Making Time for the Past: Local History and the Polis

MAKING TIME FOR THE PAST

This page intentionally left blank

Making Time for the Past

Local History and the Polis

KATHERINE CLARKE

1

3Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,

and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong KarachiKuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi

New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With oYces in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France GreeceGuatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal SingaporeSouth Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Pressin the UK and in certain other countries

Published in the United Statesby Oxford University Press Inc., New York

� Katherine Clarke 2008

The moral rights of the author have been assertedDatabase right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate

reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproductionoutside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,

Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or coverand you must impose the same condition on any acquirer

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Data available

Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, IndiaPrinted in Great Britainon acid-free paper by

Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk

ISBN 978–0–19–929108–3

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Chris


Preface

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of

trumpets to announce the beginning of a new moon or year. Even when a new century

begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.1

This book is about time and history in the Greek world. It is about the way in

which choices concerning the articulation and expression of time, especially

time past, reflect the values and aspirations of both those who ‘make’ it and

those who comprise their audience or readership. Time is in this sense not only

constructed, but also negotiated. This study encompasses a range of contexts

from the widespread awareness of time’s malleability and the perceived value of

the past by the citizens of the polis to the formal analysis of time systems by

scholars in the competitive environment of Hellenistic learning. It addresses the

development by historians of ways to articulate the long span of historical time,

and gradually homes in from the chronological strategies developed by those

who wrote grand, Panhellenic or even universal narratives, to those whose

stories were about, or for, the individual polis.

The making or negotiation of time is of considerable interest in any

historical and social context, but it carries particular resonance in the world

of the Greek poleis where each community had its own calendar and ran to its

own time.2 Both the articulation of time and the establishment of parameters

for a ‘shared’ history have been seen individually as modes of self-expression

for communities,3 so an exploration of their intersection has the potential to

be especially fruitful and illuminating. By focusing on the phenomenon of

city history—the creation of the past of, for, and within a relatively restricted

community—we can turn the spotlight more closely on the dynamics of how

1 T. Mann, The Magic Mountain (trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter; 1924), ch. 4 §4: ‘Die Zeit hat inWirklichkeit keine Einschnitte, es gibt kein Gewitter oder Drommetengeton beim Beginn einesneuen Monats oder Jahres, und selbst bei dem eines neuen Sakulums sind es nur wir Menschen,die schießen und lauten’.2 This goes beyond the local nature of time in pre-industrial Britain, where the precise ‘time

of day’ varied from place to place, until the arrival of a national rail network necessitatedconformity to a commonly agreed ‘time’. In the Greek poleis the whole system of months, start ofthe year, and so on, varied from place to place.3 On the former, M. Bloch, ‘The Past and the Present in the Present’, Man ns 12 (1977),

278–92 at 282, notes the claim by cultural relativists that ‘concepts of time are closely bound tosocial organisation and therefore vary from society to society’. On the latter, see J. Brow, ‘Noteson Community, Hegemony, and the Uses of the Past’, Anthropological Quarterly 63 (1990), 1–6at 3, on the ‘construction of an authoritative tradition that identiWes all who accept it asmembers of the same political community’.

both time and the past were ‘made’. Therefore, in the second half of this book

I explore the formulation of history within a civic context, looking at the

construction of the past in various media as a social activity, which both

reflects and contributes towards the sense of a shared identity.

But the wider validity of bringing together a study of constructed time with

an examination of the writing of history hinges on the truth of Bouvier’s

assertion that historiography, the telling of stories primarily about the past, is

by nature an enterprise which depends on the systematic structuring of time,

within which are embedded its stories.4 The fundamental importance of chron-

ography, the study of time, for historiography, the writing of history, is neatly

reflected in the career of Felix Jacoby. He wrote his inaugural dissertation at

Berlin in 1900 on Apollodorus’ great work of Hellenistic scholarship on the

subject of time, the Chronica, and made the chronicle which was inscribed and

displayed on the Parian Marble, one of our most extensive and revealing

examples of history set in a strict temporal frame, the subject of his Habilita-

tionsschrift at Breslau in 1903. Furthermore, when he came to give his inaug-

ural lecture in Breslau, the topic was yet another great chronographer from the

Hellenistic period, Eratosthenes of Cyrene.5 Thus all of the early work carried

out by this, the most intellectually ambitious researcher on ancient historiog-

raphy of at least the twentieth century, was in fact focused on the ancient

chronographers, and on their attempts to order, articulate, andmap out time as

a framework for history. It was only with this work behind him that Jacoby

embarked upon his groundbreaking and unsurpassed masterpiece on the

fragments of the Greek historians.6 Whatever the limitations and misconcep-

tions in Jacoby’s vision of the evolution of Greek prose writing, set out in his

classic article of 1909,7 the capaciousness of intellect and the imagination which

enabled him to see through and beyond the mass of tiny fragments, made his

4 D. Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps meteorologique chez les premiers historiens grecs’,in C. Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien (Paris, 2000),115–41 at 119: ‘Une Histoire sans dates ressemblerait a une Histoire hors du temps’ (‘a historywithout dates would be like a history outside time’).

5 On these early publications in the context of Jacoby’s whole academic career, see M.Chambers, ‘La vita e carriera di Felix Jacoby’, in C. Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti dell’opera di FelixJacoby (Pisa, 2006), 5–29 at 9–12. Apollodorus and Eratosthenes will be discussed in ch. 2 below;the Parian marble in chs. 4 and 6.

6 As A. Moller, ‘Felix Jacoby and Ancient Greek Chronography’, in Ampolo (ed.), Aspettidell’opera di Felix Jacoby, 259–75 at 261, notes, ‘one could even maintain that his earlymasterpieces conditioned his further work with the Fragmente’.

7 F. Jacoby, ‘Uber die Entwicklung der griechischen Historiographie und den Plan einerneuen Sammlung der griechischen Historikerfragmente’, Klio 9 (1909), 80–123. The plan wasessentially to develop a genealogy of prose genres which stemmed from the types of literaturerepresented by Hecataeus and Hellanicus. These yielded three overriding categories of history:genealogy and mythography, history delimited by time, and history delimited by space.

viii Preface

contribution to the subject extraordinary. The carrying forward of the torch of

Jacoby’s unfinished collection is one of the most valuable scholarly enterprises

of recent times, and will revolutionize the use that can be made of a hugely

neglected body of evidence for the intellectual history of the ancient world.8

Jacoby’s collection of fragments remains a relatively untapped treasure

trove partly because exploring even a fraction of its riches requires a large

investment of time. The necessary groundwork for this book could simply not

have been accomplished without a most generous award from the Leverhulme

Trust in 2001 of a Philip Leverhulme Prize which enabled me to devote the

greater part of two years to working through sizeable parts of Jacoby’s

collection—the chronographic works, the histories of both the Greek poleis

and the non-Greek lands, and the universal historians. For this opportunity

I should like to express sincere thanks and appreciation. My colleges, St Hilda’s

and Queen’s, showed the greatest generosity in allowing me to take full

advantage of the award, as well as subsequently granting me two terms of

sabbatical leave to bring the project closer to fruition. I should also like to

thank Lisa Bligh for taking over my college duties, thereby enabling me to

focus wholeheartedly on my research. The Faculty of Classics in Oxford

generously released me from many chores during the tenure of my award,

for which I am most grateful, and the Sackler Library, with its unsurpassed

collection and its helpful and flexible staff, further enhanced my working

environment.

Innumerable individuals have contributed in one way or another to this

project, and there is room here to name only a tiny handful. Matthew Nicholls

and Sarah Cottle, doctoral and undergraduate students respectively, proved

superb research assistants at various stages, and both contributed many

insightful and helpful suggestions. Friends and colleagues in my immediate

environs have kept me cheerful and offered encouragement at every stage, in

particular Rebecca Armstrong, Emily Kearns, Susan Jones, Jenny Wormald,

Angus Bowie, and Barbara Kowalzig. Further afield, I have been immen-

sely grateful for the help, guidance, and friendship of Guido Schepens and

Giuseppe Zecchini. Conversations with Irad Malkin during his stay in Oxford

in 2005 proved inspirational and significantly advanced my thinking on many

8 Part IV (biography, history of literature, and antiquarian literature) is being worked on by ateam including J. Bollansee, K. Brodersen, J. Engels, A. Henrichs, E. Krummen, G. A. Lehmann,H.-G. Nesselrath, J. Radicke, J. Raeymaekers, G. Schepens, and E. Schutrumpf; Part V (historicalgeography) by H.-J. Gehrke, D. Meyer, P. Funke, E. Olshausen, and F. Prontera. In addition, afull index to the existing volumes of FGrH has appeared: P. Bonnechere, Die Fragmente dergriechischen Historiker: Indexes of Parts I, II, and III. Indexes of Ancient Authors (Leiden, 1999)greatly enhances the utility of the earlier volumes. Furthermore, the CD Rom version of FGrHtransforms the value of the whole corpus.

Preface ix

themes in this book. Closer to home, Peter Derow, before his recent untimely

death, and John Ma, who kindly read the last chapter, both saved me from

many an epigraphic blunder; and Richard Rutherford was typically generous

with the loan of books from his exhaustive collection. The combination of

rigorous training and inspirational teaching offered by my undergraduate

tutors, Nicholas Purcell and Michael Comber, remains an ever-present guide.

The task of reading an entire typescript is a huge one, and I am immensely

grateful to Chris Pelling and Fergus Millar for adding this to the already long

catalogue of occasions on which their generosity, kindness, and encourage-

ment have proved invaluable. The text has been greatly enhanced by the

comments and contributions of all the above and many more besides, and

all remaining errors, inaccuracies, and infelicities are my responsibility alone.

The watchful eye and helpful suggestions of my copy editor and the eYciency

of the whole team at the Press have greatly expedited the book’s completion.9

I am also indebted to Hilary O’Shea at Oxford University Press for her

patience in waiting for this long project to reach completion and for her

faith in its value.

On a more personal level, I should like to thank my mother for always

supporting me since childhood in my classical endeavours and for everything

else that she has done and been. The addition of Scipio to the household has

benefited the project in a multitude of ways. Besides his irrepressible capacity

to lift the spirits, his frequent demands for energetic expeditions across the

Oxfordshire countryside have punctuated every day with long periods of

thinking space. These have helped to disentangle many a problem and lent

a sense of valuable perspective away from the desk. Finally, my gratitude to

Chris is unquantifiable. His critical yet constructive reading of the whole book

forced me to scrutinize the logic at all levels and, above all, helped me to

discern the significant from the trivial in both material and ideas. What his

constant support, companionship, patience, love, and good humour have

meant to me over the last fifteen years, I can only begin to express by

dedicating the book to him.

Katherine ClarkeOxford, 2007

9 On the vexations issue of transliteration of Greek names, I have tended to adopt latinizedforms, except where familiarity dictates otherwise.

x Preface

Contents

List of Abbreviations xiii

I Introduction 1

1. Man is the measure of all things: counting the days 1

2. The multiplication of times 7

3. Time for everyone 27

II Making a business of time 47

1. Constructing calendars 47

2. Chronographical works 56

III The world outside the polis 90

1. Thucydides and the problem of supra-polis time 90

2. Inventing universal history: Ephorus’ contribution 96

3. Extending time across space: the Olympiadic revolution 109

4. Diodorus Siculus and the culmination of universal

chronology 121

5. Strabonian strategies: between local and universal 140

6. Telling the time for the non-Greek world 150

IV ‘City is history incarnate’: writing the past of the polis 169

1. From the city of Byzas to Constantinople 169

2. Tracing the history of local historiography:

resurrecting Jacoby’s Atthis 175

3. Time for local history: pacing the past 193

4. Bridging the gap between local and universal 230

V Persuasion and plausibility: history and rhetoric in the polis 245

1. Parameters of plausibility 245

2. Addressing Athens: presenting the past 252

3. ‘Learning from history’: models from the past 274

4. Escaping the ravages of time: the preservation of history 286

5. Marking time 293

6. Past, present, and persuasion in the polis 297

VI Time for the polis: audiences and contexts 304

1. The city of the sundial 304

2. Valuing the past: promoting the polis 313

3. Local heroes: placing the historian in the polis 338

4. From local hero to supra-political ambassador 346

5. Itinerant intellectuals, Mediterranean mobility:

negotiating the world of Rome 354

6. Returning to the polis 363

Epilogue 370

References 372

Subject Index 391

Index of Passages Discussed 399

xii Contents

List of Abbreviations

Blinkenberg, Lindos C. Blinkenberg (ed.), Lindos. Fouilles et recherches,

1902–1914. Vol. II, Inscriptions. 2 vols. (Copenhagen

and Berlin, 1941).

CIG Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum I–IV (Berlin, 1828–77).

CRAI Comptes rendus de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-

Lettres (Paris).

Fouilles de Delphes iii.3 G. Daux and A. Salac (eds.), Fouilles de Delphes. III.

Epigraphie. 3. Depuis le tresor des Atheniens jusqu’aux

bases de Gelon (Paris, 1932–43).

FGrH F. Jacoby (ed.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker

(Leiden, 1923– ).

IC M. Guarducci (ed.), Inscriptiones Creticae opera et consilio

Friederici Halbherr collectae. 4 vols. (Rome, 1935–50).

IG Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin, 1873– ).

IK Inschriften griechischer Stadte aus Kleinasien (Bonn,

1972– ).

Inscr. Delos Inscriptions de Delos. 7 vols. (Paris, 1926–1972).

Kaibel, Epigr. Gr. G. Kaibel (ed.), Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta

(Berlin, 1878).

McCabe, Miletos D. McCabe and M. A. Plunkett (eds.), Miletos inscrip-

tions. Texts and list (The Institute for Advanced Study,

Princeton, 1984).

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

1997).

OGIS W. Dittenberger (ed.), Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selec-

tae, I–II (Leipzig, 1903–1905).

SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden, 1923– ).

SGDI H. Collitz and F. Bechtel (eds.), Sammlung der

griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften I–IV (Gottingen,

1885–1910).

Syll:3 W. Dittenberger (ed.), Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

3rd edn. (Leipzig, 1915–1924).


I

Introduction

1. MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS:

COUNTING THE DAYS

K� ªaæ ��Œ��Æ �Æ �sæ�� B� � �� I�Łæ��fiø �æ��Ł��Ø: �y�Ø K ��K�ØÆı�d ��Œ��Æ �Ææ��ÆØ ��æÆ� �Ø�Œ��Æ� ŒÆd ��ÆŒØ��Øº�Æ� ŒÆd

�Ø��ıæ�Æ�; K��º��ı ��e� �c ªØ��ı: �N �b �c KŁ�º��Ø �h�æ�� H�K�ø� ��d �ÆŒæ �æ�� ª��ŁÆØ; ¥ �Æ �c Æƒ zæÆØ �ı��Æ��ø�Ø �ÆæÆªØ� ��ÆØK� e ��; �B�� b� �Ææa a ��Œ��Æ �Æ �ƒ K�� ºØ��Ø ª��ÆØæØ�Œ��Æ ��; ��æÆØ �b KŒ H� ��H� ��ø� ��ºØÆØ ��Œ��Æ:�ı�ø� H� ±�Æ��ø� ��æ�ø� H� K� a ��Œ��Æ �Æ; K�ı��ø��Œ��Æ ŒÆd �Ø�Œ��Ø�ø� ŒÆd ��ÆŒØ��ØºØ�ø� ŒÆd �Ø��ıæØ�ø�; � ��æ�

ÆP�ø� fi B ��æfi � ��æfi � e �Ææ��Æ� �P�b� ‹��Ø�� æ��ª�Ø �æBª�Æ.

I put the boundary of human life at seventy years. These seventy years have

25,200 days, not counting the intercalary month, but if every other year

wishes to be lengthened by a month so that the seasons fall into alignment

and come out right, these intercalary months in seventy years will be thirty-

Wve, and the days for these months 1,050. So that all the days of a man’s life

of around seventy years are 26,250; of all those days not one brings to him

exactly the same as another.1

This passage from Herodotus’ Histories, in which one of the seven sages,

Solon of Athens, famously visits the court of the Lydian king, Croesus, and

engages in philosophical conversation concerning the nature of human hap-

piness and the mutability of fortune, oVers a striking introduction to many

themes that will be explored in this book. The complex explanation of the

disparity between the length of a lifespan, when simply assuming 360 days in a

year, and the length of the same seventy-year span when calculated taking into

account a series of calendar modiWcations, notably intercalary months, which

over the course of the seventy years add a remarkable 1,050 days to the total,

points to the potentially disturbing conclusion that ‘seventy years’ is a variable

length of time. Of course this makes logical nonsense in biological terms—at

1 Herodotus,Histories 1.32.2–4. The precise context for the calculation presented here is Solon’sexposition of the point that no one can be counted happy until he has Wlled out the span of his life.

the end of a life, one has lived through a certain and inXexible number of

days.2 But what the passage makes quite clear is that time as a lived, experi-

enced entity—what one might perhaps term ‘natural’ time, the number of

times the sun has risen and set from one moment to another, such as the birth

and death of an individual—is to be distinguished from time as a constructed,

organized, calculable entity, which can be measured in diVerent ways.

It is partly a question of the level of detail and accuracy—seventy years is a

standard ‘round’ number used to express the length of a human lifespan.

‘Threescore years and ten’ is a formula very familiar from the Psalms,3 and

one might claim to have lived seventy years without much regard for whether

or not one had fulWlled precisely the requisite number of days. Here in

Herodotus, we might say that we are simply witnessing an increasing level

of speciWcity—seventy years needs to be more closely deWned, Wrst in broad

terms and then with the further reWnement brought by the intercalary

months. It is not clear that Herodotus is suggesting that one should ever

leave the calculation on the rather slapdash basis of a 360-day year, and

whether there are any circumstances in which 25,200 days would be an

adequate deWnition of seventy years.4 If so, then the span of seventy years

becomes an even more malleable concept whose notional length is deter-

mined by the requirements of the context.

We might also note that, in spite of the comment above that experienced

time and measured time are separable entities, in fact natural and constructed

time are intertwined. The lifespan of a human being is clearly a natural

measure of time, and we shall see on many occasions the way in which

‘human’ lives and generations were used in historiographical contexts as a

measure of time. But here the natural time of a human lifespan is being

converted into the artiWcial currency of the calendar in its most carefully

constructed and manipulated form.

Furthermore, the context within which this extraordinary calculation takes

place deserves some attention. One of the major themes of this book will be

the relationship between the construction and use of temporal frameworks

and the writing of history. Although this passage does not concern the

conWguration of historical time except on the smallest scale, in so far as it

deals with the measurement and component units of the history of a single

2 We need not concern ourselves here with the confusions that might occur in the modernworld as a result of travel across time zones, which allows a person to live the same day twice, asit were, and thus to extend the length of apparently standard years.

3 See Psalms 90:10: ‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason ofstrength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut oV, andwe Xy away.’

4 The use of the verb KŁ�ºø, which produces the rather jarring translation ‘if every other yearwishes to be lengthened’, does suggest that the years can take on a life and will of their own withregard to their length and calculation, and that precision is demanded rather than optional.

