a f 23 for Deucalion and his descendants.


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features for which it enjoyed a lasting reputation and which had become in some sense its deWning characteristics.114 The trend within the Oxford fragment towards Athens itself in a more exclusive sense, having absorbed the inventions from outside to join its own innovations, is matched by a trend away from invention and towards artistic achievement, largely within precisely the context of the emergent institutions. But there is an intermediate position occupied by the various stages of development within the Welds of literature and music themselves. Just as there is a chronology of political and religious institutions, so too is there a temporal structure provided by the introduction of diVerent forms, genres, and styles. The invention of the Phrygian Xute and ‘other styles of the Mother of Dionysus, of Pan and . . .’ (f 10) has already been commented on. But we may also note the institution of the chorus of comic actors at Athens, a phenomenon which the Icarians Wrst set up (½ ½ ø æ ø (ŒÆæØø) and which Susarion invented (æ #ıÆæø) (f 39). This particular episode not only hints at a distinction between the conception of an idea by an inventor Wgure, its realization by a group, and its practice in another location. The Wrst occurrence in Athens was attended by the establishment of a prize of Wgs and wine—another innovation to match the new chorus. Then the catalogue of artistic discoveries and accompanying prizes continues. Thespis the poet, who brought out a play in the city, was the Wrst to introduce dialogue (½ŒæÆ æH );115 the competition between choruses of men was Wrst won by Hypodicus the Chalcidian as trainer (f 46); Simonides of Cos invented a system of mnemonics, trained actors, and won a prize at Athens (f 54). But, just as with the history of invention of institutions, that of artistic forms soon gives way to the chronological frame oVered by the biographical record of prominent artistic Wgures, and the list of achievements within the new styles and genres. Hesiod (f 28) and Homer (f 29) oVer early chronological markers, shortly followed by Sappho (f 36) and Hipponax, the iambic poet (› NÆØ ) (f 42). But by far the majority of literary references are to poets successful in the great Athenian festival competitions, composing for public events, which were enjoyed by the whole polis. The biographical mentions of the early poets are followed by the appearances and particularly the deaths of major poets, intellectuals, and tragedians—the deaths of Simonides aged 90 (f 57), of Aeschylus in Sicily aged 69 (f 59), of Euripides 114 For the way in which poleis could be broadly characterized, see Thucydides 1.67–88, and the debate at Sparta in which representatives from Corinth, Athens, and Sparta speak according to type. 115 f 43. The implication is that the prize of a goat, which was introduced at the same time, was indeed associated with this style.

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(f 63) and Sophocles aged 92 (f 64), of Socrates aged 70 (f 66) and Philoxenus, the dithyrambist, aged 55 (f 69). Of course, it is not only the lives and deaths of these Wgures which structure the shared past of the city, but more so their dramatic successes and contributions to the cultural Xourishing of the polis, which were no less important to its identity than the political and religious institutions themselves. Aeschylus’ Wrst win in a tragic contest (f 50), Sophocles’ success with tragedy in 470/69 bc (f 56), and Euripides’ Wrst similar triumph (f 60) are joined by those of many literary Wgures more obscure to us—Melanippides of Melos (f 47), Telestes of Selinus (f 65), Aristonous (f 67), Polyidus of Selymbria with the dithyramb (f 68), Anaxandrides the comic dramatist (f 70), Astydamas (f 71), Stesichorus the second of Himera (f 73), Philemon the comic dramatist (Paros f 7). They form a chain of literary Wgures whose successes in the dramatic festivals, which punctuated the calendar and marked out time for the polis both through and across the years, stretch alongside the political magistracies. And just as there was an interest in chronological coincidences concerning political and military events, so here in the Parian Marble do we Wnd certain ‘golden years’ in which intellectual Wgures clustered. The year when Aeschylus Wrst won with tragedy coincided with the birth of Euripides and the arrival in Greece of Stesichorus (f 50); Euripides, Socrates, and Anaxagoras are noted as rough contemporaries.116 The political and military chronological schemes are brought together with the literary and intellectual framework at certain junctures. Some are quite straightforward juxtapositions of information. The dramatic success of Philemon the comic occurred in the same year as the foundation of the city of Hellenis near the Tanais (Paros f 7); Simonides (grandfather of Simonides the poet) won at Athens in the year of Darius’ death and the accession of Xerxes (f 49); Simonides of Cos won at Athens in the year when the statues of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton were set up (f 54); Hieron became tyrant of Syracuse at the time of Epicharmus the poet.117 The return to the coast of the Greeks who accompanied Cyrus on his anabasis coincided with the death of Socrates (f 66); the acme of Callippus the astrologer fell in the same year as Alexander’s defeat of Darius and the hanging of Bessus (Paros f 6); and the complex manoeuvrings of the Hellenistic kings in their various 116 f 60: qÆ b ŒÆ ¯PæØ #øŒæ ŒÆd `ÆÆª æÆ. This entry is noteworthy for its level of detail. Euripides’ age at the time of his Wrst victory is given as 44 years. 117 f 55. I y (æø #ıæÆŒıH K ıæı; ˙˙—(((; ¼æ %ŁØ æ · q b ŒÆd ¯Ææ › Ø c ŒÆ a F . The similarity with Timaeus (FGrH 566) is striking. See f 133 on the Eleatic contest which took place ‘during Hieron’s rule in Sicily and at the time of Epicharmus the poet’ (ŒÆ a (æøÆ e #ØŒºÆ ı ŒÆd ¯Ææ e Ø ).


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locations could still be brought into synchronism with the cultural life of Athens—Antigonus’ crossing into Asia, Alexander’s burial in Memphis, and Ptolemy’s journey into Cyrene coincided with the deaths of not only Perdiccas and Craterus, but also Aristotle (Paros f 11); the year that saw Cassander’s return to Macedonia, the building of Thebes, the death of Olympias, the founding of Cassandrea and the tyranny of Agathocles in Syracuse, also witnessed the Wrst win at Athens by Menander the comic dramatist (Paros f 14). Occasionally, the relationship between literary and political time was more intricately wrought. The trial of Orestes on the Areopagus is noted in some detail—the complainants are named, Erigone the daughter of Aegisthus is added as co-defendant, and the outcome is given as acquittal for Orestes (no verdict is recorded on Erigone) because the votes were equal (f 25). This could naturally be seen as a key moment in the judicial functioning of the polis. But it is also, of course, the subject of a trilogy presented by one of the major dramatists mentioned in the document.118 And the pivotal place occupied by Aeschylus, as linking diVerent types of time, is further enhanced by a later entry in the document, since his military role at Marathon is also given prominence there (f 48). Thus the Wgure of the tragedian runs like a thread through the document, drawing together various structures—the judicial and mythical subject matter of one of his trilogies (f 25), the military world of the Persian wars (f 48), his Wrst success in the context of dramatic festival competition at Athens (f 50), and his death (f 59). It seems appropriate that the life of the polis over the long span of history may be mirrored in microcosm by the life of one of those literary Wgures and intellectuals, whose task it was to present the polis and its past to itself and its visitors at one of its great festivals. Athens may have claimed to hold a special status for its autochthony myth and for its intellectual life, both of which formed important elements in its identity—one its foundation story, the other a Weld of pre-eminence—and both of which provided a way of articulating the past and oVered a subject matter for history in its own right. It was, however, willing to ‘buy into’ the migration myths of other poleis, as we have seen. Furthermore, its strategy of claiming both autochthony and intellectual supremacy would later be imitated by another polis, Halicarnassus. This city claimed autochthony alongside a wish to maintain a presence and a history within a wider framework,119 118 Although the mention of Erigone excludes the possibility that the version mentioned here was actually that of Aeschylus. 119 H. Lloyd-Jones, ‘The Pride of Halicarnassus’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 124 (1999), 1–14 at 4, observes that claims to autochthony were by no means an Athenian monopoly, Thebes with its myth of the dragon’s teeth being an obvious counterexample.

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as shown in a relatively recent inscription relating to this polis, found in situ on the remains of an ancient wall at the promontory Kaplan Kalesi, or Salmacis.120 Some sixty lines of elegiac verse celebrate the merits of Halicarnassus, starting with its mythical past and moving on to famous oVspring, including Herodotus, described as ‘the Homer of history in prose’.121 Just as Athens might ask and answer the question ‘What makes Athens great?’ on occasions such as the delivery of the epitaphios, Halicarnassus asks itself the question ‘Why is Halicarnassus beloved by the gods?’, to which the answer comes in the form of an outpouring of civic pride. Halicarnassus was loved by Zeus because he had been born there,122 and because he was subsequently saved by the autochthonous Halicarnassians. But the Halicarnassians are also celebrated in the poem for the various inXuxes of newcomers through colonization—that of the Wrst colonist, led by Athena riding on Pegasus, that of Endymion, and that of Anthes.123 Thus, alongside the high status enjoyed by the autochthonous curators of the temple, we Wnd the assertion that Halicarnassus was anchored in the world of Panhellenic migration and heroic wanderings.124 Furthermore, Halicarnassus is special not only because of its foundation myths, but also because of the literary Wgures whom the city has produced. The inscription functions both as a very compressed city history and as a celebration of the role of intellectual achievement in that illustrious history, striking a clear parallel with the Parian Marble, and beautifully illustrating the mileage in terms of civic pride which poleis could derive from their associated literary and cultural Wgures. Thus, the inscription honours all its intellectual alumni and their products—the art of Andron, the epic of Panyassis,125 Cyprias who composed the Iliaca, Menestheus loved by the Muses, the divine 120 The details of publication, text, translation, and commentary are to be found in S. Isager, ‘The Pride of Halikarnassos: Editio Princeps of an Inscription from Salmakis’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 123 (1998), 1–23. The date of the inscription is a source of contention. Isager suggests that either the third or the second centuries bc would be plausible. Lloyd-Jones, ‘The Pride of Halicarnassus’, 13, however, is conWdent that both content and style militate against a date before the second century. 121 Line 43: ˙æ e e K ƒ æÆØØ …æ. 122 The claim was very commonly made, just like those concerning the appropriation of Panhellenic heroes (see ch. 4). According to Pausanias 4.33.1: ‘it is impossible to enumerate all who claim that Zeus was born and raised by them’. 123 The Anthes story is told in detail by Strabo 8.6.14. 124 See Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past’, 116–37, for the way in which colonial narratives could prove particularly eVective tools for communities to use in constructing a signiWcant past and shaping their collective identity. 125 On Panyassis, see E. L. Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography in Early Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry’, in Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft, 44–66 at 49, where he notes that Panyassis’ Ionica, at around seven thousand lines, probably covered the history of more than a single city, taking him above the status of a local historian.


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inspiration of Theaetetus, writer of comedy, Dionysus, Zenodotus, expert writer of tragedies . . . Nossus, a leading chronologist in history,126 and Herodotus himself. Isager’s suggestion that the Pinakes of Callimachus may have been the direct source of this catalogue of authors, just as Callimachus may have written a ktisis of Halicarnassus used by the author, would embed the epigraphic display of civic pride in literary achievement in the world of Hellenistic scholarship.127 Furthermore, this elevated level of professionalism might Wnd interesting echoes in the world of the itinerant historians who were, like the literary honorands in this inscription, celebrated by cities whose pride was boosted by their activities. We might, indeed, be dealing with a world in which the practice of local historiography, like that of literary production, was specialized and scholarly; and the practice of local epigraphy, in its commemoration of these works, itself displayed elements of the same scholarly approach, and may even have drawn on the great centres of Hellenistic learning for its information.128 For Lloyd-Jones, the inscription oVers an excellent example of the way in which ‘Greeks of the Hellenistic and imperial periods used history and tradition to deWne and assert their Greek and civic identity’.129 He is surely right, and this use of the past in the service of the polis is one of the major themes of this book. But the scholarly aspirations of the works and of their commemorative inscriptions would add a further angle in presenting us with a fascinating network of interconnections between past and present, scholarship and polis, elite and broad audiences.130 We therefore need to turn our attention now to the Wgure through whom these dichotomies were Wltered, that of the historian. We have considered (in chapter 4) some aspects of the tale which such Wgures told, but now I shall focus on the historian himself as teller of the past in the same context as the orator, the comic poet, and the calendar maker.131 The practice of commemorating the literary 126 Line 53: ˝ K ƒ æÆØØ æ ø æÆ F. 127 Isager, ‘The Pride of Halikarnassos,’ 20. 128 Such a view might tell against the inclination of Lloyd-Jones, ‘The Pride of Halicarnassus’, 13–14, to see this inscription as no earlier than the second century bc and to set it in the context of late Republican depradations in Asia Minor: ‘one hopes that the inscription did something to keep up the people’s spirits.’ 129 Lloyd-Jones, ibid. 13. 130 Here we may recall the use of historiographical texts by the scholiasts to elucidate the construction and keeping of time in the reality of Athenian society, as reXected in Aristophanes’ comedies. These plays, presented to the Athenian public, thus brought together the temporal world of the historian with that of the temporal experience of the community in the present. 131 This approach may run the risk of denying nuance and variation in the audiences and moments of reception of these diVerent formulations of the past, but I do nevertheless wish to see them all as expressions which are designed to appeal to the polis in the broad sense, and to its sense of local identity.

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achievements of the polis as signiWcant moments in its history becomes even more resonant when the celebration is not just of literary works in general, but of works which themselves explicitly set out to tell the history of the polis, those of the local historians, thereby creating a double layer of civic signiWcance.

3. LOC AL H EROE S: PLACING THE HISTOR IAN I N T HE P OL I S 132 How are we to assess the Wgure of the historian in the polis? The orator, as we have seen (in chapter 5), has a much more clearly deWned role in relation to the people at large. He draws his persuasive power partly from his adoption and subsequent manipulation of the shared past of the polis. He tells a past of the city which its citizens wish to hear, but also one which reinforces his argument. But, as has already been mentioned, this process is contingent on some pre-existing and relatively coherent public consciousness of what stories could plausibly be told about the past, and within what frameworks. It seems as though the local historian must also be a crucial Wgure in the creation of this ‘shared past’. We have established that the understanding and arrangement of time was part of the life of the polis, as well as being made explicitly into a part of its history worthy of commemoration. Furthermore, we have seen the various uses that the polis might make of its past in competitive, disputative, or aspirational contexts. But epigraphic evidence attests directly to the high value and status accorded not only to history but also to the local historians themselves. This seems an appropriate moment to recall the debate, both ancient and modern, about the relative merits and values of diVerent forms of historiography, particularly that surrounding the notion of ‘great’ history. As we have seen (in chapter 4), historians in the ancient world were often scathing about those who undertook to write about not the grand sweep of Panhellenic history, but the aVairs of a single polis or area. The association of scale with signiWcance is a natural one to adduce, and it is implicit in the claims of many ancient historians to have taken magniWcent and far-reaching themes as the 132 Many of the ideas in this and the subsequent section were Wrst formulated for a paper delivered at a conference in Milan in June 2004 held in honour of Fergus Millar, and later published as ‘Parochial Tales in a Global Empire: Creating and Recreating the World of the Itinerant Historian’, in L. Troiani and G. Zecchini (eds.), La Cultura storica nei primi due secoli dell’impero romano (Rome, 2005), 111–28. I should like to thank Prof. Giuseppe Zecchini for his kind invitation, and all the participants for their helpful and productive comments, in particular Prof. Adalberto Giovannini.

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subjects for their works.133 I have, however, argued that the horizons and conceptual frameworks evident in works of local historiography were often much broader than one might suppose. Furthermore, if we look to the more immediate reception of local historians, as it was publicly expressed on stone inscriptions scattered through the poleis of Greece, a rather diVerent picture emerges. The local historians were seen not as inferior writers, but as Wgures of great stature, heroes within the polis. › B ˛H Æ %æ ı; ÆEÆ ƒ æØH ıªæÆÆ ºØ „æØ. The demos dedicated Xenophon, son of Aristus, even though still a child, an accomplished composer of histories, to Hera.134

The second-century ad honoriWc stele of Xenophon of Samos, an accomplished historian in spite of his youth, might seem unpromisingly out of chronological place in a discussion which has thus far focused primarily on fourth-century and Hellenistic material. This inscription oVers clear proof that the world of small-scale historiography and its appreciation by the community whose story it told persisted into the Roman imperial period, even when universal historiography seemed the natural form to adopt.135 Although the primary focus of this book is not the period of Roman imperialism, as we shall see the world of Rome does impinge on the world of Greek local historiography, without inevitably subsuming it into the universal narratives which would become the lasting legacy of this period. One of the issues which I shall address here is diVerent forms of connectivity which are manifested through historiography, including that brought by Rome. But for 133 See Herodotus’ ‘great and wonderful deeds’ (1.1.1): æªÆ ªºÆ ŒÆd ŁøÆ ; Thucydides’ ‘greatest upheaval’ (1.1.2): ŒØ ª of the Peloponnesian War; Polybius’ theme of the growth of Roman dominion, which outdid all previous empires, great though they were (1.2.1–8). This claim to ‘great’ historiography would be continued by Roman writers in Sallust’s ‘great war’ (Bellum Jugurthinum 5.1) (bellum . . . magnum) between Rome and Numidia. We have already seen the claims made by universal historians (ch. 3) and when Tacitus claimed that historiography under the Principate had become a pale imitation of its Republican ancestors, he did so by complaining, albeit ironically, about the signiWcance of its theme—now small (parva) and lightweight to recall (levia memoratu), Ann. 4.32. 134 IG 12 (6) 308 (cf. SEG 1.400; FGrH 540a t 1). See L. Robert, Hellenica 13 (1965), 50–1, for the important point that ÆE indicates not ‘son’, but ‘child’: ‘ÆEÆ n’indique pas la Wliation, a` la place de Ø , mais l’aˆge’ (pace Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 317, who describes Xenophon clearly as ‘Sohn des Aristos’). Thus Robert places this inscription in the category of those celebrating child prodigies, argues that ºØ means ‘accomplished’ (surprisingly, given the youth of Xenophon) rather than ‘famous’ (as suggested in SEG on the basis that other poets and orators in the Roman period are described in this way), and punctuates with a comma after `æ ı rather than after ÆEÆ as in SEG. 135 See K. Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden, 1999), 249–79. For the continued importance of local historiography we may recall the sixth-century history of Byzantium with which chapter 4 opened.

