Early Ionian Historians

I

EARLY IONIAN HISTORIANS BY

LIONEL PEARSON

GREEN"VOOD PRESS, PUBLISHERS WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT

PREFACE

Library of ('ungr.·ss ('atotuging in l'ubll ... Uon Hata

Pearson, Lionel Ignacius Cusack. Early Ionian historians. Reprint of the 1939 ed. published by Clarendon Press, Oxford. Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Historians--Greece. 2. Greece--Historiography. 1. Title. DF212.A2P4 1975 938' .007'2022 75-136874 ISBN 0-8371-5314-x

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Originally published in 1939 by The Clarendon Press, Oxford This reprint has been authorized by The Clarendon Press Oxford Reprinted in 1975 by Greenwood Press, a division of Williamhouse-Regency Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-136874 ISBN 0-8371-5314-X Printed in the United States of America

HE predecessors and contemporaries of Herodotus have received their fair share of attention in scholarly writings; and though conjecture has played a prominent part in these writings, many of them contain work of great value. But by far the greatest portion of the work has been done by German. scholars. To many a student, seeking in vain for a comprehensive treatment of the subject in English, Hecataeus, Hellanicus, and the other so-called logographers have remained mere names and no more. Nor have German scholars been satisfied with the work of their countrymen. Felix Jacoby, whose article on Hecataeus in the Pauly-Wissowa Realencyclopiidie is by far the most successful discussion of that author, complained of the lack of the 'urgently needed monograph'. Since the publication of his article in 1912 efforts have been made, both by Germans and by other scholars, to elucidate certain aspects of Hecataeus and other Ionian historians. For the most part, however, this discussion has arisen from an attempt to understand Herodotus rather than because these other Ionians were thought worthy of study for their own sake. The object of this book is to examine the special characteristics of these writers, and it is for this reason that the discussion has been confined to four individuals-Hecataeus, Xanthus, Charon, andHellanicus. It seems only logical that an attempt should be made to understand the work of these individuals before the more general question of the literary sources of Herodotus is approached; and the fragments, though they seem scanty at first acquaintance, become less barren and more full of meaning as one comes to know them better. One of our greatest difficulties in trying to discover what these Ionian historians wrote is the unwillingness of Herodotus to mention their works by name. Though many modern scholars would do well to imitate his lucidity of style, no one would now dare try, as he did, to conceal his obligations to his predecessors. In the bibliographies given at the end of the chapters in this book I have done my best to reveal to

T

r

PREFACE

vi

the full my obligations to earlier critics. But since the book is concerned with the work of the logographers themselves rather than with the literary sources of Herodotus, I have not attempted to list the numerous critical studies of Herodotus which are relevant to this problem, nor have I attempted to offer a bibliography for the first chapter. Anyone who has· studied the fragments of the Greek historians knows that there is one man to whom my debt is greater than to any other-Felix Jacoby. He has completed and brought up to date a large proportion of the work that the brothers Karl and Theodor Muller did in the nineteenth century, but has not been able to finish the tremendous task which he set himself. This book has gradually taken shape over a period of six years, during which I was a member of the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. The \ accurate work done by the Oxford University Press has made the final stages of preparation very much less arduous than they might have been. To their learned and careful reader I am indebted for valuable criticism on many points of detail. For such errors and faults as the following pages may still contain no one but myself can be held responsible. L. P.

CONTENTS I.

Introductory: The Logographers

II.

Introduction . Hecataeus of Miletus. I. II. The Periegesis " " III. The Genealogiae

"

"

1

25 34 96

III. Xanthus the Lydian

109

IV. Charon of Lampsacus

139

V.

Hellanicus of Lesbos Index

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

February, 1939

ERRATA P. 32, lines 1-3. For "library catalogue" read "bibliographical guide." For "the same post" read "the post." P. 167, 13. For "a club" read "a blow of his fist." P. 212, 28. For "i.97" read "i.22." P. 220, 28. For "Herodotus" read "Herodorus."

NOTE TO REPRINT EDITION

CHAPTER I

The fragments of Xanthus and Charon, here quoted from Miiller's FHG, are now available in Jacoby's F.Gr.Hist., iii. The following tables may be useful to the reader: XANTHUS FHG

F.Gr.Hist.

FHG

CHARON F.Gr.Hist.

FHG

iii, C,765 Fr.1,2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

F.16 12 13 14 26 28 15 29 19 17 18 20 2 3

F.Gr.Hist. iii,A,262

Fr.17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

F.5 6 14&T.5 7 9 10 8 11 27 25 30 31 32 33

Fr.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

F.9 10 3 14 11&4 7&T.2 8 13 17 2 12a 12b

INTRODUCTORY: THE LOGOGRAPHERS a literary age is represented by the work of only W HEN a very few authors and the work of their contemporaries has been lost, if not forgotten, the critic with no specialized knowledge is at a loss what to think. He cannot decide whether he should accept the verdict of time and content himself with the thought that those works have survived which deserved to survive; or should he question the decision of a public whose tastes he does not properly understand, and believe that many of the forgotten works would be equal in quality to those that have been remembered? By confining our attention to the masterpieces which have survived intact or nearly intact we gain certain advantages. But even these cannot be understood unless we try to discover the relation which they bear to other contemporary work. Far less can we properly understand the development of the Greek literary genius by studying only isolated examples of it. It is true that many times an attempt to discover the character of some lost poem or historical work, if it brings any result at all, leads to the conclusion that the quality of this work, as literature, was negligible. But this does not mean that we should ignore it in a study of Greek literary development. The surviving manuscripts of ancient authors, though they preserve the finest literary achievements of an age, do not offer a complete account of its literary abilities and taste. Some of the papyrus fragments have shown another side of the picture. Unfortunately papyri offer little new evidence for the literary history of those ages in which Greek poetry and Greek prose first developed into artistic forms. But we cannot hope to obtain a complete understanding of the development of early epic and early history-writing by studying only the Homeric poems and the history of Herodotus. Homer, admittedly, has not only dwarfed but completely absorbed all the work of his predecessors. The Iliad and the Odyssey, whilst they represent the culmination point in the literary 4SI5

B

INTRODUCTORY: THE LOGOGRAPHERS

development of an age, are not only the sole survivipg examples of that age but the only examples about which later Greek critics seemed to know or care very much. There is no evidence available which could help us to judge the influence of literary predecessors and contemporaries on the author of the Homeric poems. With Herodotus, however, the case is different. Although his work is the last and only surviving representative of the Ionian historiography which owes its origin and development to the Ionian epic, he belongs to an age about which we have literary as well as archaeological information. The information which Homer gives about his contemporaries is confined to his description of the songs sung by the a.DLaot at the palaces in Phaeacia and Ithaca. Herodotus, besides frequent allusions to 'the Ionians' and 'the Greeks', and their remarks on matters of history and geography, does on several occasions refer to Hecataeus, a famous representative of the Ionian school of prose-writers. If, however, our knowledge about the literary predecessors and contemporaries of Herodotus were confined to his own remarks, it would be both scanty and vague. Our knowledge of them rests mainly on the frequent references which later Greek authors make to these early historians and geographers, showing that their works were not lost and, even when they were lost, were not forgotten. These references have been collected and published as 'fragments' of early Greek historians: first by Friedrich Creuzer and other scholars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, I who confined themselves to only a few early authors; then by Karl and Theodor Muller, who in their five volumes of Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (Didot, Paris, 1841-70) and Karl's two volumes of Geographi Graeci Minores (1882) attempted to offer a complete collection of all the quotations and references to be found in extant Latin and Greek authors. The work of the MulIers is being revised and supplemented by Felix Jacoby, who has so far published two parts (five volumes) of his Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin, 1923-30).2 The industry of these scholars I

2

For titles see the special bibliographies. Jacoby's F. Gr. Hist. is arranged on a different system from Miiller's FHG.

INTRODUCTORY: THE LOGOGRAPHERS

3

has thus put the evidence at our disposal in a convenient form for reference. But before approaching any individual author it will be well to examine some of the evidence about the general literary outlook of the fifth century in Ionia, in order that it may become more clear how Herodotus and Thucydides earned their positions as the two most eminent historians of their day. Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the fifth chapter of his essay on Thucydides gives the following useful summary: 'Before I begin to discuss the work of Thucydides, I want to say a few words about the other historians, his predecessors and contemporaries, which will throw light on the method of the m~n, thanks to which he was able to excel those who went before hIm, and his genius. Now of earlier historians before the Peloponnesian War there were a great number in a great many different places; among them may be mentioned Eugeon of Samos, Deiochus of Proconnesus, Eudemus of Paros, Democles of Phigalia, Hecataeus of Miletus, the Argive Acusilaus, Charon from Lampsacus, and Amelesagoras from Chalcedon; and among those who go back a little way before the Peloponnesian War and extend down to the age of Thucydides, Hellanicus of Lesbos, Damastes of Sigeum, Xenomedes of Ceos, Xanthus the Lydian, and numerous others. These men all adopted a similar method as regards the choice of themes and in talents did not differ very widely from one another, some of them writing Hellenic histories (as they called them), others barbarian histories; but instead of coordinating their accounts with each other, they treated of individual peoples and cities separately and brought out separate accounts of them; they all had the one same object, to bring to the general knowledge of the public the written records that they found preserved in temples or in secular buildings in the form in which they found them, neither adding nor taking away anything; among these records were to be found legends hallowed by the passage of time and melodramatic adventure stories, which to the modern reader seem very naive indeed; I the language which they used was for the most part similar (as many of them as adopted The fragments of Hecataeus, Xanthus, Charon, and Hellanicus all appear in the first volume of the Miiller collection, but only those of Hecataeus and Hellanicus appear in the first volume of Jacoby's; Xanthus and Charon are reserved for Part III, which is not yet published. I fLvOot TtvES' a1To rov 1TOAAOV 1T€1TtGT€Vp-eVOL Xpovou KUI. 8€aTpLKal 'TLV€S' 1TEpL1TeT£tuL TToAv TO ~A;8tov £X€tv TOtS' vvv 30KoVaat.

4

INTRO DUCTO RY: THE LOGOG RAPHE RS

the same: dialect of Greek), clear, simple, unaffected, and concise, approp nate to the subject-matter, and not revealing any elabora te art in composition; there is nevertheless a certain charm and grace which runs through their writings, to a greater degree in some than in others, thanks to which their works still survive.' Dionys ius then goes on to describ e how Herodo tus, without making any radical change in metho d or choice of subject-m atter, develo ped and perfect ed their style, followi ng in their footsteps but improv ing on their work in all manne r of ways; not confini ng himsel f to the history of a single people or city, but includ ing all manne r of differe nt histori cal events within the compa ss of a single work, and makin g great advanc es in literary art and style withou t breaki ng away from the old traditi on of a MgLS' aa4>~S' Kal KOLvTJ Kal Ka8apa Kat aUJJTOjLOS'. Thucy dides, on the other hand, was a great innova tor in that he did not attemp t to deal with such a compre hensiv e theme, neglec ted more remote times in favour of a restrict ed period of contem porary history , and develo ped a new style of his own quite differe nt from the traditio nal Ionic of Herodo tus and the others. Later in the essay Dionys ius offers a more elabor ate and technic al criticis m of their literary style,1 and Hermo genes writing probab ly a centur y and a half later, also has som~ brief but pointe d remark s about the style of Hecata eus and Hellan icus in the closing paragr aphs of his work IJ€pt lSduJJ. 2 Such criticis ms as these, howev er, can better be apprec iated after an examin ation of the fragme nts, and they will be left until later. As an introdu ction to the early Greek histori ans the fifth chapte r of Dionys ius' essay is more instruc tive. Side by side with it may be put some remark s of Strabo who is a very severe critic of histori cal writing , belongin~' really to the Thucy didean school, untouc hed by the more . . roman tic style which in his own day Livy was bringin g to , ::-+f perfect ion. He is full of scorn for the mythic al elemen t which Herodo tus and the logogr aphers introdu ced so readily into their work: 'One might more readily ', he says, 'believ e Hesiod and Homer , with their stories of heroic times, and the tragic poets, than Ctesias and Herodo tus and Hellan icus 1 Chap. 23. 2 ii. 399-400 (pp. 411-12, ed. Rabe).

INTRO DUCTO RY: THE LOGOG RAPHE RS

5

and the rest of them.'1 And he speaks of the 'absurd imaginary names which Hellan icus and Herod otus and Eudox us have dinned into our ears'.2 In his first book, when in sobere r mood, he briefly gives his opinio n about the part played by the early Ionian prose-w riters in Greek literar y history : 'The language of prose, of artistic prose at least, might be said to be an imitati on of the language of poetry. Poetic style was the first to come to the fore and achieve recognition; then, in imitati on of this style, droppi ng the restrictions of metre but retainin g all the other characteristics of poetry, Cadmus, Pherecydes, Hecataeus, and their school began to write in prose; then their successors, removing the poetic characteristics one after anothe r, transformed it into its present shape, as though bringing it down off its high horse, and making it truly prose or pedestrian (7TE~OS') language.'3 Strabo , who is not a rhetori cian like Dionys ius or Hermo genes, is thinkin g of the actual su~jects about which 'Cadm us, Pherec ydes, Hecata eus, and their school ' wrote, when he compa res their work to poetry . For his purpos e, as a studen t of geogra phy and ethnog raphy, they are neithe r more nor less useful than 'Home r, Hesiod , and the tragic poets'; that is to say, their works contain both fact and fiction, and experien ce and care are needed in order to disting uish the one clemen t from the other. Becaus e prose recogn ized none of the limitat ions of the epos, the Greeks gave to it the same name as the langua ge of conver sation, logos, and those who first took to using prose as a literary form were natura lly called Aoyoypar/JoL or AOYO7TOLOL, conven tionall y anglici zed into 'logogr apher'. As the use of prose as a literary form increas ed with the develo pment of history , oratory , and philoso phy, and other poetic forms develo ped to the exclusi on of the older epos, the origina l distinc tion of epos and logos was no longer adequa te; just as an E7T07TOLOS' was a certain kind of poet, differe nt from a traged ian or lyric poet, so the term 'logogr apher' had to take on a narrow er meanin g. The early prose-w riters had dealt with myth, anecdo te, legend , saga, nation al traditio n, 1 xi. 6, 3. 2 xii. 3, 21. 3 i. 2, 6.

6

INTRODUCTORY: THE LOGOGRAPHERS

popular history-in short, they had told stories such as were designated in Greek by the name of '\oyot. Accordingly the term '\oyoypa1>os came to mean not prose-writer in general but story-teller, raconteur, chronicler, or even, one might say, historical novelist. It has been customary with classical scholars, however, whilst recognizing this meaning of the word, to limit its use to the Ionian chroniclers and storytellers of the fifth century B.C., who have indeed a double title to the name, as the first to use logos instead of epos for narrative and as narrators of logoi. The responsibility for thus confining the use of the term is generally laid at the door of Friedrich Creuzer lone of the . ' pIOneers in collecting the fragments of early prose-writers, who in 1803 first published his book The Historical Art of the Greeks in its Origin and Development. 2 The propriety of using the term 'logographer' in this restricted sense has been attacked on the ground that this 'narrow, restricted use of ~he term with reference to literary history finds no support m Greek usage; the word is used at most in a few instances in the broader sense of historian in general.'3 The word '\0y'0ypa1>os in Athens also denoted the professional speechwnter, who wrote speeches for his clients to deliver in the law-courts, but the designation was apparently not liked by the speech-writers and was used by them principally as a term of abuse. Aeschines speaks scornfully of the logographos who has pieced together a defence for his adversary;4 he and Demosthenes call one another '\oyoypa1>os,s whilst Plato speaks of the enemy who continued to call Lysias by this name in all his attacks upon him. 6 Evidently, when an orat?r in Athens called his adversary a '\oyoypa4os, the implicatIOn was that for a paltry fee he was ready to put together .. ~ Cf. W. Schmid, Griech. Literaturgesch. I. i, p. 691; Bux, RE., s.v. Logographen, 1021. Z Die historische Kunst der Griechen in ihrer Entstehung und Fortbildung (2nd ed. 1845). See especially p. 265. 3 Bux, lac. cit., col. 1022. For earlier critiCIsm on the same lines cf. G. Curtim, .Ueber zwei Kunstausdriicke der griechischen Literaturgesch., Berichte der k. sachsIsc~en Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, 1866, pp. 14154; reprmted in his Kleine Schriften, ii, pp. 239-47. 4 In Tim. 94. 5 Aesch. In Gtes. 173, DeJals. Leg. 180; Dem. xix. 246, 250. 6 Phaedrus, 257 C•

Xlll.