2 Introduction

human being, it is nevertheless interesting to Wnd it here in the historical text

of Herodotus. In fact, the chronological angle could be said to mirror

perfectly the way in which the ‘Solon meets Croesus’ episode has been seen

as expressing in miniature some of the underlying messages of the whole

work. Most obviously it picks up on 1.5,5 concerning the mutability of

fortune and the impossibility of assessing a man’s happiness until the end

of his life, just as the historian cannot make assumptions about the outcome

of events and the relative successes and failures of diVerent claimants on

power and importance until the entire story has been told. The importance

of the individual in history is a much-discussed Herodotean theme,6 and here

we might argue that the interest in mapping out the chronology of a man’s life

is emblematic of Herodotus’ interest in the time of history itself, turning a

lifespan into a microcosm for the time of the historical duree.

Moreover, we might want to take into account the fact that the interest in,

and calculation of, time is not here carried out in the historian’s own voice, but

is put into the mouth of Solon as part of his conversation with Croesus over

the nature of happiness in human life.7 The notorious near impossibility of

such a conversation having taken place might suggest that we should see this as

very much a piece of Herodotean invention, designed to display one aspect of

his expertise in historia, rather ironically showing oV an astonishing facility

for chronological accuracy in a chronologically impossible scenario.8 The

5 Here Herodotus Wrst sets out this principle as an explanation for why his history mustinclude not only great cities, but small ones too: a ªaæ e ��ºÆØ ��ª�ºÆ q�; a ��ººa ÆPH��ØŒæa ª�ª��; a �b K�� K��F q� ��ª�ºÆ; �æ �æ�� q� ��ØŒæ�: c� I�Łæø�� t� K�Ø��P�ÆØ�� P�Æ�a K� TıfiH ��ı�Æ� K�Ø��ÆØ I��æø� ›��ø� (‘for as for those whichwere great in the past, most of them have become small; and those which were great in my daywere insigniWcant before. Therefore, realizing that human happiness does not stay in the sameplace, I shall recount both large and small indiscriminately’).6 See especially J. Gould, Herodotus (London, 1989), 42.7 The question of whether Herodotus uses Solon as a mouthpiece for his own views is one of

the points discussed by C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Educating Croesus: Talking and Learning in Herodotus’Lydian Logos’, Classical Antiquity 25.1 (2006), 141–77. Pelling notes various correspondencesbetween Herodotus and Solon: Herodotus’ attempt to educate the reader on the subject ofmutability of fortune in the preface and the attempt made by Solon to Croesus, their parallelstatus as travellers; but he notes the lack of straightforward identity between the two voices. In‘Speech and Narrative in the Histories’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The CambridgeCompanion to Herodotus (Cambridge, 2006), 103–21, Pelling further explores the complexity ofthe interaction between Solon and Croesus and the strain this places on the deWnition of wisdom(105–6). See also R. Friedman, ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, in Dewald andMarincola(eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus, 165–77 at 167, for the parallels between Solon’sand Herodotus’ own authorial personae and the association of travel with wisdom; S. O. Shapiro,‘Herodotus and Solon’, Classical Antiquity 15 (1996), 348–64, carefully incorporates into herdiscussion of the two voices the fact that Herodotus’ views on Solon may be expressed indirectlyas well as explicitly, and concludes that Herodotus largely endorses Solon’s views.8 On this and other chronological problems in Herodotus, see P. J. Rhodes, ‘Herodotean

Chronology Revisited’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from aConference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, 2003), 58–72 at 64.

Man is the measure of all things 3

question of whether Herodotus himself was really interested in chronological

issues has been the subject of some discussion, to which we shall return.9

But, regardless of whether Herodotus is claiming chronological expertise

for himself, it is surely signiWcant that he decides to use as his mouthpiece one

of the seven sages.10 The connection between travel and wisdom is brought

out by Dougherty in relation to this episode, and it could be seen to fore-

shadow rather neatly one of the themes to which we shall return (in chapter

6), namely the phenomenon of itinerant intellectuals, including local histor-

ians, who derived at least part of their authority within the polis from their

reputation as wise men.11 On the other hand, one proposition which I shall

pursue in this book is that the awareness of, and interest in, manipulating

time was by no means conWned to the authors of chronographical works and

calendars, but was of much wider concern in the Greek poleis. In some ways,

the use of one of the wisest men ever to have lived as the mouthpiece for

Herodotus’ calculations acts as a counterexample to the idea that the organ-

ization of time was of as much interest to the man in the street as to the sage.

But, in any case, the tone of this part of Solon’s speech is strikingly at odds

with the rather general anecdotes about fortunate people within which it is

embedded.12 The level of calendar detail appears quite gratuitous in relation

to the needs of the passage,13 namely to establish that one cannot assess a

9 See, for example, the assertion by Rhodes, ibid. 66, that ‘Herodotus is not writing asystematic history of Greece or of any Greek state, and he does not have a systematic chron-ology’. This is less debatable than his suggestion on 68 that Herodotus was not really interestedin the chronographical enterprise.

10 It is clearly as sage rather than as social reformer that Solon appears in this book ofHerodotus. We may compare the sudden introduction of another sage, Thales of Miletus, laterin the book in the context of war between Lydia and Media, which was stopped by the omen of asolar eclipse. Thales, we are informed, had foretold the eclipse to the Ionians, setting as hislimiting date the year in which the eclipse took place (1.74). Again scientiWc accuracy is broughtto bear on the historical narrative, although here too the transition and integration are hardlyseamless. Diodorus Siculus includes the Solon-Croesus encounter at 9.2, and, even morestrikingly than Herodotus, places this in the context of a whole panoply of sage men such asChilon, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Bias of Priene. See D. Fehling, Herodotus and His ‘Sources’:Citation, Invention, and Narrative Art (trans. by J. G. Howie, Leeds, 1989), 195 at n. 16, for thepreponderance of appearances by one or other of the seven sages in this part of Herodotus’ text.

11 See C. Dougherty, The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey(Oxford, 2001).

12 On this change in register, see D. Boedeker, ‘Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death inHerodotus’, in Derow and Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World, 17–36 at 25: ‘Solon’sarithmetic nevertheless comes as a jolt after the little vignettes of Tellos and the Argive brothers;it abruptly changes the tone of the passage, shifting from laudatory narrative to the language ofthe accounting oYce.’ The generalizing passages in Herodotus, which tend to contain gnomic orproverbial statements, have been analysed by S. O. Shapiro, ‘Proverbial Wisdom in Herodotus’,Transactions of the American Philological Association 130 (2000), 89–118.

13 But see the fascinating suggestion made by C. Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Historia et historiogra-phie grecque: ‘‘le temps des hommes’’ ’, in Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien

4 Introduction

man’s happiness until he has Wlled out his lifespan.14 Although this display of

deftness with the mechanics of the calendar enhances Solon’s credibility as a

wise man, it would be hard to argue that it is entirely comfortable where it sits

in the text, making it diYcult to assess in terms of the relationship between

chronography and historiography.

The primary focus of this book will be the construction of a particular

aspect of time, the past, and within a particular context, the polis. It thus sets

out to be a study of local historiography. However, there are several diVerent

backdrops which need to be sketched before we embark on the local histori-

ography of the Greek poleis and the way in which their past was constructed

for them and to their satisfaction. I shall start (in chapter 1) by discussing

some of the ways in which time may be articulated and calibrated, and the

diVerences and complementary nature of naturally determined and culturally

constructed time. I shall then examine some of the evidence that time as a

malleable and constructed concept was familiar within the everyday life of the

Greek polis, through the plays of Aristophanes and publicly displayed inscrip-

tions, and I shall consider the connections between time as mapped out on a

recurring annual cycle through the calendar and time which spans the past of

a place.

Moving on from here, chapters 2 and 3 oVer diVerent types of foil to this

relationship between time and the polis. In chapter 2 I look at two forms of

evidence for the manipulation of time as a task not for the polis as a whole, but

for the professionals—chronographical works and works on the calendar,

both of which survive only in fragmentary form.15 Both historical time and

the annual cycle of the calendar attracted considerable scholarly attention

from the Hellenistic period onwards, and I shall consider the way in which

complex chronological systems were not only used and understood but

actually created. I then move in chapter 3 to the expression of time in

(Paris, 2000), 89–114 at 107, that Herodotus is deliberately alluding to the work of Solon himselfhere, in particular his elegy on the ages of life, which Philo of Alexandria cites (fr. 27 West). ‘Lavie humaine y est divisee en dix periodes de sept ans au cours desquelles s’operent le devel-oppement, la maturite et le declin.’ This would enhance the resonance of the choice of Solon asthe mouthpiece.

14 The underlying logic must be that even a single day is enough to bring a man down, a pieceof wisdom which is a commonplace in tragedy. On this, see A. Kerkhecker, Studien zu Herkunftund Bedeutung des ‘eines Tages’ im griechischen Drama (MA thesis, Tubingen, 1989). As Kerk-hecker notes (14), ‘In der Tragodie werden die katastrophalen Ereignisse in der Fiktion aufeinem Tag konzentriert, den ‘‘dramatischen Tag’’.’ The topos must go back to Hector’s fatefulday in the Iliad.15 P. A. Brunt, ‘On Historical Fragments and Epitomes’, Classical Quarterly 30 (1980),

477–94, has not been superseded for a cautious, though not paralysing, approach to theproblems of fragmentary texts.

Man is the measure of all things 5

historiography other than that of the polis in order to highlight any distinctive

features of works which construct a past for individual cities. In particular

I examine the synthetic temporal frameworks and strategies which were

developed by universal historians, in the light of the fact that diVerent

poleis had diVerent calendars and diVerent histories. I also look at the way

in which time is conWgured by Greek authors writing about the non-Greek

world. Although this material is highly fragmentary, it is nevertheless

possible to discern certain trends and recurring themes in the treatment of

time, which throw into relief the works which purport to tell the past of Greek

city states.

Chapter 4 focuses on the fragmentary remains of the Greek city histories.

After exploring the debates concerning the relationship between universal or

‘great’ historiography and local historiography, it moves on to examine how

the conWguration and presentation of time can contribute to these discus-

sions, not least through the use of local and Panhellenic chronological sys-

tems. Although much attention has focused on Athens, not least because of

the survival of evidence and the existence of Jacoby’s Atthis, the ideas of which

have been fundamental in directing the study of local historiography, it is

possible by considering the fragments of local histories from elsewhere in the

Greek world, to see Atthidography as being quite in line with the attempts of

other cities to formulate and present their pasts. That said, the special nature

of Athens, at least in terms of evidence, is exploited in chapter 5, where

I consider the presentation of the Athenian past in another medium, that of

public oratory.

The display of the past, or of a certain type of past, to the polis at large

brings us back in the Wnal chapter to a point raised in chapter 1, that is the

everyday nature of such activity. In chapter 6 I focus on the polis, and consider

the value it placed on the past, its stake in the proper telling of history, and its

diplomatic use of particular episodes. Here epigraphic evidence, such as the

Lindos Chronicle and the Parian Marble, comes again to the fore, oVering

publicly displayed history, which may tell us something about shared opin-

ions and values. Inscriptions also oVer an insight into one of the key Wgures in

all of this, the historian. I move Wnally to the striking evidence for the public

honouring of local historians, often itinerant rather than native, and consider

issues of status, historiographical authority, and the possible implications of a

semi-professional system of local historiography for the posited direct and

close relationship between the polis and the telling of its past. Thus this book

takes as its main focus the manipulation of ‘constructed’ time in contexts

which concern wider audiences—the composition and performance of local

historiography, the delivery of public speeches, the presentation of a past

which is broadly speaking shared by the polis as a whole—while keeping in

6 Introduction

mind the expertise of chronographers and historians which underpinned

such activity.16

2. THE MULTIPLICATION OF TIMES

This is a book about time and its conWguration, not primarily in the abstract

as an academic or philosophical activity, but as a phenomenon which was

highly prized by the polis for its practical application, both in setting out the

festival and magisterial year and in articulating a memorable, commonly

agreed, high-status past which could be deployed in inter-polis diplomatic

contexts, as well as for internal consumption by the citizens. Therefore,

although I shall look in the next chapter at what one might term the more

scholarly interest in both the calendar and historical time, here I shall set the

groundwork for the rest of the book by thinking brieXy about time as a

constructed concept, reXective of the society to which it ‘belongs’, and which,

by common consent, conWgures it in diVerent ways to articulate and measure

out life and its activities. Both the ‘recurring time’ of diVerent natural cycles,

such as the day, the month, or the year,17 and the ‘progressive time’ of an

individual life, or of the shared history of a community, or of larger bodies

such as a political or economic confederation or a culturally homogeneous

unit, or indeed of the whole known world, were and still are articulated in a

variety of ways depending on context, circumstance, purpose, audience, and

so on.

I shall Wrst introduce some ideas on a notion which will be important

throughout this book, that time as a culturally determined concept reXects

society, and can be used to create or reinforce communal identity.18 I shall

16 The construction of time in order to fulWl the wishes of a particular constituency is neatlybrought out by L. Nixon, ‘Chronologies of Desire and the Uses of Monuments: EXatunpinarto Catalhoyuk and beyond’, in D. Shankland (ed.), Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage inthe Balkans and Anatolia: The Life and Times of F. W. Hasluck, 1878–1920 (Istanbul, 2004), ii.429–52, who states (429) that chronologies of desire are ‘always linked with an intention to controlpeople’s views of time’, and involve selection of episodes for commemoration or oblivion.17 It is worth noting that the week is not conventionally seen as a ‘natural’ unit of time, but

see A. Aveni, Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks, and Cultures (London and New York, 2000),100, for the possibility that the week is self-determined by a seven-day biorhythm whichmanifests itself in small variations in blood pressure and heart-beat, as well as, remarkably,peaks in the positive or negative response to organ transplant. On the other hand, many cultureshave not adopted a seven-day week, notably the Romans.18 Aveni, Empires of Time, 10, sums up excellently why time makes a useful tool for studying

cultures other than our own: ‘Because time is a universal concept, its study serves as an excellentway of attempting to get inside the heads of these other people to see what makes them tick’.

The multiplication of times 7

then consider some of the commonly used ways of calibrating it. From there,

I shall start to focus on how time was articulated in Greek poleis. Much of this

book is devoted to exploring the way in which Greek poleis presented the

longer span of historical time, and in my discussion of both ‘great’ and local

historiography various approaches to historical time will come to the fore.

Therefore, while acknowledging the inseparability of the long and the short

durees, in so far as the recurring time of the calendar telescopes and repeats

selected highlights of the linear time of history,19 I shall mention only brieXy

in this chapter the various means of articulating historical time, and devote

a little more attention here to the recurring time encapsulated by the calendar.

The complexity of ancient Greek calendars is, of course, a well-worn scholar-

ly Weld, and there is no need to do more than summarize what has already

been set out by others. From the point of view of this book, of greater interest

is the fact that there were several diVerent calendars in operation in a single

polis, neatly illustrating that diVerent circumstances and occasions called for

diVerent ways of organizing time. Furthermore, the development by each polis

of its own calendars drives home the fact that time and its arrangement can

be seen as intimately connected with the self-image of the community, and

leads to the Wnal section of this chapter in which I shall argue for a high

general awareness in the Greek polis of time as a concept that is manipulated

and constructed by human intervention, and in which the polis as a whole

enjoys a stake.20

The awareness of time as a concept, and as one which is deliberately con-

structed, is most obviously connected to the relationship between diVerent

‘time zones’, especially that between past and present or present and future.

Since the future is unknown, the past-present relationship is much more

resonant in terms of self-deWnition and, as we shall see, much attention has

been devoted to examining the importance for a community of agreeing a

common version of the shared past. It is only a matter of degree which

distinguishes the past which happened yesterday from the past which hap-

pened one hundred years ago, and it is impossible to divorce a discussion of

19 On this, see below in this chapter.20 Just as poleis could forge their own identity through their distinctive organization of time,

so too could the adoption of the whole or part of the calendar of another polis be used to expressa relationship with that community. See I. Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of GreekIdentity’, in I. Malkin (ed.), Mediterranean Paradigms and Classical Antiquity (London, 2005),56–74 at 69, for the adoption by colonies of the same theophoric month names as those ofthe mother city, with e.g. Samos and Perinthos having at least seven months in common. ButF. M. Dunn, ‘The Uses of Time in Fifth-century Athens’, The Ancient World 29 (1998), 37–52,argues that the polis sometimes sacriWced potential advances in chronology and time manage-ment to the preservation of its own identity and ideals.

8 Introduction

the way in which societies self-reXectively construct time present from their

thoughts about the past. On the other hand, the explicit construction of

history in narrative form, be it expressed in a chronologically continuous or

broken stream, and in whatever medium, is a rather diVerent phenomenon

from an awareness of time as a feature of the world around us,21 and so I shall

start with the latter before allowing the apparently inevitable shift to concep-

tualizing time as a way of linking past and present.

Describing time as a ‘feature’ of the world immediately opens up one of the

most perplexing aspects of the debate held by philosophers about time, that is

whether it ‘exists’ in its own right or whether it is an inseparable ‘aspect’ of the

matter of the world; even whether it is ‘real’ or ‘unreal’.22 Such discussions

seem prone to lead to extraordinary forms of argument, such as the sugges-

tion that time is ‘unreal’ because positions in time are deWned not only by

priority and posteriority, but also by past, present, and future,23 which change

in respect of a particular event, thereby undermining the reality of time

through the incompatibility of the three qualities.24 The philosophical prob-

lem rests on the idea that, without a past, present, future series, there would

be no possibility of change, but the past, present, future series is itself unreal,

and therefore, as an essential deWner of time, it renders time itself unreal.25

Perhaps more interesting is the suggestion that space and time are not

single entities, but that there may be a plurality of times and spaces. As

21 On this distinction, see D. Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps meteorologique chez lespremiers historiens grecs’, in Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps, 115–41 at 116: ‘leslinguistes de l’enonciation et les theoriciens de la narration insistent ainsi sur la necessite dedistinguer entre le temps ‘‘reel’’. . . et la reproduction ou la reconstruction de ce temps ‘‘reel’’dans le discours.’22 One of the key problems must be, as Aveni, Empires of Time, 29, notes, that we never sense

time directly. ‘There is no single organism to monitor time the way the eye detects light, the earresponds to sound, or the tongue to taste. Nevertheless, all living organisms sense time byresponding to phenomena that change.’ But the development of the mechanical clock, everpresent and ever ticking as time goes by, has led easily to the impression that time (rather thanthe movement of the hands through space) has been made manifest.23 The explicit expression of this series comes as early as the Iliad where at 1.70 the prophet,

Chalcas, is described as knowing past, present, and future: � � K �Æ � � K�� Æ �æ �K �Æ.24 See J. M. E. McTaggart, ‘The Unreality of Time’, in R. le Poidevin and M. MacBeath (eds.),

The Philosophy of Time (Oxford, 1993; article Wrst published 1908), 23–34.25 For example, the status of both types of temporal series is assumed in this argument to be

the same, but in fact the past, present, future series is, unlike the series of relativity, dependenton perception from a particular standpoint. The former, therefore, does not belong to timeper se, but to a subject, whereas priority or posteriority remains the same from all viewpoints.Furthermore, problems which arise out of the apparent contradiction inherent in the fact thatmoments of the future will be the past for certain events, at the same time as being present orfuture for others (33), seem to be the result of confusion, since it is not that the moment in timeitself is past, present, and future all at once, but rather the past, present, or future quality relatesto individual events within time.