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now it is suYcient to note that Xenophon of Samos oVers a relatively late example of a long-standing phenomenon whereby historians are publicly honoured by a community. The striking notion of dedicating a person must clearly refer to the erection of a statue of the honorand (as we know was the case for his compatriot, Leon, discussed below). It is important to acknowledge that Xenophon is not explicitly named as a local historian, simply as a composer of histories, and to repeat that he is a relatively isolated Wgure in terms of contemporary parallels. However, he and his honoriWc inscription Wt closely into a pattern, which is well attested in the preceding centuries, and makes it possible to Wnd a context in which to interpret this individual. In the second century bc, the people of Samos had had occasion to honour another historian: The people of Samos dedicated [this statue of] Leon son of Ariston to Hera. Rock gets old over time and holy bronze, worn down by an early-morning snowstorm, and the might of iron grows tired. But the indestructible reputation that comes from being held in high esteem lasts throughout life. This is what Leon enjoyed throughout the city, since he brought the deeds concerning his fatherland into sound histories,136 celebrating Hera, born of the land, and the number of their naval exploits which enabled them to adorn the temple with their spoils.137

Like Xenophon, Leon was to be dedicated as a statue to Hera.138 But it is made explicit in this longer inscription that the demos went to this great 136 Dillery, ‘Greek Sacred History’, 513, notes the unusual use of Øı , which is normally applied to people. He suggests that here we see a transferred epithet, and that the dutifulness of the historian is applied to his work. 137 See IG 12 (6) 285 (FGrH 540 t 1): › B › #Æø ¸ Æ `æ ø „æØ.

ˆæŒØ ŒÆd ºAÆ e æ ı Mb b ±ª ÆºŒe I MæÆ æı Ø; ŒÆd e ØæØ ŒØ Ł· ± Ie Æ ¼ŁæÆı Æ Æ Ø . A b ¸ø KŒæ ŒÆ a ºØ; n æd æÆ æØÆ N Øı a ¼ªÆª ƒ æÆ; Æ „æÆ ÆP ŁÆ ŒÆd Æ Æıd ÞÆ ŒºØ ƒæe IªºØÆ. The inscription, like that for his compatriot and namesake, was set up in the Heraeum. 138 The certitude that the language indicates the presence of an accompanying statue is conWrmed by the fact that this inscription was found on a statue base (see Bulletin épigraphique (1941) 110a; also W. Peek, ‘Eine neuer samische Historiker’, Klio 33 (1940), 164–70 at 164.). Thus we Wnd a neat illustration of the topos of the monumentalization of the writer, summed up both by his image and his work.


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trouble and expense because of services which Leon had performed in stressing the close relationship of the city to the goddess, Hera, and writing up local history, drawing the ‘actions concerning his own land (æd æÆ) into sound histories’. The inscription is fascinating for many reasons. The question of what precisely Leon had composed is unclear. Dillery suggests that it should be seen as a history of Samos, with a focus on the patron goddess, Hera, and the dedications at her temple, which would naturally give the work a more ‘international’ dimension and might have ‘formed the backbone of the narrative’, as in the Lindian chronicle.139 Of further interest is the fact that the demos of Samos chose to honour Leon in verse. We have many times touched on the relationship between poetry and historiography, questioning the revolutionary nature of the ‘prose revolution’, noting the closeness in content and theme between some of the lyric poets and the local historians, and considering contexts and audiences. The likely location of the Parian Marble in the context of a cult, established by an aristocratic family to an archaic poet, further clouds the question of where, by whom, for whom, and in what form the past, whether local or universal, was to be remembered. It might at Wrst appear that, like the mythical contents of some of the local histories, a poetic form could be responsible for diminishing the claims to signiWcance and ‘greatness’ in history, especially in the context of Herodotus’ great intellectual breakthrough, establishing the appropriateness of prose writing for historiography, and aligning the serious study and analysis of the past with the serious study and analysis of the universe carried out by the Presocratic philosophers. But it was also possible that the poetic framework might enhance the status of the historiographic enterprise, elevating the theme and the historian. We have already noted the potential aptness of poetry as a medium for the relation of local history.140 We may now add to this debate the evidence of the honoriWc inscriptions that many local historians, as we shall see in this section,141 composed in poetry, not in prose, making the poetic dedication for Leon of Samos all the more appropriate. 139 Dillery, ‘Greek Sacred History’, 513. 140 Many poets of the mid-seventh century until the late Wfth century took the distant or recent past of the poleis as their theme: Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, Simonides of Amorgos in the seventh century; Xenophanes at the end of the sixth; Panyassis and Ion of Chios in the Wfth. C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Ion’s Epidemiai and Plutarch’s Ion’, in A. Katsaros and V. Jennings (eds.), The World of Ion of Chios (Leiden, forthcoming) 75–109, stresses the generic Xexibility of such authors, particularly from one poetic form to another, but insists that the prose-poetry distinction did still matter. ‘To decide that The Foundation of Chios should be in prose— assuming it was in prose—was to make a statement that his treatment aligned it with one range of material rather than another, an investigative, fact-based cousin to Hecataeus or Hippias or Xanthus of Lydia rather than to Hesiod or Xenophanes or Panyassis,’ (80). 141 See below Demoteles of Andros, Menecles of Teos, Dioscurides of Tarsus, Politas of Hypata, and Aristodama of Smyrna.

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But it worth noting that the Samian demos employed in their inscription not only a poetic, but a strongly Pindaric topos, familiar from Pythian 6, of immortality through the image of the indestructible literary monument:142 A Pythian victor’s treasure house of hymns has been built in Apollo’s valley rich in gold; one which neither winter rain, coming from abroad as a relentless army from a rumbling cloud, nor the wind shall buVet and with deluge of silt carry into the depths of the sea.143

The topos of the indestructible literary monument would be picked up in poetry and historiography of the Roman imperial period.144 But here the Samian demos have celebrated the theme not of their history, but of their historian and his reputation;145 and even more strikingly, perhaps with some irony, they have done so on precisely the kind of monument which, unlike Leon’s reputation, will be ravaged by time. Further irony lies in the fact that the time-weathered epigraphic monument should actually have survived for posterity, and not the work of history itself. Clearly, it was not only the past which a polis needed to nurture, but also the Wgure who eVectively formulated it. It may also be relevant in the light of the Pindaric allusion to recall the placing of local historiography in the form of the so-called Parian Marble in 142 It is possible that the poetic form was partly or wholly due to the temple context of the dedication, but the allusion to Pindar suggests a much more deliberate and self-conscious decision on the part of the polis in its claims to the elevated status of their city’s historian. 143 Pindar, Pythian 6.5–14: —ıŁØ ØŒ . . . E oø ŁÆıæe K ºıæfiø `ººøfi Æ Ø ÆØ fi Æ· e h ØæØ Zæ KÆŒ e KºŁ, KæØæ ı ºÆ æÆ e IºØ; h ¼ K ı ±ºe ¼ØØ Æ æfiø æØ ı . . . 144 See, for example, Livy, Praefatio 10 (lessons set forth in inlustri monumento); Strabo Geography 1.1.23 and the work as a ŒºıæªÆ; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.1.1–2 (history as a E, which will outlast the body); and Diodorus Siculus 1.2.5: ‘whereas all other memorials last but a brief time, being continually destroyed by many changes in fortune, the power of history . . . possesses in time, which brings destruction on everything else, a custodian which ensures its perpetual transmission to posterity’: a b ªaæ ¼ººÆ EÆ ØÆØ æ Oºª; e ººH IÆØæÆ æØ ø; b B ƒ æÆ ÆØ . . . e Æ ¼ººÆ ºıÆØ æ Ø ºÆŒÆ B ÆNøı ÆæÆ ø E KØªØØ . . . 145 Peek, ‘Eine neuer samlischer Historiker’, 165–6, collects some interesting parallels for this imagery concerning an intellectual and his eternal reputation. See, for example, Antiphilus of Byzantium and his epigram for Diogenes (Anthologia Planudea 334): ªæŒØ ŒÆd ÆºŒe e æ ı· Iººa h Ø j ŒF › A ÆN; ˜Ø ª; ŒÆŁºE. The poetic locus classicus is Horace, Odes 3.30: monumentum aere perennius.


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the context of lyric poetry in the Archilocheion of the family of Mnesiepes on Paros (discussed above), alongside a long citation of one of Archilochus’ ‘historical’ poems about the war against Naxos.146 The poetic calling of Archilochus, the poet-historian, which formed one of the subjects commemorated there, provides an interesting backdrop against which to read this highly poetic inscription celebrating Leon’s local historiography. Again we may be seeing some points of overlap between the construction of the past carried out for the entertainment of, and under the patronage of, aristocratic families, and that which was designed for the polis as a whole. As Pelling has observed, the exclusive sympotic milieu inhabited by archaic poets did not preclude the possibility that the values encapsulated in their works might be those shared by the community at large.147 This blurred boundary recalls Aloni’s discussion of the Plataea narrative of Simonides, and the possibility that, although large-scale elegy on historical events was performed in public competition, above all at civic or Panhellenic celebrations, ‘single episodes abstracted from a longer poem might be freely recomposed and presented by an individual singer at a symposium’.148 In terms of local historiography this would imply that the location and audience for performance or display might not totally determine the narrative, its preoccupations, and its mode of presentation. This helpfully softens, while not eradicating, the distinctions between, say, Pindar or Simonides, Herodotus, the Atthidographers, and the orators, and allows them all to be engaged in the presentation of ‘the deeds of the past handed on as shared possessions of us all’.149 The fact that the polis at large had a stake in the telling of its history, and an interest in honouring those who did it well, is attested by a range of honoriWc inscriptions to historians and other intellectuals stretching across several centuries. We have already seen in this chapter the array of local talent celebrated by the city of Halicarnassus. The city of Smyrna celebrated one of its famous oVspring in the form of Hermogenes, who is attested in a Wrstor second-century ad inscription (partly in hexameters) as the author of not only seventy-two medical books, but also a work on the wisdom of Homer, 146 It is also worth recalling Sosthenes, the local historian of the Wrst century, who cited the local history of the third-century Demeas concerning the life and works of Archilochus, and noting that Mnesiepes himself, patron of the sanctuary of Archilochus, is described by Clay, Archilochos Heros, 9, as ‘local historian and man of letters’. 147 See Pelling, ‘Ion’s Epidemiai’, 108. 148 See A. Aloni, ‘The Proem of Simonides’ Plataean Elegy and the Circumstances of its Performance’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire (Oxford, 2001), 86–105 at 91. 149 Isocrates, Panegyricus 9: Æƒ b ªaæ æØ Æƒ æªªÆØ ŒØÆd AØ E ŒÆ ºŁÆ.

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and one on generalship (two volumes), works on the foundations of Asia (two volumes) and of Europe (four volumes), and on the staging posts of Asia and those of Europe (one volume each).150 Of particular relevance here are his two-volume history of his native Smyrna ( ( æØŒa æd ˘æ) and a ‘Table of the Romans and Smyrnans’ (—Æ .øÆø ŒÆd ˘ıæÆø). As Chaniotis suggests, this was probably a work synchronizing the eponymous magistrates of both places, and we shall return to the signiWcance of that particular synchronism.151 It was, of course, particularly natural for poleis to honour their own literary products when they wrote histories which were not only local, but native. One such historian was Syriscus of Chersonesus. His third-century bc account of the epiphanies of the Parthenos, and the kindly deeds performed towards the cities and the Bosporan kings, won him an inscription, set up in his home town, and a golden crown:152 Heracleidas, son of Parmenon, made the proposal. Since Syriscus son of Heracleidas having carefully written up the epiphanies of the Parthenos, read them out, and related the oVerings to the kings of the Bosporus, and recorded Wttingly for the demos the privileges accorded to the [sc. other] cities, so that he might win worthy honours, the boule and the demos have decided to praise him for these things and for the fellow magistrates to garland him with a golden crown on the 21st . . . and that the proclamation should be made: ‘The demos garlands Syriscus son of Heracleidas because he wrote up the epiphanies of the Parthenos and he recorded the kindly deeds performed towards the cities and the kings, truthfully and Wttingly for the city. They decided that the fellow magistrates should write up on a stone stele the decree and place it in the pronaos of the Parthenos . . .

All the major constituencies in the city are involved in negotiating the honoriWc process—the boule, the demos, and the magistrates. Once Syriscus has been garlanded by the demos, the magistrates are charged with recording the whole event by writing up the decree on a stone stele and placing it in the pronaos of the Parthenos. It is worth noting, in the context of such an 150 CIG 3311 (cf. Kaibel, Epigr. Gr. 305; FGrH 579 t 1). 151 Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 327. 152 See SGDI 3086 (cf. FGrH 807 t 1): ½ ˙æÆŒºÆ —Ææ r ½· j KØc #ıæŒ ˙æÆŒºÆ a½ j KØÆÆ A —ÆæŁı Øº½j ø ªæłÆ I½ªø ŒÆd ½a j d f ´½ æı ½ÆØºE½ j ØªÆ ; ½Ł æÆ Æ ½ØjºŁæøÆ d a ºØ ƒ ½ jæ KØØŒø HØ ðÞø½Ø; ¥ Æ ºØ Øa IÆ; ½ŁÆØ j AØ ıºAØ ŒÆd HØ øØ KÆØÆ½Ø ÆP e Kd Ø ŒÆd Æ½HjÆØ f ıÆ ½æıøØ jøØ H . . . . . . : : ø ØAØ K ƒŒ½Ø; ŒÆd e IªªºÆ ªŁÆØ: ˇ ½Aj ÆE #ıæŒ ˙æÆŒº½jÆ; ‹ Ø a KØÆÆ A —½ÆæjŁı ªæÆł ŒÆd a d a ½ jºØ ŒÆd f ÆØºE æ½Æj Æ ØºŁæøÆ ƒ æ IºÆŁØ½H jŒÆd KØØŒø AØ ºØ· IÆ½ªæjłÆØ b f ıÆ NðÞ ½ºÆjºØŁÆ e łØÆ ŒÆd Ł½ Kj e F æı A —ÆæŁ½ı Œ º.


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intricate set of intra-polis negotiations, that the signiWcance of Syriscus’ work reaches beyond his home city.153 He relates the goddess’ epiphanies to the Bosporan kings,154 and the honours and privileges which his town granted to the other cities, in a clear piece of interstate diplomacy. Although it is his home town which honours him, his work seems to have related to and been of importance to a wider audience. As Dillery notes, he was ‘an advocate of his city and its patron deity in the Black Sea region . . . Syriscos is really quite like the familiar elite representative of his polis in the Hellenistic period.’155 However, there are hints that his work had particular implications for his native city, beyond those brought simply by having a successful historian among its citizens. Syriscus related the benefactions to the cities ‘Wttingly for the demos’; in the proclamation, this link to the well-being of the native polis is slightly more elaborately formulated, since we are told that Syriscus related deeds not only Wttingly for the demos, but also ‘truthfully’.156 Here, then, we begin to see the re-emergence of a theme which has recurred through this book; namely, the tension between local and more universal concerns. The question ‘To whom is local historiography of interest?’ extends not only to diVerent interest groups within the polis, the aristocratic elite or the demos at large, but also beyond the polis. The scenario of a historian composing the past of his own polis for his own polis is one possibility. But there are others to consider, and at this point some of Jacoby’s ideas (discussed in chapter 4) should come back into play. The question of what stimulated local historiography, the whole debate over priority between this and universal or ‘great’ historiography, and the issue of local pride asserted in a wider world, all acquire a new set of insights when we shift the focus from the history itself to the historian and his appreciative audience. The need to express local pride in the context of dominant Panhellenic narratives, or simply against alternative or rival local histories, might explain the phenomenon of the ‘native local historian’. But the boundaries of the strictly ‘local’ are already blurred by the use by some of wider conceptual frameworks in the articulation of the historical narrative. We know, furthermore, that many historians wrote about the past of several 153 I use the term ‘work’ loosely, since it is, as Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 300, notes, unclear whether we are dealing only with a work of history or with several diVerent works. 154 The parallel with the Lindian chronicle is striking. As Chaniotis, ibid. 300, observes ‘die Bescha¨ftigung mit der Geschichte des lokalen Heiligtums und mit den OVenbarungen der Gottheit ist ein typisches Merkmal des Lokalhistoriographie’. 155 Dillery, ‘Greek Sacred History’, 521. 156 An interesting claim in the context of criticism that local historiography lacked Thucydidean style accuracy (IŒæØÆ) and objectivity, although we have no guarantee that ‘the truth’ is not simply tantamount to ‘what the audience wants to hear’.

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diVerent places,157 and this variety hints at a diVerent picture from that of the local historian writing only about his native land and heroized as a local celebrity. The honoriWc inscriptions enable us to add Xesh to this skeletal picture of a diVerent form of universality, brought not by undertaking ‘great history’ or the ‘Panhellenic narrative’, but by accumulating a range of discrete local histories.

4. F ROM LO CA L HERO TO S UP RA- P OL I TI C A L A M B A S SA D OR Alongside the local historian who wrote about his native land, we can set a signiWcant group of historians who were honoured for composing local, though not native, history, and who were, to some degree or another, itinerant.158 Demoteles of Andros was honoured in the early third century bc by the boule and the demos of Delos, since ‘being a poet, he has composed a work about the temple and city of the Delians and has written the native stories’.159 We might note this immediately as yet another example, alongside the Lindian chronicle and the inscription to Syriscus of Chersonesus, in which local historiography is associated with a religious narrative.160 The point that Demoteles is a poet also 157 See, for example, the late third-century bc author, Semos of Delos (FGrH 396 t 1), whose works spanned Delos itself, Paros, and Pergamum, as well as including an explicitly itinerant work, Periodos. In the Roman imperial period Criton was attributed a Palleniaca, Sicelica, Foundation of Syracuse, Journey around Syracuse, and a Persica. See also Proxenus (FGrH 703), author of Epirotica, Sicilian events concerning Pyrrhus, and a Constitution of the Laconians and Pausanias the Laconian (FGrH 592), who wrote works on the Hellespont, Laconia, and the Amphictyons. 158 The notion of itinerant historians has, of course, a long history, involving Hecataeus (ºıºÆ), Herodotus, Theopompus, and notably the sophist Hippias, who lectured in Sparta on the remote legendary history of that city. See Plato, Hippias Major 285d; Hippias Minor 363c–d notes Hippias’ visits to Olympia to give public readings. 159 IG 11 (4) 544 (cf. Syll:3 382; FGrH 400 t 1): ¨: E ıºE ŒÆd HØ ø½Ø· `æØ º ˝ØŒæ ı r ½· KØc ˜ º `N½ºı @æØ Ø c J æÆª½ ı ÆØ æ e ƒæe ŒÆd ½c ½ ºØ c ˜ºø ŒÆd f Łı½ f K½Øøæı ªªæÆ· ŁÆØ HØ øØ· KÆØÆØ ˜ º `Nºı @æØ Iæ B ŒÆ ŒÆd PÆ B æd e ƒæe ŒÆd e B e ˜ºø½ ŒÆd ÆHÆØ ÆP e ½ ½øØ ŒÆd IÆªæFÆØ e ƒ½æŒæıŒÆ . . . The gods. It seemed good to the council and the people [sc. of the Delians]. Aristolochus son of Nicodromus spoke. Since Demoteles of Andros, son of Aeschylus, being a poet, has composed a work about the temple and city of the Delians and has written the native stories, it seemed good to the people to praise Demoteles of Andros, son of Aeschylus for his virtue and his goodwill concerning the temple and the people of Delos, and to garland him with a crown of laurel and for the sacred herald to make a public proclamation . . . 160 Although see Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 334–5, for the suggestion that ‘er war kein Mythograph, sondern nur poetischer Bearbeiter der delischen Sagen’; that is, stressing his role as a poet rather than as an expert on the gods.