INTRODUCTORY: THE LOGOGRAPHERS

7

some sort of speech without any regard for truth or relevance, that he was, in fact, an unworthy member of an honourable profession-because there was nothing dishonourable about the profession of speech-writing in itself. This derogatory sense which the word acquired in the Athenian law-courts in the fourth century was extended to its use by literary critics, so that when Plutarch or Polybius calls an historian '\oyoypa1>os or '\0Y07TOLOS, the implication is that this writer has little regard for truth or accuracy. I But it is the use of the word by Thucydides which has established its particular application to the lonians of the fifth century: he complains about the false impression of ancient times given by poets with their romantic exaggeration and '\oyoypa1>ot who are more anxious to please their hearers and readers than to tell the truth. 2 From this passage the meaning of the word is surely clear enough; those who write about the past in prose are logographers, and Herodotus is evidently designated as one of them. With the development of a more severe attitude towards history, these early Ionian writers naturally fell into disrepute as impostors who pretended to be telling the truth about subjects of which they were totally ignorant. It is quite unnecessary to accept the suggestion of Bux, who thinks that the term '\oyoypa1>os came to have a derogatory meaning because the immigrants or refugees from Ionia during the Pentecontaetia, with their more worldly outlook, were disliked in the less cosmopolitan I Plutarch, De Iside, 20, speaking of the less edifying legends of Isis and Osiris writes: OTt 0' aUK €OLK£ Taiha KOP.LOfj f-Lv8£up.aow apaw'is Kat. OLaKlYOtS 1TAaOfLaOtv: ora 7roL7JTai. Kat. >toyoypa¢JOL Ka8a1T£p ai a.paxvar. y£vvawT£S d¢' €avrwv a11" apxf}s aVV1TOO€TOV vt/Jalvovot Kat a1TOT£lvovaLV, &,\,\' £XO TLvas anoplas Kat 7TaBwv OL7Jy~O£LS' oCuO' aVT~. Babbit (Loeb ed.) translates Aoyoypacpol as 'writers of prose'. Cf. also De defectu oracu[orum, 15: 7TA£'UTOV 8£ Tfj, dA1/0£{a, 8,al-'apTaVOvulv 01 iJ£Acpwv 8£oAO,),OL VOJLl~OVT£S' €VTav8ti 1TO'Tf 7TpO'; ocptV 'Tep Of

..oy{a, and 'Iurop{at, and a geographical nEpt~YYJUtS or nEp{OOOS rfjs. Thus, except for Dionysius of Miletus, whose very existence is a matter of doubt and about whose works we have no certain information, he is the first prose-writer in the field both of mythology and geography. In both these works he was working in accordance with the traditions of Ionian turop{YJ, anxious to correct current misconceptions and ready to propose a new theory of his own when dissatisfied with the existing view. There is no evidence that his turop{YJ was, even in the Herodotean sense of the word, historical inquiry. Indeed, later critics, Strabo in particular, are somewhat disgusted with his unscientific attitude towards both history and geography,3 an attitude which he shared not only with his

:16

So once again Hecataeus is overruled; Aristagoras goes to Thrace, where he is killed by hostile Thracians. Herodotus, moreover, besides indicating that Hecataeus had a prominent part in Milesian politics, tells us also that he belonged to an old Milesian family, because on a visit to Thebes in Egypt he described his ancestry to the priests and claimed to be only sixteen generations removed from a divine forefather: 2 what particular god or goddess Herodotus does not reveal. As a member of an old Ionian family it is only fitting that Aristagoras should have consulted him. An aristocratic pride seems to reveal itself in the opening sentence of his work entitled Genealogies: 'The following is the account of Hecataeus the Milesian; for the Greeks, in my opinion, tell a great many foolish stories.'3 It was on this mention of his activities by Herodotus, no doubt, that Suidas, or his source of information, relied in trying to fix his date. Suidas gives the 65th Olympiad (52o-5r6 B.C.) as the date of hisfloruit,4 twenty years previous to his activity during the Ionian revolt. Presumably he argued that at this time he was a person of ripe experience, sixty years old or more. The remark of Herodotus that he enumerated the tribes subject to Darius suggests, indeed, that his geographical work, the nEpt~YYJUtS, was v. 12 4---{). ii. 143. Heidel, however (Mem. qf Amer. Acad. qf Arts and Sciences, xviii. 2, pp. 93-5), thinks that in telling this story Hecataeus was perpetrating an elaborate hoax on his readers and that he was much too intelligent to believe in divine ancestry. It is true that sixteen generations back is somewhat late for a divine ancestor. Cf. Ed. Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, i, pp. I

2

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In i. 73, where he is giving Antiochu s' account of the coming of Sicelus from Rome, the parenthesis >Iv TOT< 'haAia ~ a170 Tapav-ros U.Xpt lIounowv ias 17apaAtOs is evidently an addition of his own, not part of his quotatio n from Antiochu s. Cf. also Jacoby's introduc tory note on F. 80-5. 3 Cf. Ciaceri, op. cit., i, pp. g, 44; Tropea, Riv. di Storia Antica, ii. 2, p. 86; Schulze, op. cit., pp. 20-2. Nissen (op. cit. i, p. 60, n. 5) regards the F. as evidence for a late forgery, Grosstep han, Beitriige, pp. 36--7 as evidence for a 'second edition'. 4 F. 86. See below.

0.

HECAT AEUS OF MILETU S

41

approp riate to later times. Anyon e who neglects this considerat ion in criticiz ing the fragme nts is likely to make serious mistakes. Hence there is no real justific ation for assumi ng that the deriva tion of the name Capua (i1ro Ka7Tvos TOU TPWtKOU is taken from Hecata eus. This fragme nt presen ts anothe r difficulty besides. Did Capua exist under that name as early as the time of Hecataeus?1 Servius 2 mentio ns the eviden ce for its founda tion by Trojan s, Samnit es, and Etrusc ans, and Dionysius 3 lets it be unders tood that the eviden ce for a Trojan founda tion is by no means weak or late, though it is uncert ain whethe r he makes Antioc hus respon sible for this detail. Unless one is predisp osed, like Nissen,4 to believe in a forgery ofHeca taeus, one natura lly accepts this fragme nt as eviden ce for the existence of Capua under its own name in the sixth centur y, not under the Latin name of Vultur nus, which, accord ing to Servius, is a Latin transla tion of Capua . The lack of references to northe rn and central Italian cities is natura l enough , consid ering that Greek access to these regions was cut off by the Etrusc ans. s On the other hand, the remark able numbe r of references to cities in Bruttium-S tephan us mentio ns nine cities of the Oenotr ians on Hecata eus' author ity (F. 64-71) , and sixteen more withou t mentio ning his source -corre sponds with the flouris hing colonia l power of Croton and Sybari s. Sybari s was connected with Miletu s by close ties offrien dship,6 and Hecata eus would certain ly have been inform ed about its progre ss in Magna Graeci a. All nine of these Oenot rian cities are describ ed as EV fJ-woyrdq. or EV T0 fJ-woYELcp,7 and not one of them can be identif ied with certain ty. There is no trace I Livy iv. 37; Velleius i. 7. Cf. DieIs, Hermes, xxii, pp. 416--18; B. Niese, Gott. Gel. Anz. (1885), i, p. 240; Hi.ilsen, RE., s.v. Capua, iii. 1555-6; Ciaceri, op. cit. i, pp. 389-97. 2 Ad Aen. x. 145. 3 A.R. i. 73. 4 Op. cit., ii, p. 6g8. 5 Cf. M. Caspari, JHS. xxx, p. 244. 6 Hdt. vi. 21. 7 Provided one accepts this emendat ion of F. 64, which in the text of Stephanus reads' Ap{y(J1J· 170'\tS OtVWTPWV £V f1€ao17oTaf1iq.. ]. Wells, JHS. xxix, p. 5 I, took this lemma as proof offorger y and made the strange and often-qu oted commen t: 'The south of Italy is notoriou sly scant of water; but some light is perhaps thrown on the fragmen t by the fact that there is an Interamn ia in Bruttium . Perhaps "a little learning is a dangerou s thing" for a forger.'

4515

G

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

of their names in other literature, unless the KO(Juu of F. 68 is the much disputed 'Cosa in agro Thurino', where Milo is said by Caesar to have been killed;1 it may be the modern Cassano. 2 The similarity of 'Ap{v8TJ (F. 64) to the present Rende on the River Arento, and of Nwu{u (F. 7 I) to the present S. Donato di Ninea is certainly very convincing; but no such near equivalents can be found for the other names. 3 Only the development by the Sybarites of an overland route to the Tyrrhenian Sea (by which they kept in touch with the Etruscan merchants) can explain the existence of these numerous settlements; by no means all of them can have deserved to be called 'cities', but Hecataeus may have been as generous with this title as Herodotus. 4 No such elaborate inland development on the part of Croton is known to have existed, so that one may conclude from the fragments that this part of the Periegesis was written before or certainly not long after the destruction ofSybaris in 510 B.C. According to his custom Hecataeus called these settlements 'cities of the Oenotrians', though they must have been really Greek foundations. Oenotria, as Antiochus says, was the old name for this region, and Hecataeus seems to have followed the older tradition in using the word ltalia only for the country in the extreme south of the peninsula: where Locri Epizephyrii,5 for instance, was to be found, and Medma6 and Caulonia.'

Scyllaeum is mentioned only as an UKpU/ the town was not yet founded; Strabo (vi. I, 5) describes how Anaxilas, ,":,ho became tyrant of Rhegium in 493/ built a naval statIOn there to protect the straits from Etruscan pirates; but most probably in Hecataeus' time the ~lace was still a dese~te~ promontory. Crotalla3 is not mentIOned elsewhere, but It IS probably to be connected with the River Crotalus (modern AlIi), 4 on the east coast of the original ltalia. There remain 'the River Lametus and Lametini', on which the note of Stephanus is unluckily corrupt: AUJLTJTLVOt· 7TO'\t, ('!Tu'\{u,),

42

I B.C. iii. 22. Most authorities, from Nissen (ii, p. 821, n. 9) onwards, deny that such a place ever existed. 2 Lenormant, La Grande Grece, i, p. 227; Kiepert, Forma Orbis A~tiqui, xix. Dk. 3 For discussion see Schulze, op. cit., pp. 73-116. 4 Cf. Caspari, loco cit., p. 241. S F. 83 AOKPO' 'E1rt{£q,vp.o.· 1TO,\.S '!Ta).[as. 'EKaTatosEvpaJ1T'!I. 6 F. 81 M,'O/-,:rr 1T0,\., '!TaMas Ka, KP~V7J 0f'clJVvf'0s. 'EKaTaios EvpclJ1T'!I' a1TO M''Of'''1s KOP7JS nvos. 7 F. 84 Kav'\wvla' 1TO,\.S ' !TaMas ~v Av'\wvlav 'EKaTaios Ka,\£L, TO f'€G7Jv avAwvos € tvat.. 0.110 yap -rfjs AVAWVOS' VC1T£POV JLerwvoJLaaf}-q Kav.lwvta, to)' a110 MfTa{3ov ijpwoS' TO MfTa1TOVTLOV Kat. 'JE1Tl8avpoS' 'ETrlT4VPOS Kat r:tt K>t.a'oJL€val ll'\a{of'€vaL The use of the form Aulonia is puzzling. All reconis refer to the city as Caulonia (for coins see B. Head, Histaria Nummarum, ed. ~, p. 92). Cf., however, the note of Steph. Byz. S.v. Av'\wv •.• EaT. Ka, Av'\"v OV E1To,\.aav KpoTwv.aTa., ifT" WVOf"1.u87J Kav'\wvla, which Jacoby (note on ?) regards as giving the substance of what Hecataeus said. Cf. Nissen ,ii, p. SSO, n. I.

a."

, \ A uJL7JTOV ' 7TOTUJLOV~

U7TO

t 7TPO,\

43

K' t <EKUTUtO, E"VPW7T'f} . EV ' pOTWV. A

DE AaJLTJTo, 7TOTUJLO" EV DE AUJLTJTLVOt. 5 The 'river

Lamet~s

in Italy' is mentioned by the scholiasts on Lycophron6 and IS presumably the modern Lamato, running into the KO'\7TO, AUJLTJTtKO" the bOUI~dary of old ltalia, otherwise known. as KO'\7TO, NU7T7JTLVO, or .A~a1ToVTo.A~a1TovTov is understandable only on such a bas1.s. Limnae and Madytus, two cities on the Thracian Chersonese, are described respectively as 1TOAL.A7Ja1TovTta, although Limnae is almost certainly on its western shore, near the Suvla salt-marshes. 2 Any remarks of Hecataeus about the Chersonese are precious, since he wrote at a time when either the first or the second Miltiades was still tyrant there. It is curious that, although Herodotus mentions several cities in his territory and speaks of a Prytaneum, in which Stesagoras was assassinated,3 he never tells us what the 1TOAL.Eg£ws 31, 26 (ed. Lentz, ii, p. 937, 10).

I

3

4

Note on F. 166. 2 Op. cit., p. 62. Op. cit., p. 19; Hdt. v. 15, vii. 113. Polyb. v. 108,8; Appian, Bell. Ill. i. 2.

62

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

that he used the term Thrace in a very broad sense, including much territory that was afterwards thought of as Macedonian; that he knew at least the names of a number of tribes which were afterwards forgotten or else migrated elsewhere; and that he was not concerned to show how far the Greek colonists had extended their influence in the country.

new information can he add as a result of the increased number of Greek settlements north of the Euxirre and the material gathered by the expeditions of Cyrus and Darius? In what order did he discuss the various tribes, and how does his arrangement of material compare with that of Herodotus ? None of these questions is answered by the critic who decides that in a certain chapter Herodotus is following or differing from Hecataeus. Nor is it ever an adequate explanation of any story to say that Herodotus got it from Hecataeus, if it remains to find out how Hecataeus heard of the story. Herodotus himself mentions Aristeas of Proconnesus as one of his sources, and gives his opinion about the extent of that poet's travels. He does not mention Hecataeus, but there are a few passages which are sufficient to indicate a desire to disagree with his predecessor. First, there is the celebrated denunciation of maps and map-makers in iv. 36. Then it is evident that Hecataeu& used the term 'Scythian' in a broader sense than Herodotus. He calls the Melanchlaeni a Scythian tribe, whereas Herodotus insists they are a'\'\o EBvos Kat OU EKVBtKOV.' He also calls the Issedones and MaTVKETat Scythian; Herodotus speaks of the Massagetae (probably the same as the MaTUKETat) as beyond the Araxes, opposite to the Issedones, and adds €Lat DE oiTtv€s Kat EKVBtKOV ,\Eyovat TOVTO TO gBvos €tvat. z This looks like a reference to the Periegesis. He also frequently uses phraseology of a kind that suggests a Periplus or a Periegesis. But since the sentences written in this style in different chapters are sometimes inconsistent with one another, very little help is to be expected from them. Since Herodotm had himself travelled on the north coast of the Euxine, he was not disposed to be so scornful about Hecataeus here as in his remarks about western Europe; but he insists that no one knows anything about a northern ocean. 3 Of the so-called Scythian tribes mentioned in the Europe the Issedones and the Melanchlaeni are familiar from Herodotus

Scythia and the North-East: The Boundary between Europe and Asia The fragments referring to Scythia and the north-east are very scanty, and in only one case does Stephanus give more than the mere name of an gBvos or 7TO'\tS. Of the Melanchlaeni, the 'black-cloaked people', he adds: 'Their name comes from the clothes that they wear, as the Hippemolgi get their name from milking mares and the Mossynoeci from the kind of house in which they live' (F. 185). But even this solitary reference to customs may not be taken from Hecataeus, since Stephanus could have found the information in Herodotus.' Taken by themselves, therefore, the fragments are of little use and offer no information. An attempt to reconstruct this portion of the Periegesis is impossible apart from an interpretation of the EKVBtKOS ,\oyos in Herodotus, book iv. The sources of this account have been investigated many times and the problem cannot be dealt with here in ful1. 2 It is worth while to point out, however, that the investigations have usually been carried out from the point of view of Herodotus, and the investigators have been more interested in his method of borrowing information than in reconstructing the description of Hecataeus. It is easy to believe that Herodotus made considerable use of Hecataeus in writing the fourth book; but a discovery of this kind helps us very little towards reconstructing the Periegesis. There are so many important questions that must remain unanswered: To what extent does Hecataeus depend on or differ from Aristeas and other early poets? How much I

iv.

cr.

10 7.

R. W. Macan, Herodotus IV-VI, Appendix ii; F. Windberg, De Herodoti Scythiae et Libyae descriptione; M. I. Rostovtzeff, Skythien und der Bosporus, pp. 2

'7- 2 5.

I F. 1 85-Steph. Byz. S.v. M€'\'ayx'\'a,vO.tT.llos

The Coast of Asia Minor from the Hellespont to Cilicia This large group of fragments (F. 217-68) may well be treated in one section, because the territory to which they refer was familiar to Greek readers and, when Hecataeus wrote, all under Persian domination. An examination does not, however, reveal any fresh characteristics peculiar to the group. There is some evidence to suggest that Hecataeus returned to the mythological method which he seems to have followed in describing Greece and the Aegean islands. On the other hand, the almost complete lack of fragments referring to the barbarian interior of Asia Minor makes it impossible to judge the extent of his geographical knowledge. The fragments offer, as usual, a number of unfamiliar names of cities, enough to show that our present knowledge of the Greek communities in this region is far from complete, and enough to suggest that some cities declined in importance or even disappeared completely under Persian rule. Before discussing the significance of these unfamiliar names it will be well to point out the few indications of mythological digression. Strabo's reference to Hecataeus in his discussion of Enete, the problem city of the Trojan catalogue in the Iliad, has already been mentioned (F. 199). He refers to Hecataeus in two other passages discussing similar problems -he tells us that Hecataeus identified the Homeric tf>OELPWVOpos with Mount Latmus behind Miletus,I and in his discussion of the much-disputed passage from the Trojan catalogue, AtlTttp 'AAL~WVWV 'Ostos Ka~ 'E7TLUTPOCPOS -ryPXov T1JA6fhv €g 'AAv{31JS, [JBEV npyvpov €(TT~ YEVEBA1J,z

he gives the view of Hecataeus as quoted by Demetrius of Scepsis. 3 Others had wanted to place the Halizones in the I F. 23g-Strabo xiv. 1,8; It. ii. 868. 2 It. ii. 856--7. 3 xii. 3, 22-F. 217 E7TULVE' Ile (sc. "IK~.pWS) /La>'LO'TU TT,V 'EKUTUtOU TOU ML>'''Iatou Kat M£V£KpdTOV~ TOU 'E).alTov, TWV EEvoKpaTovs yvwplJ.LwV civSpos, 30gav Kat 'T~V IIa>.uupaTou, wv " /LEV EV rfjs IIEpL61lCfJ /J"pi»v oP" A€YOJ1.EV'l'· lJ1T£P yap Tfis AaTfLou "'1JU' TO tI>/J"pWV opos KiLU/Ja..