Quinton has observed, although a temporal thing occupies some time, and is

temporally connected to something else, this does not mean that it has to be

connected, or able to be connected, to everything temporal. The assumption

made by those who would organize time and space is, however, that they form

unities. ‘Cartographers and chronologists piece these facts together in a single

system of spatial and temporal positions.’26 The major challenge to the unity

of time and space comes in relation to dreams, stories, and other imaginative

experiences, whose events ‘cannot be located in the framework of public or

historical time’,27with the result that we might want to conclude that there is a

plurality of experiential spaces and times over and above the space and time of

the shared world. However, whereas physical space and time are vast, system-

atic, and public, experiential space and time are small, fragmentary, and

private. Furthermore, it has been suggested that space and time operate rather

diVerently in so far as real space is amenable to plurality, whereas real time is

not, so that any event that an individual remembers must be able to be Wtted

into a single time sequence of his or her experience.28 The attempt to create

single time frames which accommodate diverse events is characteristic of both

recurring cycles, such as annual calendars, and the progressive time of history.

The fact that we shall see in both universal and local historiography, as in

everyday life, a multiplicity of chronological systems in play does not neces-

sitate a belief in multiple times, although the debate remains open as to

whether or not time is capable of plurality.29

Philosophical arguments concerning the nature, reality, or multiplicity of

time are entertaining to ponder, but they need not detain us too long in the

context of this book, since we need simply to highlight the interestingly

problematic nature of time, its passing, its eVects, and its articulation, rather

than trying to solve the philosophical conundrums which concern qualities,

relations, and so on. As becomes clear from anthropological discussion, the

question of how time reXects and matters to society is more helpfully focused

on diVerences in the organization of time, rather than on its conception. As

Bloch has noted, glib claims are often made by cultural relativists that

26 A. Quinton, ‘Spaces and Times’, Philosophy 37 (1962), 130–47 at 131.27 Quinton, ibid. 132.28 Quinton, ibid. 146.29 See, in particular, the interesting work of French scholars on this point and on ancient

temporality in general. Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Introduction. Temporalisations: fondements, de-scriptions, usages’, in Constructions du temps, 11–27 at 15, notes that ‘les Grecs ne pensaient pasle temps des hommes comme ils pensaient celui des dieux’. This assertion of temporal pluralityclearly picks up on the classic article by P. Vidal-Naquet, ‘Temps des dieux, temps des hommes’,Revue de l’histoire des religions 157 (1960), 55–80. See also P. Veyne, Les Grecs ont-ils cru a leursmythes? Essai sur l’imagination constituante (Paris, 1983), 29: ‘Le temps et l’espace de lamythologie etaient secretement heterogenes aux notres’.

10 Introduction

‘concepts of time are closely bound to social organisation and therefore vary

from society to society’, and that ‘the notion of time, which we feel is self-

evident, can be experienced in other cultures in totally diVerent ways, not as

linear but perhaps as static or as cyclic.’30 In fact, as he points out, it is not the

conceptions of time which vary, since these essentially reduce to two types—

linear durational time and cyclical static time, as we have already seen—but

rather the ways of dividing time up, many of which tend to operate concur-

rently, as we shall see.

There is some danger of believing that anthropology and its subject matter

hold the monopoly over discussions of community, society, and identity. But

Brow, albeit in an anthropological journal, has observed that it is not only in

‘traditional’ societies that ‘culturally constructed versions of the past are

authorized to shape a people’s sense of identity’, but rather that a sense of

belonging to any society, including modern industrial societies, ‘is nourished

by being cultivated in the fertile soil of the past’.31 Many aspects of Brow’s

anthropological analysis ring true for the ancient material. His assertion that

we should expect to Wnd ‘the construction of an authoritative tradition that

identiWes all who accept it as members of the same political community’,32

could be directly describing the way in which orators who addressed the polis

both bought into and helped to mould a commonly shared narrative of the

past, as we shall see in chapter 5. Price has oVered an eloquent expression of

the importance of time past in generating and fostering a sense of shared

identity in the context of Greek cities: ‘The development of mythologies, that

is, a shared sense of the past, is one of the key ways that this [articulation of

local identities] was achieved in the ancient world.’33

The notion of commemoration is important in creating a sense of both

continuous development and recurrence. It has been suggested that Western

ideas of memory are closely tied to the notion of linearity, with a stress on

sequence, and the idea that one can retrace events by following a line back

through time.34 But the further suggestion that ‘transformed into strictly

historiographic instructions on how to read the past, the purpose of cultural

memory in the European classical tradition was to recall through reason the

30 M. Bloch, ‘The Past and the Present in the Present’, Man ns 12 (1977), 278–92 at 282.31 See J. Brow, ‘Notes on Community, Hegemony, and the Uses of the Past’, Anthropological

Quarterly 63 (1990), 1–6 at 1 and 3. The sense of belonging is even greater if it involves someelement of common origin through a kinship claim, which is transmitted into a claim tosubstantial identity in the present (3).32 Brow, ibid. 3.33 S. Price, ‘Local Mythologies in the Greek East’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and A. Burnett

(eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford, 2005), 115–24 at 115.34 M. Rowlands, ‘The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture’, in R. Bradley (ed.),

Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society (World Archaeology 25.2; London, 1993), 141–51 at 149.


exemplary nature of the past in order to instruct the present’,35 in fact

introduces an element of repetition with the idea that good or paradigmatic

examples from the past were there to be followed again in the present and

future, thereby yet further reinforcing their deWning role for the community

in question. On this reading, the shared memory of a community allows it to

link itself by a continuous thread back through time to its origins, but also to

contribute to the extension of the sequence whereby the deWnitional para-

digms are repeated and reinforced.36 History is thus generated by the agree-

ment of particular routes through time past, linking particular exemplary

moments.

The creation of mythologies and the construction of histories can, of

course, be expressed in both verbal and non-verbal forms. Although this

book will focus heavily on the verbal representation of certain forms of

history, it is worth noting that material evidence too can be analysed in

similar ways and using the same terminology. In Price’s words on the creation

of local histories, ‘the sculpture and the coins can be seen as ‘‘memory

theatres’’ in which communities represented to themselves and others images

of their past and hence their identities.’37 The way in which time is con-

structed by artistic representation of the past has also been interestingly

discussed by Csapo and Miller: ‘All art shapes time, through narrative (or

its absence), through the ordering of narrated events, through the choice and

treatment of its subjects, in the medium and circumstances of performance,

or in the manner it interpolates the historical consciousness of its con-

sumers.’38 It would be diYcult to Wnd a more apposite formulation of the

subject of this book. Relying on the premise that time is culturally speciWc and

reXective of the society which moulds it, Csapo and Miller examine Greek art

for signs of a shift from aristocratic to democratic temporality in Athens of

the Wfth century bc. In essence, this means a shift from legitimation through

35 Rowlands, ibid. 143.36 An alternative, though not mutually exclusive, view of ancient historiography, and one not

without support in the sources, is to see its business as to commemorate not paradigmaticelements, but precisely those events and features which might be most in danger of oblivion. SeeA. Momigliano, ‘Time in Ancient Historiography’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiog-raphy (Oxford, 1977), 179–204¼History and Theory. Beiheft 6 (1966), 1–23 at 191 for this view.Momigliano sees one of the major diVerences between Jewish and Greek historiography as lyingin the duty of the Jews to remember the past and to give an authoritative version of what otherstoo were supposed to know, as opposed to the Greek wish to record what might otherwise havebeen forgotten (195).

37 Price, ‘Local Mythologies’, 115. See also Nixon, ‘Chronologies of Desire’, 429, for theassertion that ‘monuments constitute the locus of public memory and public forgetting’.

38 E. Csapo and M. Miller, ‘Democracy, Empire, and Art: Toward a Politics of Time andNarrative’, in D. Boedeker and K. A. RaaXaub (eds.), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens (Cambridge, MA and London, 1998), 87–125 at 87.

12 Introduction

the constant recreation of the ancestral paradigms and myths of origin,39 to a

more rational, linear time which privileges the present and the particular over

the timeless and the universal, and places time under human control. Csapo

and Miller’s account of the move towards sequential narrative in art and

historiography might at Wrst appear to be an assertion of one temporal

conception over another, the eVacement of static, cyclical time by linearity.

We might question both the focus on conception over organization as the

culturally variable and malleable feature of time, and the notion that static,

recurring time was taken over by linearity. In fact, Csapo and Miller are quick

to note that recurring, archetypal visions of the past were by no means

eradicated, but were rather transformed in the service of the democratic

polis, with new paradigms being provided by the recent history of the Persian

wars, and new founder Wgures discovered in the tyrannicides.40

We shall come back to look in more detail at the kind of past which Athens

created for itself in historiography and in oratory, but for now the salient

point is the way in which time is conWgured and articulated through the

creation of diVerent histories commemorating signiWcant events of the past

for the present. The coexistence of diVerent types of time raises the question

of how these diVerent types might be expressed and calibrated.41 Here the

matter of scale becomes relevant. It has been argued that not only earth

history, but also human history underwent something of a revolution in

terms of its scope in the wake of evolution theory, which rendered the biblical

time frame gravely inadequate, and by the late nineteenth century had given

birth to a new discipline of anthropology. The proposition that human

history and the entire ethnological process could no longer be Wtted into

the short span between Babel and the present day rendered obsolete the

genealogical family tree of Genesis.42 While anthropology took on the huge

time span now required in order to accommodate the history of mankind,

history remained focused on ‘the built-up body of detailed chronologies and

synchronisms forming an event-Wlled grid of time’.43

39 Csapo and Miller, ibid. 98, see Pindar’s complex chronological layering and temporalcondensations and transgressions, which break free from the Xowof time andmerge themomentof the patron’s glory with the permanent supernatural order, as evocative of aristocratic time.40 Csapo and Miller, ibid. 119.41 For a thoughtful and helpful treatment of the notion of and problems associated with

periodization and diVerent forms of temporal conWguration, see P. J. CorWeld, ‘Naming the Age:History, Historians, and Time’ (London, 1996).42 See T. R. Trautmann, ‘The Revolution in Ethnological Time’,Man ns 27 (1992), 379–97 at

386. Furthermore, biblical ethnology had already come under threat from the longer histories ofthe Egyptians and Babylonians, recorded by Manetho and Berossos. It is interesting, though,that the Old Testament had tried to accommodate the whole of time by making its start point,with the invention of day and night, integral to the Creation story.43 Trautmann, ibid. 389.


The problemmay have appeared to be a new one, but in fact, as we shall see

in chapter 3, already in the ancient world ‘historians’ were concerned about

the chronological scope of their task, and relied on a range of temporal

systems in order to deal with diVerent periods of the past. The issue con-

cerned historical and mythical time rather than the millions of years needed

now to understand the development of human life.44 But the diVerence is one

of degree rather than kind, and the attempts by Greek authors to create and

articulate narratives which could stretch the story back to the beginning of the

cosmos diVer only in expression and not in conception from more modern

strategies. As Koselleck notes, it was not until Augustine that the deWnition of

history emerged as ‘the ordo temporum in which all events were established

and according to which they were arranged’.45 But the notion that temporality

and temporal patterns underpinned human experience was Wrmly embedded

in Greek thought and practice. It was a natural consequence that producing

meaningful narratives to commemorate past events would entail Wnding

formal systems for expressing these temporal patterns. Augustine’s idea that

temporality is part of the divine order implies that it determines the nature of

events, whereas Csapo and Miller’s analysis of Athenian art sees time as the

moulded product of artistic representations of events, bringing us back from a

diVerent angle to the diYcult philosophical issue of whether time is the

framework within which events occur or whether it is shaped by the events

themselves.

The possibility that temporality might be a pre-existing feature of the world

gives rise to the question of natural time, which is articulated by the rhythms

of the day, the lunar cycle, the seasons, and the year. Such time has sometimes

been associated with ‘primitive’ societies, including, in the eyes of some, that

of the Greeks!46 It is clear that the widespread availability of technologies such

as artiWcial electric light and of industrial advances in agriculture has greatly

diminished the relationship, at least in the developed world, between everyday

life, war, and politics and the cycles of nature.47 However, even such tech-

nologies as air conditioning, central heating, and electric light have had a

44 The human genus is generally considered to stretch back around two million years,although the history of homo sapiens is much shorter, at only 200,000 years.

45 R. Koselleck, ‘History, Histories, and Formal Time Structures’, in Futures Past: On theSemantics of Historical Time (Wrst published 1979; trans. with introduction by K. Tribe, NewYork, 1985), 93–104 at 93, where he refers to Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 2.28.44. Thepassage propounds that, although human institutions make up the subject of history, historyitself is a divine creation, and is nothing but the ordo temporum.

46 See E. R. Leach, ‘Primitive Time-Reckoning’, in C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall (eds.),A History of Technology. Vol. I From Early Times to Fall of Ancient Empires (Oxford, 1955),110–27 at 112: ‘Even the Babylonian and Greek astronomers, who eventually developed notionsof time similar to our own, started with a vague cyclical time-distance scale.’

47 See Koselleck, ‘History, Histories, and Formal Time Structures’, 96.

14 Introduction

limited eVect on the impact of the seasons on human behaviour and patterns;

those who work nightshifts continue to suVer; natural time maintains a

strong hold over even the most artiWcially enhanced lives.48 In a Greek

context, as we shall see, the natural cycles played an important part in

articulating daily life and providing a terminology through which time

could be described. The calendars of each polis were organized according to

a sequence of lunar cycles within each annual pattern, while the seasons

determined the rhythm of military campaigns and formed the major frame-

work for Thucydides’ historiographical venture.49 Momigliano has analysed

the characterization of Greek time as predominantly cyclical as opposed to the

time of the Judaeo-Christian tradition which is linear and teleological.50 As he

notes, the dichotomy is of course too stark, since the whole idea of annual

festivals such as Jewish Passover, or the Christian celebration of various

episodes in the life and death of Christ, requires the idea of a cycle, no less

than in the Greek polis. Furthermore, the association of cyclical time with

Greek historiography rather than with everyday life is open to challenge.51

And within the context of the life of the polis, the notion of repetition and

cycles was Wrmly embedded.

Another natural and recurring form of temporal patterning is that of the

human life. This book started with Solon’s calculation of the span of a man’s

life, which one might see as a microcosm of history as a whole.52 The

biographical image for history is dismissed by Momigliano as inappropriate

48 See the aptly named C. Callender and R. Edley, Introducing Time (Royston, 2004), 7,however, for the way in which some creatures adhere to temporal cycles which appear to have noexplanation in the natural world, such as the seventeen-year hibernation of some cicadas.49 W. Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical (Wrst published 1977; trans. by J. RaVan,

Oxford, 1985) 226, notes, ‘it is remarkable how little the [sc. Greek] calendar takes account ofthe natural rhythm of the agricultural year: there is no month of sowing or harvest and nogrape-gathering month; the names are taken from the artiWcial festivals of the polis.’ However,see E. JeVreys, ‘The Labours of the Twelve Months in Twelfth-century Byzantium’, in E. StaVordand J. Herrin (eds.), PersoniWcation in the Greek World (Aldershot, 2005), 309–23 at 309, for theway in which the personiWcation of months in late antiquity were depicted ‘with attributes thatrepresent the civic and agricultural pursuits deemed typical of that month’: January as a consul,May garlanded with roses, August drenched in sweat.50 See Momigliano, ‘Time in Ancient Historiography’.51 As Momigliano, ibid. 187–9, notes, Herodotus seems to have believed in chains of events

rather than cycles, Thucydides complicates the notion of historical repetition at every oppor-tunity (over the plague and over stasis in Corcyra), and Polybius probably drew his theory ofcyclical government from a political philosopher.52 An interesting example is oVered in Plutarch’s Life of Theseus—Theseus in old age comes

to be plagued by demagogues (35.3: ŒÆ��Æªøª�E�) and Spartan invasions (in response toTheseus’ theft of Helen at 31.2), just as the city of his creation would be in its later life. On thelinks between Theseus and the world of late Wfth-century Athens, see C. B. R. Pelling, ‘MakingMyth look like History: Plutarch’s Theseus-Romulus’ in Plutarch and History : Eighteen Studies(London, 2002), 171–95 at 181–4.


to ancient historiography: ‘No ancient historian, as far as I can remember,

ever wrote the history of a state in terms of births and rebirths. Isolated

metaphors do not make historical interpretations.’ The Wrst part of this claim

is disputable,53 and the patterning of time in terms of human lives is by no

means absent from the sources. This can be on a small scale—Aristophanes

plays in the Clouds with the ‘periodization’ of a human life by suggesting that

certain stages could be repeated in place of others. The notion of old age as a

second childhood Wts neatly into a discussion about role reversal of parents

and children, which underpins much of the humour in the play, but it also

jokes about the possibility of turning the clock back or perhaps, rather

diVerently, reversing the Xow of time.54 Diodorus Siculus (10.9.5) neatly

draws together the idea of the ages of mankind—child, lad, young man,

and old man—with a temporal pattern according to seasons where he brings

these two forms of natural time into analogy with each other. First and most

famously, the analogy was drawn between human time and that of the natural

world by Homer (Iliad 6.145–9) who described the generations of man being

like leaves on a tree, which fall in autumn and are replaced in spring.

Articulating time with reference not to chronological punctuation marks

but to the phases or stages which intervene is unsurprisingly common. The

Hesiodic scheme of metal ages is but one version of this form of periodiza-

tion, and is strongly expressive of a linear sense of time.55 Incidentally, it is

interesting that some diVerent phases of the scheme are introduced by

characters who appear regularly in the fragments of Greek local historiog-

raphy. Thus, the age of bronze begins with the Ogygian Xood, and that of the

heroes with the Deucalian Xood. As we shall see in chapter 4, both Ogygus

and Deucalion are found regularly in the local histories, but out of context. It

would be interesting to consider both whether they were deemed there too to

be acting as chronological punctuation marks, ushering in a new age, and

whether the appearance of such Panhellenic Wgures is indicative of a less

parochial conception of local history than we might imagine.

53 See, for example, Dicaearchus, Life of Greece (´�� ¯ºº��) or Theopompus’ decision toentitle his universal history the Philippica as though history could be encapsulated by the aVairsof one man. Although not using the terminology of birth and rebirth, Strabo’s potted historiesof individual places in the Roman empire trace the cycle of foundation, development, decline,sometimes destruction, in an almost biographical mould.

54 Aristophanes, Clouds 1417. The proverb that old people were children for a second time(�d� �ÆE�� ƒ ª�æ��) turns up several times in extant literature, such as Aeschylus, Agamem-non 74–82 and Eumenides 38, Plato, Laws 646a.

55 See Hesiod, Works and Days, 109–201. It is noteworthy that this work encapsulates bothprogressive and recurring concepts of time so elegantly, the linearity of the sequence of agesbeing complemented by the cyclical time of the annual round of agricultural tasks. For thediVerent concepts of time underlying the Theogony and the Works and Days, see Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Historia et historiographie grecque: ‘‘le temps des hommes’’ ’, 92–106.