From local hero to ambassador

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deserves note. As we might expect, the boule seems to take a probouleutic role with regard to a proposal made by an individual, Aristolochus, son of Nicodromus, before the demos takes its decision. The people of Delos are honouring a man from Andros—writing local history does not necessarily mean writing native history. The implications are far-reaching in terms of the relationship between historian and community, and also the question of the local or universal applicability of conceptual frameworks. Or take the more extensive and detailed inscription set up by secondcentury bc Cretan cities in honour of Herodotus and Menecles of Teos:161 The Priansians It seemed good to the magistrates of the Priansians and to the city: Since Herodotus son of Menodotus and Menecles son of Dionysius, who were sent to us as ambassadors by the Teans, not only dwelt in the city appropriately and spoke about our [close relationship],162 but also Menecles put on a display with a kithara of the works of Timotheus and Polyidus and our other ancient poets Wnely and Wttingly, and he oVered the historical cycle about Crete

161 IC 1.24.1 (cf. SGDI 5187; FGrH 466 t 1): —æØÆø

—æØÆø E Œ Ø ŒÆd AØ ºØ. KØc ˙æ !< > ı ŒÆd !ŒºB ˜Øı ø KÆ Æº æªªı Æd æ d ±b Æ æa ø P I æ½ < > ø K AØ ºØ ŒÆd ½Øºª æd A½ ±H : : : :Æ; Iººa ŒÆd KÆ !ŒºB a ŒØŁæÆ Ø Łı ŒÆd —ºıı ŒÆd H ±H ÆºÆØH Ø A ŒÆºH ŒÆd æ ø; N < > ªŒ b ŒŒº ƒ æÆ bæ ˚æ Æ ŒÆ½d H K ½˚æ ÆØ ª ª ø ŁH ŒÆd æø; ½Ø½ a ıÆªøªa KŒ ººH Ø A½ ŒÆd ƒ æØªæ ø· ˜Øe ŁÆØ AØ ºØ KÆØÆØ ‹ Ø ºE º ª ØH ÆØ æd ÆØÆ; KÆØ ÆØ b ŒÆd ˙æ ŒÆd !ŒºB ‹ Ø ŒÆºa ŒÆd æıÆ ÆØ a ÆæØÆ K AØ ºØ ±H· ØÆÆBÆ ÆF Æ ŒÆd Ø ‹< Œ >ø KØªØŒø Ø.

ææøŁ. 162 The text here is problematic. Øºª as a dialectal form of ØÆºªÆ does not present diYculty, but the restoration of the later part of line 5 is fraught with problems. W. H. Waddington and P. Le Bas, Inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en Gre`ce et en Asie Mineure (Paris, 1853–70) iii no. 82, restore the text as A ½±H ƒ ½æÆ, but M. Guarducci, Inscriptiones Creticae (Rome, 1935) i, 281, favours Blass’s view that no mention was made of historiography at this point, and that veri simile est hoc loco aliquid de legatorum negotiis scriptum fuisse. The photograph of the inscription is by no means conclusive either way. I have adopted in my translation the suggestion of John Ma that this part of the inscription must be routine (before Iººa ŒÆd changes the tone), and must therefore refer to something like the kinship and other links between Teos and Crete.

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Time for the polis and the gods and heroes who were born in Crete, creating his compilation from many poets and historiographers. Because of this the city decided to praise the Teans, since they place such importance on education, and to praise both Herodotus and Menecles since they had a Wne and Wtting sojourn in our city. They decided to make these things clear to the Teans so that they might be aware of them. Farewell

The decree is one made by the magistrates of the Priansians and the city, in support of a decision by the demos.163 The scenario is a complex one, in which Menecles and his colleague, Herodotus, are sent by Teos on a mission, during which Menecles puts on a performance of Cretan poetry, weaving in stories about the place and its past and thereby earning himself great respect among the locals. Some of the elements are by now familiar. It is important that Menecles comes from outside the polis, and interesting that poetry again oVers the appropriate form in which to tell the city its past. Furthermore, as Erskine points out,164 the visitors from Teos carefully wove together the better-known works of Timotheus of Miletus and Polyidus of Selymbria with the local stories told by the Cretan poets, thereby cementing Crete’s place in the wider Greek cultural world and constituting a major element in the Tean embassy. Erskine’s stress on the diplomatic nature of the historiographical display is of considerable interest.165 It is tempting to place this inscription from Teos in the context of the large group of inscriptions which concern the attempt of Teos (and, indeed, other cities)166 to establish recognition of its inviolability around the Greek world, and not least among the poleis of Crete. Inscriptions celebrating the recognition of the Greek world, city by city, of this 163 I should like to thank the participants in the Oxford Greek Epigraphy Workshop, to whom I presented this (and other related) inscriptions in February 2007. Both their helpful emendations and their extremely insightful and engaged comments have contributed enormously to my work on this body of evidence. 164 A. Erskine, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou? Tales of Kinship and Diplomacy’, in D. Ogden (ed.), The Hellenistic World: New Perspectives (London, 2002), 97–115 at 106. 165 Erskine, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, sees this episode in the context of other forms of interstate diplomacy, in which the links between cities were established and reinforced through reference to the past, both historical and mythical (97). He notes the way in which diVerent forms of diplomacy were mutually supportive, and included appeals to shared mythological traditions as told by poets such as Menecles. S. Hornblower, ‘Epic and Epiphanies: Herodotus and the ‘‘New Simonides’’’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire (Oxford, 2001), 135–47 at 137, goes further, saying that it was ‘precisely the pervasiveness of syngeneia concepts which made it possible for Greeks to bridge the mythical and historical worlds in so apparently eVortless a way’. 166 See L. Robert, Hellenica: Receuil d’e´pigraphie, de numismatique et d’antiquite´s grecques I (1940), 113–15, for an inscription from Aptera concerning claims to asylum for the temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus. The sending of deputations to cement the recognition of asylum claims at various temples seems to have been a common phenomenon.


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change in status were set up in Teos,167 no doubt as readily visible proof to anyone who might question the city’s position. However, Rigsby is surely right to distinguish between the original embassies sent by Teos to secure its status, and a later embassy which served as a ‘reminder’ to the cities of Crete, and requested the inscription of the old decrees.168 It is this later phase which involved Menecles and Herodotus, and Rigsby posits that the inscription under consideration here, together with a similar one from Knossos,169 are rather unusual cases in which the cities felt that nothing new was needed in terms of their relations with Teos, and ‘simply praised the Tean envoys for their culture without mentioning asylia’.170 Their ‘culture’ involved giving ‘recitals about the traditional relations of Crete and Teos’. This is, then, a rather unusual version of how interstate diplomacy and poetic historiography might be combined. In a sense, the historiographical performances are incidental to the whole diplomatic expedition, and form the subject of two out of a large dossier of inscriptions only in the absence of any more formal interstate relations concerning asylum. However, the fact that these Tean envoys were so accomplished in the art of historiographical entertainment as well as being top-grade ambassadors, clearly did no harm to the standing of Teos in Crete. It is clear why the people of Crete might wish to honour Menecles and Herodotus, who had brought their local traditions into the larger context and given their home a place on the map. But it was Teos which gained most through its enhanced standing in the eastern Mediterranean and set up the inscription celebrating the event.171 The deliberate choice by Teos of particularly skilled poet-historians to send to Crete on a diplomatic mission hints at a theme to which we shall return, namely the culture of professional poetic performances of local history. 167 See K. J. Rigsby, Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World (Berkeley, LA and London, 1996), 291, for the note that the asylia decrees were inscribed on blocks of the blue-grey marble quarried to the east of the city, and used to build Hermongenes’ temple of Dionysus. The process of recognition was a slow one—Teos was granted inviolability by Antiochus III and the Greek world in 203/2 bc, but this was not recognized by Rome until 193 bc. 168 For epigraphic evidence for this extensive, second-phase embassy undertaken by Herodotus and Menecles, see IC 2.3.2 (cf. SGDI 5181) (Aptera), SGDI 5182 (Eranna), IC 1.6.2 (cf. SGDI 5183) (Biannus), IC1.19.2 (cf. SGDI 5184) (Malla), IC 1.5.53 (cf. SGDI 5185) (Arcades), IC 2.15.2 (Hyrtacina); I. E. Stephanes, ˜ØıØÆŒd E ÆØ: #ıºb c æøªæÆÆ F Ł æı ŒÆd B ıØŒB H IæÆø ¯ººø (Herakleion, 1988), 299 (entry 50 for Menecles, son of Dionysos), for a date of around 170 bc when the two ambassadors went ‘to diVerent cities in Crete’ (b Øæ ºØ B ˚æ ). 169 IC 1.8.2. 170 See Rigsby, Asylia, 289. 171 See G. Schepens, ‘Travelling Greek Historians’, in M. Gabriella, A. Bertinelli, and A. Donati (eds.), Le vie della storia: migrazioni di popoli, viaggi di individui, circolazione di idee nel Mediterraneo antico (Rome, 2006) for the point that itinerant historians had a double audience to please—both the sending and the receiving city. I am grateful to the author for sharing this article with me in advance of publication.

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Time for the polis

We have already caught glimpses into how poleis such as Apollonia on the Rhyndakos and Miletus used the past as a currency in which to conduct or enhance interstate diplomacy. But here too it is possible through the honoriWc inscriptions to shift the focus now away from the historical claims and content, and on to the equally historical phenomenon of the local historian himself, playing his role in inter-polis relations. If we are scratching the surface of a world in which itinerant historians were engaged in inter-polis diplomacy, but were in some sense professional and independent, hired and commemorated for their skill on behalf of the polis or poleis, then the value of history and the relationship of the historian to the poleis become even more intriguing. Another Cretan inscription, from Knossos, again in the second century bc, oVers a variation on the theme. Dioscurides of Tarsus was lauded by the people of Knossos for his encomium of Crete:172 It seemed a good idea to the magistrates of the Knossians and to the city. Since Dioscurides, son of Dioscurides and adoptive son of Asclepiodorus, a grammatikos from Tarsus, on account of the goodwill which he holds towards our city, put together an encomium in accordance with the poet [sc. Homer] about our people, he sent oV Myrinus, son of Dionysius, from Amisus, a composer of epic and lyric poems, his very own pupil, to recite his works . . . the city decided to praise Dioscurides . . .

Here the Cretans decide to lavish their praise on Dioscurides rather than on his itinerant pupil. It is worth focusing for a moment on the Wgures involved here. Dioscurides is described as a grammatikos, traditionally considered to be a teacher of grammar and literature,173 from Tarsus. He puts together an encomium of Crete, through goodwill towards the inhabitants of that island, but then yet another party, Dioscurides’ pupil, Myrinus from a diVerent town, Amisus, is sent on the mission to Crete to perform the works. The inscription gives a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual world of the second century, both in terms of relations between teachers, pupils, and patrons, and in terms of interstate relations. Myrinus, the performer, is himself a composer of epic and lyric poems. But his teacher clearly enjoys a higher reputation in the world of eastern Mediterranean politics. It may seem surprising that a teacher 172 See IC 1.8.12 (cf. SGDI 5150; FGrH 594 T3): ˚øø E Œ Ø ŒÆd AØ ºØ· KØc ˜ØŒıæ ˜ØŒıæı; ŒÆŁ ŁÆ b `ŒºØæı; Ææf ªæÆÆ ØŒ ; Øa a hØÆ L Ø æ d a ±a ºØ ı Æ KªŒØ ŒÆ a e Ø a bæ H ±H ŁØ; I ºŒ !ıæE ˜Øıø `Ø ; Ø a KH ŒÆd ºH; e ÆP Æı H ÆŁ ; ØÆŁØ a æÆªÆ ıÆ ÆP H . . . ŁÆØ AØ ºØ KÆØÆØ ˜ØŒıæ Œ º. 173 But see T. J. Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 1998), 18 and, especially, 28, for the diYculty in making clear distinctions between the function of teachers with diVerent titles beyond the tidy world of the jurists and theorists.


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of whatever kind should carry such international weight and prestige, but a late fourth-century decree of the demos of Lampsacus records political privileges, including freedom from taxes, accorded to its students and teachers, suggesting a certain status to the educational enterprise.174 Furthermore, while the encomium of Crete celebrated in this inscription does not survive, a few fragments of Dioscurides’ other works are extant—on the Spartan constitution, on customs, heroes, and Homer’s life. When Dioscurides composed his encomium ‘in accordance with the poet’ (ŒÆ a e Ø ), he was no doubt using his specialized knowledge. The involvement of a Homeric expert in constructing the past of Knossos and Crete, and the mythic associations, did nothing to diminish or compromise the status of the history produced. It seems, then, that Dioscurides was not just an elementary teacher, but a famous name, perhaps one could go so far as to say a professional with a widespread reputation, and that we should not be surprised that the Knossians chose to commemorate his interest in their local history.175 This, it seems, was something of a coup for the Knossians, and also a feather in the cap of the city which had produced such a star composer. The people of Tarsus were no doubt glad to see an inscription set up in their own polis to commemorate the Cretans’ satisfaction with Dioscurides’ encomium. Again, there are interesting similarities and diVerences with the Menecles inscription, since the inscription to Dioscurides was set up in his home town of Tarsus, as for Menecles on Teos, but a copy of the inscription was also erected in the most public of places, Delos,176 at the heart of the Eastern Mediterranean network of communications, to give this long-distance and complex operation the widest possible advertisement on a Panhellenic stage.177 We shall return to the place of poet-historians in the wider networks of the Mediterranean, as a neglected manifestation of the kinds of connectivity which have been explored by others in terms of trade, culture, travel, and so on. But this inscription clearly has something to oVer that picture, with its 174 See IK 6 (Lampsacus) 8: ‘Tax-free status is to be accorded to pupils and teachers (I ºE r ÆØ ½f ÆŁ a ŒÆd ½ØÆŒº < ı > ) who are staying in the city or are going to stay there, teaching or being taught’. The date is not certain, and could be later than the posited end of the fourth century. I should like to thank Christopher Walton for drawing this inscription to my attention. 175 See M. Guarducci, Poeti vaganti e conferenzieri dell’eta` ellenistica; ricerche di epigraWa greca nel campo della letteratura e del costume (Rome, 1929), 629, for the suggestion that itinerant historians were motivated primarily by personal glory and gain: ‘i quali per amore di gloria e spesso anche di lucro, vagavano di citta` in citta`’. 176 See Inscr. De´los 1512 (cf. Syll.3 721). Stephanes, ˜ØıØÆŒd E ÆØ, 149, notes also a copy at the other great Panhellenic sanctuary site, Delphi, although he provides no evidence for this. 177 As Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 342, observes, the copy at Delos oVered an opportunity ‘ihre literarische Leistungen einem mo¨glichst breiten Publikum bekannt zu machen’. There is no implication that Dioscurides visited Delos as part of his tour.

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Time for the polis

interstate education on display, its itinerant performer, its composer with a reputation which stretches across the Aegean, and a commemorative inscription set up at one of the key religious and cultural meeting places in the Eastern Mediterranean. Dioscurides was able to secure a lasting record of his already evident fame without leaving his hometown. In general, though, the inscriptions present a picture of historians themselves travelling around and reciting their works of local history. We have already seen in Menecles and Herodotus, sent by Teos to Crete, the traces of a network of historiographical connections, there in the context of a diplomatic deputation, from one polis to another. Local historians, far from being conWned to small towns, writing parochial history, seem to have enjoyed far higher status than this, and far greater political importance. They act as ambassadors for their own cities, and as benefactors of the cities whose past they tell. Even the transitory presence of such an inXuential Wgure, singing the right kind of songs, could be enough to evoke a costly inscription. A pair of inscriptions from Central Greece adds to the picture of itinerant historians, poets again, who turn up, present their version of the city’s past, and are honoured with not only an inscription, but also the titles of proxenos and benefactor.178 Politas of Hypata was honoured with an inscription and political privileges in the third century bc for his poetic performance:179 Good fortune. It seemed good to the city. Since Politas, son of Politas, of Hypata an epic poet, being present in the city, put on performances, in which he made worthy mention of the city, it seemed good that he should be a proxenos of the city and a benefactor. . .

Aristodama of Smyrna oVers an even more striking third-century bc illustration of the same phenomenon:180 When Hagetas of Callipolis was strategos of the Aetolians. Good fortune. It seemed good to the polis of the Lamians, since Aristodama, daughter of 178 I owe to Lisa Kallet the important observation with regard to this pair of inscriptions that the notion of delegations from city to city oVers only a partial picture, since here we Wnd no mention of a ‘sending’ city and the performers seem to be travelling on their own account. We cannot, therefore, explain the entire phenomenon of itinerant historians under the wider umbrella of ‘interstate diplomacy’. 179 IG 9 (2) 63 (cf. FGrH 483 f 2): ½%ªÆŁAØ ÆØ· AØ ºØ· ½KØc —º Æ —º Æ 0Æ ÆE½ Ø c KH ÆæÆª ½ K a ºØ Ø KØÆ ½; K Æx A ºØ Iø K½Ł; r ÆØ ÆP e æ A ºØ ŒÆd Pæª Æ Œ º. 180 See IG 9 (2) 62 (cf. Syll:3 532; FGrH 483 f 1): H `N øºH æÆ Æª `ª Æ ˚ÆººØº Æ· IªÆŁAØ ÆØ: ½ AØ ºØ H ¸ÆØø· KØc `æØ ½Æ ` Æ ˘ıæÆÆ I (ø½Æ Ø æØÆ K½ø½ Æ½æÆª½½Æ K a ºØ ºÆ K½ØØ KØÆ H Nø Ø ø; K x æ F Łı H `N øºH½ ŒÆd H æª ø F ı Iø KŁ; ½ a Æ æŁı½Æ a I Ø ØıÆ; r ÆP a æ ½ A ºØ ŒÆd Pæª Ø Œ º.


353

Amyntas, from Smyrna in Ionia, an epic poetess (Ø æØÆ) being present in the city put on many performances of her own poems, in which she made worthy mention of the ethnos of the Aetolians and the ancestors of the demos, putting on her performance with every enthusiasm, that she should be a proxenos of the city and a benefactress . . .