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

eternal problem of Herodotean sources. As it is, the fragments are neither enough nor of such a kind as either to refute or encourage those critics who are anxious to see the influence of Hecataeus everywhere in the 'AUavptKoL and MYJStKOt .\6yot of Herodotus. There are admittedly a few fragments which lend a slight degree of probability to this view, but the conclusions of critics like Prasek 1 are not really justified by the evidence. No fragments relating to Babylonia are preserved, so that this region must be excluded entirely from the discussion; and the solitary reference to KaftapYJvoL, vf]UOt 'Apa{:3twv (F. 27 I), is the only hint that he even described Arabia or the Asiatic coast ,of the Red Sea. There are eight fragments referring to Phoenician or Syrian cities, but they are all of the colourless variety, giving no indication of the manner in which he described the region. More interesting are the references to cities which he apparently called Persian, though not all of them are in Persis, and to the tribes and cities in the eastern portion of the Persian Empire. Here we find a few references to geographical features of the country and to the clothing worn by the people; but there is not enough to show how his knowledge of these regions compared with that of Herodotus, nor how much he had learned from the report of the voyage ofScylax. These general statements will have to be justified by discussion of individual fragments; but there is nothing to be gained by lengthy argument. The fragments themselves give no indication of the manner in which Hecataeus arranged his material, how he organized his discussion or grouped the different peoples. Jacoby has argued that the brief discussion of Asiatic geography in Herodotus iv. 37-41 uses the material and consequently represents the arrangement of Hecataeus.:\ But this is unlikely. In the preceding chapter Herodotus expresses his scorn for map-makers and their II€pLoSot rf], and says it will not take him long to show the size of each continent Kat oiY) TL, Eunv E, ypmp¥ €KauTTJ. This is polemic against Hecataeus, and what follows must be an alternative to rather than a summary of his description. His account centres around the Klio, iv, pp. 193-208.

2

F. Gr. Hist. i, p. 354.

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

77

Persians, whose position is taken for granted, as though it were quite unnecessary to explain it-IUpuat OlKEOVUt Kan}KOVT€S E7Tt ~v VOTLY)V (}cD.aauav ~v 'Epv(}pTJv KaA€OftEVTJV. 1 All the rest of the description is from the point of view of the Persians. This does not mean that Herodotus is using the 'official Persian source', which is always being mentioned by critics; but it does mean that he is offering an antidote to the Greek writers who have attempted to describe Asia from the point of view of Ionia. A careful examination of the passage reveals his irritation at many points: he is not concerned with retailing the description of Hecataeus; he has been in Persia himself, and tries to reproduce the Persian point of view, which is more likely to be correct than the Greek. The more one examines the passage, the less willing one is to extract the description of Hecataeus out of it. At one point only does he slip: he says that to the east of India the country is desert, and then, as though to correct this unwarranted statement, adds: 'and no one is in a position to say what it is like'.:\ Hecataeus may have been responsible for the remark about the desert; but this is not a very valuable discovery. If the conclusions of this paragraph are correct, the discussion of this portion of the Periegesis should be restricted to the actual fragments. These contain, as usual, a few unfamiliar names: Ftyy'\vJ-tWTTJ, tPOtVLKTJS 7T6'\ts, is entirely unknown, and so is Alya if it is really a 'city of Phoenicia', and not the Cilician seaport town (F. 277, 276). tPOtVtKOVuua, 'a city of the Phoenicians in Syria', is equally hard to identify.3 Equally unknown are XavSavaKy), 7T6'\t, II€putK~,4 the tribe of KaTaVVOL near the Caspian (F. 290), and the city of the Matieni called 'YcfJ7TTJ (F. 287). KvpYJ, vf]uo, EV Tip II€putKip 7T6vTtp (F. 281), is not known by name, but Herodotus mentions the islands in the Persian Gulf to which the great king banishes political offenders. s More important than the names themselves are the foriv. 37. 2 iv. 40. F. 278. See E. Honigmann, Historische Topographie von Nordsyrien im Altertum, Zeitschrift des deutschen Paliistinavereins, xlvii (1924), p. 3 I, no. 376b . 4 F.283. cr. Tomaschek in RE., s.v. Chandanake. 5 iii. 93. I

3

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

mulae of description. Gabala, Sidon, Dorus (or Dora), Aiga, and TtYYAV/1-WTTj are all 'cities of Phoenicia' (F. 273-7)' According to the later more exact description of those qui subtilius dividunt, I Sidon would be in Phoenicia, Dorus would be on its southern boundary, but Gabala would be beyond its northern limit. If Hecataeus meant by the term the part of the coast inhabited and controlled by Phoenicians before the Persian conquest, he might have extended its limits even farther so as to include the Cilician Aegae as a city of Phoenicia. 2 The doubtful position of TtyyAV/1-WTTj and .wuu· 710>'" A'/3vwv. 'EKuTu'io,' Aulq.. See Jacoby's note and Schwabe, RE., s.v. M'!>"TTU. 7 F. 328a-Schol. A. B. T. Hom. Iliad iii. 6 ~VT( 71£p K>'Uyy~ Yfpavwv 7r.!>''' ovpuvolh 4

5

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

the first author to mention the remarkable tribe of .EKLa7T08E" who shaded themselves from the sun by lying on their backs and raising their huge feet in the air. I He put them in Libya, not in India where Scylax and later authors put them. The confusion between eastern and western Ethiopians readily accounts for this change; there is said to be no trace of them in Oriental legend. 2 There is the usual collection of unidentified place-names. 3 There are also names which do not appear elsewhere except in authors as late as Strabo and Ptolemy.4 The fragments offer no evidence of mythological digressions, nothing about the Lotophagi (whom Herodotus mentions merely by name in iv. 178) nor Atlas nor even Lake Tritonis. AboutJason's adventures in Lake Tritonis Herodotus gives an account in iv. 179, with the introduction EaTL 8E Kat 08E Aoyo, AEyofLEVO" in between two purely geographical chapters. But whether this story was told by Hecataeus in the Periegesis or the Genealogies cannot be decided.

as an authority on mythology, and was quoted by scholiasts principally because of his earlier date. Stephanus of Byzantium contributes only eight citations, considerably less than his usual proportion; the remaining fragments are shared between various scholiasts, Athenaeus, Pausanias, and others. The citations mention four books, and cite the work either as rEVETjAoylaL, 'IO'ToplaL, or 'HpwoAoyla. The fragments, however, are not sufficient to reveal the scheme of the work or to show very clearly how the material was divided between the four books. Two fragments from the second book refer to labours of Heracles (F. 6, 7), and it is therefore likely that the legend of Heracles was treated in this book. But for the other books no satisfactory conclusion can be reached. The other fragments with references to books by number are all, except one, geographical. The references to the Thessalian Athena Itonia and to Phalanna in book i (F. 2, 5) probably belong to the Deucalion story, which one would expect to find in this book. Athenaeus tells us that in book iii Hecataeus described an Arcadian banquet (F. 9), and this is the only reference to this book. Stephanus refers to book iv for two Carian cities and for TPEfLLAEIS as a name for the inhabitants of Lycia (F. 10, II, 12); Jacoby thinks, therefore, that the book may have dealt with the Trojan legend, and that the fragment about Lycia belongs to the story of Sarpedon. One is not justified in supposing that the order of legends was the same in Hecataeus as in Hellanicus. It will be better, therefore, to discuss the fragments referring to various legends without taking into account the order in which they may have been treated. The most familiar fragment is the arrogant opening sentence of the work, quoted by Demetrius and Gregory of Corinth: 1 'EKaTaLo, MLA~aLO, W8E fLv8ELTat· Ta8E ypacpw w,

96

III.

THE GENEALOGIAE

There are only thirty-five fragments which can with reasonable certainty be attributed to the Genealogiae, as compared with over three hundred from the Periegesis. This comparative scarcity of fragments from his mythographical work seems to suggest that Hecataeus' fame as a mythographer was considerably less lasting than his fame as a geographer. It is likely, indeed, that he was overshadowed by Hellanicus

I

ar ..,' £7T£;' oJv xn/Lwva tPVyov Ka~ &.8£ucPaTov 0fL{3pov, II(~aYYii Tat )IE 1TETOVTat £17' , DKEdVOLO poawv, I av8pa"lgau8aL aUras, Tas 8E Ka'Ta u.ypavAoL, KaK' ~MyXEa, yaa'T'pES otov, t8P.EV ifJ€158Ea TroAAel. MyHV ~'Tt)P.OWLV op.o'ia, t8P.EV 8', EV'T' ~8'AwP.EV, dA7J8'a Y7Jpvaaa8aL I

Herodotus does not consistently follow the same tradition, announcing his intention to record 'Tel. AEyop,Eva, irrespective of whether he believes them or not; but it is noteworthy that on one occasion (discussing the stories of Heracles in Egypt, where he owed something to Hecataeus) he speaks in the same tone as his predecessor: MYOVUL DE TroMel. Kat /J.Ma ciVEmaKlTT'TWS" ot "EM'rjvES"' dJ1}(}'rjS" DE av'T(uv Kat oDE 0 p,u(}oS" Ean 'TOV TrEpt 'TOU 'HpaKMoS" MyovaLv. 2 It is also interesting to note how Hecataeus follows the custom of putting his name in the prologue, just as Herodotus and Thucydides do. Jacoby argues that this work was written considerably later than the Periegesis, some time between 490 and 480, on the ground that the mythological tradition shows many more traces of rationalism. 3 This argument is too incomplete to justify lengthy discussion; in fact the so-called contradictions between the two works of Hecataeus can be easily disposed of;4 but there is nothing specifically against his conclusion. One point that might be emphasized is the presence of geographical touches in this mythological work. The plain where the Amazons lived is precisely defined: ~ DE BEp.taKvp'rj 7TEDLov Ea'TLV ci7TO XaDtaL'rjS" p,expt BEpp,wDOV'TOS" (F. 7a); the Epeians are distinguished from the Eleans (F. 25); and Pausanias refers to him in discussing the position ofOechalia (F. 28). Another point of resemblance with the Periegesis is the preference for archaic and unusual names, such as TPEp,tAEIS for the Lycians (F. 10), Tentheus instead of Pentheus (F. 31). There are four fragments referring to the descendants of I

Theog. 24-8 .

ii. 45. For similar expressions see ii. 2, 16, 134. cr. G. De Sanctis, Riv. di Filol. N.S. xi (1933), pp. I-IS. 3 F. Gr. Hist. i, p. 319; RE. vii. 2741. Schmid, Gr. Literaturgesch. I. i, p. 695, thinks the Genealogies was written first. ~ Cf. pp. 45-6 above. 2

I

99

F. I3-SchoI. Thuc. i. 3. 2 'EKaTatos laTOp€t, OTtJEUKaAlwv TP€tS 7Tat8as EaX£,

IIpovoov, 'Op£u8Ea Kat Mapa(JwvLov. npovoov O€ TOV "EAA1'}va cP1JUL y£vEu(JaL.

Hermes, xxxiv (1899), p. 6I1. Schol. Homer, Od. x. 2 JEUKaAlwv .•. IIpop.TJ(JEws p.£v .)v vl6s, P.TJTpOS 8£ ws Ol7T).£ta-rO' Myova, K).VP.EV7JS, ws 8. 'Hal080s IIpvv£lTJs (IIpov6TJs). The reading here is disputed because ofSchol. Ap. Rhod. iii. 1086 OTt IIpop.TJ(JEws Kat IIav8wpas vlos JEUKaAlwv, 'Hal08os
, A1r€vavTl.

5 F. 16-Herodian IIEpl fLOV~POVS MtEWS 41, 25 (ii, p. 947, 8, ed. Lentz). F. 17-Schol. Ap. Rhod. i. 256.

6

€Myxwv UVT(>v taTOpEt J.L~ €KDLDovuL ELv\WVLOS OUK £IV "'yo, T~V '} A07]viiv £17';' KQTaaKEUil TfjS 'ApyovS' 0.170 TfjS EV KOPWVElq, E7TLK"~aEwS'J p.a>J..ov O€ a1TD BEUaaALKfjs '} ITwv{as, 1TEpl. 1}s

'EKaTa'ios p.f.V EV 2

TV 1TPWTTJ TWV 'IuTopLwv )..EyO.

F. 18a-Schol. iv. 257-62b.

3

F. 18b-Schol. iv. 282-9Ib.

De Heeataei Milesii descriptione terrae, p. 21. For a defence of the MS. reading see W. Aly, Volksmiirehen, Sage u. Novelle bei Herodot, p. I I9. 5 For a conjectural restoration see L. Pearson, Class. Phil. xxix (I934), 4

PP·3 24-37·

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

HECATAEUS OF MILETUS

imagination, but scarcely in his more scientific geographical treatise. Herodotus attacks him for his unfounded confidence in describing western Europe, but gives no indication that he committed himself to such detailed writing about the north and the east. In the city of Chemmis in Upper Egypt Herodotus asked the natives why they had a temple of Perseus and received in answer the story of Perseus' Egyptian ancestry: Ec/>auav TOV

with some emphasis on the Egyptian origin of the family; and that this was a subject which he felt specially qualified to discuss because of his travels in Egypt. With the trustworthiness or historical value of this account we are not concerned here. The statement that he allowed Aegyptus less than twenty sons instead of the traditional fifty is perhaps evidence of a tendency towards rationalism; but the text has to be emended to supply this statement. It would be interesting to know if he rationalized the myth of Zeus' appearance to Danae in a shower of gold. Herodian makes the statement that the phrase 7fj L1av~ P.,tayETnL ZEUS" occurs €V 7fj XP~UEt TWV WOLV{KWV, ws" aUTOS" c/>T]Ut, I thus leading one to believe that the story was told indirectly or that different versions were offered of it. There remains only the fragment explaining the origin of the name of Mycenae from the cap (p..VKT]S") which fell from the scabbard of Perseus. 2 The fragments of the Periegesis relating to Egypt show how Hecataeus liked to connect Greek mythological characters with that country. Herodotus was especially interested in the Egyptian connexions of Heracles, and it would not be surprising if he inherited this interest from Hecataeus. The fragments offer no proof of this; but it is worth noting that the story of how Heracles attacked and killed the Egyptians who were going to sacrifice him is introduced with the scorn that he reserves elsewhere for Hecataeus: Myovut DE 7ToMa "\ \ 'aVE7TLUKE7TTWS" , \ , '0T]S" OE " , aVTWV , "c:, , "ll , Kat, al\l\a Ot, "E'\I\I\T]VES"· EVT] DOE 0 p..VVOS"

I02

llEpuEa €K TfjS" €WVTWV 7TO'\WS" YEyovEVat· TOV yap L1avaov Ka~ TOV AVYKEa €OVTaS" XEp..p..{TaS" €K7T,\wUat €S" rTJv 'EMaDa. cl7TO DE TOVTWV YEvET]'\0YEOVTES" KaTE{3atvov /.dWII avllaywyfjS', IJEPL {1t{1~.tWII xp~aEwS', possibly also a work on music IJEPL TOV LltollVataKOV avaT~fLaToS', and a work on painters IJEPL ZwypucpwII. I He is usually regarded as a younger contem-

gives a poem on Dionysus and Athena, a prose work on the Argonauts, and MV()tKa 7TPOS' IJapfLEIIOllTa.1 There is considerabfe confusion here, after the manner of Suidas, who frequently assigns the same work to more than one author. The Mythica certainly do not belong to the earlier logographer, nor do the three books of Troica, as the words of Diodorus will show. Diodorus says that he used a certain Dionysius as a source in his third book, 2 and found him very useful because he collected the various traditions. He calls him simply Dionysius, but there can be no doubt that he refers to the man whom Suidas and the scholiast call the Mytilenean. Both Diodorus and the scholiast refer to a Dionysius for the story of the Amazons in Libya,3 and they obviously mean the same author. A careful reading of what Diodorus has to say, however, makes one wonder what manner of author this Dionysius was. Diodorus begins his account of the Amazons in Libya by saying he knows the story will be entirely unfamiliar to his readers, but explains that the later fame of the Amazons round the river Thermodon entirely eclipsed the glory of the Libyan Amazons, who became extinct many generations before the Trojan War (iii. 52, 2). He has, however, so he says, found mention of these Libyan Amazons in numerous old poets and prose-writers, and he will accordingly tell the 'fl" A ," st ory b ne y aKOI\OV'()WS' .(.JtoJIVatcp TCfJ avJITETaYfLEIICfJ Ta" 7TEpt TOVS'

110

porary of the grammarian Aristarchus (belonging, therefore, to the first century B.C.), and possibly identical with the Artemon of Pergamum, whose opinions as an LaTOptKoS' are quoted in several Pindaric scholia. Because of the titles of the first two of his works, Welcker2 regarded him as a valuable authority on literary history. But one cannot judge a man's critical ability merely by the titles of his books. About Dionysius Scytobrachion we are rather better informed. 3 The evidence, which at first seems very badly muddled, disentangles itselfin most satisfactory fashion. Even before it is disentangled, it shows that this author was a man who wrote on Greek mythology in an original manner. A Homeric scholiast records the story of this Dionysius that Helen and Paris had a son called Dardanus,4 and this statement is entirely unsupported by earlier mythological tradition. s The scholia on the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes record the names ofDionysius the Mytilenean and Dionysius the Milesian as authorities for different versions of episodes in the Argonaut story.6 To Dionysius the Milesian (who has acquireda: great reputation for so shadowy a figure) Suidas assigns a Periegesis, Persica, TO. fLETo. LlapEtOll, three books of Troica, a KVKAoS' LaTOptKoS', and Mythica. 7 To Dionysius of Mytilene, 'an epic poet, known also as Scytobrachion', he Athenaeus xii, p. 515D, xv, p. 694A-C, xiv, pp. 636E, 637B; Harpocration, 2 Kleine Schriften, i, p. 433. 3 Cf. Susemihl, Gesch. der griech. Lit. in der Alexandrinerzeit, ii, pp. 45-9; E. Schwartz in RE., s.v. Dionysius (lOg) Skytobrachion, v. 92g-32. Both writers cite earlier literature on the subject, but the last word is with Schwartz. Jacoby, F. Gr. Hist. i, no. 32, collects the fragments, but adds nothing to the discussion. 4 F. II-Schol. A. Homer, Iliad iii. 40. 5 Jacoby (note on F. II) doubts this: 'Er war schwerlich der erste, der die Ehe von Paris und Helena fruchtbar sein Iiess.' 6 F. 1-5-Schol. Ap. Rhod. ii. 206-8b, 963-5c; iii. 200, 240; iv. 177, "53. These citations are in accordance with C. Wendel's edition of the scholia. 7 s.v. LhovVULOS MLA1jULOS'J iUTOPU'vyvwTO'.