16 Introduction

But dividing up time according to a sequence of periods was prone to a

biological metaphor also. The organic view of historical development

through phases was most eloquently expressed by Florus with his metaphor

of the stages of life, applied to the history of Rome: ‘If anyone were to look at

the Roman people as he would an individual and review its entire life, how it

began and grew up, how it arrived at the so-called fruition of youth, how

after that it, as it were, grew old, he will discover its four stages and

progressions.’56 Makdisi has analysed the relationship between the annual

commemoration of an individual life in the form of the diary and the

Islamic historiographical tradition. As he notes,57 the same word, ta’rikh, is

used to denote both diary and history, and essentially refers to the ‘Wxed

beginning of the month’. The diary of Ibn Banna’ included this Wxing of the

new month even when there was nothing to record for that day, suggesting

that not only the content of each span of time was important, but also the

temporal structuring itself.58 The ta’rikh, as a form of writing which included

both the aVairs of an individual and those of the world at large, in both an

annual cycle and an annalistic record, blurred the boundaries between the

individual life and the span of history, and between recurring and linear

time.59 In the words of Sakhawi: ‘As a technical term, ta’rikh is the indication

of time that serves accurately to establish circumstances such as the dates of

birth of hadith transmitters and of religious leaders, the dates of death . . .

Important events and occurrences that happen to take place are added to this

[including wars and battles and conquests] . . . It may also be extended to

minor matters such as the construction of mosques, schools, bridges . . .

earthquakes, conXagrations . . . In sum, the term ta’rikh signiWes a branch

of learning that is concerned with research regarding the occurrences which

take place in time, in the intention to establish their character and their place

56 Florus 1.1.4. After his summary of the four stages of the ‘life’ of the Roman empire, Florusgoes on to outline them in more detail and identify a period of Roman history with each stage—infantia, adulescentia, iuventus, senectus (1.1.5–8).57 G. Makdisi, ‘The Diary in Islamic Historiography: Some Notes’, History and Theory 25

(1986), 173–85 at 176.58 In this respect, it is interesting to compare historians such as Diodorus Siculus and Livy,

both of whom continue to record the accession of new magistrates who provide the annalisticframework of the account, even if nothing else. The passing of time thus becomes a historicalevent in its own right. Tacitus interestingly reconverts the existence of annual magistracies into apurely temporal marker by placing the new consuls for each year in the ablative absolute,thereby removing them from the syntax of the main clause, just as they have been removed fromthe mainstream of history by the Principate.59 We shall see later in this chapter in more detail the way in which the annual cycle of the

calendar not only provides ways of expressing more precisely when within a year a particularevent happens, but also encapsulates the whole of time past in a selective and telescoped waythrough the annual commemoration of certain signiWcant moments.


in time. In fact, it is concerned with everything that was (and is) in the

world.’60

More common than mapping out history in terms of a single human life is

articulating time past in terms of a sequence of connected and overlapping

lives, or rather of generations. We shall see the generation, usually assumed to

be thirty years,61 used commonly as a standard chronological measure in both

universal and local historiographical texts, particularly in connection with the

distant mythical period, when other forms of temporal patterning, such as by

annual magistracies, were not available.62 The use of the generation and of

genealogical tables oVers a basic link between humanity and the progress of

time, and seems to be almost universal, according to anthropologists.63 The

concept appears in both Homer and Hesiod and in the lyric poets.64 It is not,

therefore, surprising that the Wrst attempts to establish a chronology that

could be used in Greek historiography involved lists of rulers, based on a

standard generational length.65

The use of generations to calculate the extent of a dynasty brings us to the

role of rulers and dynasties as chronological measures. It is worth noting that,

unless they are connected with a genealogy containing named individuals,

rulers and dynasties provide not only a method of periodization, but also a

terminology for dating, whereas generations are used as a measure of extent

only. The idea of both dividing up time and naming each segment according

to the dominant monarch is easily familiar to anyone who learned British

history as a sequence of ‘ages’ associated with an individual—the Victorian

60 See Makdisi, ‘The Diary in Islamic Historiography’, 179.61 The scholia to Homer’s references to generations, as at Iliad 1.249–52 and Odyssey 3.245,

make plain that the ancients considered a generation to be a period of up to thirty years, thetime span needed for the completion of the cycle of birth and reproduction (from an undeniablymale perspective). In fact, the length of a ‘standard’ generation seems to have been variable,from thirty, to thirty-three, to forty years. See R. Ball, ‘Generation Dating in Herodotos’,Classical Quarterly 29 (1979), 276–81, for the argument that Herodotus’ use of generationswas less systematic than some have thought, and that particularly the notion of ‘three gener-ations to 100 years’ seems to be an Egyptian borrowing.

62 D. W. Prakken, Studies in Greek Genealogical Chronology (Lancaster, 1943), 4, implies thatgenealogical chronology was used whenever it could be, but that ‘it was not easily applied to thesections [sc. of Ephorus] on contemporary events’, but I would place the order of preferences theother way round, or perhaps simply acknowledge that diVerent chronological systems better suitdiVerent periods and narratives. Prakken’s book oVers a thorough survey of the use of gener-ational chronology in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Ephorus.

63 Prakken, ibid. 2.64 Prakken, ibid. 5–17, discusses all of these.65 Hecataeus’ Spartan king list from Heracles to his own time stands at the forefront, but his

decision to assume a forty-year generation is striking. See F. Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik: EineSammlung der Fragmente (New York, 1973; Wrst published 1902), 43–4, for the idea of fortyyears old as the point of intellectual acme.

18 Introduction

Age, the Edwardian Age, the Thatcher years, and so on.66 It is no diVerent in

the case of whole ruling dynasties such as Tudors and Stuarts. The use of

dynastic ‘eras’ to map out time and describe periods within it is well attested

for the ancient world too. Particularly from the Hellenistic period onwards,

some cities preferred eras to eponyms, and used them to make political points

in a public and widespread way. Just as we shall see particular events com-

memorated in the annual cycle of calendars, another way of commemorating

positive moments in history was to build them into one’s time reckoning.

Under the Roman Principate, cities which wished to express loyalty to Rome

might choose to date their history in terms of the Augustan era.67 Also

regularly commemorated in the selection of eras was the liberation of cities.68

Kushnir-Stein has examined the Palestinian coins minted in the Hellenistic

and Roman periods, and noted the way in which the system of dating changed

over time and according to circumstance.69 In the third century bc, regnal

dating was used in the Ptolemaic mints at Ptolemais, Gaza, and Joppe. Under

Seleucid control, both royal coinage, dated now by the Seleucid era of 312 bc,

and city coinage, often mentioning Seleucid dynastic names, appeared.70

Finally, at the end of the second century bc, individual city eras appeared

on coins, with an Ascalon coin of year 6 and Gaza coins of year 13/14

exemplifying the trend. The fact that ‘the introduction of the eras of auton-

omy was accompanied by the adoption of an individual calendar by each

city’,71 provides a neat illustration of the way in which the organization

of time was, and is, integral to the identity and self-assertion of a community.

In the case of Palestinian coinage, the introduction of new eras to commem-

orate the changing status of the cities and their relationship to ruling dynas-

ties continued long into the Roman imperial period. ‘Thus it appears that all

city eras of Palestine marked turning points in their histories of their cities.’72

The notion of the era seems to have served them well in articulating time.73

66 The practice is, of course, by no means conWned to history lessons. Architecture, fashion,and furniture are but a few examples of the Welds in which the designation ‘Victorian’ or‘Georgian’ would be a natural temporal indicator.67 See B. H. McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods

from Alexander the Great down to the Reign of Constantine (323 b.c.–a.d. 337) (Ann Arbor,2002), 172 and 175, for examples of Augustan time. Paphlagonia counted from the twelfthconsulship of Augustus; Samos and Philadelphia dated their inscriptions to Augustus’ victory(�� B� ˚Æ��Ææ�� Œ��).68 E. J. Bickermann, Chronology of the Ancient World 2 (Ithaca, NY, 1980), 72–3, discusses the

‘freedom eras’ of cities such as Tyre.69 A. Kushnir-Stein, ‘City Eras on Palestinian Coinage’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and

A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford, 2005), 157–61.70 Gaza was thus Seleuceia and Ptolemais appeared as Antioch.71 Kushnir-Stein, ibid. 157.72 Kushnir-Stein, ibid. 159.73 An era need not reXect the political status of a city. Olympiads, Pythiads, Isthmiads, and

Nemiads—eras associated with festival games—all appeared as forms of dating in inscriptions.See McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 176.


As we have already seen, eras were very often associated with particular

rulers or dynasties, being simply the sum of the sequence. Whereas some

rulers, Seleucus I or Queen Victoria, reigned for many years with the result

that their eras covered a long time span, other forms of organizing time

according to political power are conWned to a shorter and predetermined

length of time, commonly a year. The year comprises both a labelled and

countable unit,74 by which historical time can be indicated and measured, and

a period which contains a highly signiWcant natural cycle, that of the seasons,

and consequently has become a signiWcant unit also in political terms.75 It

should, however, be noted immediately that the solar year of the seasons is not

identical with the lunar year. Greek distinguishes linguistically between the

two, and we shall see that the diVerent types of year gave rise to concurrent

calendars.76

The identiWcation of years by annually elected magistrates is an essential

feature of the organization of time in the ancient world, both for the Greek

poleis and for Rome. In Athens the eponymous magistrate was the chief

archon, starting his year of oYce on 1 Hecatombaion, but each polis had its

own magistrates by whom to mark out time. The archons of Delos from 326

to 168 bc are known from the inventory lists of temples, some lists of

stephanophoroi are extant (from Miletus, Priene, and Heraclea), and there

are fragmentary lists of eponyms from Boeotia, Achaea, Delphi, Aetolia, and

Thessaly.77 The notion of eponymous dating might seem unwieldy to a

modern readership which is embedded in a system of years numbered from

a Wxed starting point. Although we use an extreme form of dating by eras

based around a event now two millennia old, it is noteworthy that our own

system of numbered years was not devised until the sixth century ad,78 and

was not transformed into a bc and ad system until 1627 by the astronomer

Petavius. The successful translation of the eponymous dating of Greek poleis

into Julian dates which are meaningful to us depends on the coexistence of a

list of magistrates. The question of when the oYce of archon became eponymous

74 It is worth noting, though, that numbers and names fulWl diVerent functions—the numberlocates the year within an era, the name identiWes the eponymous magistrate.

75 Bickermann, Chronology of the Ancient World, 63, sums up the dual nature of the year asfollows: ‘Absolute chronology borrows the concept of ‘‘year’’ from the calendar, but thechronological year is a historical unit, that is, a link in a series of years, whether they benumbered or otherwise individualized. This labelling distinguishes the chronographical yearfrom the calendar unit.’

76 McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 150,notes the diVerence between the natural year (K�ØÆı �) and the civil year, which started on theWrst day of the Wrst month of the magisterial year (��).

77 See McLean, ibid. 157, for the use in Egypt and Pergamon of the king as eponymousmagistrate, counting from the year of his accession.

78 At the time of the cleric, Dionysius Exiguus.

20 Introduction

has been the subject of some discussion. Although the Athenian archon list,

going back to the sixth or seventh century, was not set up until c.425 bc, the

inscribed list of victors in dithyrambic and dramatic contests held at the City

Dionysia dates the earliest victors to the archonship of Menon (473/2), and

probably went further back still.79 It was not until 421 that archon dates were

regularly used in the prescripts of inscribed Athenian decrees, but it seems

that archons were used regularly for dating long before the list of archons was

published on stone, and that therefore the archonship should be seen as the

eponymous oYce from earlier than the published list.80

The archon was not only the eponymous oYcial in Athens, but was also the

designated regulator of the lunar, or festival, calendar. We shall come back to

this role, but Wrst it is worth noting that Athens, like many Greek poleis, ran

several calendars concurrently, which complicated his task.81 It is true that we

too have many diVerent ways of organizing and describing time which are

simultaneously in force. We might correctly describe our place in space in a

multitude of ways—designating ourselves as being in a continent, a country, a

county, a town or village, a street, and a particular building, all accurately, but

with diVering degrees of speciWcity depending on context and audience. In

the same way, we might identify our millennium, century, decade, year,

season, month, week, day, time of day, or hour and minute, all truthfully,

though diVerently expressed.82 Furthermore, we are accustomed to time

systems which are internal to a particular sequence of events and meaningful

only to a restricted group of people. Like the ‘war years’ used by Thucydides,

we speak of ‘the third day of the holiday’, or ‘the sixth week of the university

term’. We do, however, rely on a single civil calendar for identifying each day

within the year.83 But in Athens, three continuous calendars were in operation

79 On this see J. P. Sickinger, Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens (Chapel Hill andLondon, 1999), 42. The inscription, IG ii2 2318, dates to the mid fourth century.80 See, for example, the list of Athenian regulations concerning Miletus from 460/59 bc,

which twice names the archonship of Euthynus (IG i3 21).81 As too did, for example, the Egyptians, who employed a lunar and a solar calendar, with

the same names, as well as the Seleucid calendar. From Ptolemy Philadelphus, state documentswere double-dated according both to the Ptolemaic and the Egyptian solar calendars. In the end,Macedonian month names came into usage, with no relation to the moon whatsoever. SeeMcLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 167–8.82 For the multiplicity of ways in which time may be organized and expressed in both the

ancient and the modern world, Aveni, Empires of Time, oVers a most stimulating and wide-ranging treatment, which is sensitive to both continuity and change across time and acrosscultures.83 Religious elements in the calendar, traditionally Christian in Britain, do still have an

impact on, for example, the organization of the school year, but they oVer only islands of afragmented festival calendar and not a coherent and continuous system for organizing the timeof the whole year.


at once—the lunar regulatory calendar,84 the festival calendar, which used the

same month names but was often out of phase with the lunar calendar, and

the prytany calendar.85 Although the archonship was the oYce which gave its

name to the year, the prytany calendar was used by the boule and the ecclesia

to administer business and to date oYcial documents, with days within each

of the ten prytanies being numbered sequentially and often supplemented by

calendar date. The start of the prytany year coincided with the Wrst day of the

lunar calendar year, namely 1 Hecatombaion, only from 407/6 onwards,86 and

even then there is some controversy over precisely what pattern of prytany

lengths followed.87

Alongside the ten prytanies ran the lunar months which were the basis of

the festival calendar. To complicate matters, diVerent cities had diVerent

names for their months, not surprisingly since they were often linked to the

local festivals.88 Even individual poleis did not always keep the same months

over time. Athens started its festival year with Hecatombaion, but by the Wrst

century ad the year started with Boedromion. Within each month, the days

were divided into three decades. Once the Wrst day had been designated that

of the ‘new moon’ (��ı��Æ), the rest of the Wrst decade was numbered the

second, third, fourth, and so on, of the ‘month as it became established’

(ƒ�Æ��ı �� ). The middle decade was simply numbered the eleventh,

twelfth, thirteenth, and so on, and marked the period of the full moon. The

last decade, somewhat confusingly, if not illogically, was numbered backwards,

84 As W. K. Pritchett, Ancient Athenian Calendars on Stone (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963),313, notes, the regulatory calendar, or the calendar kata theon (‘according to the god’), served asa base mark for the degree of the archon’s tampering in the festival calendar. Dates kata theonappear for the Wrst time in the second century bc.

85 B. D. Meritt, The Athenian Year (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961) makes a serious attemptto grapple with the problems of temporal organization in Athens, and the diYculties entailed byits use of three calendars concurrently, but is pilloried by Pritchett in Ancient Athenian Calendarson Stone. The clearest exposition is still A. E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendarsand Years in Classical Antiquity (Munich, 1972), 57–64; 64–138 then moves systematicallyaround the Greek poleis examining the evidence for their calendars one by one.

86 See F. M. Dunn, ‘The Council’s Solar Calendar’, American Journal of Philology 120 (1999),369–80, for the argument that the council adopted a solar, rather than lunar, calendar brieXy inthe late Wfth century.

87 The Aristotelian Atheniaion Politeia 43 claims that the prytanies followed regularly, withsix of 36 days and six of 35. P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia(Oxford, 1981), 519, expresses scepticism about the Athenaion Politeia’s reliability on thismatter. ‘A.P.’s placing of the longer prytanies at the beginning of the year is merely an illustrationand was not followed every year.’ By contrast, see W. K. Pritchett and O. Neugebauer, TheCalendars of Athens (Cambridge, MA, 1947), 3, for the view that Aristotle’s statement about thenumber of days in a prytany provides the only authoritative basis for working out the calendarof a given year (in his time).

88 As Burkert, Greek Religion, 225, comments, ‘there are virtually as many calendars as thereare cities and tribes’.

22 Introduction

as it led to the end of the month. So, the 21st of the month was called the

tenth, the 22nd the ninth, and so on, of the ‘month as it waned’ (��e�

�Ł�� or º�ª�� or �Æı��ı or I�Ø ��). The Wnal day was called

both old and new to signify the transition from one lunar cycle to the next.89

This scheme is, broadly speaking, the one most commonly attested in the

evidence, but there were variations. Sometimes the counting of days recom-

menced with the second decade; sometimes the third decade was designated

‘the after-20s’ (�� NŒ��Æ�) and it could be counted either forwards or

backwards.

The months formed the framework for an elaborate calendar of dedications

to the gods, which has been the subject of much study. We shall see later in

this chapter how the festival calendar, as indeed other forms of dating and

temporal organization, were part of everyday life for the citizens of the polis,

not only through their practical experience, but also through the public

display of inscriptions which incorporated the lunar months in their dating

systems, set out the festival calendar, or explicitly discussed the problems of

keeping the festival calendar roughly in line with the solar year. There are two

obvious ways in which to analyse this calendar, by time and by deity. The

latter is adopted by Erika Simon in her much-cited work on the Attic festivals,

on the grounds that the Athenian months are not meaningful to us.90 Thus

she gathers up all the festivals for which there is evidence, according to the

god in whose name the festival was performed, starting with Zeus. This

system has obvious disadvantages. The main festival for Zeus took place in

the last month of the Attic year, Scirophorion. Furthermore, the organization

by deity gives no sense of the Athenian experience, as the festival calendar

progressed through the year. But her study nevertheless throws out some

interesting points about the relationship between dedications to the gods and

the organization of time for the polis.

The parallels between Attic festivals and those elsewhere show both a degree

of uniformity across the Greek poleis and the fact that each city had its own

way of worshipping the gods and thus organizing its time.91 Just as the Attic

89 For the general pattern, see R. Hannah, Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Timein the Classical World (London, 2005), 43. The whole system is attributed by Plutarch, Life ofSolon 25.3, to that eponymous lawgiver. As so often, Aristophanes reXects quite how aware theAthenian audience might have been of such issues of calendar reform. In Clouds, Strepsiades andPheidippides discuss the collection of debts in one ‘old’ and one ‘new’ day, according to Solon’slaw (1177–201).90 E. Simon, Festivals of Attica: An Archaeological Commentary (Madison, 1983), 4.91 As so often, the medieval festival calendar in England oVers a helpful parallel closer to

home. DiVerent parishes would commemorate their own local saints in an annual cycle offestivals, which punctuated the year. The relics of St Beornwald were held in his own parish ofBampton in Oxfordshire, but would be visited by the chaplain of the daughter church on certain


lunar year started in midsummer with the month of Hecatombaion, which

was the month of the Panathenaea, so too did other poleis start the year with

the month of the most important festival, in Delphi the month of Apellaios

for Apollo. In spite of Apollo’s obvious link to Delphi, his importance also to

the patterning and designation of Athenian time is clear.92 Indeed, the fact

that two festivals in his honour, the Thargelia and Pyanepsia, were sometimes

celebrated under the name of Helios and the Horai, strongly supports the

notion of Apollo in Athens as a god of temporal organization. The local

variations on the festival calendar are occasionally more revealing than the

Attic versions. For example, the women’s festivals for Demeter of the Thes-

mophoria and the Stenia were held in the second week of Pyanepsion, but in

Boeotia and elsewhere this month was far more resonantly called Demetrios.