Here we Wnd a female poet joining the ranks of other itinerant historians and apparently putting on a star performance. It is interesting that she receives the same civic honours as Politas of Hypata, namely proxeny and oYcial recognition as a benefactor.181 But certain elements are of particular interest. First, that the inscription ends with a list of eponymous local magistrates—the archons at the time, the strategos, and the hipparchon. Second, of course, there is the striking fact that this historian-poet is a woman,182 although no special attention is drawn to the issue of gender, and Aristodama is apparently received and treated by the polis in exactly the same terms as her male counterparts, receiving ‘everything that is given to other proxenoi and benefactors’ (‹Æ E ¼ººØ æØ ŒÆd Pæª ÆØ ÆØ Æ).183 She is clearly a highly rated local historian, oVering spirited performances of her own compositions, and these are, more explicitly than the performances by Politas of Hypata, a form of local history, dealing with the wider ethnos of the Aetolians, but also with the ancestors of the Lamian demos.184 The itinerant credentials of Aristodama are conWrmed by a similar but slightly diVerently worded inscription from Delphi, set up by the people of 181 To the dossier we should add the decree from Larissa honouring Bombus from Alexandria in the Troad, who turned up in Larissa and made epideixeis in the gymnasium concerning the kinship and goodwill between the cities, on which see B. Helly, ‘Quinze anneés d’e´pigraphie thessalienne (1990–2005)’, in G. A. Pikoulas (ed.), Inscriptions and History of Thessaly: New Evidence (Volos, 2006), 21–6 at 25. 182 See S. B. Pomeroy, Spartan Women (Oxford, 2002), 3, for the assertion that ‘Poets were the most revered teachers in archaic Greece. There were no travelling women poets.’ It is not clear whether the second part also of this assertion is temporally bound to the archaic period. If not, it is clearly false. However, it is surely true that Aristodama must have been an exceptional case. 183 This high-proWle role for a woman in the important political task of constructing and relating the past of the community is in line with the picture presented by R. van Bremen, ‘Family Structures’, in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Oxford, Blackwell, 2003), 313–30 at 322–3. Van Bremen is reacting to the common assumption that women were denied a public role, except in particular contexts such as festivals, and argues that ‘It was inherent in Greek society from early on that there existed a public role for women and for the young.’ Her focus is on the similar regulation of women’s behaviour to that of men, through the institution of the gynaikonomoi, rather than on opportunity and free performance. However, the model of a polis society, which was less concerned with gender distinction than has sometimes been asserted, still stands and accommodates the Lamian inscriptions very eVectively. 184 Pace Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 339, who follows Jacoby in worrying over whether Aristodama dealt with ancient myths or more modern Aetolian history. The general tendency of local historiography to incorporate a huge time span should make such distinctions relatively unimportant.

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Time for the polis

Chaleion,185 to the same historian-poetess, neatly illustrating the way in which she travelled around diVerent cities performing local histories for each. The notion of a single tour seems most likely, leading Chaniotis to conclude that the two inscriptions should probably be dated to the same year of 218/7 bc.186 On the other hand, as Stephanes notes, Aristodama seems to have been accompanied by a diVerent brother on each occasion, to whom civic honours were also granted—Dionysius at Chaleion and O[-]nes at Lamia, suggesting the possibility of two separate journeys.187 With greater certainty we may note that, as in the case of Dioscurides and Myrinus, whose activities on Crete were celebrated not only in Tarsus, Dioscurides’ home town, but also on the island of Delos, a major hub of cross-Mediterranean activity, here too we Wnd the wandering, inter-polis Wgure epigraphically honoured in two locations—at a town where she performed and at a major Panhellenic site, Delphi, where both her skills and the honour paid to the recipient city could be most widely advertised.

5. ITINERANT INTELLECTUALS, MEDITERRANEAN MOBILITY: NEGOTI ATING TH E WORLD OF RO ME Before we return to the relationship between the historian and the polis, and to the proposition that constructing the past was an activity in which the polis had a direct interest, it is worth reXecting on some later parallels, or perhaps simply continuations, of this phenomenon of itinerant intellectuals, who seem to have played a key role in inter-polis relations of the third and especially second centuries bc.188 The cue for the most obvious and striking parallel is the inscription with which section 3 started, namely that in honour of Xenophon of Samos from the second century ad. We have already observed that the near-global empire of Rome inspired certain types of ‘great’ historiography, and turned the Panhellenic into the 185 See IG 9 (2) 740 (cf. SEG 25.590; Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.145): KØc ½%æØ ½Æ % Æ ˘ıæÆ½Æ I (øÆ ½Kø Ø æØ½Æ ÆæÆ½ª½Æ º½Æ . . .ŒÆd H æª ø H A½ ½ ºØ ±H ½Æ KØÆ . . . Since Aristodama daughter of Amyntas, from Smyrna, coming here from Ionia as a poetess being present . . . many . . . and commemorated the ancestors of our polis . . . 186 See Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 339. 187 Stephanes, ˜ØıØÆŒd E ÆØ, no. 326. There can be no mistaking the relationship in each case—O[-]nes is ‘her brother’ ( HØ IºHØ ÆP A) and Dionysius is ‘her brother’ (ŒÆd ˜Ø½ıøØ HØ IºHØ ÆP A). 188 For the link between wisdom and travel, see the interesting comments of C. Dougherty, The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey (Oxford, 2001), 3–4, in relation to Solon and his meeting with Croesus, with which this book started.

Negotiating the world of Rome

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Pan-Mediterranean. Although we see more named local historians honoured in the epigraphy of the Hellenistic period, we know from the names of lost authors and of their works that local historiography continued to thrive in the Greek poleis in the Roman imperial period too. The phenomenon of itinerant local historiography, one of whose functions seems to have been to facilitate and enhance interstate diplomacy through reference to past contact and longstanding ties of kinship, may have remained no less relevant in the new world of Roman rule. The repeated mention of the political importance of these Wgures, as itinerant, suprapolitical ambassadors, forging crucial links between the disparate communities of the empire, securing goodwill, and gaining lasting memorials of the interaction between poleis, begins to hint at an important binding force in the empire, on which diplomacy could continue to be built. Millar, in his work on the Emperor in the Roman World,189 put forward a model of a Romanocentric, emperor-focused unity, by which the empire and especially the Principate with its central imperial Wgure fostered, or at least provided the fertile breeding ground for, such magnetic uniWers as the citizenship and the imperial cult.190 But alongside this unity, we might posit the utility of itinerant local historians in enhancing inter-polis relations, lending a sense of a commonly understood past and of shared conceptual frameworks, rather than merely a common interest in Rome and Romanitas. The parochial world of local historiography, which seems at Wrst glance to be far removed from global empires, must in fact have been more attuned to the wider stage than it seems. When Menecles of Teos turned up in Crete with Herodotus and wove local tales into his other songs, the dynamics of integration between the local and the global might not have been so very diVerent from when the people of Volubilis far oV in the Atlas mountains asked for Roman citizenship;191 knowing the common language and using it to tie the small place into the larger network is as much a part of historiography as of more conventional political exchange. The role of itinerant historians in the smooth running of interstate relations, which seems to have been so 189 F. G. B. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977). 190 On the unifying eVects of the imperial Wgurehead, see P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1988), 297–333, F. G. B. Millar, ‘State and Subject: The Impact of Monarchy’, in F. G. B. Millar and E. Segal (eds.), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects, (Oxford, 1984), 37–60; on the importance of imperial cult in particular, see K. Hopkins, ‘Divine Emperors or the Symbolic Unity of the Roman Empire’, in K. Hopkins (ed.), Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978), ch. 5. C. Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley and London, 2000) oVers a detailed study of various aspects of this uniWed, though heterogeneous, world. 191 For the successful embassy from Volubilis, asking for citizenship and rights of conubium, see E. M. Smallwood, Documents of the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (Bristol, 1984), no. 407b (cf. CRAI (1915) 394–7).

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important in the Hellenistic period, was developing during the expansion of Rome’s world dominion and could clearly be adapted to the increasingly uniWed world of Roman power, although the historians of the Greek poleis retained their own mythological and historiographical currency.192 This was a form of interstate activity, which could form its own networks marked out by the travels of the historian, and not always Wltered through the prism of Roman power and the Wgure of the emperor. I have argued elsewhere that it is possible to detect a parallel but reverse form of itinerant historiography in the period of the Second Sophistic;193 that while Xenophon was being lauded in the Samian Heraion, Wgures like Pausanias went around in their footsteps ‘gathering up’ the local histories which had been deposited by centuries of travelling historians. Pretzler has examined the work methods which emerge from Pausanias’ text, whereby he extracted local history from informants on site, as he travelled around, often using monuments as the cue for the story,194 as well as backing up his on-site research with later library work.195 Jones too notes Pausanias’ use of exegetai, respectable if not highly learned antiquarians, whom Jones calls ‘the gens moyen cultive´s’, sometimes designated explicitly as relaters of local matters (› H KØøæø Kª ), who could pass on to Pausanias the kinds of local tales that our itinerant historians had told on their travels.196 Although these local experts are not to be confused with the often itinerant local historians, nevertheless they seem to have been the guardians of those stories relating to particular poleis and sites. It is particularly interesting that one of Pausanias’ few named exegetes was a poet, Lyceas of Argos (1.13.8), oVering a fascinating insight into the moment of transition from verse to prose for one set of local tales. Lyceas perhaps also, in contrast to the caveat just issued, hints at a greater degree of continuity between the poetic composers of local historiography and the world of Pausanias, than might be supposed. This continuity is further reinforced if we join Alcock in seeing Pausanias as not merely gathering up tales, but actively participating in their evolution at a local level. It is clear that he gives some insight into the existence of competing versions of 192 That the power of kinship ties and allusion to the distant past continued to carry political power under the Principate is well illustrated by the debate in the senate under Claudius concerning the adlection of the Aedui. See D. C. Braund, ‘The Aedui, Troy, and the Apocolocyntosis’, Classical Quarterly 30 (1980), 420–5. A Tiberian example concerns the cities of Asia Minor who had to make their claims to asylum afresh before the senate in a competition in which they adduced kinship ties as well as benefaction to Rome (Tacitus, Annals 3.60–3). 193 See Clarke, ‘Parochial Tales in a Global Empire’, 111–28. 194 For the historical landscape through which Pausanias leads the reader, see K. Arafat, ‘Pausanias’ Attitude to Antiquities’, Annals of the British School at Athens 87 (1992), 387–409. 195 M. Pretzler, ‘Turning Travel into Text: Pausanias at Work’, Greece and Rome 51 (2004), 199–216. 196 See C. P. Jones, ‘Pausanias and his Guides’, in S. E. Alcock, J. F. Cherry, J. Elsner (eds.), Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece (Oxford, 2001), 33–9.


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local tales;197 furthermore, that one of Pausanias’ tasks is to decide between these alternatives, ‘deciding local ‘‘truths’’, dictating local history’ (p. 265), rendering him both the collector and the creator of local historiography. It would be fascinating to speculate on the relationship between the exegetai consulted by Pausanias and the ones dismissed by Jacoby as the source of the tradition of local historiography in the Wfth century bc. Is what we see in Pausanias essentially a composition of antiquarian material, and not of the same analytical or interpretative quality as a work of historiography? In the absence of complete works of local historiography, that remains a diYcult distinction to articulate and support. There is a further and related issue which continues to elude precise analysis, namely the place of the polis in all of this, and the interest of the polis community in the construction of its past. One of Jacoby’s main theses in Atthis was that local historiography was the result of an impulse towards the celebration of civic pride, rather than the oVspring of a college of priests. The possibility that Pausanias’ project involved gathering up past stories of the Greek poleis and turning them into Roman possessions, with Greece now a theme park for wealthy Romans,198 would represent a dramatic shift in the relationship between historiography and the self-assertion of the polis. Although Pausanias might be helping to form local traditions as he interrogates his sources, the impetus for the account would no longer be found inside the polis, nor even among itinerant historians who were engaged in some form of inter-polis diplomacy, but in a dispassionate outsider, drawing information from scholarly experts. The combination of the Pausanias who forms traditions as he goes and the one who simply compiles exegetical information may oVer a diVerent way of formulating Habicht’s idea of two levels in Pausanias’ text—what he has seen on his travels (ŁøæÆ Æ) and the stories he tells from others (º ªØ), making him into both autoptic guide and transmitter of tales.199 In this sense, we might come back to Herodotus, and indeed the combination of local traditions and larger narratives would add force to that parallel.200 Pausanias, like Herodotus, saw it as his task to construct a connected, if not comprehensive, narrative which would reXect the underlying vision of Greece.201 197 S. Alcock, ‘Landscapes of Memory and the Authority of Pausanias’, in J. Bingen (ed.), Pausanias Historien. Fondation Hardt 41 (Geneva, 1996), 241–67 at 262. 198 For Greece as a location for the celebration of Roman otium, see S. Alcock, Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge, 1993), especially 224–6. 199 C. Habicht, Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 1998 [1985]), 21, for the combination of ŁøæÆ Æ and º ªØ. 200 This is indeed the view put forward by E. Bowie, ‘Inspiration and Aspiration: Date, Genre, and Readership’, in Alcock, Cherry, Elsner (eds.), Pausanias, 21–32 at 25. Bowie sees the association of tales with monuments as a strongly Herodotean inXuence on Pausanias. 201 For Pausanias as deliberate creator of a coherent vision of a notional Greece, see J. Elsner, ‘Structuring ‘‘Greece’’: Pausanias’ Periegesis as a Literary Construct’, in Alcock, Cherry, Elsner

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Just as the activities and products of itinerant historians could be seen to reXect the needs of the poleis for which they worked, so too is Pausanias’ version of the connectivity brought by travelling around and gathering local tales into a single work Wrmly embedded in the political reality of his age, and it shares its ambiguities. The cohesion brought to Greece by the development of the Panhellenion has been seen as a reXection of, or contributor to, the same type of network, linking the Greek poleis into a cultural and political unity.202 Rather than focusing only on the way in which Pausanias appears to gather up and neatly ‘package’ the past of the Greek poleis for their Roman masters, one might also reintroduce the idea of the assertion of an independent Greek identity. Whitmarsh has argued that writers on the subject of exile in this period ‘create and explore a tension between polis and cosmos, between the traditional parochiality of Greek identity and its new role as the integrative language of the eastern Roman Empire’,203 and this view may be applicable also to the work of Pausanias. If Whitmarsh is correct, then we might wish to draw a less sharp dichotomy between the world of the itinerant historian, who creates through his or her travels a conceptually independent network of historiographical allusions between the Greek poleis, and the world of Pausanias, who also blurs the boundary between the local and the Panhellenic. While the blurring of these boundaries may be appealing, it is important not to lose sight of diVerences over time and the exigencies of changing political realities. The parallel with the world of the Second Sophistic is appropriate, but only to a degree. There is a tension between the ability of intellectuals to circulate around the cities, as Philostratus’ sophists do, and their role as benefactors of individual cities, able to act as ambassadors and advocates for the poleis in wider contexts, often through their facility for telling the past in particular ways. This might seem to mirror quite accurately some aspects of the Hellenistic world of itinerant historians acting as benefactors of cities which were not necessarily their own, and embodying the link between intra-polis historiography and inter-polis networks. But the connected world put together by the periegete, using the stories performed by the itinerant historians before him and transmitted in turn to the travelling Roman reader, who could use it to guide him in the footsteps of all his predecessors on the journey, was a form of reminiscence rather than one of (eds.), Pausanias, 3–20. Unity was not incompatible with the gathering up of disparate tales, but rather achieved by that process. 202 See K. W. Arafat, Pausanias’ Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers (Cambridge, 1996), 12–14, 35. 203 T. Whitmarsh, ‘ ‘‘Greece is the World’’: Exile and Identity in the Second Sophistic’, in S. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge, 2001), 269–305 at 273.


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novelty, a re-evocation of the local tales, which the travelling historian had Wrst set down. As is often observed in the case of oratory, one might suggest that in local historiography too, the early centuries of the Principate oVered a pale and derivative imitation of a phenomenon that had truly Xourished in the fourth-century poleis, and continued as a form of polis self-assertion during the Hellenistic period as the power of Rome loomed.204 But Bowie notes, in his discussion of the ‘gatherer-historian’, Pausanias, that itinerant historians were still at work generating local historiography in his lifetime, actively participating in the world of inter-polis relations, perhaps politically more important than the itinerant sophists, and honoured in inscriptions accordingly.205 P. Anteius Antiochus of Cilician Aegeae, a close contemporary of Pausanias whose honoriWc inscription was set up for his work on early Argive history, is a good example of the continuation of this phenomenon.206 He was celebrated by the people of Argos for having spent time in their city, ‘establishing the ancient kinship with the Aegeaeans’ (Ææa ±E ØÆ a KŒ ÆºÆØF æıÆ `NªÆı ±H ıªªÆ, 20–1). As Price has commented in connection with this Wgure, he reminds us that the Panhellenion was not the whole answer to the question of how to conduct Greek diplomacy in the second century ad.207 ‘Many preferred to forge their own mythological ties with individual cities. The pattern of networking remained Xuid and varied.’208 One striking aspect of the world in which the writers of the Second Sophistic were working is, of course, the existence of a nearly global empire with a strong sense of a centre of power at an imperial capital. The political eVectiveness of the intellectuals of this period was manifested largely through their ability to intercede on behalf of the poleis of the Greek East with the power structure of Rome. Our earlier itinerant intellectuals at Wrst glance appear to have been operating in a very diVerent context, one in which the tensions lie not between the Panhellenic unity, posited by Whitmarsh,

204 E. L. Bowie, ‘The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic’; Past and Present 46 (1970), 3–41, stresses on the whole the depressed nature of political life in the cities of the Greek East, and the escapist element in the oratory it produced. G. W. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969) also focuses on the links to Rome of the prominent intellectuals of this age. Cultural life is thus vibrant and the intellectuals high-proWle and politically eVective, but not entirely independent. 205 Bowie, ‘Inspiration and Aspiration’, 25. 206 For this inscription see L. Robert, ‘Documents d’Asie Mineure’, Bulletin de Correspondance Helleńique 101 (1977), 120–9. 207 Although Robert, ibid. 128, sees this ‘orator-historian’ (rhe´teur historien) as symptomatic of the literary Wgures whose work Xourished under the Panhellenion. 208 S. Price, ‘Local Mythologies in the Greek East’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford, 2005), 115–24 at 122.

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and the superpower of Rome, but between the individual polis and a sense of shared Panhellenic traditions and history. It would, however, be misleading to dismiss Rome from the earlier picture. We have already noted the point made by Lloyd-Jones in connection with the inscription from Halicarnassus that it was to be read in the context of secondcentury Roman intervention in the area as a form of self-assertion through intellectual supremacy, not so very diVerent a view from that often made about the dynamics of the Second Sophistic. Although most of the inscriptions honouring itinerant historians make no reference to the power of Rome, and can be read entirely within the framework of inter-polis relations being conducted in the currency of intra-polis history, there is a notable exception in the Wgure of Aristotheus of Troezen:209 It seemed good to the people of Delphi . . . since Aristotheus son of Nicotheus from Troezen, a historian coming to the city . . . held recitations for several days of his works, and he set forth encomia210 of the Romans, the common benefactors of the Greeks, that he and his descendants should be given by the city proxeny, the right to consult the oracle Wrst, priority in judicial hearings, inviolability, exemption from all taxes, the right to sit in the front row at all the competitive occasions which the polis stages, and the other civic privileges which are accorded to other proxenoi and benefactors.