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Then the story begins with the conquests of the Amazons in western Africa-a land still unfamiliar in Alexandrian times-including the ~onquest of the Gorgons. So that there will not be any conflict with established mythology, a note is added that the Gorgons afterwards grew powerful again and were conquered by Perseus, and finally, together with I S.v. Lltovvu£oS'

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there are two parallel versions of the story here. Herodotus claims to be speaking on the authority of 'the Lydians themselves' ,and gives no indication that he knows of any alternative verSlOn. Torrhebus' name occurs again in a fragment of Nicolaus of Damascus. The story he tells is that Torrhebus, son of Atys, when wandering by a lake (which was afterwards called Torrhebia in his honour), 'heard the voice of nymphs, whom the Lydians also call muses, and so learnt music and himself taught it to the Lydians; and because of this the melodies were called Torrhebian'. 3 The connexion of i.94. 2 This is Muller's text (Fr. I). According to the Teubner text (C.Jacoby, 1885) the Lydians and Torrhebians do not borrow words (avAova,v) from each other's dialect, but mock and disparage one another (atAAovatv). See the critical note. 3 Nic. Dam. F. Is-Steph. Byz. s.v. TOpp1Jf3o,· 1ToA" AvSla, a1To Topp~f3ov TOU • ATVO, (TO £IJV'KOV Topp~f3w, Kat IJ1JAVKOV TOpp1Jf3l;-- £V Tfi TOpp1Jf3lB, £aTLV opo, Kapl,os KaA€6f-L€VOV Kat 'TO L€POV 'TDU Kaplov €K€L. Kapl,os OE Lhos 7TaLS' Kat TopPTJf3{aS w, N'KoAao, B'), 0, 1TAa~op.£vo, 1T£pl T'va Alp.v1Jv, ijT"avvova, £K 'Tijs

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CHARON OF LAMPSACUS

CHARON OF LAMPSACUS

the editors, and Stein thinks some words have dropped out; since white pigeons were sacred to Astarte, he thinks that Phoenician sailors brought some of these birds on shipboard with them. 1 Even so, the remark of Charon does not help to explain the passage of Herodotus, and there is no good reason for thinking there is any connexion between their two accounts of white pigeons. The only other fragment which might be referred to the Persica is the report of Plutarch that Charon mentioned the flight of Themistocles to the court of Artaxerxes. 2 It does not follow that Charon carried on his account of the struggle between Greeks and Persians as far down as this; one good reason against such a view is the emphatic statement of Thucydides that no history of the Pentecontaetia existed, except the totally inadeq uate account in Hellanicus' Atthis. 3 Granted Charon's taste for digressions, one may reasonably suppose that he took the occasion of outlining the future career of Themistocles at some earlier stage in his account of the Persian Wars. The remaining fragments are concerned with mythology, and it is useless to attempt to assign them to one work rather than another, since an opportunity for a digression may occur at any time. His mention of Cybele (he used the spelling Kvf1~fJlJ) might occur anywhere at all. 4 Pausanias says that Charon mentioned Carcinus of Naupactus as author of the epic known as the NaV1TaKTLa E7TTJ;5 Charon would be most likely to refer to this poem in some mythological discussion. More interesting is the scholiast's report of his story about a certain Rhoecus and a hamadryad nymph. 6 The

story is evidently compressed and the original wording not preserved; it is that Rhoecus earned the gratitude of a nymph, when her oak-tree was on the point of falling to the ground, by ordering his servants to prop it up; when the nymph promised him any favour he liked to ask, he asked the privilege of being her lover; she consented but said he must be faithful to her always and that a bee would act as messenger between them; 'and one time when he was playing at TTEaUot the bee flew past him; he spoke rather angrily, which enraged the nymph, so that he was blinded'. The scholiast has so condensed the story that the last part is unintelligible as it stands. The scholiast on Theocritus iii. 13 adds a few details, calling Rhoecus a Cnidian and placing the scene of the story in Niniveh, and recognizes that the bee is a conventional go-between in affairs of love. The clue, however, as Wilamowitz has seen,1 is to be found in a fragment of Pindar, preserved only in the Latin version of Plutarch's Aetia Physica, in the answer to the question 'Cur apes citius pungunt qui stuprum dudum fecerunt?'2 The bee is said to be quick at detecting the unfaithful lover; and besides quoting the passage of Theocritus alluding to Anchises and his blindness, which prompted the scholiast to tell the story of Rhoecus, he quotes Pindar: 'Parvula favorum fabricatrix, quae Rhoecum pepugisti aculeo, domans illius perfidiam.' Rhoecus, then, was blinded by the bee because he was unfaithful to the nymph. A parallel story to this one is referred to Charon by the scholia on Lycophron 480 (Fr. 13):

I

Note ad loco

2

Themistocles

'Tf8V"f]KOTOS

3

i. 97.

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FHG. iv, p. 627-Photius, Lexicon, S.V. KvfJ"IfJo~' .; KaT£XO/L£Vo~ Tfj /L"ITpt TWV (hwv, (hO'ovoa oll/LvAaeau8a, P.EVTO' Y€ ETEpaS yvv«t/"lav 1Tap?Jyy€LA€V, EU€UOa, 8e p.€Tafu aV'TlOV aYY€AOV p.EA,uuav. Kat 1TOT€ 1T€UU£VOVTOS aUTOV TTapL1TTaTO ~ p.EALUUa" 17"-

KPOT£POV S' n a1To"LT£Uaaa8aL aUToi~J aL£gHtlV Ta E1TL •AI"T,yEvov, Toil KaJJ.{ov. Antigenes was archon 407-406. Since his successor was Cailias, Dubner (whom Jacoby follows, F. 171) reads Toil (1TpO) I

2

KaJJ.{ou. 4515

x

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

154

happened after Arginusae. 1 But such emendations, whilst palaeographically they are ridiculous, are totally unnecessary and entirely deserve the crushing rebuke of Wilamowitz. 2 To emend the scholion in favour of the confused evidence of the chroniclers and the emended text of Suidas 3 is surely very foolish; on this point the more recent critics are agreed. 4 With this additional material at our disposal it is easy to explain the contradictions of Suidas: he is combining the two accounts represented for us by Pamphila and Eusebius, and out of the confusion we may extract two statements: (I) Hellanicus was born in the reign of Amyntas I; (2) he spent some time at the court of Perdiccas. 5 Of these statements the first is probably true; the second is not unreasonable. The other chronological indication of Suidas ('in the times of Euripides and Sophocles'), if it is not an original remark of his own, evidently comes from the source whence Pamphila had her information; and according to Diels and Riihl 6 this source is the Chronica of Apollodorus. Riihl's argument is very ingenious: he thinks that Apollodorus identified the floruit of Hellanicus and Euripides; that Pam phil a interpreted this date as 456, the year in which Euripides produced his first tragedy, regarded this year as the fortieth year of Hellanicus' life, and so calculated his date of birth as 496. It is generally agreed now that this date is in fact a few years too early, since the Atthis cannot have been published before 406, and even the Macrobioi (formerly attributed to Lucian), that not very valuable list of long-lived men, allows him only eighty-five years. 7 The date of Hellanicus is a matter of some importance, because his chronological relation to Herodotus has to be J In his edition of the scholia Rutherford reads as follows: TOU, l:a>.ap.iv. Jlavp.aX'iaaVTa, /)ov'\ovs 'E,\M.v'K6, ¢nJa,v J'\w(J"pw8fjvat., KaL Jyypa.c!>,VTas ws II'\aTat.£i, avp.1T0'\'T£vaaa8a, aV-rok (KaL t/>,'\6xopo,) /).£gu1v TO. £1TL •AVT'YEVOV, TOU (1TpO)

Kill{ov (

).

Hermes, xi, p. 292 'Est hominum genus, qui utique certi quidpiam pronuntiari postulant, qui sententiae audacter prolatae confidunt, cum mendacii fortitudinem. subtilitatis modestiam esse capere non possint.' J For emendations see p. 152 n. 3. 4 Jacoby, F. Gr. Hist. (F. 171) and RE. viii. 109; cf. Preller, Ausgewiihlte Aufsiitze, p. 25. 5 Cf. Jacoby, F. Gr. Hist. i, pp. 430-1. 6 Loc. cit. 7 Lucian, Macrobioi 22. 2

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

155

decided. The most -useful evidence is that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the scholiast on Aristophanes. It was decided in the previous chapter that Charon was an elder contemporary of Herodotus; without doing violence either to the statements of Dionysius or to those of the scholiast, it can be maintained that Hellanicus, though perhaps not older in years than Herodotus,l published some of his works before Herodotus published his history. Many writers on Herodotus are inclined to believe that his history was published as early as 429-which is unlikely-but even if this were so, there is no reason why Hellanicus should not have written some of his work before that time. Wilamowitz is overdogmatic in insisting that Hellanicus published nothing before the Peloponnesian War;2 Jacoby is prepared to believe that his first publications may date from about 440 . 3 The case, then, may be briefly stated as follows: The Atthis was published shortly before the history ofThucydides, when Hellanicus was an old man. He had been publishing works, therefore, for many years before this. The tradition that he was born on the day of Salamis4 is worthless, resting as it does on the etymology 'E>J...a.V'KO~ from 'E>J...~vwv VLK'Yj. But the date of his birth is to be put about this time, or possibly a few years later. The statements of the chroniclers, Pam phil a, and Suidas are for the most part worthless; but Suidas is probably right in reckoning him as a contemporary of Euripides and Sophocles. The fragments are a motley collection and are referred to a large number of different works. As many as twenty-four titles are mentioned in the fragments, but no ancient author has preserved a list of his writings. Suidas certainly tells us that Hellanicus was a prolific writer ('he wrote many works both in prose and verse'), but, as Jacoby says, he was too lazy to copy out the list of works. Consequently there has been a dispute conducted on the same lines as the dispute about the works of Charon of Lampsacus. It has been argued I But the traditional date for Herodotus' birth (484-75) rests on no better evidence than Suidas and the chroniclers. 2 Loc. cit. 'Herodotus ... locuples testis est, ineunte bello Peloponnesiaco nobilissima Hellanici scripta edita nondum fuisse.' J RE. viii. 110. 4 Vita Euripidis, § 2 - T. 6.

15 6

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

-notably by Preller, Gutschmid, and Kullmer-that the number of works attributed to him is excessive, and that this large number is due to the fact that ancient authors have referred to the same work under different names, citing sometimes not the name of a whole work, but a sub-title or the title of a subdivision of the work. On general principles this hypothesis is reasonable, but it is impossible to decide with certainty how it should be worked out. Different schemes have been suggested, but there is not enough evidence for anyone to draw up confidently an abridged list of works. Jacoby, accordingly, decides that any such attempt is useless, and that critics who have devoted their efforts in this direction have been wasting their time. He argues that nearly all of the titles represent 'works which are bibliographically separate';I not subdivisions of larger works. It is useless to state an opinion on this point until after studying the fragments very carefully. For the moment it will be enough to mention the titles, which Jacoby (following the example of earlier scholars) copveniently divides into three groups: (I) M ythographic-Deucalioneia, Phoronis, Asopis, Atlantias, Troica; (2) Ethnographic 2 -Aeolica, Lesbiaca, A rgolica , II€pt ' ApKaStaS", Els "Af.Lf.LwvoS" dva{3aatS", Boeotiaca, Thessalica, Aegyptiaca, Cypriaca, l:Jdiaca, Persica, Scythica, KTta€ts" EBvwv, II€pt E()VWV, 'EBvwv Dvof.Laatat, Bap{3aptKU vOf.Ltf.La (he is prepared to believe that the last four are alternative titles of one work); (3) Horographic or Chronographic-Atthis, II€pt Xtov KTta€wS", 'UpHat TijS" "HpaS" aL EV "ApYH, Kapv€OvLKat. This makes twenty-four titles. Jacoby is prepared to admit twentyone separate works. The authorities for the fragments are the same as those with which the preceding chapters have had to deal: Athenaeus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo, Josephus; the scholiasts to Homer, Pin dar, Euripides, Aristophanes, Lycophron, and Apollonius of Rhodes; the lexicographers and anthologists. Comparable to what Herodotus says about

Hecataeus is a single rather scornful remark about Hellanicus made by Thucydides, when he says that this writer had indeed written about the period between the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars, but without due regard for chronological accuracy. I Apart from this solitary reference in a fifth-century author, there is no direct allusion in any writer till shortly before the Christian era. Strabo and Josephus 2 do not think highly of him as an historical authority, and he nowhere receives the sincere casual praise that is bestowed on Charon and Xanthus. 3 Hermogenes 4 ranks him as a stylist with Theopompus, Ephorus, and Philistus, whose style did not in any way serve as a model for later writers, as did the style ofHecataeus and Herodotus. Cicero, who probably did not know his work at first hand, says much the same. 5 It seems probable that his work survived mainly because of the abundant material which it contained about mythical times. Being a prose-writer hewas perhaps regarded, in and after Alexandrian times, as more authoritative than the poets-a point of view which irritated Strabo,6 because Hellanicus was highly unorthodox.

'Bibliographisch gesonderte Schriften'; loco cit., col. I 1I. Jacoby uses the term ethnographic to describe works which deal with the ethnography and geography of a single country-a type of work which is half-way between the old 1l.plo8o, rij, and the work of Hdt. (Klio, ix, p. 88.) I

2

157

THE MYTHOGRAPHICAL WORKS

Phoronis

Dionysius of Halicarnassus provides probably the best introduction to the mythographical works of Hellanicus. In the first book of his Roman Antiquities he makes great use of Hellanicus, quoting from his works explicitly on three separate occasions, and referring indirectly to him in several other passages. It is quite evident that in writing this portion of his work Dionysius was constantly referring to the Phoronis and to the Troica. The Phoronis dealt extensively with the Pelasgians, and was consequently important for the early history of Italy; and the Troica brought Aeneas to Latium. i. 97. 2 Strabo x. 2, 6; Josephus, contra Ap. i. 16-T. 23, 18. e.g. Dion. Hal. A.R. i. 28. 4 ll.p' l8.wv ii. 12, p. 412, I, ed. Rabe-T. 15. s De Oratore ii. 12, 53-T. 14. 6 xi. 6, 3 p~ov 8' UV TtS fHuu)3cp Kal. fOp.~pt.p '1TLUT£VU£L£V TJpwoAOYOVUL Kat TOtS TpaYLKois 1TO£1JTaLS 7j KT7Julq. T£ Kat fHpo86-Ttp Kal. fE>..>tavlKcp Kat dAAo,s '7"O£OV1'O£S'. (T.24·) I

J

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

The only explicit reference to the Phoronis is in i. 28 (F. 4), where he is discussing various theories about the origin of the Etruscans. He first mentions the view that they came from Lydia, but quotes from Xanthus the Lydian, 'a man whose knowledge of early history is second to none', a passage contradicting this view; I then he goes on:

Thessaly, and then migrated to Italy. But in the genealogical details of the story neither Herodotus nor Dionysius (though he quotes some of the names) was particularly interested. No authoritative statement by an ancient author survives to tell us what the scope of the Phoronis was. Its chief interest for most modern critics is that it described the origin and development of the Pelasgian people, but it also dealt with myths which have only a distant family conn ex ion with them; it was concerned with the descendants of Phoroneus, one branch of whom acquired the name 'Pelasgians', as one or more of its members bore the name Pelasgus. Since Phoroneus was regarded as one of the very earliest of men subsequent to the deluge, the ground that Hellanicus could have covered, had he wished, in a mythographical work of this kind seems practically unlimited. It is generally supposed that in selecting his material he made use of an earlier epic poem called Phoronis, which is mentioned by Strabo as well as by other later authors. 1 No remark of Hellanicus about Phoroneus, the founder of the line, is recorded. But it appears that he sketched separately the stories of the descendants of his three sons, finishing the account of one branch before starting on another. This is the method followed by the so-called Apollodorus in his Bibliotheca, and this mythographical handbook covers the same ground as the various mythographical works ofHellanicus, and agrees in many details with the fragments. As one fragment after another is examined, it will become increasingly clear how much the author of the Bibliotheca owes to Hellanicus; when one has seen how often he follows his heterodox views in individual instances, one is prepared to believe that he has likewise followed his example in arranging his material. More than eighty years ago Preller

158

'Hellanicus of Lesbos, however, says that the Tyrrhenians were formerly called Pelasgians, and obtained the name which they now hold when they settled in Italy. Here is the story as he tells it in the Phoronis: "Pelasgus, their king, and Menippe, the daughter of Peneius, had a son called Phrastor; his son was Amyntor, whose son was Teutamides, whose son was Nanas. Now during the reign of N anas the Pelasgians were expelled by Greeks, and after leaving their ships at the mouth of the river Spines in the Ionian Gulf, they captured the city of Croton inland, and beginning from there they settled the country which is now called Tyrrhenia." ,

This passage at once reminds the reader of what Herodotus says in i. 57: 'What language it was that the Pelasgians spoke I cannot say for certain. But if we are to judge by the Pelasgians who still survive, those who live in the city of Croton (according to other texts Creston)2 up country above the Etruscans, who were once upon a time neighbours to the people now called Dorians and who lived in those days in country which we now call Thessaly; and by the Pelasgians who at one time lived with the Athenians and now are settled at Placie and Scylace on the Hellespont, and all the other settlements of Pelasgian origin which changed their names,-to judge by these people the Pelasgians spoke a barbarian language.'