Sometimes the local nature of the festival calendar operated on a much

smaller scale. The villages of Attica tended to hold their Dionysia in midwin-

ter, in the second half of the month Poseideon, but each chose its own date.93

Another aspect of the festival calendar which emerges from a god-by-god

approach is the non-annual nature of some of the celebrations. Although it

was essentially a calendar of sacriWces and festivals which ran each year, it was

only every four years that a new peplos was woven for Athena to be presented

at the Great Panathenaea.94 Simon’s claim that the Athenians did not think in

annual terms—‘they thought rather in greater dimensions of time, namely in

the cycle of four years (the halved ��ªÆ� K�ØÆı �), in which they had their

main festivals, like the Panathenaea or the Olympic games’95—is somewhat

exaggerated, but it is certainly true that there were diVerent scales of temporal

patterning embedded in the festival calendar, and not only a yearly one.

A diVerent approach to the festival calendar has been taken by Mikalson.

Rather than examining the festivals by deity, he chose to gather all the

evidence for what happened on each day of each month.96 Apart from oVering

feast days through the year—St Beornwald’s day (21st December), Christmas, Palm Sunday,Easter, Rogation Days, Pentecost, and the Nativity of St John the Baptist (to whom the mainchurch was dedicated). See J. Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Oxford, 1998/1994), 76–7: ‘Whatwe seem to have here is an aYrmation of the integrity of the ancient parish by means of a cycleof feasts and processions, attended by the subordinate clergy and initiated by the festival of thelocal saint himself.’

92 See Simon, Festivals of Attica, 73: ‘Apollo and his sister Artemis had more inXuence on thenames of Attic months than any other gods, and their festivals were deeply rooted in theAthenian calendar.’

93 Simon, ibid. 101.94 Furthermore, the Parthenon frieze depicted not the annual procession, but the four-yearly

Great Panathenaea.95 Simon, ibid. 42.96 We shall see evidence for ancient interest in this kind of chronography in the next chapter

with Philochorus’ On Days.

24 Introduction

a stronger sense of what the patterning of time through the year might have

been like for an Athenian citizen, which months were most dominated by

religious festivals, how spread out they were, and so on, this approach also

gives some sense of a smaller cycle, that is the monthly repetition of sacriWces

and festivals. The pattern which he discovers is of a system of monthly

festivals, which dominate the Wrst decade of each month.97 Mikalson’s at-

tempt in setting out what happened on each day of the year is to bring

together what he sees as having become two separate Welds of study, that is

religious history and civic life as witnessed in the extant epigraphy: ‘A year

calendar including all the known festivals and meetings is the single bridge

which can span the gulf now existing between these two disciplines’, so that we

can, for example, understand whether a legislative assembly could meet on a

festival day.98

Trying to bring together the diVerent forms of temporal articulation,

which, after all, were simply ways of dividing up roughly the same block of

time for diVerent purposes, was an aim in the ancient world too, as well as a

cause of vexation. We shall see in the next section some evidence for the

manipulation of the festival calendar in order to avoid too much divergence

from the solar calendar. Much of the evidence for intercalating months comes

from Athens, but other poleis too adopted the same practice. In Delphi, for

example, the sixth month Poitropios was followed by a second Poitropios in

certain years; in Aetolia, the intercalary month followed Dios and was called

Dios embolios. Athens intercalated a month known as Poseideon beta or ‘the

later Poseideon’ (—��Ø��g� ��or —��Ø��g� o��æ��).99 Pritchett concludesthat ‘manipulation of the calendar was common in the Greek city-states’,100

but this view has been subject to more recent criticism.101 The advantage

97 J. D. Mikalson, The Sacred and Civilian Calendar of the Athenian Year (New Jersey, 1975),14–24: Month 1 contains Noumenia; 2 Agathos Daimon; 3 Athena’s birthday; 4 Heracles,Hermes, Aphrodite, Eros; 6 Artemis’ birthday; 7 Apollo’s birthday; 8 Poseidon and Theseus.

98 Mikalson, ibid. 1 and 3.99 McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 160–1.

But the epigraphic evidence suggests that Poseideon was not the only month, which wasrepeated. See IG i3 78.53–4, discussed below p. 41.100 Pritchett, Ancient Athenian Calendars on Stone, 345. Pritchett and Neugebauer, The

Calendars of Athens, gather the evidence for calendar manipulation by other Greek poleis also.See 20–1 on an early third-century decree containing a law of the Euboean cities, which regulatesthe intercalation of the civil calendars in order to facilitate the performance of the Dionysiacartists (IG 12 (9) 207).101 See A. G. Woodhead, ‘The Calendar of the Year 304/3 bc in Athens’, Hesperia 58 (1989),

297–301, for the point that we should not assume the existence of intercalation too readily. Hetakes the case of the year 304/3 bc, known not to be an intercalary year in Athens, and arguesconvincingly on the basis of a story in Plutarch, Life of Demetrius 26, that a decree from that year,published by A. P. Matthaiou, ‘� `ØŒe ł��Ø��Æ �F 304/3 �:� .’,Horos 4 (1986), 19–23, in which��æ�ı appears, more probably refers to the renaming of a month, rather than to intercalation.


oVered by a formal calendar systemwas continuity. As Gell comments, ‘just as

a map replaces the discontinuous, patchy space of practical paths by the

homogeneous space of geometry, so a calendar substitutes a linear, homoge-

neous, continuous time for practical time, which is made up of incommen-

surable islands of duration, each with its own rhythm’.102 But when the

diVerent continuous systems comprising lunar months and a solar year did

not match up, the organization of time was still a problem.

It was the archon’s job to try to Wnd a solution. Not only did he give the

year its name, but he was also in charge of the festival calendar. Anthropo-

logical studies show that complete convergence between the calendar keeper

of a community and the ‘Big Man’ is rather unusual. Among the Simbo of the

Solomon Islands, the calendar is controlled by the bangara, who is responsible

for the insertion of intercalary months and making the calendar tally with nut

production.103 But on the whole, calendar expertise seems to be spread among

the tribal elite, and requires the consensus of the community at large.104 Even

if the archon took responsibility for arranging the year’s calendar, as we shall

see in the next section, the time according to which the polis ran its aVairs was

a public matter, of interest and concern to all citizens, and therefore must

have gained at least the tacit agreement of the community at large. In any case,

the process was ultimately imprecise, and it has been suggested that modern

scholars, living as they do in a world dominated by the tyranny of the clock,

have demanded a precision in ancient calendar manipulation which was not

required by the current circumstances. ‘Equations’ between the diVerent

calendars were not regular and perfect. ‘They point to a Xuid system, in

which the synchronisms of the two with regard to each other, and, in

addition, of both vis-a-vis the solar year, were always running into trouble.’105

On the other hand, as we shall see when considering the evidence for everyday

awareness of time as a malleable concept, the way in which it was mapped out

did matter to the polis enough for it to be the subject of jokes in the theatre

and of expensive inscriptions set up in public.106 Burkert has claimed that

102 A. Gell, The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images(Oxford and Providence, 1992), 296.

103 Gell, ibid. 306–7.104 See Gell, ibid. 301–3, for the way in which the Mursi of Ethiopia rely on calendrical

experts to tell them which bergu (or month) they are in, but the Wnal arbitration lies withcommunally agreed village opinion.

105 A. G. Woodhead, The Study of Greek Inscriptions (Cambridge, 1959), 116.106 This evidence seems to me to carry some weight against the arguments of F. M. Dunn,

‘Tampering with the Calendar’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 123 (1999), 213–31,which are directly targeted at Pritchett. Dunn argues that Pritchett has over-interpreted theevidence and painted an unfair picture of ‘wilful manipulation’ by unscrupulous archons. Infact, the scholarly dispute is more a matter of emphasis and tone rather than one of substance,since both agree that calendar adjustments were made.

26 Introduction

‘the calendar of a city or tribe is always at the same time a fundamental

document for the locally deWned religion’,107 but we could go further and join

Sourvinou-Inwood in seeing the arrangement of time encapsulated in the

religious calendar as fundamental for the identity of the whole polis.108

3. TIME FOR EVERYONE

We have seen various ways in which time might be seen as a constructed

concept, and prone to diVerent types of organization. Just as there is still now

a multiplicity of ways in which the annual cycle can be conWgured and a range

of ways in which the past can be periodized and articulated, so too was this the

case in the poleis of Greece. The fact that cities had their own complex

calendars—sometimes several at once—and a long and signiWcant history

makes it unsurprising that scholars in the ancient world would turn their

attention to the study of the formal chronological systems and of the calendar

problems which were developed. These treatises hold a clear interest in their

own right as pieces of intellectual history, and will be discussed in the next

chapter. However, the purpose of this work is to consider time not primarily

as an abstract concept, but rather as a more broadly constructed and socially

reXective phenomenon. The emerging complexity of conceptions of time, not

just in our world, but also in that of the Greeks, suggests that their complex

calendars and strong interest in the value of time past might lead us to see a

close connection between these and the life of the polis. Furthermore Ricoeur,

followed by Bouvier, has articulated the way in which formal temporal

systems act as bridges between the real time of the world and the represen-

tational time of narrative,109 not least historical narrative, using the notion of

‘tiered time’: ‘Et comme modele de ‘‘tiers temps’’, le philosophe cite le calen-

drier, l’enumeration des generations successives, les archives, les documents:

autant d’outils qui permettent a l’historien d’etablir une connexion entre

le temps reel et le temps discursif.’110 Thus the chronological strategies of

107 See Burkert, Greek Religion, 225.108 C. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘What is Polis Religion?’, in O. Murray and S. Price (eds.), The

Greek City from Homer to Alexander (Oxford, 1990), 295–322 at 322, claims that ‘the Greek polisarticulated, and was articulated by, religion’.109 In the words of P. Ricoeur, Temps et recit III: Le temps raconte (Paris, 1985), 189: ‘Ces

instruments de pensee ont ceci de remarquable qu’ils jouent le role de connecteurs entre letemps vecu et le temps universel.’110 Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps meteorologique’, 116: ‘As an example of ‘‘tiered

time’’, the philosopher cites the calendar, the listing of successive generations, archives, docu-ments: no less tools which enable the historian to establish a connection between real time andthe time of discourse.’

Time for everyone 27

historians, on which this book will focus, not only oVer a framework within

which to tell a linear, but structured, story; they also anchor the representa-

tional narrative in the real, lived-in, temporal world of events, thus bringing

together the life of the polis and the constructed world of the historical

narrative. I shall consider ‘time in action’ in diVerent contexts in the following

chapters, but should like to focus here on establishing an important precon-

dition for the direction in which this study will move; namely that the world

of time as an abstract, constructed phenomenon, which could be manipulated

at will, periodized, or formed into calendars, was a world familiar to a broad

cross section of the inhabitants of the Greek poleis, and not just to a rariWed

intellectual elite, in spite of Herodotus’ association of the ability to calculate

time with the pinnacles of wisdom.

One might argue that it was necessary only for the authors of speeches,

histories, plays, works of art or coins, to understand the Xexibility of time and

its constructions, while the audiences could remain blissfully unaware. How-

ever, if we are, as I shall attempt, to argue for time (and particularly the

past) as one of the matrices through which whole communities deWned

themselves, then it would be helpful to establish that they could be doing so

with some degree of self-conscious awareness. I shall therefore present some

evidence for the notion that one need not have fallen among the number of

the seven sages or have been a professional chronographer or calendar maker

in order to have had an interest in and an understanding of the constructed

nature of Greek time.

We shall see in the course of this book that the preoccupations of chrono-

graphers were by no means exclusive to them, but were shared by historians

who needed chronological frameworks within which to compose the past of

one or more poleis, as well as by their audiences and readers. In the same way it

would be misleading to assume that the scholarly Wgures who analysed the

festival calendar of the city were engaged in an activity that was removed from

the everyday life of the citizens. We have already seen that, at the most basic

level, the festivals structured the public life of the polis. As Parker says, in

discussing the sixth-century attempt to codify the festival calendar more

systematically,111 ‘the state festival-programmewas part of the publicly deWned

conditions of life for an Athenian no less than were the laws on inheritance or

adultery.’ As we shall see, general awareness not only of the festival calendar but

also of its proneness to manipulation seems to have been high.

Here, then, I shall consider some of the media through which we can gain

insight into the everyday assumptions and conceptual presuppositions of

the potential audiences of historiography, oratory, and so on. In spite of the

111 See R. Parker, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford, 1996; paperback 1997), 51.

28 Introduction

caveats one might issue about the complex relationship between the repre-

sentation of life on the comic stage and the reality of the polis, Aristophanes’

plays nevertheless oVer a valuable glimpse into the thought world of the

theatregoer in Wfth-century Athens. Of course, these productions cover a

wide spectrum of human experience, but included in that is the sense of

constructed time. In addition, the epigraphy of the Greek world allows us to

gain insights in at least two ways. First, inscriptions may oVer a sense of which

temporal frameworks were part of the regularly encountered world of the

citizen of a polis, and at what level of complexity. One obvious problem is that

levels of literacy and the formulaic and oYcial nature of inscribed monu-

ments mean that we cannot safely assume that the language and concepts

found there necessarily represent those of the average citizen,112 although this

in itself does not mean that the ideology or self-image of the polis is not

nevertheless encapsulated therein. Second, the very subject matter of some

inscriptions explicitly concerns the calibration and manipulation of socially

constructed time. Here we are on safer ground in adducing the inscriptions to

illustrate the degree to which temporal conceptualization and exploitation

might have impinged upon the life of the polis as a whole, rather than being

the preserve of an intellectual elite of chronographers.

An initial illustration of the ‘popularity’ of temporal calibration at a

microcosmic level is oVered by the clepsydra. It is worth observing immedi-

ately that this device did not ‘tell the time’, but simply measured out equal

allocations to litigants in the Athenian courts. But multiple references, both

casual and more pointed, to this process in Aristophanes’ plays suggests at

least that the notion of measuring out time was commonly understood and

thus could be exploited for comic potential. The embodiment of the whole

legal system within this time-measuring device is neatly brought out in the

Wasps, where Procleon is described as one who sleeps only around the water

clock, code for the fact that he is addicted to participating in trials.113 In the

Acharnians, being ‘in the water clock area’ (��æd Œº�ł��æÆ�) is synonymous

with being in the law courts.114 Commentators on these plays have been quick

112 See W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA, 1989) for a cautious view of theextent of literacy, even in the democratic city of Athens, where public accountability was at ahigh premium, although he stresses other forms of dissemination of information, such asheralds (78–9). R. Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1992), 86,reduces the importance of the literacy issue to some degree by stressing the compatibility ofthe ‘symbolic’ accountability of the public written record with actually using the contents of aninscription for practical purposes. See her interesting comments (84–5) concerning the em-phasis placed on the physical presence of the stone, as though the object in fact is, rather thanrecords, a decree.113 See Aristophanes, Wasps 92–3; later, at 857–8, the presence of a water clock is seen as a

prerequisite for holding a trial.114 See Aristophanes, Acharnians 693. The scholiast glosses the phrase as K� fiH �ØŒÆ��æ�fiø.


to point to descriptions of the clepsydra in fragments of other works.115 There

are many self-referential mentions of the process of measuring out time in

this way in the speeches of the Attic orators, who were subject to its con-

straints,116 but the only extensive description is to be found in the Aristotelian

Athenaion Politeia, where the water clock is clearly seen as an instrument of

the courts:117

There are water clocks with tubes as outlets: water is poured into these, and

speeches in trials must keep to the time thus measured. There is an allow-

ance of ten measures in suits for more than 5,000 drachmae, and three

measures for the second speech; seven measures and two measures respect-

ively for suits up to 5,000 drachmae; Wve measures and two measures for

suits up to 2,000 drachmae; six measures for adjudications, when there is no

second speech. The man appointed by lot to take charge of the water clock

closes the tube whenever the secretary is about to read out a law or testimony

or the like. However, when a trial is being timed by the measured-out day, he

does not stop the tube for the secretary, but there is simply an equal

allowance of water for the plaintiV and for the defendant.118

115 W. J. M. Starkie (ed.), The Wasps of Aristophanes (Amsterdam, 1968), ad loc., provides arange of descriptions. He also notes that a glass clepsydra is mentioned by Baton of Sinope 2.13.

116 We shall return to these passages in which the orator makes his relationship to and use ofthe clepsydra part of his persona in ch. 5.

117 Ath. Pol. 67.2–3: �N�d �b Œº�ł��æÆØ ÆPº½��Œ�ı�� ı�½ÆØ �Ø�Œæ��; �N� L� e o�øæ Kª��ı�Ø;�æe� n ��E º�ª�Ø� a� ��ŒÆ�: ��ÆØ < �b > ��Œ��ı� ÆE� ��bæ ��ÆŒØ��Øº�Æ�; ŒÆd æ��ı� fiH�½�ı�æfiø� º ªfiø; ��ı� �b ÆE� ��æØ ��ÆŒØ��Øº�ø� ŒÆd ��ı�; ½��ı� �b Æ½E�� K�½e��½A� ŒÆd ��ı�; ��ı� �b ÆE� �ØÆ�ØŒÆ��ÆØ�; < Æx� > ½o��æ�� º ª�� PŒ �½Ø� �P��½�: ›� �� K½��o��øæ ½�N�º�½��g� K�ØºÆ��Ø e� Æ½Pº��Œ��; ‹Æ� ł��Ø��Æ j � �� j �Ææ½ıæ�Æ� j ��º�� ›ªæÆ��Æ�f� I�ÆªØ½ª��Œ�Ø� ��ººfi �: ‹Æ� �b� fi q ½�æe�� ØÆ��æ�½�� c� ��æÆ�� › ½Iª��; �� b �PŒ K�ØºÆ��½��Ø ÆP �; Iººa ��Æ�Ø e ½Y�� o�øæ fiH � ŒÆ½�ª�æ�F�Ø ŒÆd fiHI��º�ª½�ı��fiø.