Here another itinerant historian, Aristotheus, was honoured by the people of Delphi in the early or mid-second century bc.211 The polis of Delphi resolved to grant proxeny and all the other rights and privileges customarily granted to benefactors of the polis, to Aristotheus and to his descendants, but not because he composed and performed a Xattering account of Delphi’s early history; rather his Xattery was directed at Rome.212 We might wonder why the people of Delphi should go to the considerable expense of setting up an honoriWc inscription to commemorate this historian’s 209 SGDI 2724 (cf. Syll:3 702; Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.124; FGrH 835 t 1): AØ ºØ H ˜ºH . . . KØ %æØ Ł ˝ØŒŁı ½ æ Ø ƒ æØªæ ÆæÆª ½K a ºØ . . . KØÆ b ŒÆd IŒæØ K½d ºÆ ±æÆ H æÆªÆ ıø ÆP HØ; ÆæÆªø ½b ŒÆd K½ŒØÆ N .øÆı f ŒØf H ¯ººø Pæª Æ; ŁÆØ Ææa A½ ºØ æÆ ÆP HØ ŒÆd KŒª Ø; æÆ ½Æ; æØŒÆ; IıºÆ; I ºØÆ ½ ø; ææÆ K AØ E IªØ x ½ ± ºØ½ Ł Ø ŒÆd pººÆ ØÆ ‹Æ ŒÆd ½¼ººØ æØ ŒÆd Pæª ÆØ ½æ½Ø A ºØ. 210 The restoration to the crucial word, K½ŒØÆ, is based on a combination of sense and length. 211 The date is uncertain and will be discussed below. 212 Indeed, this fragment is placed by Jacoby in his section on Rome and Italy, since its content concerns that region. It does, however, also contribute to our understanding of the historiography and cultural history of Greece, in so far as it enriches our picture of the phenomenon of itinerant local historians. See A. Erskine, ‘The Romans as Common Benefactors’, Historia 43 (1994), 70–87 at 79–80, for the possibility that Aristotheus’ encomium constituted cult worship of the Romans in this role.


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performance, as well as granting him extensive civic rights. Perhaps they were simply appreciative of the entertainment, which Aristotheus provided for several days. Or, more probably, we should see this as a good illustration of the political importance of historiography, whether local or not. History written in support of the ruling power was seen as carrying considerable beneWts for all concerned. Even though Aristotheus came from outside, the fact that he performed at Delphi was valuable for the people of that polis, and they were only too keen to set up a memorial linking themselves with the pro-Roman performance, especially given the well-attested wish of the Delphians to be associated with the new ruling power after their ‘liberation’ in 191–188 bc.213 The inscription honouring Aristotheus has traditionally been dated to c.158/7 bc,214 but the arguments for that date are purely circumstantial and it seems that there are compelling reasons for a reconsideration. Aristaenus, on whose statue base the inscription appears, was seen by Polybius (22.10) as already ingratiating himself to Rome in the 180s, and Erskine has traced the use of the phrase ‘common benefactors’ in Greek inscriptions referring to the Romans back to 182 bc.215 It would seem that a date for this inscription, say, at least a couple of decades earlier than the context suggests would not be inconceivable in historical terms.216 It would, indeed be entirely in keeping with Delphi’s eagerness to position itself carefully vis-a`-vis Rome that a proRoman performance, richly rewarded with honours and privileges, should follow quickly on the heels of the liberation. Aristotheus clearly knew what 213 In fact, the Delphic location of this whole episode is by no means accidental. P. S. Derow and W. G. Forrest, ‘An Inscription from Chios’, Annual of the British School at Athens 77 (1982), 79–92, argue that Delphi and Chios, from where comes an inscription which mentions the dedication of a depiction of the foundation of Rome by Romulus and Remus, enjoyed an exceptionally close bond, which they both turned in the direction of ‘making manifest their goodwill to the victors’ (90). For the importance of the restored Delphic Amphictyony in relations between Greek cities and Rome, see A. Giovannini, ‘Philipp V, Perseus und die Delphische Amphiktyony’, in B. Laourdas and C. Makaronas (eds.), Ancient Macedonia (Thessaloniki, 1970), 147–54. 214 See Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.124, and H. Pomtow, ‘Delphica II’, Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift (1909) for the context of the inscription. It is its place on the base of the statue of Aristaenus which leads to the supposition of a date c.158/7 bc, since the palaeography links it closely to the following inscription (explicitly dated to the archonship of Patreas in 157 bc). 215 Erskine, ‘The Romans as Common Benefactors’, 70–87. The phrase appears until the late Wrst century bc. 216 See P. S. Derow, ‘Rome, the Fall of Macedon and the Sack of Corinth’, in Cambridge Ancient History VIII2 (Cambridge, 1989), 290–323, for the increasing tendency of some Greek poleis to style themselves pro-Roman during these decades. It is worth noting that H. B. Siedentopf, Das hellenistische Reiterdenkmal (Waldsassen, 1968), 114, dates the statue base with its dedication to Aristaenus to 186/5 bc and, were it not for the palaeographical link of the Aristotheus inscription to the one which follows it, it would be tempting to connect Aristotheus’ honoriWc inscription chronologically to this preceding one. For helpful discussion of the inscription and of its historical context, I owe thanks to Peter Derow.

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would make an irresistible theme for the polis in question, especially at this point in its history, and also knew the precise terminology of the Romans as ‘common benefactors’ in which to express his theme. Just as it had made sense for Sicilian historians to display their aYliations and aspirations to Greek identity through their use of speciWcally Hellenic ways of articulating the past (as discussed in chapters 3 and 4), so do we see reXected here, perhaps, historiography as a vehicle for expressing adherence to a new world order that was emerging with increasing force and clarity. It is hard to tell to what degree a story uniWed by the presence of a single phenomenon or set of circumstances, namely the scenario whereby an itinerant intellectual turns up at a Greek polis and relates history, usually that of the host polis and usually in poetic form, for which he or she is rewarded by the polis with honoriWc inscriptions and political privileges, runs the risk of distorting or simply ignoring the contextual reality surrounding each individual case. The notion of interaction between poleis is clearly not unique to any period. We have already noted the circulation of intellectuals, including some historians, in the settled, stable world of the Principate in what would be termed the Second Sophistic. At the other end of a chronological spectrum, the worlds of the Odyssey and the Iliad are adequate testimony to the mobility of aristocrats and the importance of guest-friendship. Pelling has noted the importance of such inter-polis links for intellectual life, ‘with poets and celebrands alike revelling in their cross-community connections’, in the world of Pindar and Bacchylides.217 Somewhere in between, a fragment of Hyperides oVers a glimpse of fourth-century tourism, whereby rich Aeolians came to Delos with lots of gold, ‘being away from home on a tour of Greece’.218 But it would be a missed opportunity if we were simply to allow the itinerant tellers of local history in the period under consideration to dissolve into a bland phenomenon of continuous mobility around the Mediterranean world, involving intellectual Wgures of various kinds. There is a sense in which one can Wnd a convincing context for the particular phenomenon of itinerant historians in the ancient Mediterranean koine of interaction and connectivity, which has been so eloquently explored in diVerent ways by scholars such as Purcell and Malkin.219 The Panhellenic range of the historians, who travel widely and seem to know what to say wherever they go, might be seen to 217 Pelling, ‘Ion’s Epidemiai’, 108. 218 FGrH 401 f 5: ŒÆ a ŁøæÆ B ¯ºº IF . 219 See P. Horden and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000) for a superb account of the intricacies of Mediterranean activity on a range of scales. Also I. Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, in I. Malkin (ed.), Mediterranean Paradigms and Classical Antiquity (London, 2005), 56–74.

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mirror rather neatly the observation already made (in chapter 4) that the parochiality of local historiography, for which it would be criticized from antiquity onwards, was more apparent, or rather assumed, than real, and that one of the crucial features of local accounts was precisely to embed themselves in larger narratives, which carried more weight in the world beyond. Local historiography, as carried out by itinerant historians, might be seen, then, as another, rather neglected, manifestation of the wider theme of Mediterranean connectivity. This context has the advantage of simultaneously oVering a new and more rigorously developed framework of intra- and inter-polis relations within which to read the fragments of local historiography, which are notoriously diYcult to interpret. It enables us to bring Jacoby’s model of local historiography, as a form which was necessarily constructed against a bigger picture as an expression of local pride, within the context of placing one’s own city on the world map, in a more up-to-date scholarly framework. Conversely, it allows the fragments of local historiography to contribute another angle on the increasingly complex picture of Mediterranean interaction which has built up over recent decades. But this model alone will not suYce. The complementarity between intrapolis individuality and inter-polis connectivity, which can be partially expressed in terms of coexisting local and Panhellenic frameworks in historiography, appears to map easily on to the world of the travelling historian, serving each polis as he or she goes, and forming a network of journeys which might be re-enacted by later periegetes, such as Pausanias, or by even later tourists. However, it sits less happily with the notion of the historian who carries authority within his own community, and of local historiography as the natural home-grown product of the polis in its quest for recognition in the wider world.

6. RETURNING TO T HE P O L I S The status of the often itinerant performers of local history is undoubtedly elevated. They were clearly sometimes high-level ambassadors sent on important inter-polis missions, and it is important to return to the questions on what grounds they won acclaim in the poleis, and what their precise relationship to those poleis really was. I have argued throughout that each polis had a strong interest in the construction and presentation of its past, and a high level of awareness of the ways in which time could be manipulated. Although we may gain a relatively strong sense of the orator as a presence in the polis and one who has a particular stake in presenting to the polis certain aspects of

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its past, both buying into and moulding the ‘oYcial tradition’, the historian tends to be a more elusive Wgure. The statesman-historian of the Thucydidean type may have been less dominant in the Greek world than is often assumed, and indeed the story of the ‘historiography of exile’ is an important episode in its own right. If we take Lucian seriously, then the ideal writer of history is not ‘of the polis’ in any case, but an outsider: ‘an impartial judge, well disposed to all men up to the point of not giving one side more than its due, in his writings a stranger () and a man without a polis (¼ºØ), independent (ÆP ), subject to no sovereign (IÆºı )’.220 It is true that local historians such as Androtion were heavily involved in the political Realien of fourth-century Athens, but we have no evidence that this was the case for the majority of local historians.221 Furthermore, the existence of itinerant historians suggests that the local historian as prominent citizen, and proponent of the interests of his own polis through his relation of its past, is a picture which oVers us only a partial description. The ‘pride of Halicarnassus’ phenomenon needs to be complemented by other possibilities for the construction of the community’s past. A model which would accommodate at least some of the evidence, and which emerges not from the fragments of local historiography themselves, which seem to have been largely native productions, but from the inscriptions which honoured the performers and composers of historical works, is to consider the local historian as a professional or semi-professional Wgure, at least from the Hellenistic period onwards. The context for Wgures such as the ones we have seen honoured in the epigraphy, historians who simply turned up and performed, or who came under a more intricate and formal arrangement instigated by either the historian’s home town or the host city, would then be similar to that of the technitai Dionysou, the ‘artists of Dionysus’, to whom a good deal more scholarly attention has been devoted.222 Lightfoot has set out the way in which large corporations of musicians, poets, and dramatists, the so-called technitai, evolved from the early third century bc, and spread throughout the Mediterranean,223 and some of the 220 Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 41: Y ØŒÆ ; hı –ÆØ ¼æØ F c ŁÆ æø Ø IEÆØ ºE F ; K E ØºØ ŒÆd ¼ºØ; ÆP ; IÆºı . 221 See also P. Funke, ‘æØŒÆd ı Ø ŒÆd ƒ æÆØ: Die rhodische Historiographie in hellenistischer Zeit’, Klio 76 (1994), 255–62 at 259, for the statesman status of Antisthenes and Zeno of Rhodes, in spite of which Polybius applies the same critique (in Book 16) as to other local historians. 222 I owe to Professor Adalberto Giovannini the initial suggestion that this professional, ‘rhapsodic’ world might oVer the most satisfactory context for interpreting the itinerant historians. 223 J. L. Lightfoot, ‘Nothing to do with the technitai of Dionysus?’, in P. Easterling and E. Hall (eds.), Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession (Cambridge, 2002), 209–24.


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aspects of this phenomenon which she identiWes are of particular interest and relevance to a consideration of itinerant historians and their relationship to the polis. We have already noted the interestingly blurred boundary between historiography and poetry, and it is striking that both Guarducci, in her study of ‘wandering poets’, and Stephanes, in his book on ‘Artists of Dionysus’, include our itinerant historians in their respective pictures.224 As Schepens appreciates, Guarducci’s work ‘places our wandering historians squarely in context: considered alongside poets, artists, grammarians, philosophers, doctors, and musicians, they are seen as participating in a large diversiWed movement, typical of the vibrant dynamic of Hellenistic culture’.225 It is not clear that one can speak of ‘cults of historians’, of the kinds associated with poets, such as Archilochus, but the awards of proxeny, which are celebrated in the honoriWc inscriptions for historians, Wnd precise parallels in the awards of such civic honours to members of the poetic and acting guilds as rewards for civic benefaction, suggesting that both groups, although outsiders, were publicly acknowledged as beneWcial to the city.226 On the other hand, performing historians Wnd no place in the list of prizes, which are neatly graded in value according to a hierarchy of types of performance,227 and the comparison between lyric poets of the archaic period and itinerant historians of the Hellenistic period may be too disparate to be meaningful. The assertion that, ‘they [sc. the Artists of Dionysus] constituted themselves as cities and appointed oYcials and issued decrees, while managing to live in the cities where they took up residence as privileged outsiders—in the city but not of it’ might suggest that the signiWcance of the performers to the polis and of the polis to the performers was minimal.228 The problem over the shift from 224 See Guarducci, Poeti vaganti e conferenzieri dell’eta` ellenistica and Stephanes, ˜ØıØÆŒd E ÆØ. 225 Schepens, ‘Travelling Greek Historians’. 226 See, for example, Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.125, the next inscription on the Aristaenus statue base after that which celebrates the award of proxeny and other civic honours to Aristotheus. FdD iii.3.125 celebrates Aristys, a musician/poet who was honoured with exactly the same, clearly standard, list of privileges as Aristotheus. 227 See Lightfoot, ‘Nothing to do with the technitai of Dionysus?’, 214. The inscription concerning detailed regulations for the new festival of the Demostheneia, set up at Oenoanda in ad 124, also lists categories of artists who could compete for prizes, but no historians are mentioned among the tragic and comic poets, trumpeters, and heralds. The only categories which might conceivably accommodate any of the historical performers discussed in this chapter are those of citharodes and writers of encomia in prose. See G. M. Rogers, ‘Demosthenes of Oenoanda and Models of Euergetism’, Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991), 91–100. For a text of the inscription, see M. Wo¨rrle, Stadt und Fest in Kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien: Studien zu einer Agonistischen Stiftung aus Oenoanda (Munich, 1988) and for English translation, S. Mitchell, ‘Festivals, Games, and Civic Life in Roman Asia Minor’, Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990), 183–93 at 183–7. 228 See Lightfoot, ‘Nothing to do with the technitai of Dionysus?’, 210. See also 223 for the guild in Ptolemais-Hermiou, which called itself a techniteuma in a way which was clearly modelled on the politeuma.

366

Time for the polis

actors who were citizen amateurs to professional guildsmen with formal contracts neatly mirrors the disquieting sense in which itinerant historians seem disjointed from the poleis whose pasts they tell rather than embedded in them. Furthermore, although Lightfoot goes so far as to incorporate historians and grammatici (perhaps Wgures such as Dioscurides) into her picture of those who might perform at venues such as Delos and Delphi, without necessarily being a member of a guild or part of the festival proper, there are two elements here which might warn us that we have not yet found the perfect context or explanation for our itinerant historians. First, the ‘lecturers who included historians and grammatici’ (p. 218) sound rather distanced from the spirited performers of poetic accounts of the past, sung to the lyre, by stars like Menecles or Aristodama, though this may simply be a matter of style rather than of substance. Second, the congregation of performers at festivals in Delos and Delphi echoes a theme which we have already identiWed in connection with the historians’ inscriptions, namely advertisement of the inter-polis transaction at one of the great neutral Panhellenic sites—important in the quest to gain recognition for all parties on a larger stage—but these locations are, by deWnition, detached from the world of individual poleis. Perhaps we need to diVerentiate more carefully between these Panhellenic performances and the more polis-based world evoked by Gentili, who sees our itinerant intellectuals—be they rhapsodes, actors, or historians—as bringing ‘court’ culture and knowledge in the Hellenistic period to a mass audience at the city festivals, and, in a sense, making public the learning concerning both Panhellenic and local myths, which ‘provided the traditional beginnings of the history of individual cities’.229 The possibility that professional or semi-professional historians travelled around performing specially composed and tailored works might go some way to answering the ongoing problem of historiographical authority. Figures with a pre-existing reputation presumably claimed an audience without much diYculty, and indeed might be considered a real coup for a polis. The question of why, for example, the people of Crete trusted two men from Teos to examine their local history, and tell them about their own past, may not be as perplexing as it Wrst seems, if there were well-known historians around who would make it, quite literally, their business to know the story and know how to tell it.230 For Rigsby, the designation of the Tean ambassadors is 229 B. Gentili, Poetry and its Public in Ancient Greece (Baltimore, 1988), 175. 230 See Rigsby, Asylia, 280, for the fact that Teos was the oYcial residence of the IonianHellespontine Artists of Dionysus during the third century. Thus, the provision of authoritative poet-historians from that city becomes even less surprising. Furthermore, the personal inviolability accorded to Artists of Dionysus seems to have assisted in the claim to inviolability of the polis as a whole.