These two passages are undoubtedly based on the same authority. It is perfectly possible that Herodotus had seen this passage in the Phoronis; but a more cautious critic would state his case in this way: 'Herodotus had some knowledge of the view which Hellanicus incorporated in his Phoronis.' This 'view' was that the Pelasgians at one time lived in See Chap. III (Xanthus), pp. 120-1. Croton is evidently Cortona in Etruria. If Hdt. wrote Creston, an elaborate explanation is needed of the relation between the statements of Hdt. and Hellanicus. See the work of A. della Seta listed in the bibliography, where earlier literature is cited. I

2

159

I Strabo x. 3,19; Schol. Ap. Rhod. i. 1129; Clem. Alex. Strom. i. xxi, 102,6 (p. 66, ed. Stahlin); Etym. Magn. 374, 23. H. L. Jones (Strabo, ad loe,., Loeb ed.) thinks Strabo means Hellanicus, and Weizsacker (Roscher's Lexicon, s. v. PlwrolUus, cols. 2435-6) speaks of'das epische Gedicht Phoronis des Hellanikos'. Kinkel (EpieoTum Graee. Frag., pp. 210-12) collects "the fragments, but throws no light on the authorship. Preller-Robert (Gr. Mytlwlogie, ii, p. 279), discussing Phoroneus, speak of this epic as 'scarcely older than the sixth century'. No certain decision can be reached.

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

realized this: 'In fragmentis digerendis utilissimum erat quod Apollodorus in bibliotheca his ipsis Hellanici operibus maxime usus esse videtur, et in singulis et in omni argumenti descriptione; quae res licet ad hue latuerit omnes, tamen satis probabiliter demonstrari potest.'I A careful reading of the Bibliotheca is essential for anyone who wants to know the character of Hellanicus' work. The subject-matter of the Phoronis falls naturally into three parts dealing with the descendants of lasus, Pelasgus, and Agenor, between whom Argos was divided. The different scholia give various accounts in explaining the threefold name of Argos, nlaaov, II€AaaytKov, and £7T7TOfJOTOV. The story of Eustathius is simplest: there were three sons of Phoroneus, lasus, Pelasgus, and Agenor; on their father's death they divided the kingdom, Agenor receiving the cavalry regiments because there was not enough land to go round. This story he attributes to Hellanicus, and notes the alternative version, that Argos was called £7T7TOfJOTOV because Agenor invaded it with a large force of cavalry after the death of his elder brothers.2 The Townley scholiast gives a similar account, but the Venetian gives only the alternative v~rsion of Eustathius: lasus and Pelasgus, who are not sons of Phoroneus but of Triopas, divide the kingdom, and after their death Agenor comes in with his cavalry: 'Hellanicus tells the story in the Argolica.' 3 There is evidently some confusion here and no evidence for solving the difficulty. Whether Hellanicus gave one or

both of these versions and whether the Argolica is a separate work I or part of the Phoronis are matters for conjecture, and it is not worth while to discuss them here. But the threefold division of Argos and the Argive origin of the Pelasgians must have been described at the beginning of the Phoronis. Apollodorus, who begins his second book with the lineage of Phorone us, the son oflnachus, has quite a different version and is of no assistance in this instance. I t is likely that Hellanicus made large alterations in the standard version of the tale in order to show more clearly the Argive origin of the Pelasgians; possibly he wished to refute the suggestion that Pelasgian Argos was Thessaly.2 Most probably it was he who first made it clear that there were two men called Pelasgus-I, a grandson of Phoroneus (probably not a son),3 II, the king who led his subjects to Thessaly. It was a favourite device of his to duplicate names; his genealogy of the Athenian kings in the Atthis is the most remarkable example of this method of reconciling contradictory legends or filling up missing generations in a genealogy. Dionysius recognizes both Pelasgus I and II in i. 17 and i. ~8, but the distinction cannot be attributed to any early logographer except Hellanicus. There is no way of knowing whether Hellanicus dealt first with the Agenor or the Pelasgus branch of the Phoronid family. We do know (from two scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes)4 that Cadmus, the son of Agenor, was dealt with in the first book; and it appears from a passage in Athenaeus 5 that the story of Heracles was treated in the second. It is generally thought that there were only two books of the Phoronis, and the text of Harpocration,6 which as it stands

160

) De Hellanico, op. cit., pp. 29-30. 2 Schol. Eust. Hom. II. iii. 75 q,"Iu, 'E>J..o.VLI(O' 7Tai8a, TfXi, tPWPWVEW, Y£VEUOat,

8.

'1ra-rpos 8aVDV'TOS St£vElp,aVTo T~V ' Ap'YElav. KaL ~ /L£V '"pas 'Epaalvcp -rep 1ToTallCiJ IIEAaay

.lav vo£iv. Cf. Kullmer, p. 474: 'Unserm Logographen war es also darum zu tun, den Ursitz der Pelasger in der Peloponnes festzuhalten.' 3 There is no precedent for making Pelasgus son ofPhoroneus (as Eustathius does). Jacoby thinks the mistake arose from a variant n£Aaayo, •.. ,; Tp"')7Ta and'; (N,6f3"1' Tij,) tPopwv£w, (note on F. 36). See also Kullmer, p. 472, and Preller-Robert, Gr. Myth. ii, p. 284. 4 F. I-Schol. Ap. Rhod. iii. I 179, II86. 5 F. 2-Athenaeus ix. 4IOF. 6 F. 3-Harpocration S.V. 1:T£q,aV71q,6po,. cr. below, p. 167, n. 4. 4515

Y

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

refers to a tenth book, is usually emended so as to give a reference either to the first or the second. The fragments referring to the Pelasgus branch are the least numerous, and may be taken first. Jacoby refers them to the first book. Another scholion on Apollonius l supplies the only reference to the treatment of the Pelasgian branch before it left Argos for Thessaly. The scholiast points out that the town of Larisa in Thessaly was named after Larisa, the daughter of Pelasgus, 'as Hellanicus says'; 'and there are three places called Larisa: the oldest is the Argive one, which is the actual acropolis; the second is in the Pelasgian part of Thessaly, and the third Larisa of Gyrtone, which Apollonius mentions here'. It is open to question whether the scholiast means that all the three towns were mentioned by Hellanicus; but probably he does mean this,2 and probably Hellanicus used the existence of this name Larisa in Argos as an additional proof of the Argive origin of the Pelasgians. Furthermore, the recurrence of a triple division is interesting: Pelasgus is said to have founded an Argive Larisa, 3 in memory of his daughter, according to Pausanias;4 the strictly Thessalian Larisa is said to have been founded by Acrisius, presumably when he fled from Perseus into Thessaly, as Apollodorus ?escribes;: and the Larisa in the Pe1asgian part of Thessaly IS older, smce Apollodorus, who is quite probably following Hellanicus, makes Acrisius take refuge on this occasion with Teutamides, king of the Larisaeans. This Teutamides cannot possibly be the same as the great-grandson of Pelasgus II, who occurs in the fragment from Dionysius 6 as father of the king who led the Pe1asgians to Italy. No doubt Hellanicus used the name as a typical one for Pelasgian kings,' and its recurrence need cause no comment. When Dionysius, without mentioning any authority, speaks

of the division of Thessaly in Pelasgian times into three parts, Phthiotis, Achaea, and Pelasgiotis, I he almost certainly has the Phoronis iJ). mind; and so we have yet another example of threefold division in that work. Harpocration's statement that Hellanicus in the Thessalica divided Thessaly into four parts2 is not relevant here. 3 It refers to Thessaly in later historical times, and the Thessalica seems to be another work of Hellanicus-about which, it must be admitted, we have no further information. There remain only two more fragments which can be referred to the 'Pelasgian' section of the Phoronis. One is a reference in Stephanus to the city of Metaon in Lesbos, which, according to Hellanicus, was founded by an Etruscan, in other words a Pelasgian, called Metas. 4 Herodotus tells us about Pelasgians in Lemnos,s but for any record of them in Lesbos we are referred to Strabo, Diodorus, and Dionysius. 6 Their colony in Lesbos is subsequent to their career in Italy, and it is interesting to see how the name 'Pelasgian' has been dropped in favour of 'Etruscan'. The other fragment is from Photius (it is likewise to be found in Suidas and Zenobius).' It is explained how 'Pitane' is a proverbial term for anyone who combines exceptional good and bad fortune: Pitane (who according to Kullmer8 is a woman, not a city)

I F. 91-Schol. Ap. Rhod. i. 40 AapLUav T~V emua>..tas My£J.WVIOS p.lp.V']Tai.

2 3

4 6

Jacoby thinks differently (note on F. 9 1 ). F. 36; see above, p. 160, n. 2. n. 24, I; see Jacoby on F. 91. Dion. Hal. A.R. i. 28. Cf. p. 158 above.

5 7

Bib. ii. 4, 4. Cf. Iliad ii. 840-3.

163

A.R. i. 17 £KrrI (I' VUT£POV y£v'il- (sc. after Phoroneus I) n.>"01TOVVTJUOV€K>"I1TOVT.S

I

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TOTE Ilev Aip..ovlav, vvv @€TTaAtav ovop,a'op€V7Jv JL£TaV€CT7TJoav' ~i'OVVTO TfjS a7TOtKlas ' AXaLoS' Ka~ cP(}'iOS' Kat Il€AacryoS' ot Aaplu1]S Kat IIOOfLSWVDS viol. ... Kat V€p.oVTat T~V xwpav Tptxii, Tois ~Y€J.L6at 1TOt~aaVT€S OftWVVJLOVS ras p.olpas, 4>8LivTtV

€LS

Kat. ' Axntav Kat II£Aacryr.wTLv. 2 F. 52-Harpocration s.v. T£Tpapxta· T.TTapwv p.£pwv OVTWV T-ijs e'TTa>..tas fKacrrov fL'poS rerpas EKaA€'iTO, Ka9o. CPTJOtV fEAAo.VLKOS EV TOrS BeTTaAtKOLs. OVOJLa-ra SI cPTJ0r.v Elvat TarS' T€Tpa(ff, B£TTaALWTLV 8LWTLV II£AaayLwTLv fEcnr.aLWTLV.

Kullmer (p. 475) tries to reconcile the two fragments. F. 92-Steph. Byz. s.v. MI.Taov· 1TOA'S Aluf3ov, i}v Mhas Tvpp'Jvos cPK'U£V, cfJs 'E>J.aVIKOS. 5 Hdt. vi. 137. 6 Strabo xiii. 3, 3; Diod. v. 81; Dion. Hal. A.R. i. 18. 7 F. 93-Zenobius Provo v. 61; Photius, Suidas s.v. n'TaV'] £lp.t· av,'J 1Tap' 3

4

, AAKallfl K£LTaL. AlY£TaL 8€ KaTa TWV '1TVKVaLS' avpcpopaLS' Xpwp.£vwv ap.a Kat £inrpaylar.s, Trap' oaov Kat Tfj IILTaV[J TaVTa UV/L{3'{3YJK£ Trpa-yp.aTn, WV Kat 'E>J..aVtKOS'

P.I.P.V']Tat. "''JU' yap alrr~V .mo n.>..aaywv av/)pa1ToS,ulJfjva£ Ka, 1Ta>",v 1l1T' 'EpvlJpatwv (v.l. 'Ep£Tp,lwv) .I>"£vlJ'pwlJ-ijva,. Jacoby prints 'EpvlJpatwv, following Zenobius; he does not mention the alternative 'Ep.TP"WV, which is the reading of Photius

and Suidas. 8 p. 480-1. Hofer (in Roscher, s.v. Pilant) entirely rejects such a theory, and thinks the town in Aetolia is meant.

r HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

was enslaved by the Pelasgians, according to Hellanicus, and set free again either by the Eretrians or the Erythraeans (the reading is doubtful). This fragment is too scanty for any explanation to be possible. 1 Few and meagre as they are, these fragments do at least indicate that Hellanicus told the story of the Pelasgians from the very beginning, describing their various migrations to Thessaly, to Italy, and back again to the Aegean. The latter part of the story must have had some historical value, and altogether the 'Pelasgian' portion of the Phoronis is a far more serious loss than the other sections of the work, which were apparently concerned entirely with mythology and seem to have had no particular literary value. These were the portions, however, which interested Apollodorus, and in consequence it is possible to reconstruct them with far greater completeness than the 'Pelasgian' section. There are some difficulties and contradictions, but for the most part the remarkable agreement of the fragments with the story as told by Apollodorus makes work comparatively easy. One must be prepared to find oddities in the genealogy, for Hellanicus was not an orthodox mythographer, and difficulties are likely to occur in the fragments through attempts by the Homeric scholiasts to correct his radicalism. The story which comes first in the Agenor section, in book i, is the myth of Cadmus, whom Hellanicus most probably regarded as the son of Agenor and brother of Europa and Phoenix. 2 The story occurs with slight variations in Apollodorus and the Homeric scholiast. 3 Cadmus was sent out to search for Europa, whom Zeus had carried off, and came to Delphi for advice. The oracle told him to give up his search, but to follow the lead of a wandering cow, and found a city where it should fall exhausted on its right side (the derivation of Botw,rtu from f3ofj~ is typical of Hellanicus). The cow fell on the site of Thebes, and Cadmus, KuIImer, lac. cit., has a suggestion. Ap. Bib. iii. I, I; the scholiast calls Europa 'daughter of Phoenix', probably on his own initiative. 3 F. 51-Schol.A.D. Hom. II. ii. 494,Ap. Bib. iii. 4. Fordiscussioncf. Kohler, Leip.wp 'Y7r'P~vwp 'EX lwv . 3 Note on above fragment. 4 This is Kullmer's view. s F. 23-Schol. Ap. Rhod. i. 916 £K£L yap (sc. £V l:aJ.L00p4K'!/) J.o.VtKOS S£ {aTOp!, Ka'Ta avv8-r]K1JV ath-ov 1Tapaxwpfjaat. T~V {JauLA-flav 'ET€OKA£f. ..• o~£v . . ~up'7Tt8~s TatS' 3vo terropiaLS £xpTjuaTo, £natiOa JLEV rfj t/1€p£l(v8ovs, VUT£POV I3E 7Tn EAAav'Kov. 6 Bib. iii. 6, I. F. g9-Schol. Eur. Phoen. 150. C£ Ap. Bib. iii. 6, 3-8 and also HecataeusF. 32. 2

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

167

Heracles, which seems to have occupied an important place in book ii. Apollodorus tells the story at some length, and there are sixteen fragments in Jacoby's collection l referring to it. It belongs properly to the section of the Phoronis dealing with the descendants ofIasus, the section which was probably known also as the Argolica. The ground for referring the story of Heracles to the second book is a passage in Athenaeus,2 a passage which needs particular attention, since he appears to refer also to another work of Hellanicus, the Historiai: 'Hellanicus in the Historiai says that Archias was the name of the boy who poured out water for Heracles to wash his hands, whom Heracles killed with a club and on account of whom he had to leave Calydon. But in the second book ofthe Phoronis he calls him Chaerias.' One is unwilling to accept this solitary testimony for the existence of a separate work called Historiai. The probability is that Athenaeus read somewhere how Hellanicus 'in his histories' called this boy Archias, and then on looking up the Phoronis found that his text gave the name as Chaerias; that 'histories' is simply a general name for the works of Hellanicus, and that Athenaeus is quoting not two separate passages, but two readings of the same passage. 3 The only importance of the fragment-the matter of which is entirely trivial-is that it refers a story of Heracles to the second book. An entry in Harpocration and Suidas mentions Stephanephorus as a son of Heracles, according to Hellanicus EV D€Karcp (/JOPWV{DOS, but Preller, whom Muller and Jacoby follow, read EV D€Vr€pcp.4 The fragment is oflittle importance because there is no indication of context. I

F. 2 and 102-16. 2-Ath. ix. 410F TOV IlE

2 F.

TVtav'Kos fV 8EKcl.Ttp (Gutschmid 1TPWT'ij,] •.• 'Hpoowpo, O€ KaL 'EMo.VLKOS rpauLv WS OTE T~V vSpav 'HpaKAfjs dvnpn T~V -Hpav atncp KapK{vov E~opf-Lfjaa'J 1TPOS Suo 8£ au Svvap.€vov p.aX€U8aL aVfLfLaXov €7T'KoA£uaaBaL TOV '16A€ltJv' Kat EVTJ.o.VLKO, EV {3'. 5 F. 1 II-Dion. Hal. A.R. i. 35. F. Ilo-Schol. Hesiod, Theog. 293, refers to Eurytion, the herdsman of Geryones. I

2

f

169

I Quoted by Aulus Gellius, N.A. xi. 1 'Timaeus in Historiis, quas oratione Graeca de rebus populi Romani composuit, et M. Varro in Antiquitatibus Rerum Humanarum, terram Italiam de Graeco vocabulo appellatam scripserunt, quoniam boyes Graeca vetere lingua hMO{ vocitati sint, quorum in Italia magna copia fuerit, bucetaque in ea terra gigni pascique solita sint complurima.' 2 Bib. ii. 5, 10 amI 'PTJY{ov ()~ a1TOPP~YVVaL Tavpo, KT>'. Cf. Diodorus iv. 22-3. Note that Eryx is called king of the Elymi who according to Hellanicus (F. 7gb) migrated to Sicily in the third generation before the Trojan War. 3 F. 109 (cf. Ap. Bib. ii. 6, 4), 112. 4 F. 130, 131. See below, p. 174. 5 F.2. Cf. Ap. Bib. ii. 7,6. See p. 167 above. 6 F. 113. About the numbers of the Hellanodicae; the context is a matter for conjecture. 7 Bib. ii. 8, 4.