118 The text carries on as follows in fragmentary form:

�ØÆ��½æ�EÆØ �b �æe� a� ��æÆ½� ��F —��Ø��H�� ½�� . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .� Ææ� . . . �ÆØ �æH�½ÆØ . . . . . . . . . . . . ::�ØÆ ½. . . ��ÆØ� Æ ŒºØ ½. . . . . . . . . I�� . . . ½. . .�Æ�Ø� �ƒ �Ø½Œ�Æ�½Æd . . . . . . . . . . . .��º . . . ½::��N� n� �ŒÆ��Ø º½. . . . . . . . .��:: ½::� ªaæ ��ı�� ½. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :� ��½. . .�æ�� K�øŁ�E��f� ½. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ::�º�Ø::� o�øæ ºÆ��Æ½� . . . . . . . . . . . . ::� �N½��; › � �b� ��æ�� E� �½Ø�Œ�ı�Ø�; ›�b ��æ�� E½� ��ª�ı½��Ø�: K� �b �E� ½. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ::�Æ�½. . .� K��Eº� fiH �ØÆł�½�Ø��fiH. . . . . . . . . ::�fiø �Ø½ÆØæ��EÆØ �� ½� ��½æ�Æ K�d �E� ½. . . . . . . . . . . . :: Iª��ø½� ‹��Ø� �æ ��Ø ��½e�j Ł��Æ�� j �ıªc j I�Ø��Æ j ��ı�Ø� �æ��½ø� . . . . . . :��Ø� ½‹� Ø �æc �ÆŁ�E� j I��E�ÆØ.Translation is speculative, but the following is attempted by P. J. Rhodes in the Penguintranslation (1984):

This day is measured out according to the length of days in Posideon, since this allowance can beapplied to the days of the other months. Eleven jars are used, and are distributed in Wxedproportions: the juror in charge of the clock sets aside three jars for the voting, and the opposinglitigants take equal shares of the remainder. Previously plaintiVs used to be eager to compressthe defence into a very small share of the time, so that the defendants had to make do withwhatever water was left; but now there are two separate containers, one for the plaintiVs and onefor the defendants.

30 Introduction

The discovery of a clepsydra in the Athenian agora—an open earthenware

bowl nine inches high with a clay spout at the bottom, which emptied in six

minutes—suggests that either several measures could be allowed in succession

in the courts, or they were available in diVerent sizes.119 Rhodes suggests that

by the time of the Athenaion Politeia, the clepsydra may have been developed

and reWned beyond this level.120 At least, that text’s detailed description of the

procedure by which it was used would be compatible with this view.

The production of a comedy by Eubulus in the early fourth century in

which the eponymous protagonist was nicknamed Clepsydra because she

allowed her lovers to remain only until the water clock ran out further attests

to the familiarity of the object, which gave rise to its comic potential.

MacDowell takes this to imply that clepsydrai were being used in private

houses by the fourth century.121 However, the context of the fragment and

the nature of the comic context itself should both counsel caution. Our

knowledge of the play comes from its mention in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae,

in which it features in a list of plays which took their names from prosti-

tutes.122 As with so many other pieces of information about, and ‘fragments’

of, ancient literature taken from Athenaeus, we have no guarantee as to the

authenticity of this parade of learning through citation. The note in Athe-

naeus that it was Asclepiades, son of Areus, who recorded in his History of

Demetrius of Phaleron the explanation of Clepsydra’s nickname attempts to

add verisimilitude through detail, but the reference nevertheless rings with a

rather hollow and implausible tone.123 More compellingly still, the asserted

comic context itself should make us question the value of this piece of

evidence for domestic water clocks. While many aspects of comedy neutrally

provide background to the play, and therefore allow us to make assertions

In earlier times the juror in charge used to take out some of the water as an allowance for thesecond vote. The full measure of the day is used for those public suits where there is anadditional penalty of imprisonment, death, exile, loss of civic rights or conWscation of property,or an assessment has to be made of what the oVender should pay or suVer.

119 See S. Young, ‘An Athenian Clepsydra’, Hesperia 8 (1939), 274–84, for this discovery.120 See Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia, ad loc.121 See D. M. MacDowell (ed.), Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford, 1971), ad 92–3.122 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.567c–d. For the frequent citation of comic fragments in

the jovial setting of theDeipnosophistae, see J. Wilkins, ‘ Dialogue and Comedy: The Structure ofthe Deipnosophistae’, in D. Braund and J. Wilkins (eds.), Athenaeus and his World: Reading GreekCulture in the Roman Empire (Exeter, 2000), 23–37.123 The fact that Athenaeus does not cite Eubulus himself on the matter in fact reduces rather

than enhances the value of the explanation, since it indicates that Athenaeus took the story andits explanation at second hand from Asclepiades. On the other hand, this might still carry acertain scholarly cache, if Asclepiades were ‘the expert author’ from whom the learned wouldseek such matters. See C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Fun with Fragments: Athenaeus and the Historians’, inBraund and Wilkins, (eds.), Athenaeus and his World, 171–90 at 186–7, for the idea that theoriginal source might not be considered any more valuable than the expert citer.


about the nature of the world which was familiar to the audience, in this case

the use of the water clock actually constitutes the comic underpinning of the

play. The use of a clepsydra in a domestic context could be precisely designed

to strike a note of comic incongruity, which reveals that this was not a

commonplace, any more than was a women’s assembly or an eVective anti-

war sex strike.

In any case, neither MacDowell’s suggestion that this is the earliest refer-

ence to the clepsydra outside the law courts nor Rhodes’s pointing to the fact

that Empedocles actually gave the earliest extant description,124 denies the

continuing strong association of the clepsydra with the law courts, as the

passage from the Athenaion Politeia shows. Allen’s suggestion that the clep-

sydra stood in close relation to the development of democracy at Athens

remains attractive.125 The free speech which underpinned the principle

whereby citizens spoke for themselves in the courts was intimately connected

to democratic ideology,126 and the law courts themselves were essentially

bound up with the idea of democracy through the possibility of justice for

all (encapsulated in the notion of N��Æ) and administered by all (through

the practice of jury pay). The clepsydra, the instrument which ensured fair

access to the attention of the court, could thus naturally be associated with

democratic equality.127

But for our purposes, it is interesting to note that in the Athenaion Politeia,

the system of allocating particular measures of time by the clepsydra stands

alongside a rather diVerent system for temporal calibration which concerns

the measuring out of the day into divisions which can be allocated to diVerent

speakers.128 The tension between the natural time span of the day, which

clearly varies from month to month, and the sense of justice brought by

124 See Empedocles 31 b 100 (D-K).125 D. Allen, ‘A Schedule of Boundaries: an Exploration, Launched from the Water-clock, of

Athenian Time’, Greece & Rome 43 (1996), 157–68.126 For the notion that the law courts protected the rights of the ordinary citizen and were a

‘common possession’ of the members of the democracy, and the pressure on this ideology inpractice, see J. Ober,Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of thePeople (Princeton, NJ, 1989), especially 217–19.

127 The association becomes even stronger when one recalls that it was Ephialtes’ democraticreforms of the 460s which had enhanced the demands on the Heliaia, and thus necessitated amore time-eYcient running of these courts, underpinned by democratic equality.

128 But it is striking that the Athenians, at any rate, seem not to have exploited thepossibilities oVered by technologies such as the water clock in order to develop a systematicmeans of articulating the time within each day. The famous aside in Herodotus (2.109) that theGreeks learned from the Babylonians ‘the twelve parts of the day’ corresponds to no evidence fora systematic system of hours, indicated by the sundial, until the third century. Dunn, ‘The Usesof Time in Fifth-century Athens’, 39, argues that this fact provides evidence for a widerphenomenon whereby Athens persistently failed to realize its opportunities to regulate andmanage time.

32 Introduction

artiWcially constructed equal measures of time here extends beyond the time

of the individual trial, as measured out by the clepsydra, to the equality

between trials conducted at diVerent times of year, ensured by the assumption

throughout the year of the length of days in the month of Poseideon. The fact

that it was the orator’s job to maximize the time he spent presenting argu-

ments—hence the oft-repeated instruction to ‘stop the clock’ whenever a

piece of evidence or a witness was produced—brings home the fact that the

legal system, at least, was self-conscious about the constructed and manipu-

lated nature of time for justice.

Beyond the comic potential to be found in the allocation of time by the

water clock in judicial and other contexts, there is clear evidence that

the calendar itself as a phenomenon was signiWcant and meaningful to the

Aristophanic audience. In Wealth, Hermes is said to have received cakes as

oVerings on the fourth (K� �æ��Ø) of the month. At a most basic level, this

indicates that the audience could be assumed to know what this meant, that is

to have a sense of the orderly division of the annual cycle into months, days,

and so on, which is not surprising given the evidence for calendars being

displayed in Greek poleis, as discussed later in this chapter. Furthermore, it

shows that these divisions were part of a religious system, whereby gods were

associated (whether by date of birth or by some other memorable event) with

particular days of the year, thus articulating a religious calendar, which was

punctuated by festivals and particular rites in their honour.129 The festival

calendar could itself, of course, be subdivided—in Thesmophoriazusae, a

meeting is to be held ‘on themiddle (that is, second) day of the Thesmophoria’

(fi B ��fi � H� ¨��æ�ø�).130

These references to the everyday workings of the calendar may seem too

obvious to mention, but it is worth noting at Wrst that the world of formal

time management, which would vex archons and intrigue scholarly chrono-

graphers (as we shall see in chapter 2), was not entirely detached from that of

the man in the street, although actually devising and simply referring to

calendar systems clearly require very diVerent levels of expertise. The expos-

ure of the average citizen to the various dating systems which the chrono-

graphers would discuss in the abstract, and the historiographers would use to

pin down events, has already been hinted at in discussion of the multiple

dating systems in play within a single polis, and was greatly enhanced by the

epigraphic habit of Greek poleis, which naturally dated their decrees in terms

129 Aristophanes, Wealth 1125–6. Cf. A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Wealth (Warminster, 2001),ad loc., on the fourth of the month as Hermes’ birthday: cf. Hom. Hymn Herm. 19. Mikalson,The Sacred and Civilian Calendar of the Athenian Year, 16–18, notes that the fourth of everymonth in Athens was shared by Hermes with Heracles and Aphrodite.130 Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 375–6.


of a combination of local magistracies, month names, and so on.131 One

example is a marble stele from Athens, dealing with the expenditure of the

treasurers of Athena in 408/7–407/6 or the following year, and using the

dating ‘on the three-and-twentieth day of the prytany, the sixteenth of

Scirophorion’, a neat instance of the democratic magisterial time being com-

bined with the festival calendar of days and months.132 Sickinger notes the

signiWcance of a Wfth-century decree from Athens, which begins with the

heading, ‘in the archonship of Alcaeus, on the nineteenth day of the prytany’,

followed by a prescript of the usual kind, as another early example of more

than one element in dating.133

The fundamental importance of the calendar to the polis as a whole is

lavishly attested by the large number of extant inscriptions, publicly dis-

played, which set out the calendar of festivals, revealing the predictable fact

that such matters were by no means a subject of interest only for later writers

of an antiquarian inclination. They punctuated and articulated the life of the

citizen, and did so in a way which encapsulated the shared past of that city,

commemorating the key events of the mythological and historical past in an

annually repeated cycle of communal activity.134 In a sense, then, the festival

calendar operated on at least two temporal scales, oVering a synchronic

history—it punctuated the time span of each year, articulating the annual

cycle, but it also operated as a form of local historiography spanning the past

of the city across the wider time of its history.135One could see the calendar as

131 McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 147–78,sets out clearly the various dating systems used in the Greek poleis in epigraphic contexts. As hepoints out, several systems were often combined, with, for example, dating by prytany beingsupplemented by a calendar date.

132 See IG i2 304b–c (I3 377).133 Sickinger, Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens, 89. The two systems duplicate

each other in terms of placing the event in time, but it should be noted that they do providediVerent information in terms of context within the life of the polis. I owe this point to ChrisBurnand.

134 But see Simon, Festivals of Attica, 81–2, for the way in which the commemoration of ahistorical event might be moved from its true date in order to make it coincide with theappropriate patron deity’s festivals. Salamis was, therefore, celebrated on 16 Mounychion,even though the battle was seven months earlier in Boedromion: ‘because Artemis Mounychiahad helped the Athenians against the Persian Xeet, the commemoration was made a part of herfestival.’ Similarly, Marathon was celebrated several weeks after the date of the battle at a festivalof Artemis on 6 Boedromion.

135 As Parker, Athenian Religion, 273, notes, particularly during the third century bc, festivalsbecame explicitly described as a commemoration (�� Æ) of recent events. However, even inthe archaic period there were political festivals such as that for Aphrodite Pandemos or theSynoecia, and see R. G. Osborne, ‘Competitive Festivals and the Polis: A Context for DramaticFestivals at Athens’, in P. J. Rhodes (ed.), Athenian Democracy (Edinburgh, 2004), 207–24 at 212,for the way in which games were introduced into festivals to commemorate recent events in thelife of the polis. The games at the Aianteia may have been introduced after the victory at Salamis,those at the Theseia were instituted after the return of Theseus’ bones from Scyros in the 470s.

34 Introduction

the encapsulation of the longue duree of history in a form which articulated

the day-to-day life of the polis.

The relationship between the small-scale time of the calendar and the large-

scale time of history is worthy of some attention, since it provides a bridge

between the conWguration of time past and time present in ways which were

relevant to more than just a scholarly audience. Furthermore, most modern

scholarly attention which has been devoted to studying time in the Greek

world has been relentlessly focused on the calendar, and I should like to bring

that valuable work into a closer relationship with the diVerent temporal

concerns on which this book will concentrate, namely the construction of

the historical past, particularly as expressed to, by, on behalf of, and in

complicity with the polis.

Grafton and Swerdlow have, in a fascinating article,136 examined this

relationship and made some insightful observations. They point out that

the establishment of a calendar, particularly one with ominous days marked

in, acts as a guide to present and future behaviour, whereas the concern to

establish chronology by years, placing events in lists of eponymous magis-

trates or regnal years, establishes a framework for history to which past

migrations, foundations, battles may be attached. As we have already seen,

the relationship between these types of temporal conWguration is more

complex than a straight dichotomy, since the annual calendar could encom-

pass events which commemorated elements from the whole historical past.

We are, of course, familiar with this commemoration of signiWcant events in

the articulation of the annual cycle through our own calendar with its

religious festivals, such as Easter, Christmas, and innumerable saints’ days,

built in. The degree to which the celebration of Christian feasts dominates

everyday life in Britain, through the timing of school and public holidays, has

only recently come under challenge as antithetical to the multicultural nature

of British society. Both magisterial and festival calendars can clearly be taken

as reXective of society in so far as their articulation requires conscious

decisions and adherence from the community at large. The small-scale

chronological concern with days has a long history, stretching back to Hes-

iod’s Works and Days, but is clearly alive in some of the works we shall

consider in chapter 2, such as Philochorus’ On Days, and is incorporated by

later writers into their accounts of events as far back as the mythic period.137

136 A. T. Grafton and N. M. Swerdlow, ‘Calendar Dates and Ominous Days in AncientHistoriography’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), 14–42.137 We shall see in chapter 4 the implausible precision with which local historians dated

events such as the fall of Troy to not only particular years, but particular dates within the year,making use of both the historical frame and the smaller time of the calendar. Grafton andSwerdlow, ‘Calendar dates’, 17, point to the way in which Plutarch in his Life of Theseus claims


The idea of ominous days illustrates the notion of combining the long and

the short duree, drawing into an annual cycle events from the span of past

time, and hints at two possibilities: either that the calendar harnesses the past

in ways which will direct the course of the future, since a day on which a

negative event has occurred may become ill-omened through association, or

that the occurrence of a bad event on a particular day in the past reveals the

inherent unluckiness of that day. The idea that particular days in the calendar

could not just locate negative events in time, but could actually cause them

suggests that the arrangement of time, however artiWcial, was in fact reXective of

a natural and underlying temporal order.138 And the fact that particular dates in

the calendar might be responsible for causing bad or good events made it

likely that there would be synchronism across years as well as across space.139

As Grafton and Swerdlow observe, the notion that the calendar represented

some natural underpinning truth rather than being merely a human and

arbitrary creation, seems to have led to the synchronization of diVerent

calendars. ‘These ‘‘calendars’’ or perhaps lists of dates . . . summed up, one

might guess in the order of the Attic calendar, the separate historical ‘‘calen-

dars’’ of a number of Greek and barbarian nations, containing the dates of

their festivals and major dated historical events, just as the Olympiad chron-

ography that took shape in the same period set out in a single orderly

sequence of years the separate histories of these same nations. In this way a

distinct cyclical chronology of calendrical dates grew up alongside the linear

chronography of years.’140 We could hardly wish for a more eloquent expres-

sion for the relationship between the calendars which articulated the day-

to-day lives of citizens and the historical frameworks within which they

constructed their pasts.

The body of extant inscriptions which displayed the calendar of sacriWces to

particular gods in each polis spans a wide geographical range, allowing us to

assert that the construction of festival calendars was common across the poleis

of Greece, and hence that such calendars were local in detail,141 but universal

that Theseus sailed to Crete on 6 Mounychion and returned to Athens on 8 Pyanepsion—aninteresting juxtaposition of ‘historical’ calendar dates and mythical content. The claim that onecould pinpoint the foundation of Rome down to the time of day was ridiculed by Cicero,De Div.2.98–9, but taken seriously by others.

138 Grafton and Swerdlow, ‘Calendar dates’, 25, cite Aelian, Varia Historia 2.25 which notesthe good things caused by 6 Thargelion—the birth of Socrates, the defeat of the Persians atMarathon, the Athenian successes at Plataea and Mycale, the defeat of Darius by Alexander.

139 That is, with noteworthy events tending to occur on the same day in the calendar albeit indiVerent years; a diVerent form of synchronism from that which linked events taking place indiVerent locations, but at the same point in time. See ch. 3 for the latter.

140 Grafton and Swerdlow, ‘Calendar dates’, 27.141 See earlier in this chapter for the diVerent calendar details, such as month names, which

were used in diVerent poleis.

36 Introduction

in conception. Just as we shall see when examining the historiography of the

Greek poleis, and considering the way in which the telling of the longer time

frame, the history of the place, was both locally Xavoured and universally

comprehensible in form and structures, so too do the microcosmic orderers

of time, namely the calendars which map out the pattern of the individual

year, conform to a broadly common structure, listing the sacriWces which are

to be performed in each month in chronological order through the year.

It is fortunate that one extraordinarily early such calendar from Corinth

survives. This is a fragment of porous limestone found in 1898, inscribed on

two adjacent faces in boustrophedon letters, and showing the name of a

Corinthian month, ‘Phoinik[aios]’, together with a reference to four pigs,

undoubtedly to be sacriWced on the speciWed date in that month.142 In 1970

an inscribed fragment of the same text was found in dumped Wlling from the

early sixth century. Robinson conjectured that both fragments came from the

wall blocks of an older temple and belonged to a sizeable sacriWcial calendar:

‘The text, presumably a calendar of sacriWces, must have extended over (part

of) two wall surfaces of the building,’ (231), which could best be dated to

around 600 bc.