367

straightforward: ‘obviously Dionysiac Artists’.231 Another angle would be to recall that the parochialism of the local historians is questionable; their ability to tell authoritative and accepted, even laudable, versions of the past of other poleis, reinforces this idea. Many historians wrote several works concerning diVerent places. This suggests either that the local nature of key historiographic frameworks, such as the relevant mythic past and appropriate temporal systems, was less pronounced than we might have imagined; that is, that composing the history of Samos was not such a very diVerent task from composing that of Tegea or Argos or Delphi. Or it may be that a truly topclass historian could overcome any local variations. It is, in any case, worth asking what gave a historian the authority to turn up in a strange town and start telling the people their past; and what it was that made them listen. The epigraphic evidence oVers a rare insight into the context of immediate reception of this form of historiography, telling the past of the Greek poleis, and provides unusually direct evidence for the relationship between the local historian and his or her audience, to a degree which is lost to us for more famous Wgures. Here, for once, the original audiences have left permanent and explicit expressions of their reception of the historians and their works.232 The idea of the local historian as inextricably linked to his own home polis, and spokesperson for the oYcial tradition of that place, is clearly not the only possible model, pace Prakken on the role of Hereas as ‘undoubtedly [my italics] the historical voice of Megara at the end of the fourth century’ who ‘carried on the literary and historical polemic of Megara against Athens’.233 Patriotism for one’s own polis might well have played a part, or indeed been in some cases the primary motivation, but it cannot be the whole or only answer. On the other hand, if we assign local historiography to the world of festivals, competitions, and rivalry for reputation among well-known professionals, then where does that leave the polis, and what is the status and truth claim of the history? It remains unclear precisely what the context might be for such performances of local historiography. Where did the historian perform and for whom?234 Fowler has interestingly discussed the relevance of orality and 231 See Rigsby, Asylia, 289. 232 Though see J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), 53, on the issue of dedicatees and the possibility that immediacy of reception may detract from the eternal, unspeciWed audience of ‘great historians’. 233 D. W. Prakken, ‘On the date of Hereas, the Megarian Historian’, Classical Weekly 37 (1943–4), 1–2 at 2. 234 Some glimpses drawn from inscriptions honouring itinerants may, however, be helpful. See Inscr. De´los 1506, a mid-second-century bc inscription celebrating Ariston, son of Acrisius from Phocaea, who, in spite of his youth like Xenophon of Samos (K E F ÆØe ºØŒÆØ) turned up on Delos and made many performances ‘in the assembly place and the theatre’ ( HØ KŒŒºØÆ æøØ ŒÆd K HØ Ł æøØ).

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literacy for the question of historiographical authority, particularly in Herodotus, and has observed the tendency of ‘great’ history to abandon the Muses’ inspiration, and pare down the poetry of a festive occasion, baldly speaking, into the bare facts told in prose.235 The disjunction between the occasion-bound performance and an occasion-free literate version, with a middle ground in the world of competitive contexts,236 requires the composition to be appealing and comprehensible to more than its original, restricted audience. Mythography was from the start ‘occasion-free, panhellenic, and in these respects literate’, and, in Fowler’s view, the extant fragments of local historiography tell the same story, with multiple implied audiences built in, no distinction between the telling of local and Panhellenic subjects, and the widespread use of Ionic dialect suggesting that these works were designed from the outset to be consumed by more than a single, local audience.237 On the other hand, I would not wish to go so far as to detach local historiography from its immediate contexts and audiences, some of which we are in the rare position of being able to identify. The stake in its success for both the city which produced the historian, and that whose history was told, is shown by the epigraphic evidence concerning the moment of creation and reception to be too high for such a conclusion to be allowed. In any case, we know from the epigraphy that at least some local historiography was very much oral in nature, and was performed for a particular occasion in the Wrst instance, whatever then happened in terms of producing a more self-contained text. Whether for a private or a public audience, or both in the case of the Parian Marble, and whether in poetry or prose, it seems that local historiography stuck close to its roots in the world of lyric poetry and the telling of the mythical and historical past combined.238 The point of contact between Jacoby’s world of fragments surviving from the vast wealth of local historiography written in prose and largely by native 235 See R. Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, in Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft, 95–115 at 102–3. Of course, the example of Herodotus is highly complex, since it has been strongly argued that he gave public performances at Athens and Olympia. Theopompus also travelled around the Greek world as epideictic performer. Marincola, Authority and Tradition, 8, makes a similar point about the move in historiography from the inspiration of the muses to the historian’s own authority. But his almost complete failure to accommodate the fragments of local historiography means that he is not required to place them on this spectrum. 236 It is worth recalling at this point Thucydides’ explicit rejection of such contexts for the production of his ‘great’, eternal work of history (1.22.4), perhaps written with a hint of irony. 237 Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, 114 for mythography; 111–13 on the widespread audience implied for local historiography. 238 On the complex and poetic interaction between mythic narratives and present rituals, through which the polis and groups within it expressed their identities, see B. Kowalzig, Singing for the Gods: Performances of Myth and Ritual in Archaic and Classical Greece (Oxford, forthcoming 2007).


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historians and, on the other hand, that which the epigraphic evidence allows us tentatively to reconstruct, a world of local historiography which was performed, often in lyric form, on particular occasions and often by artists from outside the polis, may be glimpsed by considering a pair of inscriptions. We have already seen Syriscus of Chersonesus who was celebrated by his own town for a dual benefaction—both writing and performing (ªæłÆ I½ªø) the epiphanies of the goddess.239 But this double treatment, both written and oral, was also celebrated around the same time for another historian in another town. The polis of Amphipolis set up an inscription to honour an individual who had presented his historical researches on the town and its patron goddess in oral performances (½KØjÆ IŒæØ) and in a written publication (ı ½Æ b Øºj ŒÆd æd B Æıæ ºı).240 This time the composer of the history, both oral and written, is not a local, but a visitor (ÆæØH½) of the type we have seen in many honoriWc inscriptions. Local historiography could be produced by both natives and visitors, in both oral and written form. The ‘occasion-free’, literate, prose histories on a grand scale for an unspeciWed readership throughout all subsequent time, which were written by historians of the Wfth century, set the agenda for most of western historiography thenceforth, but may in fact be seen as something of an aberration. Historiography continued to be created for particular audiences on particular occasions. On the other hand, I do not agree with Gabba’s view that the decline of the polis in the fourth century reduced historiography from being political to simply oVering Herodotean-style entertainment: ‘In the Hellenistic period, changing cultural interests and the responses thereto of historians meant that historical research lost much of its political element and returned to traditional narrative forms.’ The mainstream of historiography, that is local historiography, had never, in my view, forgotten these traditional narrative forms, and indeed remained highly political, although the focus of its political role may have shifted from the contents of the narrative to the diplomatic use to which a more distant past could be put. But it is still right to move with Fowler away from the notion of partisan and parochial local historiography, which was of no interest to anyone but the home polis. The constituencies to whom local historiography mattered were deWned, not anonymous and amorphous, but they were certainly multiple, not unique. 239 See SGDI 3086. 240 Bulletin épigraphique 92 (1979), no. 271. I should like to thank John Ma for drawing my attention to this inscription.

Epilogue A time scale is never merely a scale. Time does not present itself as empty, homogeneous, morally neutral duration, except perhaps to philosophers and theoretical physicists, and among them perhaps only to those of an older, Kantian or Newtonian persuasion. For normal human beings time is always Wlled, clotted with events, and signiWcant.1

This has been a book about the eventfulness and signiWcance of time for normal human beings. I have argued throughout that the making of time was of concern not only to professional chronographers and historians, but also to a wider audience. Walbank’s assertion of the all-pervasive importance of time past in the life of the Greek city underlines why articulating and expressing time eVectively and plausibly, particularly in the context of local history, mattered: ‘In both classical and Hellenistic Greece the past was important not simply as the subject-matter of historians, but also as an element in public life and sentiment. Consciousness of the past penetrated political activity to an extent which would seem strange today.’2 In a sense the historian, the orator, or the artist used the same frameworks as the chronographers but in the service of the polis, thus acting as a link between the formal manipulation of time and the life of the city. I have argued that members of the polis laughed in the comic theatre at jokes which relied on a sophisticated awareness of the constructed nature of time, were familiar with calendars which telescoped the signiWcant events of the past into an annual cycle, listened to orators making speeches which oVered particular contested views of the past, and, according to the epigraphic evidence, heard and appreciated the performances of historians who elaborated the shared past both for the internal consumption of the polis and as a form of interstate diplomacy. The answer to the question ‘who had the right to tell the polis its past?’ must be manifold: tragic and comic dramatists, orators, native and visiting historians, rhapsodes, exegetae, and statesmen all oVered versions for the polis to reject or to accept through acclamation. 1 T. R. Trautmann, ‘The Revolution in Ethnological Time’, Man ns 27 (1992), 379–97 at 384. 2 F. W. Walbank, ‘Polybius and the Past’, in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and ReXections (Cambridge, 2002), 178–92 at 179.

Epilogue

371

ReXections on the constructed nature of time and the relationship between time and narrative run like leitmotivs through Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which opened the preface of this book. It thus seems appropriate to allow Mann also the last word, with his thoughts on the embeddedness both of life itself and of its narration in the medium of time. My opening quote from Mann’s work and indeed the underlying argument of this book might seem to Xy in the face of Poussin’s vision shown on the cover, depicting A Dance to the Music of Time. Whether the dancers represent the annual cycle in the personiWed forms of the seasons,3 or the life cycle of the individual, evoking the biographical metaphor for the longue dureé of history, Poussin’s Wgures perform their dance to the music produced by the rhythm of time himself, who has, almost uniquely here, exchanged his scythe for a lyre. But, as Janus looks on, evoking the whole span of history with his forward- and backward-looking gaze, we should note that Apollo’s chariot is drawn by not only the naturally recurring dawn, but also the humanly articulated hours, reminding us that humans construct even the small, recurring times of daily life, just as they do the expansive, linear time of history. And alongside Poussin’s dancers it is time to recall another type of performance, that of our lyre-wielding historians whose playing delighted the citizens of the Greek poleis, and to follow Mann’s cue in introducing some music to enhance the telling of the tale. If time cannot after all be allowed to dictate the rhythm of the music and the performance of the dance, then let a lyrical narrative dictate the rhythms of time and of history. For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are inextricably bound up with it, as are bodies in space. Similarly time is the medium of music; music divides, measures, articulates time, and can shorten it, yet enhance its value, both at once.4 3 The echoes of other seventeenth-century paintings, such as Claude Gelleé’s Apollo and the Seasons Dancing to the Music of Time, and the reading of Poussin’s painting implied by Antony Powell’s novel sequence of the same name, point towards the Wgures representing seasons, but the characterizations are hardly compelling, and one might just as easily adopt the view that the dancers are Poverty, Labour, Wealth, and Pleasure, encapsulating the cycle of the human condition. On various interpretations of the painting, see R. Beresford, A Dance to the Music of Time by Nicolas Poussin (London, 1995). 4 T. Mann, The Magic Mountain (trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter; 1924) ch. 7 §1: ‘Die Zeit ist das Element der Erza¨hlung, wie sie das Element des Lebens ist—unlo¨sbar damit verbunden, wie mit den Ko¨rpern im Raum. Sie ist auch das Element der Musik, als welche die Zeit mißt und gliedert, sie kurzweilig und kostbar auf einmal macht.’

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Subject Index Abraham 159, 163 Abydenus 160–1 Acragas 112, 126, 223, 231, 232, 240 Acusilaus of Argos 190, 208, 219 Aeneas 75, 89, 122, 126, 141–2, 155–6, 196, 234 Aeschines opponent of Demosthenes 248, 254, 274, 278, 279, 288, 293, 294, 296 past in 256–61, 273, 276, 279–80, 286, 287–8, 295, 297–8 Aeschylus 300–1, 310, 326–7, 331, 333–4, 335 Agathocles of Cyzicus 196, 199 Agathocles of Syracyse 124, 134, 138, 239, 335 Alcimus the Sicilian Greek 196 Alexander the Great 60, 78–9, 123, 138, 139, 152, 331, 334–5 as temporal marker 62, 66, 67, 68, 73, 75–6, 79, 85, 164, 218, 231, 238 alien wisdom 150–67 Althaemenes, as temporal marker 100, 145, 147 Amazons 89, 125, 140–1 as invaders of Attica 262, 263, 265–6, 285, 310, 311, 332 Ammonius of Athens 53 Anaxagoras 71, 327, 334 Anaxandridas of Delphi 215 ancestors appeals to 12–13, 254, 256, 265, 275, 276–84, 308, 353–4, see also exemplarity of past brought back to life 261, 272, 282, 287 diVerentiated as models 257, 258–61, 278–80 Androtion of Athens 180, 211, 316, 364 annalistic historiography 17, 107–8, 139, 154–5, 179, 209–10, 213–14, 230, 239, 250, 313 anthropology 10–11, 13, 26 Antiochus of Syracuse 102, 133, 196–7, 218–19, 239, 242 antiquarianism 34, 40, 51, 180–3, 324–5, 356–7 Apion of Oasis 165, 167 Apollodorus of Athens and Jacoby viii, 49

chronology in 67, 70–2, 73–4, 79, 80–1, 83, 86 scope of works 48, 60 Apollonia on the Rhyndakos 319 Apollonius of Acharnae 52 Apollonius of Aphrodisias 196, 199 Archilochus historical poetry of 190, 330, 343 cult of on Paros 209, 330, 341, 342–3, 365 date of 72 Archon, as regulator of calendar 21, 22, 26, 41, 44, 94–5, 180 Archon-dating 20–1, 34, 229, 293–4, 353 as continuous 67, 68, 80 in chronography 67, 77–8, 79–80, 82 in local historiography 209, 210–13, 222, 306 in Parian Marble 201, 227–8, 307, 325–7 in universal history 90, 91, 97, 128, 129–32, 192 archon-list of Athens 66, 91, 93, 110, 183 aristocratic milieu for historiography188, 331–2, 341, 343, 362 Aristodama of Smyrna 352–4 Aristophanes the Boeotian 196, 199 Aristophanic comedy as evidence for everyday time 23, 33, 305–8, 337 historical allusions in 246, 279, 307–8 playing with time 16, 29–30, 43–6, 305 Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia 22, 30–2, 180, 185, 327 Aristotheus of Troezen 360–2, 365 Aristotle 80, 180, 327 Artapanus 159–60, 163 artists of Dionysus 364–7 Athanas of Syracuse 137 Athenian calendar lunar 20–6, 43–5 prytany 22, 34 festival 22–7, 33–45, 334 Athens, dominance of in civilization 268–9, 304–5, 329 in historiographical frameworks 213, 217–18 in Persian wars 263–5, 267–8 in scholarship 177, 245

392

Subject Index

atthidography 175–83, 210–14, 315–16 as paradigmatic 178, 194, 213, 243–4, 246 autochthony 170, 318, 335–6 Athenian 256, 269–71, 285, 300, 308, 310–12, 317–18 Babylonia 151–2, 159, 160–1, 165 Berossus of Babylon 151–2, 160–1, 165 Byzas, founder of Byzantium 169–73, 195 calendar frieze 150–1 calendar Christian 15, 21, 23–4, 35 deme- 38–41 local 8, 36–41, 47, 51, 90–3, 207, 215–17 lunar 15, 22–3, 165 manipulated 25–7, 41–6, 94–5 of Athens, see Athenian calendars of Pope Gregory XIII 46 of sacriWces 36–40 subject to scholarly analysis 35–6, 215–17 Callias of Syracuse 196, 239 canon-formation 176 canopus decree 41–2 Carthage foundation of 112, 158, 165, 223, 233, 234, history of 117, 120, 121, 138, 232–3, 236, 241 Castor of Rhodes 73, 74–5, 83, 85 cecrops 140, 206, 210–11, 212, 227–8, 269, 330, 332 Chaldaeans 152, 158, 159, 165 Christian chronography 48–9, 83–5, see also calendar, Christian chronicle, from Oxyrhynchus 77–9, 87–8, 110 chronographic tradition 48–50, 55–6, 75, 84–5 chronography and generic classiWcation 51–3, 55–6, 59–64, 69 and non-Greeks 150–67 and scholarship 48–9, 55–6, 64–5, 85, 151, 229 competitive expertise in 48–9, 55–6, 57–8, 81–2, 85, 92, 93–4, 105 importance of for historiography viii, 14, 56–7, 93, 110–11 problems of evidence 48, 51, 55, 57–8, 63–4 city history, see local history civic honours, given to intellectuals 344–5, 346–7, 350–1, 352–4, 360, 365

Cleidemus of Athens 183, 316 Clement of Alexandria 64, 68, 88–9, 206, 218, 228 Clepsydra as democratic 32, 300, 306 in law courts 29–33, 296, 305–6 comedy by Eubulus 31–2 collective memory 186, 245–7, 301, 311–13, 315, 319, see also history as shared colonization 104–5, 144–7, 169–70, 182, 185, 197, 240–1, 268 of Ionia 68, 86, 147, 185, 211 Comarchus 215 connectivity, see local history, as outwardlooking; network, Mediterranean Constantinople, history of 169–73 Consulship at Rome 82, 116–17, 129–32 continuators of historical works 112, 136–7, 242 continuity 250, 272–3, 276–7, 283–7, 290–1, see also preservation of past cosmic time 74–5, 84, 166–7 Crates of Athens 53 Creation-myth 154, 159, 160, 163 Crete, myths of 347–9, 350–1 Ctesias of Cnidus 135, 136, 157–8, 161–2 Cyrene, foundation of 169–70, 186, 193 decline theory 132–3, 253–4, 277–80, 297–8, 308 Deinias, Argolica 198, 204, 217–20 Delos, as Panhellenic site 351, 354, 362, 366, 367 Delphi and colonization 182, 202 see also oracles calendar of 24, 25, 215 political importance of 351, 353–4, 360–2, 366 Demetrius, History of Judea 162–3 Democracy, and time 12–13, 32, 292, 306 Demon, Atthis 206 Demosthenes 252–6, see also Aeschines, opponent of Demosthenes Demosthenes of Bithynia 196 Demoteles of Andros 346–7 Deucalion 142–3, 201, 208, 332, see also Xood, of Deucalion, as temporal marker Dieuchidas of Megara 223–4 Diodorus Siculus 16, 86, 88, 96, 121–39, 226–7 annalistic structure in 17, 107–8, 129–30, 137, 139

Subject Index organization of work 122–5, 126, 138–9 scope of work 121–2, 123–4, 125 Sicilian perspective of 122, 135, 138 sources of 102, 107 use of eponymous magistrates 129–32 use of Olympiads 128–32 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 48, 66–7, 75, 81–2, 154–6, 184–5, 234 Dionysius the Argive 206, 218 Dioscurides of Tarsus 350–2, 354 dynastic time 18–20, 75–7, 114–15, 133–4, 148, 166–7, 204–8 Egypt interest in time 150–2, 163–7, 324 calendar of 21, 41–2, 164, 165–6 Ephorus of Cyme 96–109 life of 96–7 local history of 181–2, 315 organization of work 106–9, 122 scope of work 97–106, 125, 137 sources used by 98, 101–3, 106–7 Epicharmus, poet 204, 226, 327, 334 epiphany 188, 214, 248, 324, 344–5, 369 epitaphios, see funeral oration eponymous heroes 200, 312, 317, 322 eponymous magistrates 20–1, 73, 90–3, 107, 127–8 as local 208–15, 295 Eras 18–20, 207 Eratosthenes of Cyrene 48, 59–60, 64–70, 82, 85–6, 110 and Jacoby viii, 49 Erchia, deme-calendar of 38–9, 40 Erechtheus 206, 211, 269 etruscan time 133, 153–4 Eumolpus 206, 211, 265–6, 269, 326, 328 Eupolemus 159 Euripides, date of birth 232, 327, 334 date of death 68, 72, 135, 232, 327, 333 Eusebius 64, 74–5, 77, 85, 127, 161, 166 Exaenetus of Acragas 112, 223 Exegete 41, 178–80, 213, 220–1, 356–7 exemplarity of past 11–12, 133, 245–303 Exodus from Egypt 88–9, 163, 165 fertile Crescent, chronology of 83–5, 153, 158–67 festival calendars 23–7, 33–5, 36–43, 105, 328 as subject of chronography 50, 53, 54–5, 81, 215–16 as subject of local history 51–2, 53, 175, 215–16