.l,

4515

z

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

plete than it has any right to be, and it differs at several points from the versions of Kullmer and Jacoby. Some of the instances of triple division do not, perhaps, deserve to be emphasized so much, but symmetry seems to play an important part in the work of Hellanicus. It is undeniable that the material of the Phoronis divides itself naturally into three parts, and because there is no explicit quotation from a third book, this is no argument for insisting that there can be only two books. The suggestion, then, is that the first book-or at least the first part-known also as Boeotiaca, dealt with the descendants of Agenor and the Theban saga; the second, known as Argolica, dealt with Iasus and his descendants, more particularly Heracles; and the third book or 'part', perhaps known as Thessalica, dealt with the Pelasgian branch of the Phoronid family. One cannot insist on the accuracy of these alternative titles, but the arrangement is at least plausible. The main thesis of the Phoronis undoubtedly was to show that the Greek families of mythical times originated in the Peloponnese. I It evidently was intended to bring some of the chaos of Greek mythology into order. Obviously this could not be done unless the writer used his own imaginadon, and invented his own solutions of difficulties. Hellanicus was not in any sense of the word a conservative writer, and it will be found in examining his other works that he was always ready to sacrifice the conventional version, if some kind of order or symmetry could be achieved by so doing.

Deucalioneia The formal distinction between the Phoronis and the Deucalioneia which one is prepared to make before even looking at the fragments is a very simple one: the Phoronis should go back to the very beginnings of human life, since Phoroneus, according to the epic named after him, was the 'father of mortal men', and according to Acusilaus 'the first man';2 I Cf. e.g. F. 115 (the context of which is uncertain)-SchoI. Aristid. Panath. iii. 257 Dind. My .. I'lE ([),),.olJ,v ijKoVTas Ka, 1TO,ucp v,wrlpov, TOU, AaK,SCUJ.L0vlov,· KaL 'Yap .dwp..;:, 01'7', TO 1TaAa,ov n,A01Towr/a,o. VUT'POII "E"avaa" w, 'E,u&'V'KOS Al".. Kat «MOl. 1ToMOL 'TWV lcrroptKWV, 01 WEpt aVTWV'YPW/JaV'T£S. 2 Clem. Alex. Strom. i. xxi. 102,5 'AKovalAao. "ap tPopwvla 1TPWTOII rivIJpw1Tov

17 1

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

the Deucalioneia, on the other hand, should bcgin with the Deluge, Deucalion being the 'first' of all who lived after the Deluge, Phoroneus of those who lived before it, as Plato points out in the Timaeus. 1 This is the formal distinction which one would expect between the two works. Another distinction is this: the Hellenes proper spring from the seed of Deucalion, whilst the descendants of Phoroneus are Pelasgian or Argive, but not Hellenic. It is rather disappointing to find that these points are not emphasized at all strongly, so far as one can tell, by Hellanicus. The Bibliotheca of Apollodorus opens with some chapters on theogony, and after this goes on to deal with the family of Deucalion, thus lea,ding us to believe that the historical cycle of Hellanicus begins with the Deucalioneia, not with the Phoronis. This is the view of Preller,2 who thinks that the few fragments, which.are concerned with theogony, should be assigned to the former work,3 on the ground that Apollodor~s followed Hellanicus in his order and arrangement. It 1S at least true that, since Deucalion is the son of Prometheus,4 there is greater opportunity to introduce stories about Zeus, the Cyclopes, and the other giants at the beginning of this work than in the Phoronis. No certain reference to the Deucalioneia, however, goes back beyond Deucalion himself. A fragment from the first books mentions him as a king in Thessaly, where he instituted the worship of the twelve gods. This is orthodox enough, but in the account of the Deluge there is a peculiar piece of petty heresy. A Pindaric scholiast, commenting on the tradition that Deucalion and Pyrrha settled in Opus, near Parnassus, where the ark was left high and dry after the flood, "Y£v€u8at 'A€Y£L, 08EV Kal 0 Tij~ l/JopwvlSos 1TOlT}T~S Elva, aVTov £~T)

7TuTtpa

8V7JTWV

avlJpw1TwV. (Kinkel, Ep. Gr. Fr., p. 210, Acusilaus F. 23 a Jac.) I 22a. 2 Op. cit., p. 30. 3 Jacoby assigns F. 87-90 te'!'tatively to the P';oro~is. F; 89 mus~ belong. there, since the reference to Hellamcus (about the Il'law • .daK'TvAo,) IS put sIde by side with a quotation from the epic Phoronis. There is, however, some grou~~ for believing that Hellanicus wrote a separate work on theogony. Cf. RE. Vlll. 121. 4 F. 6b-SchoI. Ap. Rhod. iii. 1085 aT. I'lE np0J.LTJlJlw. vlos .dwKaAlwv '{3aalAEvaE 9maaAlas 'E,u&'v'Ka. "'TJm. s F. 6a-ibid. 1086.

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

remarks: 'Some say that Pyrrha did not live in Opus. Apollodorus writes as follows: "The tale is that Deucalion lived in Cynus, and they say that Pyrrha is buried there." Hellanicus also has this account .... And Hellanicus says that the ark did not come to rest on Parnassus, but somewhere around Othrys in Thessaly.'1 The odd thing is that this passage quoted from Apollodorus does not resemble anything in the Bibliotheca, 2 which follows the traditional version, bringing the ark to rest on Parnassus. 3 It is natural enough that different Greek tribes should preserve the tradition of the ark coming to rest on different mountains, and Hellanicus has, after his manner, preferred the less usual version of the legend. Stephanus mentions the Deucalioneia as authority for the names of eight different towns, but the only other fragment explicitly referred to the Deucalioneia by an ancient author is a typical passage in Athenaeus: 'Hellanicus in the first book of the Deucalioneia says that Erysichthon, the son of Myrmidon, was called Aethon, because his hunger was insatiable.'4 Otto Crus ius has a long article on Erysichthon in Roscher's Lexicon, at the beginning of which he shows that Hellanicus is the oldest authority for his name and existence. The story was developed later by Callimachus,s and it is not possible to know in what form it was told by Hellanicus. It is possible, however, to decide in what context the story was told: it was told in describing the genealogy of Aeolus. Apollodorus gives the descendants ofDeucalion: first, Hellen his son; then the sons of Hellen, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus (once again a triple division); and one of the daughters of Aeolus, Peisidice, marries Myrmidon. 6 This is where the tale of Erysichthon fits, but how it was told and whether or not Hellanicus invented it we cannot know. I F. I I 7-Schol. Pindar, 01. ix. 62a. • 'Non in bibliotheca, nisi dicas bibliothecam nunc forma parum genuina haberi' (Preller, note 19). 3 i. 7,2. 4 F. 7-Ath. x. 416B 'EUU.V'KOS 1)' £1' a' JmKaA"'lV£Las 'EpvulxfJovu. aaL yovv Kai 'TOV 'EAAaVtKDV iO'7'OPEtV, aT' NTJAEVS l1£AlCf TtP ciSeAcPcp p.aXEuap.Evos ~A8€v Ee '!w)...KOV cds TO. Karu MEGcn]V7JV Kal EK'TLC1( lIvAov, TWV MeGU7Jvlwv

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xi. 235-60. Eust. on Od. xi. 253 introduces the story thus: llnlov Kat OTt ",lp£Ta, >.6yos ..• 4 Cf. F. 130, 131 with Bib. i. g, 18-lg. It should be mentioned that Ap. calls Hylas son of Theiodamas, whereas Hell. (F. 131a and b) called him son of Theiomenes. 2

3

S.

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F. 133-Schol. Eur. Medea 9 .,,£pt S. TijS £is Kop,vlJov

175

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EK'Tl8€Tar. Kai 'EMav'Kos. 2 F. 132-Paus. ii. 3, 8. Ap. calls him Medus, son of Medea and Aegeus (Bib. i. g, 28). 3 Bib. i. g, 24 mentions the Eridanus, but not the Ister. 4 Note on F. 117. . s F. II8-Strabo x. 2, 6 (on the Aeolian cities Olenus and Pylene) 'E>'M.v'KOS ~E OVaE T~V 7T£pi. TaUras icrroplav of8O', aM' £os £'T' Kat. av'TC:Ov ovuwv EV 'TV apxalg.

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HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

scope of the Deucalioneia really was. It is easy enough to decide what it ought to be, if it is to be worthy of its name: it should describe the growth of the different tribes named after the descendants of Deucalion; but the fragments suggest that its scope was more limited than that. It is worth while to quote, in conclusion, the paragraph in which Kullmer so confidently reconstructs it:

ters of Atlas, the Pleiades: l how Lacedaemon was the son of Taygete and Zeus; Hermes of Maia and Zeus; Dardanus of Electra and Zeus; Hyrieus of Alcyone. and Poseidon; Oenomaus of Sterope and Ares; Lycus of Celaeno and Poseidon; Merope had a mortal lover , and for this reason her star did not shine so brightly in the sky. Another Homeric scholion supplements this list by giving Iasion as the son of Zeus and Electra. 2 Apollodorus enumerates the divine lovers differently, 3 but some of the Hellanicean version is to be found in an Oxyrhynchus papyrus fragment, dating from the second century A.D.,4 which Hunt confidently attributes to the Atlantis. Mter quoting the passage in the scholiast he remarks: 'This passage alludes so patently to the text before us as to assure beyond any question an identification which the subject and dialect would of themselves naturally suggest. References to Hellanicus are not infrequent, but quotations of his ipsissima verba are extremely scarce; and the present addition to them, though regretfully small, is very acceptable.' Of the papyrus itself he says: 'Its handsome appearance indicates with sufficient clearness that this manuscript contained the Atlantis itself, and not merely some commentary or grammatical treatise in which the Atlantis was excerpted.' Its text, as restored by Hunt and Wilamowitz, runs as follows: [Ma~ 8€ Z€VJ.U.VLKOS lv T 1Tpdm.p TWV • ATAaV"TLKWV TaS /LEV .~ 1I£O's avvEAIIE'v· TaUY£TT/v .J.£, J.v YEV£allaL AaKElla{/Lova' Ma,av .J.£, d' J.v 'Ep/Lfjs' •HA£KTpav .Jot, J.v .Jc!.pllavos· •AAKvovT/V !1oa€LllwvL, J.v 'Ypt.evs· ETEp6mJv "Apn, ",a,v AlfLV7JV £tva, 1l0VT'K..]v. s F. 58 ' A {£<wTa.· E8vos rijs Tpwa~os. ws 'E>J.av'Kos £V TO'S 7T£P' Av~tav (Av~Las. Jacoby) My£'£'CJTa 7T€{WS T£ Kal7To'''IT'Kws. Cf. also F. 85 and pp. 2312 below. S Iliad xx. 307-8.

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

carnassus, I is designed to fit in with this prophecy. The story of how Aeneas with his family and other survivors took refuge on Mount Ida belongs to the epic cycle. 2 But the subsequent return of Ascanius to Troy was told by Hellanicus almost certainly in an original manner. Ascanius was first sent to be king of the Dascylitis region, at the request of the inhabitants: this is his typical explanation of the lake called Ascania in this region. 3 Here Ascanius remained for a short time, but at the invitation of Scamandrius and the other sons of Hector, who had been released from captivity by Neoptolemus, he returned to Troy and helped them to restore their authority there-KuTaywv UVTOU~ E7T/. rryv 7TUTPCPUV

called Crusaeans lived there, and they granted them a safe refuge. There they remained through the winter season, and set up a temple of Aphrodite on one of the promontories, and founded a city, Aeneia, where they left behind those who were too weak to travel and as many as wished to remain there, where they could pass the rest of their lives on land which belonged to them.'

188

, \ 'rr I '"I.. .... Up)(Y}V €L~ .L pOtUV U,/,tKVELTUt.

Here the story of Ascanius ends (7TEP/.P.EV 'AUKUVtOV Toauihu MYETUt). But this does not show the fulfilment of the prophecy, since Ascanius does not himself become king of the new Troy, but restores the sons of Hector. The Romans of Virgil's time knew well enough, of course, what they thought the prophecy meant: is it possible that Hellanicus was one of the earliest writers to refer this prophecy to the foundation of Rome ? The text ofDionysius deserves very careful reading here: 'So much, then, is recorded of Ascanius. But Aeneas, taking with him his other sons and his father and the statues of the gods, when the ships were ready, crossed the Hellespont, making the crossing where the Chersonese is nearest to Asia to the point which juts out on the European side and is called Pallene. A Thracian tribe lived in this region, the Crusaean tribe as it was called, which had been the most energetic of all those who helped them in the war. This is the most trustworthy account of the flight of Aeneas; amongst early historians Hellanicus adopted it in his Troica.'4 After this Dionysius mentions various alternative versions of the story, but in 49, 4 he takes up the narrative again: 'First then they came to Thrace, and anchored at the place called Pallene on the Chersonese; and, as I said, some barbarians I 2

3

4

F. 3I-Dion. Hal. A.R. i. 45-7. The 'IMov lIEpa,s (Homeri Opera, Oxford text, vol. v, p. 107). Dion. Hal. i. 47, 5. See Jacoby's note on the fragment. i. 47,6-48, I.

The long account of the wanderings of Aeneas which follows is not necessarily all taken from Hellanicus. Dionysius claims to be relying principally on the monuments left in Greece, showing where they anchored or took refuge when sailing was impossible. I But Hellanicus is not forgotten. Aeneas in his wanderings goes to Delos, Cythera, Arcadia, and Zacynthus, 'and the Zacynthians received his band as their friends because of blood-relationship. The story is that Dardanus, the son of Zeus and the Atlantid Electra, had two sons by Bateia, Zacynthus and Erichthonius; the latter of these was an ancestor of Aeneas, and Zacynthus was the founder of this island; so, calling to mind this relationship, and treated kindly by the inhabitants, they remained here for a time.'2 This passage is a clear reference to Hellanicus: Bateia as a name for the wife of Dardanus is peculiar to him, and the description of Dardanus as 'son of Zeus and the Atlantid Electra' recalls other fragments of the Troica. 3 From Zacynthus Aeneas goes on to Leucas, Actium, and Ambracia, and probably it is in describing this journey that Hellanicus has occasion to mention the Acarnanian people called 'Phoetians'.4 Whilst Anchises takes the ships to Buthrotum he goes to consult the oracle at Dodona, where he meets some Trojans with Helenus; he rejoins Anchises and they cross the Ionian sea to Italy; instead of settling at once they go on to Sicily, where they meet with Aegestus. Dionysius tries to substantiate his story by referring to monuments and customs in all the places supposed to be visited by Aeneas; finally, after bringing the Trojans to the coast of Latium, I

3

4

i. 49, 3.

F.24. Cf. p. 181 above. F. 30. Cf. p. 186 above.

2

i. 50, 3.

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

190

and describing how they give the name Troia to the place where they encamp, he writes: 'I was obliged to describe all this and make this digression, because some writers say that Aeneas never came to Italy with the Trojans, others that it was a different Aeneas, not the son of Aphrodite and Anchises, others that it was Aeneas' son Ascanius, and others again differ from this. And there are some who ~ay that Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite, after settling his company 10 Italy, returned back home again, and became king of Troy, and after his death handed on the kingdom to his son, and his descendants retained the royal name for a long time; these authors, I imagine, were misled by the words of Homer which they did not understand rightly'; and he quotes the famous prophecy of Poseidon. I Then Dionysius goes on to tell the familiar Latin stories about Latinus, Lavinia, and Turnus, but interrupts the narrative to show that the Trojans were just as much Greeks as the Arcadian settlers under Evander, and gives an account of their origin2 which is very probably taken from Hellanicus, perhaps, indeed, from the Atlantis. It represents Dardanus and his sons by Chryse as rulers in Arcadia; then because of a great flood they emigrate, leaving Deimas, one of the two sons of Dardanus, to reign in Arcadia, and they settle first in Samothrace; here lasus, brother of Dardanus, is struck by lightning because of a passion for Demeter, but Dardanus founds the city of Troy with the permission of Teucer. Then follows the account of Aeneas' origin. Bateia, daughter of Teucer, appears again as wife of Dardanus, and this time the genealogy is given in full: Atlas, Electra, Dardanus, Erichthonius, Tros, Capys, Anchises, Aeneas. The number of generations from Atlas corresponds exactly with the genealogy of the Atreidae and Helen as shown on page 179. The Hellanicean genealogical tree of the Atlantids, therefore, can now be shown more in full (see opposite page). This genealogical tree makes one more ready than ever to believe that the Atlantis is a sub-section of the Troica , probably part of the first book, since that is where the genealogies belong. It does not, of course, follow that Hellanicus t

i. 53, 4. Cf. p. 187 above.