Other and more extensive examples abound. Parker discusses the elusive

‘Solonian’ calendar of sacriWces with due scepticism concerning its author-

ship, but with cautious conWdence in the sixth-century dating of this as the

Wrst known such written festival calendar (although we know it only from a

late Wfth-century revised version).143 Surprisingly, the Wrst attempt at a

gathered published text of the Athenian festival calendar has only recently

been made, although fragments have clearly been appearing for well over Wfty

years. The surviving version is a product of the revision of Athenian law,

which took place in two stages between 410/9 and 405/4, and again in the

period 403/2 to 400/399, conWrming the rightness of Parker’s scepticism.144

By bringing the pieces together and interpreting them in the context of other

partially extant calendars, Lambert has begun to make sense of a previously

142 For the publication, see H. S. Robinson, ‘Excavations at Corinth: Temple Hill, 1968–1972’,Hesperia 45 (1976), 203–39.143 Parker, Athenian Religion, 43–6. The attribution to Solon, famed for his publication of

written laws and concern for the principle of accountability, is perhaps not surprising. See F. dePolignac, ‘Changer de lieu, changer de temps, changer la cite’, in Darbo-Peschanski (ed.),Constructions du temps, 143–54 at 148, for the interesting suggestion that Solon’s publishedlaw code might be seen as another form of boundary, this time temporal rather than spatial. Thenotion that the written code was unchangeable, ‘etablissait la aussi une ‘‘borne’’ temporelle dansla chaıne de la transmission’ and created ‘une reference temporelle precise qui genere un toutautre rapport entre la tradition et son devenir.’144 S. D. Lambert, ‘The SacriWcial Calendar of Athens’, Annual of the British School at Athens

97 (2002), 353–99.


shady, but fundamental, document of Athenian religion and polis life. There

are other early sacriWcial calendars from around the Greek world, although

some of these are too fragmentary to contextualize and interpret.145Whatever

the nature of the ‘Solonian’ festival calendar, it seems to have inspired the

creation of a whole series of ‘deme’ calendars. The relationship between the

calendar of Athens and those of the Attic demes is generally considered to be

complementary, with opportunities for everyone to attend both local and

centralized versions of major festivals.146 The oldest extant deme calendar,147

from Thorikos, neatly exempliWes the way in which communities across the

Greek world not only organized, but also publicized, their festival year, listing

the oVerings that were to be made to the various gods in each of the twelve

months.

Other deme calendars survive from the fourth century—one involving

cultic relations with Oenoe, listing sacriWces to Artemis, Athene, Zeus, and

Apollo in a particular month.148 Another much more extensive document

from the early fourth century, stretching over Wve columns on a marble stele,

lists the cults of the deme of Erchia month by month.149 This inscription lists

145 See Parker, Athenian Religion, 44, for these problems. He observes that calendars wereseen as part of the legal codiWcation accepted by the polis, which set out the religious year andwere unusually, perhaps even problematically, coherent by contrast with the generally ad hocrather than codifying nature of early nomothete activity (51). One early sacriWcial list for Eleusis(from the start of the Wfth century) displays the same features as these calendar texts, listingsacriWces to be made to particular deities, but it lacks any indication of when these rituals were tobe performed. See F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrees des cites grecques (Paris, 1962), no. 4.

146 S. Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge, 1999), 29, noting that no demefestivals were timed to coincide with the date of the Panathenaea, leaving everyone free to attendthe festival in Athens itself. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘What is Polis Religion?’, 313–15, notes thesacriWces at Thorikos to Athena and Aglauros for the festival of the Plynteria, but celebrated on adiVerent day from in Athens itself.

147 IG i3 256 (cf. SEG 33.147). The date is, in fact, the subject of some dispute. G. Daux, ‘LeCalendrier de Thorikos’, L’Antiquite classique 52 (1983), 150–74 at 152, maintained that ‘laforme des lettres et l’orthographe concordent en faveur du IVeme siecle avant, premiere moitie.385 a 370?’ D. M. Lewis, ‘A New Athenian Decree’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 60(1985), 108, also used the palaeography and the orthography, together with the archaic dativeplurals in –��Ø to date the inscription to c.430, in which he was followed by M. Jameson,‘SacriWce and Animal Husbandry in Classical Greece’, in C. R. Whittaker (ed.), PastoralEconomies in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1988), 115 n. 7. Since then, scholarly supporthas oscillated between the two dates. V. J. Rosivach, The System of Public SacriWces in Fourth-Century Athens (Atlanta, 1994), 22, dates the Thorikos calendar to 430, but E. Lupu, GreekSacred Laws: A Collection of New Documents (NGSL) (Leiden, 2005), 115–49, who oVers a newedition of the text, reverts to Daux’s arguments, explaining the Wfth-century datives as deliberatearchaizing, and choosing to place the calendar with those from Erchia and the Tetrapolis in theaftermath of state calendar reforms of 410–399 bc. R. Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens(Oxford, 2005), 65 n. 58, sums up the state of play and adds support to the date of c.430 bc.

148 See Sokolowski, Lois sacrees des cites grecques, no. 16. The inscription starts ��e� . . . butlacks the name of the month in question.

149 Sokolowski, ibid., no. 18.

38 Introduction

sacriWces not only by month, but more speciWcally by the date within the

month. So, for example, the entry of the second column for the month of

Boedromion is as follows: ‘On the fourth day of the beginning of Boedromion

to the King, in Erchia, a white female lamb, burned whole, seven drachmae;

on the fourth day of the waning of the month, in the village (pagos) of Erchia,

a sheep to Achelous, twelve drachmae.’150 The Wve columns all give slightly

diVerent versions of the sacriWcial calendar, not all including every month,

and not all containing the same details for those months. The inscription

shows, if nothing else, that in this deme the articulation of the ritual year was

an event in itself.

To set alongside this combination of speciWcity and variation in the Erchia

inscription, Parker makes the important point that the ‘Solonian’ calendar

and other early month-by-month calendars recognized moveable feasts: ‘On

this view the role of the published calendars was to establish a sequence for

festivals, and not, except within broad limits, an absolute dating.’151 But it

remains the case that the broad structuring of the year was set out and made

public. As we shall see in the realm of local historiography when dealing with

the longer time frame of history, the same interest in establishing a relative

order alongside the wish to secure a precise and absolute placement in time

is apparent.

Another set of Attic fourth-century sacriWcial calendars of a similar format

to that concerning Erchia is to be found on both sides of a block of pentelic

marble, and outlines the religious calendar for Marathon, Tricorynthus, and

the Tetrapolis. The year is here organized into three-monthly groupings,

which are then enumerated month by month. So, for example, in column

A, we deal Wrst with the fourth quarter of the year, containing the months

Mounichion, Thargelion, and Scirophorion:

��æ�� æØ��:

!�ı�Ø�ØH��:

:: —æÆŒ�æ�øØ Œæ�� ˜‘‘¨Ææª�ºØH��:

:: �Ææa e� ��æª�� r� ˜‘‘#ŒØæ��æØH��:

:: K� Iª�æAØ ŒæØ � ˜‘‘ Œº.

‘In the fourth period of three months:

In Mounichion

150 ´�½��æ��ØH��j� �æ��Ø ƒ�jÆ��; ´Æ��jº�Ø; �¯æ�ØA; I�j�c º�ıŒ�; ›º jŒÆı��; ��jºØ��;ˆ‘‘ j ��æ�Ø �Ł�j��; K� —�j½ª�øØ � ¯æ�ØA�Øj�; %��º�øØ j �r� ˜ ‘‘.151 See Parker, Athenian Religion, 48, although this Xexibility seems to sit unhappily alongside

the permanence of an inscribed calendar.


a ram [sc. is sacriWced] to the accomplisher—at the cost of 12 drachmae

In Thargelion

a sheep by the tower—at the cost of 12 drachmae

In Scirophorion

a ram in the market-place—at the cost of 12 drachmae etc.

A fragment of the revised Athenian calendar of sacriWces which was set up in

the city during the last years of the Wfth century gives some insight into

another aspect of these documents which deserves attention. This lists the

sacriWces to be made to particular gods on two days in the month of

Hecatombaion,152 and it is clear that a large part of the work of the public

notaries (I�ÆªæÆ��E�), set up as a commission by the restored democracy in

410, was concerned with the detailed publication of the sacred calendar in

the Royal Stoa in the agora. The civic nature of the enterprise to establish the

sacriWcial year reinforces the notion that organizing time in terms of the

annual cycle of the festival calendar, which attracted the attention of anti-

quarians and local historians, was by no means of merely academic interest,

but was a signiWcant and important part of the life of the polis.153 This

explains why it was worth the trouble of recording the ritual calendar in

writing at all. As is clear from a glance at the Erchia or the Tetrapolis

calendars, there was an important Wnancial aspect to these documents. As

Sokolowski says, ‘il me semble qu’on doit voir dans notre texte [sc. the Erchia

inscription] plutot des comptes qu’un calendrier cultuel’.154 This Wnancial

aspect is seen by Parker too as crucial from the earliest times: ‘A prime

function of the sixth-century code was surely to deWne what monies of the

Athenian people were to be expended on what gods.’155 By setting up an

inscribed record of the sacriWces to be held throughout the year, the city was

not only mapping out time in an interesting way, but also marking its

devotion and Wnancial commitment to particular deities. Perhaps it was for

this reason that, in an Athenian religion which was extremely lacking in

oYcial documents, ‘the only books of public cult . . . are the calendars in-

scribed for all to view (though few to read) on wood or stone.’156

It is possible to go beyond noting the assumed knowledge of the system of a

formal calendar made up of months containing named days, many of which

were signiWcant in terms of festivals in honour of particular deities or

152 See Sokolowski, Lois sacrees des cites grecques, no. 10.153 It might be signiWcant in this regard that Solon is said to have transformed the Genesia, an

aristocratic festival of the ancestors, into a festival for the whole polis. Thus the celebration of thepast of individual families became the shared property of the entire community. It is interesting thatthis democratization of the past was expressed through the annual cycle of the festival calendar.

154 Sokolowski, Lois sacrees des cites grecques, 42: ‘It seems to me that we should see in thistext a set of accounts rather than a cult calendar.’

155 Parker, Athenian Religion, 53. 156 Parker, ibid. 55.

40 Introduction

commemorating important events in the past of the polis. In apparent con-

tradiction to the notion of Wxing the calendar in stone, epigraphic evidence

also provides many examples of the oYcial manipulation of the calendar,

revealing that time was clearly seen not simply as a naturally determined

feature of the world, but as an artiWce of man, which could be self-consciously

constructed speciWcally to suit the collective needs of the polis.

A third-century decree notes the stopping of the calendar at 9 Elaphebolion

for Wve days, presumably to complete preparations for the City Dionysia.157

Commentators on the passage in Aristophanes’ Peace, discussed below, which

makes comedy out of this type of manipulation, have posited a corresponding

suppression of some calendar days later in the year, possibly making the Wnal

months noticeably shorter than usual.158 An Athenian decree from the late

Wfth century, regulating the oVerings of Wrst fruits at Eleusis, again indicates

the possibility of manipulating the calendar with a view to facilitating the

festival programme. It states that ‘there shall be intercalation of the month

Hecatombaion by the new archon’.159 Hecatombaion was probably chosen

here to give longer notice to those willing to oVer Wrst fruits at Eleusis, the date

for which ritual probably fell in the month of Boedromion (the Attic month)

during the Eleusinia. The inscription is of further interest for its proof that the

assembly could direct the archon on the matter of the calendar, reinforcing the

argument that themanipulation of time was an issue for the polis as a whole.160

Two centuries later and in an entirely diVerent part of the Greek world, the

manipulation of the calendar was no less current an issue. The so-called

Canopus decree,161 a trilingual inscription (in Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs,

and Egyptian demotic) from 237 bc preserving the resolutions passed by

the assembly of Egyptian priests meeting at Canopus, not only exempliWes the

simultaneous use ofmultiple dating systems, stating its date as ‘the ninthyearof

the reign of Ptolemy. . . on the seventh of the month Apellaios, the seventeenth of

157 See SEG 14.65.3–4: �¯ºÆ��ºØH��½�� ½K��Ø ƒ�Æ��ı ��æ�Ø K��º��øØ; ��½ � ½��ØŒÆd �NŒ½��E B� �æı½Æ��Æ�.158 See A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Peace (Warminster, 1985) and S. D. Olson (ed.), Aristopha-

nes Peace (Oxford, 1998) ad Aristophanes, Peace 411V.159 See IG i3 78.53–4: � Ð��Æ �b K��ºº�� ¯ŒÆ��ÆØØ�Ð �Æ e� �� ¼æ��Æ. Dating options are

425/4 or c.422 or c.416/5 bc. F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford,1949), 65, notes that the proponent of the amendment, Lampon, was acting as a citizen memberof assembly, not as an exegete or in any expert capacity.160 See Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks, 26, for the sending out of sacred heralds to

announce the precise beginning of festivals, as a practical means of overcoming the vagaries ofthe calendar. Presumably intercalations and other calendar manipulation could be publicized ina similar way.161 OGIS 56. See R. S. Bagnall and P. Derow (eds.), The Hellenistic Period: Historical Sources in

Translation (Oxford, 2003; new edition), no. 164. As L. E. Ross, Sun, Moon, and Sothis: A Study of


the Egyptian [month] Tybi’,162 but it also provides a spectacular illustration

of the way in which the festival calendar was deliberately manipulated. In this

case, the change which is being commemorated, or perhaps rather celebrated,

is the introduction of a new, more accurate, calendar system involving ‘leap

years’. In order to avoid public feasts held in the winter ever being held in the

summer, since the star shifted by one day every four years, or vice versa, in

future times ‘as has happened in the past and as would be happening now, if

the arrangement of the year remained of 360 days plus the Wve days later

brought into usage’, there was to be a one-day feast of the Benefactor Gods

added every four years to the Wve additional days before the new year, ‘in

order that all may know that the former defect in the arrangement of

the seasons and the year and in the beliefs about the whole ordering of the

heavens has come to be corrected and made good by the Benefactor Gods.’

This oVers a striking illustration of how the very arrangement and regula-

tion of the festival calendar, here involving the interpolation of an extra day

every four years in order to prevent the festivals from creeping ever forward

out of their appropriate seasons, was itself commemorated in the festival

calendar with a feast to celebrate the now correct organization of time. It

might be seen to illuminate the interesting relationship between natural time

and man-made time, since the festival calendar is clearly a human invention,

and one which man is eager to control, but at the same time that manipula-

tion is here determined by the wish to maintain the festivals in the correct

natural season. Or perhaps more accurately it illustrates man’s attempt to

grapple with the fact that the number of days in a solar year is not an integer,

and therefore necessitates a system of ‘leap’ years.163 The calendar could thus

be suspended, or rather stretched, so as to ensure that festivals happened at

the ‘right’ time—neither in an inappropriate season nor before the necessary

preparations had been made. Notoriously in 419 bc, the Argives stopped the

clock, as it were, so that the festival month of the Carneia would not begin

until they had Wnished their invasion of Epidaurus.164

An interesting case, which links the notion of calendar manipulation with

the possibility of crystallizing a commonly accepted view of the past in an

Calendars and Calendar Reforms in Ancient Egypt (DeerWeld Beach, 1999), 130, notes, since thedecree seems to have been published widely and several versions are partially extant, it is moreaccurate to speak of ‘exemplars’ of the decree, rather than implying that we have a single stone.

162 The combination of a Macedonian and an Egyptian date is noteworthy. As Ross, ibid. 146,comments, the two dates do not match up, paralleling casual treatment ofMacedonian dating onthe Rosetta stone, whichmight suggest that the Wnal preparation of the stele was left to Egyptians.

163 It was precisely this Egyptian system of ‘leap years’ every fourth year that Julius Caesaradopted in his far-reaching calendar reforms. See Suetonius, Divus Iulius 40.

164 Thucydides 5.54.3: %æª�E�Ø �� I�Æ�øæ��ø� ÆPH� �F �æe �F ˚Ææ��ı ��e�K��ºŁ �� æ��Ø �Ł��; ŒÆd ¼ª�� c� ��æÆ� Æ�� Æ e� �æ ��; K��Æº�� K�

42 Introduction

annual cycle, is alluded to in two passages of Plutarch referring to the excision

of a date from the Athenian calendar.165 The second of Boedromion was

removed from the calendar, so that the Athenians would not have to com-

memorate what happened on that date in the mythical past, this being the day

on which Poseidon and Athena fought over supremacy in Attica.166 The day

was not just an ill-omened one, in which case it would have remained part of

the calendar, nor was it subtly extracted from the middle of the month at a

turning point in the counting, so that the lunar and civic calendars could be

synchronized. This was a case of deliberate and ostentatious excision with a

view to erasing a piece of Athenian history, according to a process which

Loraux describes as ‘non-commemoration’, in a way which would remain

consciously noticed through the obvious jump from the Wrst to the third of

the month. Thus the calendar could not only be used to express the history

that the polis wanted to remember, but also manipulated to encompass and

preserve the history from which the polis wanted consciously to dissociate

itself, rather than to forget.167

We have already seen that Aristophanes’ plays provide evidence that the

notion of manipulating time fell comfortably enough within the parameters

of common understanding that it could be exploited for its comic potential.

Time could be played with and consciously used, and the audience in the

Wfth-century theatre could be expected to take this in their stride. Two

Aristophanic comedies make particular comic mileage out of the dissonance

between ‘natural’ time, as observed by the gods and the natural world, and

‘man-made’ time, in the form of the festival calendar, perfectly illustrating

both ends of the spectrum from time as a naturally occurring, unchangeable

feature of the world, to time as an artiWcial creation, which can be manipulated

c� �¯�Ø�Æıæ�Æ� ŒÆd K�fi ��ı� ‘When they [sc. the Spartans] had retreated, the Argives marchedforward on the fourth day from the end of the month before the Carneia. And declaring everyday throughout the whole period the fourth day from the end of the month, they attackedEpidaurus and devastated it.’ A. W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, and K. J. Dover, A HistoricalCommentary on Thucydides Vol. IV (Oxford, 1970) oVer some parallels for the manipulationof time in the context of warfare.

165 See the excellent discussion by N. Loraux, ‘On a Day Banned from the Athenian Calendar’,in The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens (trans. C. Pache, with J. Fort;New York, 2006; Wrst published 1997), 171–90. Loraux notes that the second of Boedromion wasstill being used in oYcial decrees at the end of the Wfth century, and suggests that the excisionwas probably carried out in the Hellenistic period (174).166 See Plutarch, On Brotherly Love 489b and Table Talk 741a.167 A far more extreme example of the eradication of history through the politically motivated

manipulation of the calendar is the introduction of an entirely new ‘Republican’ calendar, basedon the decimal system, in the wake of the French Revolution. But French revolutionary timelasted only fourteen years. I look forward to reading H. I. Flower, The Art of Forgetting: Disgraceand Oblivion in Roman Political Culture (Chapel Hill, 2006), which promises to oVer new insightsinto the mentality of erasure, but was not published in time to be taken into account here.


by man. And this, it is clear, is a dissonance that could be expected to amuse

the audience at large.

In Peace Trygaeus reveals to Hermes that the calendar is being deliberately

distorted by the sun and moon, through cutting it short and removing days,

in order that the festivals of the other gods might be diminished and their

own worship enhanced.168 The problem to which the scene refers must be, as

both Sommerstein and Olson note in their commentaries, the irregularities

(or perhaps rather opportunities) in the Athenian calendar, discussed above,

which were caused by the archon ordering the calendar to be stopped at a

particular date so that a festival could be postponed and still held on its

correct date.169 As Olson points out, the gods could be expected to know

when the correct day ‘really’ was, and were thus irritated not to receive

sacriWces precisely then, but only when the man-made calendar allowed—

an interesting play on the disparity between ‘natural time’, to which the gods

adhere, and ‘artiWcial time’ constructed by man, or, put rather diVerently, an

insight into the problematic meshing of lunar and solar time.