393

festivals, as context for local history 189, 290, 295–6, 300, 302, 343, 366 Flood biblical 158, 161, 162, 163, 165 of Deucalion, as temporal marker 16, 104, 153, 332 foundation-myths 99–105, 146–7, 169–70, 195–200, 268–70, 318–19 of Rome, see Rome, foundation of fragments, methodological problems of 55–6, 60–2, 63–4, 103–4, 153, 174, 250 funeral oration 251, 299–300, 309, 311–12 genealogy 18, 100–1, 162–3, 192, 200–3, 308 generations, see also genealogy; dynastic time as measure of time 18, 69, 88, 161, 162, 204, 207–8 in mythical period 100, 125–6, 146–7, 201 genres, evolution of viii, 174–5, 185, 191, 194, 341 ‘great’ history 97–8, 174–9, 183–4, 186–7, 189–93, 214, 345 Hagias-Dercylus, Argolica 198, 218 Halicarnassus 335–8, 360, 364 Harpocration of Alexandria 55–6 Hecataeus of Miletus 18, 62, 100, 185, 201, 224, 346 Hegesippus of Mecyberna 199, 223 Hellanicus of Lesbos and Ephorus 99, 100, 102, 107 and Thucydides 91, 93–4 as chronographer 208, 210, 213, 214, 217, 218, 228, 238 as Atthidographer 179, 183, 201, 213, 228, 316 Priestesses of Hera 74, 91, 180 Hellen 143, 203, 208, 332 Hellenica 116, 242–3 Heraclea Pontica 134, 197–8 Heracles as temporal marker 48, 58, 83, 89, 100, 125, 127, 192 career of 89, 143, 149, 198–9, 200, 215, 231, 271–2, 289 festivals for 25, 33 Heraclidae, return of as temporal marker 67, 73, 86, 89, 168, 191, 231, 238 in oratory 256, 263, 270, 280 in Strabo 144–5, 147, 149, 150, 228 in universal history 96, 97–101, 103–4, 127, 139

394

Subject Index

Hereas of Megara 316, 367 Hermogenes of Smyrna 343–4 Herodotus of Halicarnassus historiography of 185–93, 357 interest in chronology 2–4, 95, 164, 166, 191–3 literary context of 185–6, 188, 368 sources of 185–6 spatial scope of 97–8, 130 time in 98, 99, 130 Herodotus of Teos 347–9, 352, 355 Hesiod Catalogue of Women 202, 208 date of 64, 72, 192, 225, 326 time in 16, 18, 35, 95, 208, 220 Hesychius Illustris of Miletus 169–73 Hippias of Elis 65–6, 91, 93, 110, 183 Hippostratus 221, 225, 238 Hippys of Rhegium 234, 235 historia perpetua 99, 136–7, 176 historian as itinerant 337–8, 346–54, 360–3, 364–6, see also local history, and diplomacy; network, Mediterranean authority of 363, 366–7, 368 in community 6–7, 40, 173–4, 210, 338–54, 358, 363–9 history as didactic 101, 245, 274–86, 308 as entertaining 160, 182, 184, 343, 349, 361, 369 as ordo temporum, see chronography, importance of for historiography as shared 185–6, 245–7, 249, 273, 289–90, 301 competing versions of 245–6, 247, 255, 260, 273–4, 357 recent used in oratory 251, 252–4, 256, 261–3 used in intra-polis rivalry 315–16 Homer as subject for chronography 48, 57, 60 as temporal marker 146, 211, 333 concepts of time in 16, 18, date of 64, 68, 72, 86, 100, 192, 205, 211, 224–5, 326 importance of to later writers 141–6, 266, 267, 288–9, 336, 343, 350–1 human life-span 1–2, 15–18, 157, 163, 308 Hyksos dynasty 166–7 Inachus, King of Argos; river-god 85, 88, 170, 203

Indian time 157–8 inscriptions and local history 152, 183, 212–14, 319–30, 335–8 as evidence for history 101, 171, 173, 277, 290–3, 322 concerning calendars 29, 36–42, 52 dating in 19, 23, 33–4, 212–13, 214–15, 229 honoriWc for historians 209–10, 339–54, 359, 360–2 intellectual time 68–72, 78–81, 87–9, 129–30, 134–5, 159–60, 224–7, 232, 334–42 intellectuals, as itinerant 354–60, see also historian, as itinerant intercalary months 1–2, 25–6, 41, 94, 163–4 interstate relations, use of past in, see local history, and diplomacy invention, history of 88–9, 159–61, 224–7, 268–9, 306–7, 326–8, 332–3 Ion of Chios 187, 204, 208, 222, 224, 341 Iphitus 87, 89, 228 Isocrates and myth 265–72 and Panhellenism 270, 271–2, 273, 302 as historian 246, 261–72 as tutor of Ephorus 96, 248, 261 Istrus the Callimachean 53, 199, 222, 223, 306 Jacoby, Felix and chronography viii, 49 Atthis of 6, 175–93, 213, 243, 315–16, 363 career of viii–ix continuators of ix, 177–8 Jason 83, 142, 172 Jewish chronology 83, 85, 88, 159–60, 162–3 Kar, king of Megara 204, 208, 210 King-lists 66, 73–7, 93 of Argos 74, 128 of Assyria 74, 161–2 of Athens 74, 206–7, 212, 228, 235, 269 of Babylonia 160–1 of Egypt 75–6, 77, 152, 166–7 of Greece and Macedonia 76–7, 128, 134 of Persia 74, 133–4, 148, 219 of Rome 74, 133, 148 of Sicyon 74–5 of Sparta 67, 86, 110, 127, 134, 192, 205, 224 of Thebes 74

Subject Index Kings, dating by 18–20, 72–5, 105, 127–8, 148, 204–11 kinship 147, 188, 229, 231, 317, 319, 348, 356, 359 Lelex, king of Megara 204, 208 Leon of Samos 340–2 Lindian chronicle 163, 214–15, 321–5, 328–9, 341 literacy 29, 186–7, 190, 292, 367–9 local history 169–244 and chronology 193–230, 237–43 and diplomacy 183, 314–15, 316–20, 345, 346–52 as outward-looking 219, 322, 323–4, 345–6, 355–6, 362–3, see also Panhellenic time as parochial 181–3, 184, 221–2, 230 as patriotic 181, 183, 313–14, 345, 367, see also polis, self-assertion of as professional 349–51, 364–7 as scholarly 325, 337 audience of 174, 186–9, 213, 324–5, 349, 367–9 proliferation of 176, 194 local pride in home-grown talent 226, 335–8, 338–46, 349, 351, 363–4, see also local history, as patriotic local tradition, see collective memory Lucius Cincius Alimentus 82, 155, 156 Lyceas of Argos 356–7 Lycurgus, as temporal marker 68, 73, 86, 147, 223, 228 Lysimachides, On the Athenian months 54–5 Lysimachus of Alexandria 206, 217, 224, 228–9 Magnesia on the Maeander 209, 229, 319 Manetho of Sybennetus 166–7 Mariandynians 198 Medea 142, 217 Megara, history of 204, 223–4, 316–17, 367 Memnon of Heraclea 198 Menecles of Teos 347–9, 355 Meton 135, 306 Miletus 21, 147, 207, 319, 331 Miltiades 141, 254, 257, 273, 277, 287 Mimnermus, Smyrneis of 103, 185, 341 months, see also intercalary months aetiologies of 52–3, 54–5, 105, 206, 215 dating by Athenian 80–1, 206, 294–5, 332 dating by local 47, 84, 87, 91, 215–18

395

Moses as inventor Wgure 159–60 date of 83, 85, 88–9, 162–3, 165 mutability of fortune 3, 139, 161–2, 263, 276 Myrsilus of Methymna, Lesbiaca of 217 Myth in history 98–106, 125–6, 155–6, 164, 195–203, 266, 289–90, see also spatium mythicum, spatium historicum Mythological landscapes 141–3, 169–70, 317 native historiography 151, 157, 165, 183, 194, 338–46, 363 network, Mediterranean 351–2, 354–6, 358–60, 362–3 Ninus 136, 162 non-Greek time 75–7, 150–67 Nymphis of Heraclea 198 oYcial tradition, see collective memory; history as shared Ogygus, as temporal marker 16, 83–4, 85, 210, 218, 228 Old Testament, time in 13, 83–5, 88–9 Olympiad Wrst as start of accurate dating 83, 85–6, 89, 110–11 Wrst as temporal marker 67–8, 75, 112, 127, 228, 233 Olympiadic dating 66–89, 107, 109–21, 127–32, 149 as continuous 67, 68, 73, 76–7, 85–6, 111, 132 as Panhellenic 66, 111, 116, 130–1, 155, 191, 220–3, 236 as universal 66, 78, 86–8, 107, 109–21, 168 in local history 155, 165, 205, 219, 220–3 used of intellectuals 70–2, 222, 225 Olympic Games, history of 203, 215, 220–1, 228, 229 Olympic victor lists 59–60, 63, 65–7, 77–8, 87, 110–11, 220–1 ominous days 35–6, 42–3, 84–5, 233 oracles 87, 99, 204, 209, 229, 259, 269, 289, 316, 324 and colonization 169–70, 182, 202, 206, 208, 271 orator as chronographer 293–6, 297 as competitive 246, 273–4, 279–80, 287–8, 296, 297–8 as historian 245–303 authority of 247, 249, 259, 274–5, 288, 294–5, 301

396

Subject Index

Orestes 197, 201, 301, 310, 335 Osymandeas, tomb of 150–1, 163 P. Anteius Antiochus 359 Panhellenic time 220–4, see also Olympiadic dating, as Panhellenic Panhellenism 97–8, 190, 223, 271–2, 357–8 Parian Marble and chronology 66, 201, 212–13, 227–8, 325 and intellectual history 88, 227, 325–9 and Jacoby viii, 49 context of 330–1, 341, 342–3, 368 past, as negotiated 248–9, 295–6 Xexibility of, see history, competing versions of Pausanias 142, 199, 220–1, 228, 356–9 Peloponnesian war 68, 98, 108, 132, 262 Pergamum 148, 209, 319–20 periodization 16, 65, 90–1, 114, 173 Persian wars as temporal marker in history 108, 128, 219, 222–3, 231, 232 in art, see Stoa Poikile in comedy 307–8 in funeral oration 309 in oratory 253–4, 257, 263–4, 267, 278–80, 298 in poetry 103, see also Simonides Phanodemus of Athens, Atthis of 53, 214 Philip of Macedon as temporal marker 68, 77, 79, 137 history of 78, 80, 114–15, 117, 138, 171 in Demosthenes 252–3, 256, 295 Philistus of Syracuse 135, 136, 137, 221, 235, 238, 242 Philo of Byblos 158–9 Philochorus of Athens and festival calendar 35, 52–3, 56, 180 Atthis of 199, 306 time in 206–7, 210–12, 216–17, 219, 239, 250 Philoxenus of Cythera 135, 327, 334 Phlegon of Tralles 48, 58, 62–3, 69, 83, 87 Phoenicia 151–2, 158–9, 165, 203 Phoroneus, king of Argos 83, 203, 210, 218, 228 physical objects, as veriWcation of stories 143, 171, 173 Pindar 13, 129, 185, 236, 342, 362 place-names, aetiologies of 61, 156, 170–2, 196, 250 Plataea, as subject for poetry 188–9, 343

battle of 47, 129–30, 236, 309, 331 poetry and local historians 341–3, 346–9, 350–4, 365–6 as historiography 102, 135, 185, 187–90, 330–1, 356 as source for historiography 102–3, 135, 169 cited in oratory 266, 287–9 Polis, self-assertion of 183–4, 191, 200, 313–14, 329–30, 336–8, 345, 357, see also local history, as patriotic Politas of Hypata 352, 353 Politeia, works on 180–1, 316 Polybius on historiography 100–1, 105, 108, 110–11 use of local dating 116–19 use of Olympiadic dating 82, 87–8, 110, 112–16 use of temporal markers 73, 117, 120–1 Polyidus 135, 327, 334, 347–8 Pompeius Trogus 136–7 Porcius Cato 66–7, 82 Porphyry of Tyre 48, 72, 75–7, 83, 86 preservation of past 165, 286–93, 299, 342 Priestesses of Hera as dating device 90–1, 214, 226, 231, 235 list of 74, 109–10, 131, 180, 183, 313 priestly records 152, 155, 156, 178–80, 213 priests, dating by 73, 74, 93, 214–15, 295, 321 Promathidas of Heraclea 197–8 prose revolution 187–91, 310, 341, 356–7, 368–9 prytany, dating by 22, 34, 54, 118, 209 Psaon of Plataea 137 Ptolemy Philadelphus, procession of 167 Quintus Fabius Pictor 82, 118, 154–5 record-keeping 152, 153, 158, 163, 165, see also priestly records regal time, see also king-lists; dynastic time as continuous 18–20, 74–7, 133, 134, 160–1, 166–7, 206 as fragmented 133–4, 148, 162, 206, 207 as local 204–7, 210–11, 218 relative chronology 72–89, 128, 147, 171, 192, 239–41 Rome history of 17, 70, 76, 79, 114, 121, 132–3, 154–6, 195–6 foundation of 36, 66–7, 112, 127, 233–4, see also Romulus

Subject Index impact of on Greek historiography 131, 157, 324, 339, 354–6, 359–60 impact of on Mediterranean history 155–7, 337, 355–6, 357, 360–2 temporal systems of 20, 87, 116–18, 130, 131–2 Romulus 75, 82, 142, 155–6, 196, 361 Saints, local 198 Salamis, battle of celebrated in Athens 34, 311 in comedy 308 in historiography 102, 219, 231–2, 236 in oratory 246, 253–4, 260, 279–80, 291, 300 Samos, Heraion 339–42 Scaliger 48–9 seasons as natural cycle 14–15, 20, 21, 42, 44–5, 95, 158, 165, 167, 308 as metaphor 16, 69 in military campaigning 90, 92, 93–5, 119–20, 132 Second Sophistic 324, 354–60 Sicels, crossing of 126, 208, 214, 234–5, 239 Sicilian historiography 124–5, 133, 135, 136, 137, 194, 220, 223, 230–43 as western Hellenica 242–3 aspirations to Hellenism of 111, 122, 131, 235–43, 313 Sicyonian record 226 Simonides 102–3, 135, 188–9, 327, 343 Solon and Croesus 1–5, 56, 81, 354 as oratorical exemplum 254, 256, 258, 297–8 as poet 254, 287–8 as political reformer 264–5, 354 calendar of 23, 37–8, 40 Sophocles, date of death 72, 135, 327 Sosibius, of Sparta 205, 224–5, 228 Sparta, as comparandum for Athens 259–60, 262–4, 266, 269–70, 276 Spartan ephorate, dating by 90–1, 109–10, 229 Spartan king-list, see king-list of Sparta spatium mythicum, spatium historicum 98–106, 140–6, 164, 175, 195–201, see also myth in history Stephanus of Byzantium 61–3, 196, 250, 318 Stoa Poikile, display of past in 257–8, 309–10 Strabo 102, 104–5, 140–50, 222, 240–1

397

sundial 32, 304–5, 306 Syncellus 73–4, 83–5, 166 synchronism 108, 114–16, 129–30, 135, 138–9, 231–4, 334 synchronization of calendars 26, 36, 43 of time-systems 79–89, 90–150, 219, 222–3, 227–30 synoecism 140, 149, 171, 215, 222, 323, 327 Syriscus of Cheronnesus 248, 321, 344–5, 346, 369 Tauromenium, painted inscription at 154 temporal markers 58, 85–6, 143–6, 161 Teos 347–9, 366–7 Thallus 73, 74 Thargelion 53, 81, 218 Theseus 15, 89, 141, 199, 259, 269, 272, 304, 327, 328 bones of 34, 197, 300 Thorikos, calendar of 38 Thrasyllus 88–9 Thucydides as paradigmatic 175–6 spatial scope of 98, 103, 176 time in 90–6, 99, 108, 109–10, 240–1 Timaeus of Tauromenium 105, 122 and Olympiadic chronology 66, 110, 111–13, 222 dating in work 82, 218, 219, 222–4, 228, 230–4, 238, 239–40 scope of work 199, 230–4, 235, 237–8 time as biographical 15–16, 17–18, 69, 115, 157, 208, 240, 262 as borrowed 217–18, 219 as comic 31–2, 43–6 as cyclical 12–13, 15–16, 34–6, 42–3, 50 as humanly constructed 69–70, 128–9, see also time as reXective of society as linear 7, 8, 11, 12–13, 50, 212 as local 163, 193–230 as natural 36, 55, 69–70, 93–5, 151, 157–8, 167, 306, see also seasons as natural cycle; time as biographical as reXective of society 7–8, 10–13, 26–7, 28–46, 173–4, 216, 305 personiWcation of 15, 45–6, 129 reality of 9, 27–8, 69–70, 129 telescoping of: historical time within calendars 34–6, 42–3, 50, 84–5, 216, 290, 306–7

398

Subject Index

time past continuity of 11, 126, see also continuity; exemplarity of past discrete moments in 67, 250, 253, 285, 307, 312–13, see also temporal markers time-zones 2, 8, 46 Timotheus of Miletus 135, 347–8 Titias 197, 198 tragic history 120, 135 tragedy, as historical 139, 266, 288, 289–90, 300, 310 Trojan War and nostoi of heroes 58, 141, 143, 145, 217, 223 as temporal marker in local historiography 171, 211, 212 in Sicilian historiography 231, 235 in universal works 128, 144–6, 147, 231, 168 disputed date of 49, 58, 60, 68, subject for oratory 266–7 Troy, fall of as temporal marker 123–5, 127–8, 132, 158, 223–4, 225 disputed in chronography 58, 68, 72–3, 81, 83, 86, 206, 217, 224 truth, importance of in historiography 98, 101–2, 140, 171, 175, 248, 344–5, 367

tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton 70, 252, 255, 256, 259, 311, 334 Tyranny in Greece 148, 211 universal chronology 65–6, 74, 81–9, 96–150 universal history relationship with local history 107, 115–19, 174, 175–93, 345 scope of 97–106 time in 96–150 visual displays of time 12–13, 154, 207, 309–10 votive oVerings, as chronological structure 163, 172, 321–4, 341 war years, dating by 90, 93–4, 118, 132, 163 week, as unit of time 7, 21, Xanthus the Lydian 106, 145 Xenagoras of Heraclea 59 Xenophon of Samos 339–40, 354, 356, 367 Xenophon, date of 80, 222 Xerxes, crossing of to Europe as temporal marker 68, 71, 73, 117, 127, 129, 139