• i.

60-2.

191

restated the descent of Aeneas in his account of his wanderings; Dionysius does this so as to appeal to his Greek readers, and convince them that the Romans are not, after all, barbarians. The story of Aeneas, however, is not yet finished. Dionysius recounts more Latin stories, but ten chapters later he Atlas

I

I

Taygete Lacedaemon :-\myclas Cynortas Oebalus or Perieres Tyndareus Helen

I

Sterape Oenomaus I

I

Alcyone Hyrieus Nycteus Antiope+Zeus

Oenomaus II Pelops+ HippoI dameia I Niobe + Amphion Atreus Menelaus, Agamemnon -

.. --

I

Electra Dardanus

I I

I

Erichthonius Tras

I I

Capys Anchises Aeneas

Ilus --

I

Laomedon Priam Hector

comes to the vexed point of the date of the foundation of Rome. Before giving the accounts of Latin writers and telling the familiar story of Rhea Silvia, he refers to some of the logographers. After mentioning Cephalon Gergithius and some others he says: 'The writer who made up the list of priestesses in Argos and the events belonging to the time of each of them says that Aeneas came from the Molottians with Odysseus (or after Odysseus),! founded the city, and named it Rome after one of the Trojan women. He says too that this woman, weary with their wandering, urged the other women to burn the ships and helped them to do this. The same account is given by Damastes of Sigeum and other writers.'2

It can scarcely be doubted that this is a quotation from Hellanicus. The mention of Damastes, who is elsewhere connected with him, provides the final proof. 3 It is indeed one of the most interesting of all the fragments, being one of t Mer' 'OSI/(TC1lW~ or /L£T' 'OSvC1C1la, the MSS. of Dian. Hal. vary; but the parallel references in Eusebius (Armenian version, p. 131, 33 Karst) and Syncellus (p. 361, 16 Bonn) show that 'with Odysseus' must be correct. • i. 72, 2-F. 84. 3 Cf. Damastes T. 4 (F. Gr. Hist. i, p. 153) and Jacoby's note.

192

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

the very earliest accounts of the foundation of Rome. Critics normally take it for granted that this is a fragment from the chronological work called Priestesses if Argos. But Hellanicus could scarcely have avoided the subject in his Troica, in which, as we have seen, the wanderings of Aeneas were traced, and it seems not at all improbable that Dionysius is really quoting from the Troica, referring to the Priestesses merely to point out that Hellanicus is a serious authority on questions of chronology. The mention of Odysseus is a reminiscence ofHesiod, Theogony 1013, where Latinus occurs as the son of Odysseus and Circe" I Hellanicus evidently recognized no distinction between Rome and Alba Longa, and at such an early date he would be entirely free from any Latin literary influence. Unfortunately it is not clear whether Hellanicus left Aeneas in Italy, regarding him as the founder of a new Troy, or not. Dionysius mentions how some writers made Aeneas return to Troy, so as not to contradict Poseidon's prophecy. But he shows such respect for the account of Hellanicus, who after all does make Aeneas found Rome, that one more readily believes Hellanicus looked upon Rome as a new Troy and was the first to explain the prophecy in this way. Perhaps one may conclude that he had talked with Greeks who had been in Campania, and so the 'Trojan origin' of Rome became for the first time known to Greek readers. If the Troica described the wanderings of Aeneas, one would expect that the Nostoi of other heroes were also dealt with. When Strabo objects to his identifying Cephallenia with Dulichium,2 he is probably thinking of a passage in the Troica treating of the return of Odysseus. His mention of the Cyclopes, who were named, so he says, from Cyclops, the son of Uranus, again seems to refer to Odysseus. 3 More startling is his statement that Telemachus married Nausicaa,4

and that the orator Andocides was descended from them. I The latter, if not both of these fragments, must belong to the Atthis, but there is one other reference to an Odyssean scene. Stephanus under the heading ~a{ag remarks: 'Hellanicus in the first book of the Priestesses writes: "Phaeax was the son of Poseidon and of Cercyra the Asopid, after whom the island was called Cercyra, its earliest name being Drepane or Scheria'" (F. 77). On this note of uncertainty investigation of the Troica must end. It is useless to disguise how difficult it is to sort out what belongs to the Troica from what belongs elsewhere, but one cannot very well allow this work to absorb the Priestesses as well as the Atlantis and Asopis. Presumably one must admit that in the Priestesses, an encyclopaedic work as it seems, Hellanicus described many incidents which he had also described, perhaps with less regard for chronology, in his mythographic works. The final verdict on the Troica must be that it is an extensive work, perhaps in more than two books, though no book later than the second is mentioned by any authority; that the first book contained the genealogies of prominent Greeks and Trojans (sections of which came to be known as the Atlantis and Asopis), whilst the second book contained an account of the Trojan War, followed, perhaps in a third or even a fourth book, by descriptions of the wanderings of some heroes, including Aeneas and Odysseus. An important feature of the work is its fondness for explaining or even rationalizing difficulties and obscurities in the Homeric story, and making clear the genealogies, hitherto obscure, of the heroes; hence its usefulness to the scholiasts and Stephanus of Byzantium, who have done their share in quoting from it, and must have borrowed from it on many occasions without acknowledgement.

Cf. also Lycophron 1242 and the scholion ' Oljuau£a aaty £y , ha1l{If aUVTUX£tV is probably a reference to the Troica. 2 F. 144-Strabo x. 2, 14. 3 F. 88-Schol. Hesiod, Theog. 139, which Jacoby refers tentatively to the PhoTonis. 4 F. 156-Schol. (Eustath.) Odyssey xvi. 118.

ETHNOGRAPHICAL WORKS

I

Alv£{If Kat auv(l~Ka~ /In' aM~'\wv Kat £lp~V1JV 1ToLijaaL, which

193

This is the most unsatisfactory portion of Hellanicus' literary work for the investigator to unravel. In the first place there are as many as seventeen titles,z which Jacoby groups I

F. 170c-Suidas s.v. ' AVIjOK{Ij'1" 4515

2

C C

See p. 156 for list of titles.

194

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

under the heading of Ethnographical Works, and iUs impossible to decide with certainty, from the scanty evidence, how many separate works there actually are. Some of the fragments which Jacoby assigns to ethnographic works, such as the Argolica, Thessalica, and Boeotiaca (F. 36b, 50-2), have already been discussed and assigned to the PhoTonis. 1 Jacoby wants to keep these works separate, but where evidence is so scanty argument is impossible; one is tempted to decide one way or the other, but it is impossible to prove any conclusion. However, if the Boeotiaca, Argolica, and Thessalica are regarded as alternative subtitles for sections or books of the Phoronis, the seventeen titles are reduced to fourteen. Jacoby is prepared to admit that the K-rlU€LC; or K-rlU€LC; eOvwv Kal. 7ToA€wv may be the same as IJ€pl. eOvwvand 'EOvwv ovofLaulaL and even Bap{3apLKa vOfLLfLa. Kullmer, however, thinks that all of these fourteen titles can be referred to two works: (I) a work dealing with Greek colonization in Asia Minor and the islands, which, following a quotation in Athenaeus from 'EMavLKoc; ev KTluWLV, he calls the Ctiseis; (2) Bap{3apLKa vOfLLfLa, a work dealing with foreign customs, parts of which were called Persica, Scythica, and Aegyptiaca. The names Barbarica Nomima and Ctiseis are well attested, and it is clear that Hellanicus wrote on the subjects that these titles suggest. The difficult question is the extent of these works. The idea of a book which would deal with the origins and early history of Greek cities in Asia Minor and the islands was not new in the time of Hellanicus. Indeed, the earliest of the logographers, Cadmus of Miletus, is credited with a book of this kind. 2 So also some logographers occupied themselves with the early history of a particular city, as, for example, Charon of Lampsacus devoted a book to the history of his native city. Of all the various titles mentioned in the fragments only two are quoted with reference to a book number, Lesbiaca and Persica. Stephanus of Byzantium refers twice to the first book of the Lesbiaca or Lesbica, and once to the second book

(F. 33, 34, 35 a ). He also refers to the first book of the Persica, and once to the second (F. 59, 60, 62), as also does Harpocration (F. 61). Such references seem quite sufficient to prove that the Lesbiaca and Persica were separate works. The quotation from the work on Aeolica is more problematical. According to the scholiast on Pindar, Hellanicus described the migration of Orestes to Aeolis ev T

"~ £p~~~6p.£vo,. rOVTOLS UVJlc.pKLUaJl EaVTOVS aJlap.L~ wS 'ljAOOV aUTOO .. KaL KaT£AL7TOJl Jlavs 7TEJlT£. F. 7 I b -Tzetzes ad Lyc. 227 (cf. 224 and 462) EV .t1~l"vcp 1TPWTWS £vpelJ1) TO 'TE 1TOp IJ.rf.v'Kos KtK>'T)K£V lv Til Els aVyypap,p,a. • TelV

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

four other fragments which can with fair certainty be r~ferred to the Aegyptiaca. Athenaeus on two occasions quotes the actual words ofHellanicus. Commenting on the word ~8av~ov , A'~yv1TT~aKO ~~s OVTWS " ypa'l'E~' 'A. erA'tyvnnwv , l\I\aV~KOS EV h e remark s: 'E"" EV Tots O'tKO~S KEtTa~ c/>~aA"f} Xa>VfATOUUU O€

(F. 178b). Many of these attributes are conventionally given to Semiramis, and it is accordingly not surprising to find that in Castor's list of the Assyrian kings Atossa is treated as an alternative name for Semiramis. 2 It is interesting to see that this Semiramis-Atossa is called 'queen of the Persians', just as Sardanapalus is called f3UUt'AEl8 N{vov, II€putKfJ, xwpu,. Hellanicus uses the terms of his own time to describe peoples and cities of early times; because Assyria was later under Persian rule, he calls the rulers of Assyria, when still independent and powerful, 'rulers of the Persians'. Thus he is enabled to call each Atossa a 'Persian' queen, and they are both entitled to mention in his Persica. The remaining fragments confirm the impression that Hellanicus was unorthodox in his use of names and numbers and his enumeration of families, just as in the Troica. These fragments, however, are all concerned with the sixth and fifth centuries. Stephanus and Harpocration quote him as their only authority for the Thracian cities of Strepsa and that the type of Sardanapalus arose from the last great Assyrian king Assurbani pal, who in the legend absorbs his weak, degenerate successor, so that th:re are contradictions in his character, and Hellanicus solves the problem by havmg two kings of the same name. I F. I 78a-De Mu/., ch. 7.• AToaaa is Sturz's certain emendation for >'VrTovaa. 2 Exc. Barb. 37b, 16. For other references see Jacoby's commentary.

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

Tyrodiza (€V II€patKWV f3'); the scholiast on Aeschylus' Persae quotes him three times to show his departure from the more familiar versions;1 and the author of the De malignitate Herodoti writes: '(According to Herodotus) the Naxians sent three triremes to support the barbarians, and one of the trierarchs, Democritus, persuaded the rest to desert to the Greek cause. Thus he does not know even how to praise without blaming as well, but in order that one man may be glorified the reputation of a whole city and people must suffer. We find evidence against him in Hellanicus among earlier writers and Ephorus among later ones: the former says the Naxians came to the aid of the Greeks with six, the latter with five triremes.'2 But finally there is an unimportant fragment which shows that Hellanicus and Herodotus did not always disagree. 3 As the fragment from the De malignitate shows, the Persica carried Persian history down as far as the battle of Salamis, I F. 18o-Schol. Aesch. Persae 770 Kupov vios Ka!-'pua."s· o.S.>.cf>oL S£ KaT" 'E>.Aav'Kov MaparP'S, Mlpr/>,s. So the Medici codex. Some later MSS. give the names as Mapr/>{as and MI!-,rP's or M6!-,rP's. F. 181-id. 778

,

.'

•

M'~l: t " , 1T€':'1TTOS 0,£, a~os TJPS~V, ~l,a~vV7J, TTaTpq.

Opovo,a, S apxaw,a,' TOV S. avv So>.cp 'ApTac/>plVTJS £KT£tv£V £u(J'Aos f.V BOILo,s (JVv tiv8pam,v r/>lAotul,v. TOVTOV 'E>.Aav'Kos ~arPlpV'T/v Ka>..r. This is the scholion in the Medici codex. F. 182-id. 719 'Hp6S0TOS (vii. 2) ~'rP."aL ~apdov 7TaiSas .tvu'av'Kos S£ ,a'. From Medici codex; scholia in other MSS. agree. Possibly the story told in the so-called A scholia (in later MSS.) on 776 contains a hidden allusion to the story of Hellanicus. One's suspicions are aroused by the remark that the Darius who plays a prominent part is not the father of Xerxes but some one else. It seems likely that the scholiast has somehow confused or attempted to blend two stories. This duplication of Darius would be typical of Hellanicus. Furthermore, from the 'J7T60m<s of the play in M and other MSS. and from a scholion on line 6 we learn that, besides the three well-known historical characters, there was a fourth Darius-Ttv£S S£ KaL TETapTov ~ap.iov .tvat yparP0vat. But presumably Aeschylus deserves credit for the absurd etymology given by the scholiast for Artaphrenes-

, ~ tifY',las,. £Xw~ ¢~Evas, rPP'v,s yap aV7'OV Ov!-'ov CPUKOUTP0rP0VV (767). 2 Ch. 36, p. 86gA-F. 183. Hdt. viii. 46 gives the Naxians four not three triremes. 3 F. 184-Phot. Bib. cod. 72, p. 43b, Ig (reporting Ctesias) 7T'pL TOV Oa.paV7'os TOV TTaT'pa 8ul TOV '7TVpOS 1Tapa TOV vap.ov. E~ 00 Kat EA€yxos 'EAAavtKou Kat 'Hpo8orov WS .p•.5S0V7'U.rP0v. I

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

and it began in mythical times. The evidence, however, does not permit us to decide in how great detail the different periods and episodes were treated. Like the Aegyptiaca, it seems to have been overshadowed by the more successful work of Herodotus, and it is quoted only for its oddities. Its historical value, therefore, cannot be estimated at all. This lack of adequate information renders lengthy discussion of such works unprofitable. It will be enough merely to point out a few considerations. Since the author of the De malignitate knew something of the Persica, he would certainly have seized upon any criticisms of Herodotus that were to be found in it; and if it had been published after the history of Herodotus had been recognized as the standard work on 'barbarian matters', it surely would have contained many criticisms of it, both explicit and implied. One is therefore inclined to think that the Persica is one of the earlier works, published before the history of Herodotus. About the Aeg)ptiaca and 'E8vwv ovo/Laatat, likewise the Scythica and Barbarica Nomima (whether or not these are separate independent works), one cannot be so sure. To what extent did Hellanicus depend on mere literary authority, and how much did he supplement his book-knowledge with independent Oftc; and {aTopLa? Does his work represent an advance on the rfjc; llEpLoooc; of Hecataeus or not? He seems to have been ready, like Hecataeus and Herodotus, to find the source of many elements of civilization in Egypt; but did he approach Persian and Assyrian customs in the same friendly spirit? Is he qnAo{3ap{3apoc; like Herodotus, or not? How anti-Persian was he in his narration of the Persian Wars, of which no trace survives except the note in the De malignitate? These are the unanswerable questions which one naturally wants to ask. And again about the Ctiseis, Lesbiaca, Cypriaca, and the other disputed works on early Greek history: Does he sacrifice fairly well-established historical facts to a theory of the migrations? To what extent does he take account of the local traditions of the different cities? Is he prejudiced in favour of Aeolians or Ionians? Do the Pelasgians playas important a part here as in the Phoronis? Does he say much

about the relations between the Greek settlers and the earlier inhabitants of Asia Minor? How comprehensive is his work or section to which Stephanus refers as TO. 71'Ept AvoLav (F. 58) ? What is its relation to the Lydiaca of Xanthus? One might ask many more questions of this kind, all of them equally unanswerable. Rather than attempt to overwork a barren theme, it seems better to proceed to the examination of the Atthis and the other works dealing with the history of the Greek mainland, about which there is more instructive and helpful evidence.

208

209

CHRONOGRAPHIC WORKS

Atthis Best known by name of the chronographic writings, and probably of all the works of Hellanicus, is his 'AT8Lc; or 'AT8LoEc; or 'ATTtK~ avyypar/>Tj, to which Thucydides alludes in i. 97, remarking that its treatment of the history of the Pentecontaetia is very brief and not very accurate in its chronology. The genuine historical character of this work, as well as its late date of composition, is shown by the remark of the scholiast on Aristophanes (already quoted on page 153), I that Hellanicus described how all slaves who fought on the Athenian side in the battle of Arginusae were given their freedom. Of the works which we have investigated up till now none can claim a genuine historical character except the Persica. But it appears that there were writers, whether numerous or not, besides Herodotus and Hellanicus, who had dealt with Greek history before or during the Persian Wars. The novelty ofthe Atthis was that it dealt with the Pentecontaetia. 'My predecessors', says Thucydides, 'omitted to deal with this period, but described either Greek events before the Persian Wars or the wars themselves; and the one man who did touch on the history of these years, Hellanicus in his Attic History, described them too briefly and with little regard for accuracy in the dates.'2 The work of Thucydides, however, marks an advance on the Atthis in another respect as well as its chronological I

F. 171-Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 694. Ee

HIS

z

F. 4g-Thuc. i. 97,

2.