Index of Passages Discussed LITERARY TEXTS AESCHINES Against Ctesiphon 24 27 75 105 107–13 115 132 135 136 178 181 182 183 189 197 243 257–9 Against Timarchus 6 7 25 132–3 141 152–3 180–2 183 On the Embassy 31 32 58 63 74 75–8 89 96 115 126 164 165 171

293 294 286, 292 276 259 295 276 288 288 278 257 287 257, 291 298 296 257 260–1, 282 258 258, 286 258, 297 259 288 288 259, 262 258 259 292 293 258–9, 279–80 260, 280 260, 280 292 260, 294 259, 292 296 257 260 260, 280

ANDOCIDES On the Peace with Sparta 29 275 ANTIOCHUS OF SYRACUSE, see FGrH 555 APOLLODORUS OF ATHENS, see FGrH 244 ARISTOPHANES Acharnians 693 Birds 471–536 685 997–8 1694–6 Clouds 16–17 615–16 626 44 749–52 961–83 1417 1131–4 1287–9 Lysistrata 1150–6 1250–3 Peace 414–15 Thesmophoriazusae 375–6 Wasps 92–3 857–8 1071–90 Wealth 1125–6

29–30 308 308 306 305–6 45 44 45 308 16, 308 45 45–6 308 308 41, 44 33 29, 31, 45 29 308 33

400

Index

ARISTOTLE Atheniaion Politeia 43 67.2–3

22 30–1

ARISTOXENUS Harmonica 2.37

47

ATHENAEUS Deipnosophistae 5.25–35 13.567c–d

167 31–2

BEROSSUS OF BABYLON, see FGrH 680 CTESIAS OF CNIDUS, see FGrH 688 DEINARCHUS Against Aristogeiton 6–7 16 24

296 275 291

DEMOSTHENES Against Leptines 11 284, 291 18 255 64 291 68–70 255 117 284 142 284 For the People of Megalopolis 14 252 Olynthiacs 1.8 252 On Halonessus 36 295 On Organization 21–2 277 26 277, 281 28–9 277 33 283 35 283 On the Chersonese 74–5 252 On the Crown 29 294 37 294 48 275 54 294 68 282

90 108 139 154 155 186 203–4 219 225 318–19 On the False Embassy 16 57–60 66 136 251 255 256 269 271–2 273 312 On the Navy Boards 1 32 Philippics 1.17 2.10 3.41

295 254 296 295 293, 294 256, 280 285 298 248, 294 298 257, 279 260, 293, 296 282 286 254, 297 254 287 276, 280 277 279 298 277 299 252 283 291

DIO CHRYSOSTOM Oration 11.38 165 DIODORUS 1.1–4 1.9.1 1.12.6 1.23.1 1.26.1 1.26.3–5 1.44.1 1.44.4–5 1.49.4 1.63.5 3.52.2 3.74.4 4.1.1 4.19.2 4.21.1 4.79.3 4.80.4 4.83.4

274 121 164 164 164 165 164 152 150–1 165 125 125 125 126 126 126 126 126

Index 5.1.3–4 5.6 5.16.3 5.47–9 5.55 5.63.1 5.64–80 5.84 7.1 7.5.1 7.5.4 7.8 7.11 9.2 9.17 9.21 10.2 10.9.5 11.1.1 11.11.6 11.14.4 11.20.1 11.27.1 11.34.1 11.37.6 11.38 11.48 12.2 12.3.4 12.23–6 12.32.1 12.36.2–3 12.37.2 12.40.6 12.53.1 12.71.1 12.74.5 12.81.5 13.1.2–3 13.42.3 13.75.1 13.103.3 13.103.4 13.108.1 13.108.5 13.114 14.2.3 14.3.1 14.23.5 14.46.6 14.84.6 14.84.7 14.93.1

106, 122 126 126 227 227 125 226 125 127 127 155 127 127, 133 4 128 128, 134 133 16 12 102, 135 135 129 129 129–30 130 130 130 127 132 131 131 135 132, 136 102–3 131–2 134 132 132 123–4 136 134 137 135 134 232–3 138 124 132 135 135 134 136 134

401 14.117.8 15.2–13 15.23.2 15.37.3 15.60.3–5 15.75 15.89.3 15.94.4 16.1 16.3.8 16.14.3 16.70.6 16.76.5 16.76.6 16.88.3 17.1 17.113 18.19.1 19.1.10 19.1–15 20.2.3 20.30.1 20.43.7 20.77.1 20.100.7 21.5 21.16.4 30.8 31.19 32.27.1 34 and 35.15 34 and 35.17 36.10.3 37.1 37.3–8 37.30.2 38 and 39.1

136–7 138 134 136 138 132 136 137 123 136 137 131 97 137 138–9 123 137–8 123 124 138 124 134 123 134 134 137 134 132–3 134 135 132 129 135 139 133 135 133

DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS Antiquitates Romanae 1.4.2 156 1.5.4 156 1.8.1 156 1.63 81 1.70–1 75 1.72.5 156 1.73.1 156 1.74.1 155, 234 1.74.2 66–7 1.74.3 82 1.79–84 155–6 2.59 81 4.30.2 154

402 de Thucydide 5 9

Index 184–5 93–4

EPHORUS OF CYME, see FGrH 70 ERATOSTHENES OF CYRENE, see FGrH 241 FLORUS 1.1.4–8 HERODOTUS Histories 1.1 1.5 1.24 1.32.2–4 1.50–2 1.74 2.3.1 2.4.1 2.43.4 2.53.2 2.100.1 2.100.2 2.109 2.142.1 2.145.2 2.145.3 2.145.4 2.160.3 3.122.2 4.145 4.146 4.150–8 5.42–3 5.57 8.51.1 HESIOD Works and Days 109–201 HOMER Iliad 1.249–52 6.145–9 6.357–8 Odyssey 3.245

17

97, 120, 130 3, 139, 263 170 1–5, 208 170 4 164 164 164 192 152 166 32 166 164 164 192 111 99 169 169–70 170 170 203 192

16

18 16 276 18

HYPERIDES Epitaphios 35–9

299

ISOCRATES Archidamus 8 280 17–21 271 24 289 41 281 42 262 43–53 262–3 82 280 84 281 105 281 Areopagiticus 14 261 16 265, 278 20–8 264–5 30 284 38 284 50 278 62 278 74 284–5 75 285 For the Liberty of the Rhodians 35 281, 285 On the Peace 36–7 279 47–8 278 49 270 54–5 278 79 279 86 264 87 300 89 268 91 279 94 281 Panathenaicus 1–3 267 49–50 264 71–2 266 74–87 266 119 269 120 285 121–2 290 124 269 126 269 153 269 161–2 278 168–71 290 204–7 269

Index Panegyricus 8 9 23 24 25 28 29 30 31 37 64 66–7 68 71 83 99 158 176 181 186 Plataicus 1 61 53 57 To Philip 12–13 22–3 25 32–4 40 57–65 105 132 134 144 146–8 JOSEPHUS Antiquitates Judaicae 1.93 Contra Apionem 1.58 1.74–92 1.93–105 1.106–11 1.143 10.228

297 245–6, 247–9, 255, 289, 320 283 270 268 268, 290 290 265 268, 290 268 263 263 265 283 267 283 267, 268 292 267 267 283 282 283 284 302 301–2 301 271, 280 263 261 272, 282 272 287 272 264

158 151 166 166 152, 158 151–2 158

LINDOS CHRONICLE, see Blinkenberg, Lindos 2 (cf. FGrH 532)

LYCURGUS Against Leocrates 7 14 62 68–9 84 98–100 101 110 117–19

403

275 278 266 280 269 266 266 275 291

PARIAN MARBLE, see IG 12 (5) 444 (cf. FGrH 239) PAUSANIAS 1.13.8 5.7.6

356 220

PHILOCHORUS OF ATHENS, see FGrH 328 PHLEGON OF TRALLES, see FGrH 257 PINDAR Pythian 1.75–80 2.1–8 6.5–14 PLUTARCH Life of Aristeides 19.8 Life of Demetrius 26 Life of Numa 1.2–3 1.4 Life of Solon 25.3 27.1 Life of Theseus 31.2 35.3 On Brotherly Love 489b Table Talk 741a POLYBIUS Histories 1.3.1 1.5.1 1.6.1

236 236 342

47 25 81–2 65 23 56 15 15 43 43

113 112–13 120–1

404 1.63.5 1.88.7 2.20.6 2.32.1 2.34.1 2.35.2 2.37.4 2.41.1 2.71.3–7 3.1.9–11 3.16.7 3.22.1–2 3.77.1 3.106.1 3.118.10–11 4.1.3–9 4.2 4.5.1 4.14.9 4.26.1 4.27.1 4.28.4 4.28.5 4.37.1–2 4.52.4 4.66.11 5.1.1 5.30.7 5.33.2 5.79.1 5.91.1 5.95.5 5.105.3 5.105.10 5.108.9 5.111.9 8.2.1–11 9.1.4 9.14.6–12 9.15.1 11.1.1 12.4a.3 12.11.1 12.23.7 12.27.6 12.28.11 14.1.5 14.12.1 16.24.1 18.42.1 21.18.1 21.40.1 23.1.1 23.9.1 27.7.2

Index 120 120 121 116 116–17 120 116 115 115 120 114 117 119 117 113 115 114–15 118 114 114 118 88 116 119 118 114, 118 119 119 96 119 119 120 114 121 117 113–14 115–16 100, 195 121 121 113 105 110 237 238 102 113 115 117 117 119–20 114 114 114 118

28.16.10–11 39.8.6

113 113

PORPHYRY OF TYRE, see FGrH 260 STRABO Geography 1.1.10 1.2.31–5 1.3.2 1.3.17 2.2.1–3.8 3.5.6 4.6.3 4.6.9 5.2.4 5.2.7 5.3.2 6.4.2 7.25 8.3.2 8.3.3 8.3.30 8.4.1 8.5.4 8.6.2 8.6.15 8.6.20 8.7.1 9.1.6 9.1.7 9.1.17 9.1.20 9.1.22 9.3.12 9.4.7 9.5.6 9.5.12 10.1.8 10.3.2 10.4.17 10.4.18 10.5.2 11.5.3 12.8.4 13.1.3 13.1.33 13.1.34 13.1.46 13.1.52 13.1.53 14.1.3 14.1.21 14.2.5–12 14.2.10

146 325 145 148 304 149 148 148 140 143 142 148 143 146 146, 266 143, 149, 228 143 144 149–50 144 148 144 140 144 141 140 141 143 104 143 149 145 102 102 147 146 140 146 143, 145, 147 141 141 142 141 141 147 148 227 149

Index 14.5.12 17.1.29 17.1.46 17.3.24 SYNCELLUS Chronography 1 2 THUCYDIDES 1.1.2 1.3.4 1.4 1.10 1.11.3 1.17 1.22 1.97.2 1.126.6 2.2.1 2.41.1 2.64.2 3.18.5 5.3.5–6 5.4.1–2 5.19.1 5.20 5.54.3 6.1–5 6.4.4 6.5.2 6.5.3 6.53 7.57 7.87

141 164 164 304

84 84–5 120 176 99 102 147 176 95, 102, 182, 187, 368 93 52 90–1, 94, 229 243 298 92 91 91 91 92–4, 119 42–3 240 240 241 241 259 238 120

TIMAEUS OF TAUROMENIUM, see FGrH 566

i3 78.53–4 i3 256 ii2 2318 22 2326 22 5526 1–2 9 (2) 62 9 (2) 63 9 (2) 740 11 (4) 5443 12 (5) 444 12 (5) 445 12 (6) 285 12 (6) 308 12 (9) 207 14.1297 IK 6 (Lampsacus) 8 Inscr. Delos 1506 1512 Inschriften von Priene 37 LSCG 4 10 16 18 Milet 6 (1) 155 OGIS 56 264 SEG 14.65.3–4 SGDI 2724 3086

25, 41 38 21 221 46 352–4 352–3 354 346–7 212–13, 227–8, 325–35, 342–3 209, 330 340–2 339–40 25 70 351 367 351 314–15 38 39–40 38 38–9 319 41–2 209, 319–20 41 360–2 248, 344–5, 369

PAPYRI

INSCRIPTIONS Blinkenberg, Lindos 2 CIG 3311 Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.124 iii.3.125 IC 1.8.12 1.24.1 IG i2 304b–c (I 3 377)

405

163, 214–15, 321–5 343–4 360, 361 361, 365 350–2 347–9, 355 34

P. Haw. 80/1 P. Oxy. 12 P. Oxy. 3965

304–5 77–9, 80 188–9

FRAGMENTARY TEXTS FGrH 70 (Ephorus of Cyme) T8 98 T 30 107 T 30a 102 T 34 96

406 F9 102 F 11 104 F 15 104 F 16 104 F 18a 104 F 22 105 F 31 99 F 31b 98 F 34 104 F 97 315 F 102 100 F 115 104 F 118 104 F 121 104 F 123 104 F 125 105 F 149 100 F 173 100 240 (Xenagoras of Heraclea) F 26 59 F 29 59 F 31 59 F 32 59 F 34 59 241 (Eratosthenes of Cyrene) T1 65 T2 65 T3 65 F 1a 68 F 1b 66–7 F 1d 67 F2 67 F9 68 F 12 68 F 13 68–9 F 40 60 F 47 69 243 (Euthymenes) F1 64, 72 244 (Apollodorus of Athens) T6 73 T 12 60 F 28 79 F 31 71 F 32 62 F 34 80–1 F 35 72 F 37 81 F 38 80 F 42 81 F 61 86 F 63 86 F 64 86

Index F 66 79 F 74 72 F 85 74 F 86 74–5 F 158 60 F 163 60 F 167 60 F 178 61 F 185 61 F 332 79 F 335 73 F 336 72 F 339 72 F 343 80 250 (Castor of Rhodes) F2 74–5 F6 74–5 F7 83 F 10 75 F 12 73 F 14 83 252 (Roman Chronicle) F1 70 253 (Thrasyllus) F1 88–9 254 (Ti. Claudius Polybius) F2 67, 111 255, see P. Oxy. 12 256 (Thallus) F3 73 F4 74 F7 74 257 (Phlegon of Tralles) T3 83 F1 87 F8 58 F 12 87 F 37 69 F 38 69 260 (Porphyry of Tyre) F2 75–6 F3 76 F4 86 F 20 72 F 23 72 F 31 77 F 32 77 F 33 83 F 87 83 305 F2 206, 218, 228 306 (Deinias of Argos) F2 217

Index F4 204 314 (Pausanias) F1 199 323a (Hellanicus of Lesbos) F 10 210, 218 F 13 211 F 21b 217 F 22 201 F 23 201, 238 F 24 201 F 37 211 F 98 211 325 (Phanodemus of Athens) F 17 63 F 18 53 F 25 63 328 (Philochorus of Athens) F3 201 F 18 199 F 83 52 F 84 52 F 92 210 F 122 306 F 166 53 F 168 53 F 196 239 F 202 219 334 (Istrus the Callimachean) F6 306 F13 53 F 24 53 361 (Ammonius of Athens) F6 53 362 (Crates of Athens) F6 53 365 (Apollonius of Acharnae) F2 52 F5 52 366 (Lysimachides) F1 54 F2 55 F3 54–5 F5 53 F6 53 F8 54 382 (Lysimachus the Alexandrian) F 13 206, 217, 229 390 (Hesychius Illustris of Miletus) F1 169–73, 195 392 (Ion of Chios) T1 222 T6 222 F1 187, 204, 208 F 16 224

407 404 (Anaxandridas of Delphi) F3 215 410 (Comarchus) F1 215 417 (Creophylus) F1 198 424 (Archemachus) F3 225 430 (Promathidas of Heraclea) F1 197 F2 197–8 443 (Artemon of Clazomenae) F2 225 448 (Heropythos of Colophon) F1 197 469 (Acesandrus) F3 204 472 (Agathocles of Cyzicus) F2 199 F5 196 477 (Myrsilus of Methymna) F1 217 482 F2 229 F5 209 485 (Dieuchidas of Megara) F4 223–4 487 F3 204, 208 526 F1 219 550 (Sicyonian Record) F1 226 F2 226 554 (Hippys of Rhegium) F3 235 555 (Antiochus of Syracuse) T3 219 F2 102 F3 239 F4 208 F9 239 F 12 239 556 (Philistus of Syracuse) T 15a 238 T 16b 238 T 22 238 F2 221 564 (Callias of Syracuse) F1 239 F5 196 566 (Timaeus of Tauromenium) T 10 110, 231 F7 238

408

Index F 19b F 26 F 41 F 51 F 58 F 60

111–12, 222–3 112, 223 235 240 240 112, 222–3, 233, 234 224 199 232 232 240 111 112 218, 238

F 65 F 89 F 105 F 106 F 112 F 119 F 125 F 126 568 (Hippostratus) F5 225 F6 238 584 (Persaeus of Citium) T3 225 595 (Sosibius the Laconian) F2 205 F3 205 607 F1 200 609 (Manetho of Sybennytus) F8 166 F9 166 F 28 166 610 F1 152, 166 F2 166 616 (Apion of Oasis) F4 165 F 13 167 F 20 165–6 618 (Chaeremon of Alexandria) F7 165 624 (Asclepiades) T1 164 627 (Callixenus of Rhodes) F2 167 659 F3 165

661 F4 167 665 F 170 165 679 F7 152 680 (Berossus of Babylon) T3 161 F1 160 F 3b 160, 161 F 4b 161, 165 685 (Abydenus) F 2b 160–1 688 (Ctesias of Cnidus) F 1b 161–2 F 29 161 F 33a 161 F 45 157–8 706 F 7a 154 F 7b 154 722 (Demetrius) F1 162, 163 F2 162–3 724 (Eupolemus) F1 159 726 (Artapanus) F2 159 F3 159–60 790 (Sanchouniathon) F1 159 795 (Hermogenes) F2 153 810 (L. Cincius Alimentus) F2 156 813 (C. Acilius) F2 156 817 (Promathion) F1 156 818 (Galitas) F1 156 821 (Zenodotus of Troezen) F1 156 F3 156

Making Time for the Past: Local History and the Polis

Making Time for the Past: Local History and the Polis

Making Time for the Past: Local History and the Polis

Measuring Time, Making History

Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (American Association for State and Local History)

time past

Making Time

A time far past

Stonehenge (Digging for the Past)

Tenochtitlán (Digging for the Past)

Passion and the Past

Making History

Making history

Kairos: A Cultural History of Time in the Greek Polis (PhD Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Making History

Passion and the Past

Politics and the Past

Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History

Making History

Making History

Making History

Time For The Stars

Time For the Stars

Time For The Stars

Time for the Stars

The past and the punishments

Screening the Past: Film and the Representaion of History

Time for the Stars

Time for the Stars

Time for the Stars

Time and the Shape of History

Making Time for the Past: Local History and the Polis