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF l.ESBOS

accuracy and literary merit. Thucydides selected a. brief period of Attic history for treatment, just as Sallust broke away from the tradition of earlier Latin chroniclers by selecting certain episodes and resolving to write Roman history carptim. 1 Hellanicus could not begin his Atthis at any other point than at the very beginning. As the fragments will show, it is a history of Athens from the earliest times down to his own day. It cannot, therefore, be otherwise than a bulky work. Several fragments refer to a first and a second book. Harpocration once refers to a fourth book (F. 44), but Jacoby emends 0' to o€V'dp

oVtKa 8£Ka.,E'L .. 0 8€ ., Ap1JS E'TTL TWV cpOVWV. 1j O'TI. E1TT}g£ TO 86pv EK€i fV rfi 1TPOS IIoO'£LSwva tnTf:p W

fAAtppo8lov SlK"{J,

07£

J

a1T€K7£LV£V aVrov pLaaap.£vov 'AAKl1T1TTJV 7T]V av-rov I(at

w,

'Aypav>.ov Tij, KlKP01l"0, OvyaTlpa, r/rrJa&v 'EAAavLKo, £v a'. The 'first' book is obviously book i of the Atthis. Note the HeIIanicean etymology-1Tayo, connected with ~yvvp.&. 4 iii. 14, 2. W. Nestle (Neue Jahrbiicher, xix (1907), p. 332), arguing that Aeschylus refers to this story in Eum. 332, thinks the dramatist borrowed it from HeIIanicus-surely a chronological impossibility. 5 Ep. 3 d.tppolJlov TOO Iloa'~07J "Ap'£vovTO, 'A07JvwV Kp[avaJoO. This puts the trial fifty years after the accession of Cecrops. Because Alcippe is granddaughter of Cecrops, KuIImer wants to put the trial in the reign of Amphictyon; but surely the trial should take place when Alcippe is stilI young.

216

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

reigned twelve years he was expelled by Erichthonius', I .and he is probably no more than a stopgap put in to complete the list. Erichthonius, on the other hand, was, according to Hellanicus, son of Hephaestus, and was the first to celebrate the Panathenaea. 2 Apollodorus tells the story of his birth to account for the name Erichthonius, and describes how he was reared by Athena in her precinct on the Acropolis: hence it is very proper that the founding of the Panathenaea should be attributed to him, and much of the story may have been told in the Atthis. The remaining fragment, which refers to the reign of Erechtheus, does not correspond to anything in Apollodorus. Harpocration, supported by Suidas and the Etymologicum Magnum, in a note on ifJopfJaVT€'iov, remarks that according to Andron of Halicarnassus this heroon was named after Phorbas, king of the Curetes, who was killed by Erechtheus; and according to Hellanicus, in the first book of the Atthis, he was a son of Poseidon (F. 40). This Phorbas must be distinguished from the Attic hero Phorbas, charioteer of Theseus, after whom other authorities say that the Phorbanteum was named. 3 But the story of this earlier Phorbas appears in a Euripidean scholiast, perhaps in the form in which Hellanicus told it.4 Eumolpus, the Thracian king, is said to have come to Eleusis to be initiated in the mysteries in the reign of Erechtheus, and the Hellanicean line of succession is given-Erechtheus, Pandion (II), Aegeus, Theseus -omitting, it must be admitted, the name of Cecrops II. Eumolpus fought for the Eleusinians in their war with Athens, and was killed, Kal. aMot 8uo Vtol. [Jou€t8wvo
lines

~

()~

which reiterates the notes on

. c. 1440.

yap TUV'T1}V 7TPWTOV ap7TauuS' B1JUEVS' /LETa TO TEKEtV eg uVTfjS' 'IcptYEVEtUV cicprIPE()1J UVT~V and 143 7TPWTOS' B1JUEVS' E7TTUETfj TUV'T1}V ap7TauuS', Ku()a CP1JUtV JoiJptS' 0 Ea/LtoS'. This version

c. 1330.

was evidently adopted by Hellanicus, if not invented by him, simply because Theseus belongs to the generation before Helen and chronological accuracy had to be preserved even at the 'expense of tradition. His account is given more in full by the note of a Homeric scholiast:

12 4 0 •

c.1230-1225.

For the story of Theseus Plutarch refers several times to Hellanicus, evidently regarding him and Andron as two of the most important authorities. How much of the story Plutarch may have taken from Hellanicus without acknowledgement it is useless to speculate. But Hellanicus told the story of Theseus .and the Minotaur with such additions as a real historian might be able to add as a result of some inquiry: 'Hellanicus says that the city did not send its young men and maidens by lot, but that Minos himself used to come and pick them out, and that he now pitched upon Theseus first of all, following the terms agreed upon; and he says the agreement was I Ap. Bib. iii. 14,6 (only twelve years). Cf. also Marm. Par. Ep. 10, which reckons an event in the reign of Erichthonius only 76 years after the accession ofCecrops.

102 E7TTUETfj

'As Hellanicus tells the story, Peirithous and Theseus, the one being the son of Zeus, the other of Poseidon, made an agreement to marry the daughters of Zeus; and carrying off Helen when she was still very young (KOf'tSij vlav) , they entrusted he: to Aethra, daughter of Pittheus and mother of Theseus, at Aphldna in Attica. Then they went down to Hades for Persephone. But the Dioscuri, when their sister was not restored to them, ravaged Attica and took Aethra prisoner.'3

Plutarch does not refer to Hellanicus in describing any of the political institutions of Theseus, except his institution I F. 164-Plut. Theseus 17 (trans. B. Perrin, Loeb edition). • F. 168a-Plut. Theseus 31. 3 F. 1 34-Schol. A. Iliad iii. 144.

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

HELLANICUS OF LESBOS

of the Isthmian games, about which he knew several different accounts. The foundation by Theseus of an Isthmian festival in honour of Poseidon is compared with the foundation of the Olympic festival by Heracles in honour of Zeus ; I and although Hellanicus is not cited expressly for this comparison, he probably did emphasize it, because, as the remaining fragments will show, he seems to have represented Theseus as an Athenian counterpart of Heracles :

names; so that Hellanicus had opportunity enough to indulge his taste for etymology. Thus Plutarch cites Hellanicus for five events in the career of Theseus: the Minotaur episode, the founding of the Isthmian games, the expedition against the Amazons, the victory in Attica over the Amazons, and the rape of Helen. The epitome of Apollodorus, it should be noted, does not seem to be following Hellanicus very closely in its account of these episodes; probably, then, its description of the other exploits of Theseus affords no clue to his narrative. The words of Plutarch, however, show that Hellanicus told the story of Theseus in some detail. F or the historical period after Theseus the evidence of the fragments is very meagre indeed. Harpocration refers four times to the second book: we learn that this book contained an account of the hierophants at Eleusis, I and possibly of the tribal organization of Cleisthenes;2 that Munychia and a heroon of Stephanephorus were mentioned (F. 42, 46); and Pegae, in the Megarid, received mention somewhere in the fourth book, if Harpocration's quotation is correct. 3 Harpocration also refers to Hellanicus in his note on 'Epv8pa'iot (F. 48)-'Erythra, a city in Ionia, one of those founded by Neleus, son ofCodrus, according to Hellanicus in the 'Ar8Lo€s-.' But there are no references at all to Draco, Solon, the Peisistratids, or any of the famous episodes of the sixth century. The Atthis must have included some account of the history of these times, but there is absolutely no trace to be found of this portion of the work. The loss of this section is unfortunate, because it would be most valuable to the historian and the critic of Herodotus. The lack of citations from this section is also instructive, showing as it does how later writers were prepared to accept the verdict of Herodotus without

220

'But some say that the Isthmian games were instituted in honour of Sciron, and that Theseus thus made expiation of his murder, because of the relationship between them ... for Sciron was a son of Canethus and Henioche, who was the daughter of Pittheus. And others have it that Sinis, not Sciron, was their son, and that it was in his honour rather that the games were instituted by Theseus. However that may be, Theseus made a formal agreement with the Corinthians that they should furnish Athenian visitors to the Isthmian games with a place of honour as large as could be covered by the sail of the state galley which brought them thither, when it was stretched to its full extent. So Hellanicus and Andron of Halicarnassus have it.'2

Theseus again challenges comparison with Heracles by his expedition against the Amazons, which, according to Plutarch, Hellanicus described: 'He also made a voyage into the Euxine Sea, as Philochorus and sundry others say, on a campaign with Heracles against the Amazons, and received Antiope as a reward of his valour; but the majority of writers, including Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Herodotus, say that Theseus made this voyage on his own account after the time of Heracles, and took the Amazon captive; and this is the more probable story. For it is not recorded that anyone else who shared his expedition took an Amazon captive.'3

Hellanicus also described how the Amazons invaded Attica, crossing the frozen Cimmerian Bosporus and actually encamping within the city.4 Plutarch regards certain placenames in Attica as evidence of events in this war, and probably the story originated from an attempt to explain these Theseus 2S. 2 F. 16s-Theseus 2S, 4-S. F. 166-Theseus 26. 4 F. I 67a-Theseus 27; F. 167b-Schol. Lyc. 1332; F. 167c-Tz. Posthomerica p. 7 Schirach. ' I

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of his part in the Hermae episode). The text of this passage and the accuracy of its statements have often been disputed,S but lengthy discussion is unnecessary here. Thucydides in i. 51 mentions Andocides, son of Leogoras (whom some critics take to be not the orator but his grandfather), as one of the commanders of the ships sent to Corcyra, but because his -name does not appear in the inscription recording Athenian e.g. in the account of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. Alcibiades 21-F. 170b. 3 F. 170c-Suidas, s.v. 'AVOOKtO,]s. 4 F. 156-Schol. Eust. Odyssry xvi. 118 ' Ap,u-rOT€>',]S 0' £V ' IlJaK7]atwv llO>"T"q. Ka~ tEMavtKOS S€ TTJAlf.!axov cpaat. NaVac,Kaav yijl-'al. T~V ' AAKI.VOOV Kat y€VVijaal. 'TOV ll'pa€-,r-ro>',v. Is this merely a reference to the Atthis or to some portion of the Troica dealing with the return of Odysseus? 5 See Jacoby's note on F. 170. Probably the parenthesis KalJ..jKn yap .ls av...ov TO K']PVKWV y€VOS should not be attributed to Hellanicus. Cf. also Blumental, Hellanicea, p. 22, who wants to refer this F. to the Atlantis, Hermes being son of the AtIantid Maea, and Jacoby in RE. viii. 117. 1

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223

expenses for this campaign, I this statement is suspect. Z The inscription, however, does not prove Thucydides wrong (for Thucydides does not say he was a UTpaT1]Yo,), and if he could claim Corcyrean ancestry by representing himself as a descendant of Nausicaa, he was certainly a suitable person to be sent on a mission of this sort.3 Evidently this is what Hellanicus pointed out, using his taste for genealogy to explain what was perhaps a curious appointment-particularly curious if this Andocides was either the orator (who would have been too young) or his grandfather (who would have been too old). The story of his relationship to Hermes is probably to be connected with what Timaeus said about Hermocrates the Sicilian: that he was descended from Hermes on his father's side, so that the failure of the Athenian expedition to Sicily, after their mutilation of the Hermae, was inevitable. 4 The remaining two incidents belong to the archons hip of Antigenes (407-406), and were evidently narrated towards the end of the Atthis. The scholiasts on Aristophanes cite the authority of Hellanicus first for the enfranchisement of the slaves who fought at Arginusae, secondly for the minting of a gold coinage in the year when Antigenes was archon. s The difficulties and implications of the first of these two scholia have already been discussed, but one important detail remains to be pointed out. The scholiast says that Hellanicus described the enfranchisement of these slaves DtEgtWV TO. E7T~ 'Avny'vov,: is this evidence enough to justify a statement that he recorded the events of each year separately, naming the archon in each case? The scarcity of fragments dealing with IG. i 2 • 295; Tod, Gk. Hist. Inscriptions, no. 55. See, e.g., Marchant's edition of book i, note ad loc., and Tod, loco cit. (where an explanation of the error is suggested). 3 Jacoby ingeniously suggests that Andocides was sent 'als eine Art Zivilkommissar urn seiner genealogischen Verbindung mit Korkyra willen'. Cf. also Boeckh, Kl. Schriften. vi, p. 75 (A. as a naval expert not holding official rank), and Hicks, Gk. Hist. Inscriptions, no. 41 ('A. the orator unofficially attached to the expedition'). 4 [Anon.] De Sublim. iv. 5 F. 17 I -Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 694 (706 Dindorf) TO,)S C1VVVavl'ax..JaaVTas oov>.ovs 'E>'>'clY'K(" o/ria,Y £>'.vlJ.pwlJfjva, Kat £'Y'Ypa",€VTas ,os ll>'aTat.>.tov. F. I 72-Schol. V. Ran. 720 (732 Dindorf) T0 -rrpOT€Pcp 'Tn £-rrt ' AVT'Y€YOVS 'E>'>'clY'KOS "'']C1t xpvaovy YOI'Lal'a 1

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historical times makes it impossible to answer this question decisively; but the criticism of Thucydides must make any one reluctant to believe that Hellanicus adopted this system for the Pentecontaetia, whatever method he may have used for the closing period of the Peloponnesian War. 1 Owing to the lack of fragments dealing with important historical episodes, the chief interest of the Atthis should be in its chronological method. For the early period it is evident that Hellanicus adopted the system of measuring by generations, and to make his calculations work out correctly he adopted his favourite device of introducing new names and duplicating familiar ones in order to lengthen the list of kings. The combined evidence of the Christian chroniclers and Alexandrian mythographers enables us to see quite clearly how he organized his account of early Athenian history, from the beginning to the time of the Trojan War. For his chronology of the later kings and earlier archons there is no evidence at all. When archons were elected annually, there was no longer any possibility of reckoning by generations; except in cases where one family retained a prominent position for several generations (as the Alcmaeonidae did), the old system of chronology was useless. Hence the confusion which makes it impossible to reconstruct accurately Athenian history in the seventh and sixth centuries. Evidently no records were kept in Athens, and Hellanicus had no documents to which he could refer to verify the dates of events. Certain events, of course, like the accession of Peisistratus, the archons hip of Cleisthenes, and the great battles of the Persian Wars, were associated with definite dates, and the tendency was to date other events so many years before or after one of these events. Even in the Pentecontaetia it seems that no exact records were kept: how else could there be uncertainty about such incidents as the battle of Eurymedon and the peace of Callias? There is nothing to show that the Atthis had any definite

system for the seventh and sixth centuries and the Pentecontaetia. Thucydides in his first book rarely dates an event by the name of an archon, I and his chronology is probably in no way more accurate than that of Hellanicus. It is only with the opening of book ii that exactness becomes possible:

224

I Jacoby remarks (note on F. 171-2): 'An der Datierung nach Archonten in der •AT(){S ist nicht zu rutteln. Dass H. die vollstandige Liste gab, ist damit nicht unbedingt gesagt. Aber der Ausdruck des Scholiasten macht Chronikform mindestens fur den historischen Teil wahrscheinlich.' Cf. Niese, Hermes, xxiii, p. 82.

225

'The thirty years truce, which was entered into after the conquest of Euboea, lasted fourteen years. In the fifteenth, in the forty-eighth year of the priestess-ship of Chrysis at Argos, in the ephorate of Aenesias at Sparta, in the last month but two of the archonship of Pythodorus at Athens, and six months after the battle of Potidaea, just at the beginning of spring, a Theban force ... made an armed entry into Plataea.'2

So also Hellanicus, when he reached events of his own time, was on a sure enough footing, and when he reached events which had taken place after the time that he had embarked on his history, he was capable of dating them with real exactness and thought it worth while to do so. The wording of the scholiast, therefore, which describes him as 'narrating the events in the archonship of Antigenes', must not be taken as evidence for the character of earlier portions of the Atthis. In another work, however, The Priestesses of Hera in Argos, he made an attempt to work out a chronological system over a long period. But if this work had been at all helpful in clearing up the chronology of the Pentecontaetia, Thucydides could hardly have passed it by.

The Priestesses of Hera in Argos The Carneonicae I. The Priestesses The evidence for the existence of this important work is confined to two authors, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Stephanus of Byzantium. The '!EpHat or '!EpHat "Hpa, at EV "ApYH, to give the fullest form of the title, is twice quoted by Dionysius and as many as ten times QY Stephanus, who helps us to assign his quotations to their proper chronological context by always quoting the number of the book. He quotes from three books of the Priestesses, and since his quotation from the third book appears to refer to an incident of the year 429,3 I

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there can scarcely have been more than three books: It is generally admitted to be one of the later works ofHellanicus, though there is nothing to show that it is as late as the Atthis; when Thucydides dates an incident in his own lifetime by referring to the Argive priestess,1 it does not follow that he is taking the information from Hellanicus. Though Jacoby is prepared to state that it was not published till 423 (on the ground that Thucydides takes from ithis date for the burning of the temple of Hera in Argos and the flight of the priestess Chrysis in iv. 133),2 a more certain terminus post quem is provided by the note of Stephanus on Chaonia (F. 83): v' , - 'R ' , v' 'E'"lV\aVLKOS , .'O{ driven out by ·07TJ.o.vLKos adl5£< (F. 152b; cf. above, p. 187). Verum non magni hoc faciendum esse bene scio.' 2 RE. viii. 143. 3 F. 85b---Clem. Alex. Strom. i. xxi, 131,6 val /L~v Kal Tlp7ravl5pov apxat'ova[ Ttv€S'· fEA'Ao.VLKOS' yovv TOV'TOV IUTopf.'i KaTa MCoav y€yov£vat. 4 F. 86-Schol. V. Aristoph. Av. 1403 ' AVTi7TaTpos 15£ Kal Ev