In the Clouds too, Aristophanes plays on the dissonance between the

apparently ‘natural’ progression of time adhered to by the physical world

and the gods and the man-made nature of the calendar. His chorus is made to

address the moon, which is supposedly upset that the Athenians ‘do not keep

the days accurately, but have turned the calendar upside down’,170 thereby

getting the sacriWces for the gods on the wrong days, working on holidays,

rejoicing on days of mourning, and so on. Some of the comic eVect derives

from the failure to notice that the Athenians are manipulating a calendar

which is not natural in the Wrst place, but itself man-made. There are no

‘right’ days for particular events, except the ones dictated by the artiWcial

calendar, except in so far as certain festivities might be related to the seasons.

Nevertheless, the chorus solemnly declares that one should run the days of

one’s life in accordance with the moon.171

168 Aristophanes, Peace 414–15:

ÆF� ¼æÆ ��ºÆØ H� ��æH� �Ææ�Œº��ŒÆd �F Œ�Œº�ı �Ææ�æøª�� ±�Ææøº�Æ�.

Hermes: ‘So, that’s why for a long time they, the scoundrels, have been secretly stealing some ofthe days and nibbling at the cycle of the year.’

169 See Sommerstein (ed.), Peace and Olson (ed.), Aristophanes Peace, ad loc.170 Aristophanes, Clouds 615–16: ��A� �� PŒ ¼ª�Ø� a� ��æÆ� �P�b� OæŁH�; Iºº� ¼�ø � ŒÆd

Œ�ø Œı��Ø��A�.171 Clouds 626: ŒÆa ��º�� ‰� ¼ª�Ø� �æc �F ��ı a� ��æÆ�. Dunn, ‘The Council’s Solar

Calendar’, 378–9, concludes that this chorus makes best sense in the context of a change to asolar calendar for the prytanies some year before, in, or soon after 432 bc. See also Hannah,Greek and Roman Calendars, 51–2, for this view.

44 Introduction

This play makes much of the fact that the moon inevitably dictates one’s life

in so far as it determines, through the months, the Wnancial calendar. Strep-

siades’ idea that, if he pulls the moon out of the sky,172 he can stop the clock,

as it were, on lunar time, and thereby avoid payment of debt which is tied to

particular dates in the month,173 forms a strong parallel for the notion in the

Peace that one can somehow suspend the progression of festivals by putting

the calendar on hold. There is, of course, a subtle diVerence, since putting the

counting of days on hold or intercalating others in order to avoid reaching the

‘appointed date’ of a festival constitutes a manipulation of the ‘artiWcial’,

measured time of the calendar; by contrast, taking the moon out of the sky

might be seen to disrupt the progression of ‘natural’ time, as formulated in

terms of lunar cycles and passing seasons.

In a sense, Aristophanes is making comic mileage out of a very problematic

philosophical conundrum. Strepsiades’ idea that if he pulls down the moon,

he will not have to pay his debts, hints at the belief that time will stop if it

cannot be measured out, by lunar cycles or by the counting of days in the

festival calendar. By manipulating or putting out of action the counting

system one simultaneously suspends the associated events. Thus one is left

with the notion that events happen only in measured and measurable time;

time and the events which punctuate it do not happen independently of the

system of counting. This is a rather startling proposition, which runs counter-

intuitively. Surely the world and the events within it happen whether or not

we have our eyes on the clock and the progression of time continues regard-

less of its measurement. The comic potential must lie in the fact that life in

biological terms carries on regardless, and we have a strong sense that this

must be true also of the festivals, debt collections, and other regular occur-

rences which we choose to build into our lives, making it somehow absurd to

suggest that the counting of time determines, rather than is subordinate to,

these other events. Of course, the Athenians had proved otherwise, by their

complex constructions and manipulations of the calendar which brought

home very starkly the ability of man to play with time, but this power was

perhaps more apparent than real, or at least was conWned to certain aspects of

time.174 The striking assertion in the Clouds that interest accumulates ‘month

172 Clouds 749–52.173 See Clouds 16–17 and 1131–4 for Strepsiades’ fear and lament, respectively, at the

prospect of the end of the month and payment day. A similar joke underpins Wasps 92–3,where the complaint is made that the cock has crowed late because it has been bribed by thosewho wish to avoid any review of their accounts.174 On the other hand, the manipulation of the calendar would have a real, rather than

apparent, eVect in the help it provided to debtors. In this way, Strepsiades’ idea makes a certainamount of sense.


by month, day by day, as time Xows by’175 suggests that there was a sense in

which time could be conceptualized as an aspect of the world, or perhaps a

purely abstract phenomenon, which led an independent existence.

I shall examine in the next chapter the way in which both the annual cycle

of the calendar and the long time span of history were the subject of

considerable scholarly attention, especially in the Hellenistic period and

beyond. But before temporarily moving to consider the ‘academic’ concern

with time, I give one further illustration of the way in which time and its

management mattered to the wider populace in a later period of history.

When Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Wrst stage of his calendar reform in

1582 in order to bring the calendar back into line with the solar year, by

dropping ten days from that year and declaring that the day after October 4th

that year would be October 15th, the Catholic nations adopted the change

without complaint. But when the Protestant countries of Europe Wnally

succumbed in 1752, by which time it was necessary to drop not ten but eleven

days, special measures were taken in Britain to ensure that payments were not

required before the date when they would have been under the old system.

Whether or not the ensuing riots were on any signiWcant scale, or have simply

been blown out of proportion from Hogarth’s famous painting of the Ox-

fordshire parliamentary elections of 1754 for 1755, in which a banner bearing

the slogan ‘Give us our Eleven Days’ is depicted, the sense of lost time,

however irrational, is easy to understand.176 It is the importance and value

placed on time and its organization, especially that of the past, which this

book takes as its theme.

175 Clouds 1287–9: j ŒÆÆ �B�Æ ŒÆd ŒÆŁ� ��æÆ� . . . ��ææ�� F �æ ��ı. As K. J. Dover(ed.),Aristophanes Clouds (Oxford, 1968), ad loc., states, this compound of Þ�ø is attested for timenowhere else in Greek literature. But for the personiWcation of time in an epigraphic context, seethe inscription set up to honour the Athenian dead after Chaeronea (IG 22 5526: 1–2):

½t �æ ��; �Æ��ø� Ł��½E� �Æ��Œ�� Æ��ø��,½¼ªª�º�� æø� �A�½Ø ª��F �ÆŁ�ø��.‘Oh time, all-seeing spirit of all matters for mortals,Be a messenger to all people of our suVerings.’

Tragedy also oVers many examples of time personiWed. See, for example, Sophocles, Electra 179:�æ �� ªaæ �P�Ææc� Ł� � (‘for time is the healer god’); 781–2: › �æ��ÆH� �æ �� ØBª� �� ÆNb�‰� ŁÆ��ı�� (‘time standing over me kept me ever expecting death’).176 A rather diVerent form of objection, not practical but ideological, attended the inaugur-

ation of the four standard time zones in North America on November 18th 1883. This majorchange in the regulation of time was seen as an attack on the autonomy and independence of theindividual states. See Dunn, ‘The Uses of Time in Fifth-century Athens’, 37.

46 Introduction

II

Making a business of time

1. CONSTRUCTING CALENDARS

Æ�� c� �� K�Æ��Æ�� fi B �æ��Ø �F ´��æ��ØH�� ƒ�Æ��ı ŒÆ�

%Ł��Æ��ı�; ŒÆa �b ´�Øø�f� �æ��Ø �F —Æ��ı �Ł��; fi w ŒÆd �F� Øe � ¯ºº��ØŒe� K� —ºÆÆØÆE� IŁæ��ÆØ �ı��æØ�� ŒÆd Ł��ı�Ø fiH Kº�ıŁ�æ�fiø ˜Ød

—ºÆÆØ�E� ��bæ B� ��Œ��: c� �b H� ��æH� I�ø�Æº�Æ� �P ŁÆı�Æ��;‹��ı ŒÆd �F� �Ø�ŒæØ�ø��ø� H� K� I�æ�º�ª�fi Æ �Aºº�� ¼ºº�� ¼ºº�Ø ��e�

Iæ�c� ŒÆd �º�ıc� ¼ª�ı�Ø�.

They fought this battle on the fourth of the month Boedromion, according to

the Athenians, but according to Boeotian reckoning on the fourth day from the

end of Panemon, on the day when even still nowadays the Hellenic council

meets in Plataea and the Plataeans make sacriWces to Zeus the Liberator in

memory of their victory. It is not surprising that there is a discrepancy in the

dates, since, even now when matters of astronomy are more precise, diVerent

people start and end each month on diVerent days.1

In the previous chapter I examined some methods for patterning time, not

least the annual cycle of the calendar in the Greek polis. I also considered ways

in which both this small-scale, recurring time of the year and the longer, linear

time frame of time past, that is of history, were made familiar to the inhab-

itants of the polis. The recurring time of the calendar and the linear time of

history could be articulated independently of each other or related to each

other, with the cycle of the calendar encompassing selected highlights of the

historical past. Although this book proposes that the manipulation and

presentation of time was of interest to the whole community, I shall focus

in this chapter on those who addressed the question of how to organize and

articulate time from a scholarly angle.

1 Plutarch, Life of Aristeides 19.8. A more commonly cited example illustrating the same localvariations on the calendar is to be found in Aristoxenus, Harmonica 2.37: Iººa �Æ��ºH� �ØŒ�fi B H� ��æH� Iªøªfi B H� ±æ��ØŒH� � ��æd H� �ø� I� ��Ø�; �x�� ‹Æ� ˚�æ��ŁØ�Ø �b��Œ�� ¼ªø�Ø� %Ł��ÆE�Ø �b �� æ�Ø �� Ø�� Oª� �� (‘But the deWnition of the keys givenby the Harmonists is exactly like the treatment of the days such that whenever the Corinthiansare reckoning the tenth day of the month, the Athenians are on the Wfth, and still others are onthe eighth’).

The extant traces of the chronographic tradition from the ancient world

may be described as, if not entirely exiguous, at best extremely fragmentary

and heavily dominated by a small number of authors. But it is worth Wrst

noting the extent and nature of the evidence, not least since it is so often

ignored in modern scholarly works which purport to present and describe the

two major forms of time management in the ancient Greek world—the

annually recurring time of the calendars and the linear time of history.

I shall deal in detail with ancient scholarly works on each of these in the

relevant sections of this chapter, but we should note immediately that this

tradition is very much a creation of the Hellenistic period, and is represented

by a sequence of key scholars of the eastern Mediterranean centres of learning.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene spent much of his life in the Alexandrian court of the

third century bc and was renowned for the wide range of his scholarly

interests, spanning as they did mathematics, literary criticism, philosophy,

poetry, geography, and chronography itself. But by far the dominant Wgure in

the extant fragments is the second-century bc scholar, Apollodorus of Athens,

who moved to Alexandria, subsequently to Pergamum, and later back to

Athens, and left not only his great chronographic work, but also a major

commentary on the Homeric Catalogue of Ships, and a work on the gods. He

is followed in the next century by Castor of Rhodes and historians such as

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who give a strong sense of the competitive nature

of the chronographic scholarly world by this stage. And the ongoing tradition

is represented for us in a rather patchy way by Phlegon of Tralles in the second

century ad and the third-century polymath, Porphyry of Tyre, with whomwe

enter (in a hostile sense) the world of Christian chronography and a whole

new episode.

In spite of its limitations, this Greek scholarly chronographic literature is of

great interest and importance. In terms of the history of scholarship, from the

Renaissance to the early twentieth century, it gave rise to a whole strand of

criticism which saw itself as oVering both the analysis and the revival of the

ancient tradition. Renaissance scholars who were engaged in the same attempt

to set out the structure of the past, including the Creation, the life of Heracles,

the fall of Troy, the Wrst Olympics, as well as the religious practices and beliefs

which underpinned the ancient calendars, were very clearly stepping into the

shoes worn by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.2 The importance of

commentary and competitive interpretation as an element in the ancient

chronographic enterprise was illustrated by the extraordinary reconstruction

2 See A. T. Grafton, ‘Tradition and Technique in Historical Chronology’, in M. H. Crawfordand C. R. Ligota (eds.), Ancient History and the Antiquarian: Essays in Memory of ArnaldoMomigliano (London, 1995), 15–31 at 16.

48 Making a business of time

of a Hellenistic chronicle, a List of Olympiads (� ˇºı��Ø��ø� I�ÆªæÆ��) by

Scaliger, followed by the even more extraordinary decision of Ewald Scheibel

in nineteenth-century Berlin to write a vast commentary on this modern

reproduction, explicating Scaliger’s text year by year. Thus ancient chrono-

graphy was practised again in the modern world, as scholars sought both to

solve the chronological problems of antiquity using ancient chronographic

works, and to appreciate and criticize the methods which were called into play

in the attempt.

Trends in classical scholarship have, however, shifted elsewhere in the

course of the twentieth century. The interest in chronography as a Weld of

study with a history to recount has waned as part of a more general move

away from the history of scholarship in its own right. The interest in chrono-

graphic texts as the route to establishing accurate dates for such key events as

the Trojan War has diminished as scholars have turned their attention from

realities to mentalities. Perhaps most compellingly, the patience and math-

ematical expertise required for scholars to make sense of and be truly engaged

with ancient debates over dating have dramatically declined, with some

notable exceptions.3 But before chronography became less fashionable, a

sequence of late nineteenth-century German scholars paved the way for

Felix Jacoby to make it the foundation stone of his career and the underpin-

ning of his life’s work on historiography.4 As outlined before (in the preface),

Jacoby wrote his inaugural dissertation at Berlin in 1900 on Apollodorus’

Chronica and made the epigraphic chronicle displayed on the Parian Marble

the subject of his Habilitationsschrift at Breslau in 1903. Furthermore, his

inaugural lecture in Breslau took as its topic the greatest chronographer from

the Hellenistic period, Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Although the chronographic

tradition, both ancient and modern, for the very precision and erudition

which the subject matter demands, has tended to be located in the realm of

recondite scholarship, Jacoby’s building of a career in historiography on the

foundation of a thorough understanding and appreciation of the ancient

chronographers should remind us of quite how important the development

and analysis of formal time systems is to the writing of history.

3 The painstaking study of D. Panchenko, ‘Democritus’ Trojan Era and the Foundation ofEarly Greek Chronology’, Hyperboreus. Studia Classica 6 (2000), 31–78, oVers a classic illustra-tion of the skills required for this kind of work.4 See I. Moller, ‘Felix Jacoby and Ancient Greek Chronography’, in C. Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti

dell’opera di Felix Jacoby (Pisa, 2006), 259–75, for the importance of chronography in Jacoby’shistoriographical scheme. At 261–3, Moller discusses the work of H. Diels, Jacoby’s teacher, onApollodorus’ Chronica (1876), E. Rohde’s work on Die Konigslisten des Eratosthenes (1884/5),and E. Meyer’s interest in the methods for establishing ancient dates in the Wrst volume of hisForschungen zur Alten Geschichte (1892).

Constructing calendars 49

The twofold nature of ancient chronography is worth keeping in mind.

Combined with the epigraphic record of actual calendars, it underpins mod-

ern attempts to reconstruct the calendar systems of Greek cities,5 and, on

a grander scale, it sets out explicitly some of the problematic issues which

had already vexed historians over how to articulate and measure the time

of history. Thus the chronographic tradition treated both the cyclical time of

the calendar and the linear time of history.6 Of these, the latter Weld is far

better represented in the extant fragments and will therefore occupy the

majority of this chapter. It might, in any case, seem appropriate to focus on

the scholarly works which address the linear time of history in a book which

itself takes the presentation of the past as its primary focus. But we have

already seen that the relationship between the two types of time encapsulated

by calendars and by the long span of history was a close one, and this blurred

boundary is relevant to our consideration of chronography too. Partly for this

reason, I have chosen to bring together here works in which the form, origin,

and nature of polis calendars were explicitly treated with chronographic works

dealing with the articulation of historical time. This clearly places the em-

phasis on the formal similarity between the two bodies of text, both of which

are concerned with scholarly expositions of temporal organization, and on

the similarity of the potential readerships of such works.

But it is worth noting that alternative ways of conWguring the evidence are

justiWable and illuminating. Rather than bringing together scholarly works on

diVerent types of time—the annually repeated time of the calendar and the

linear time of history—Jacoby, in his Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker,

included the works on the calendar in the same volume as the local histories.

This was partly because the authors of both types of work sometimes coincided

in Wgures such as Philochorus, but primarily because Jacoby considered this

concern with the annual cycle of festivals as a form of local historiography.

5 Unfortunately, there tends to be little reference made to the chronographic works in booksabout the Greek calendar(s), but they are potentially an excellent source in so far as they attemptthe same task as modern scholars of disentangling the intricacies of the calendar. A. E. Samuel,Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity (Munich, 1972) adoptsa bipartite approach, integrating the ancient scholarly literature into his discussion of the lineartemporal systems adopted in historiography, but not really engaging with the fragments ofworks on the Athenian festival calendar, not least since he focuses on issues of intercalation andthe problems of more than one concurrent civil calendar in that polis; furthermore, he isadmirably lacking in Athenocentricity, thereby reducing the relative importance of fragmentsfrom Atthides concerning Athenian month names. One would not suspect from R. Hannah,Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Classical World (London, 2005) thatany scholarly tradition or debate surrounding such matters existed in antiquity at all.

6 This two-stranded interest of chronography is noted by Grafton, ‘Tradition and Technique’,16: ‘Technical chronology reconstructs the calendars and dates the main events of ancient andmedieval history.’


There is considerable force to the point that the organization of time adopted

by the polis was an integral part of the story of the place. Although historians

sometimes used local calendars as a chronological framework within which to

place historical narrative, this does not seem to have been their prime interest in

the calendar, not least since much historical narrative does not happen at the

level of days and months, but over the course of years, decades, and centuries.

Rather, consideration of the origins of the festivals which punctuated the

calendar formed a natural theme, rather than a mere structuring device, for

the local historians. It established inmemorable and legitimating form, through

reference to the distant—oftenmythological—past, an aetiology for the present

articulation of time in the polis. It seems that local historians saw the develop-

ment of local festivals and the associated patterning of time as fundamental

aspects of the city’s functioning. It was both a feature of the everyday life of the

polis and an element of its history that it had come to celebrate certain religious

festivals on particular days.

The question of categorization, then, is very pertinent here. It is not clear-

cut whether it is more helpful to group together all works which deal with the

structures of time, whether on a recurring cycle or stretching across historical

time, or whether it would make more sense to consider, as Jacoby did, works

on the calendar as another form of local historiography, and the large-scale

chronographic works as a separate category which provides the framework,

rather than the content, for local histories. That would give rise to a diVerent

problem, namely that the works on the calendar concern the past only in so

far as it provides aetiologies for the current system of months and festivals,

and they therefore do not require any temporal framework of the kind which

the chronographers produced. Regardless of this, it seems clear that the

overlap in interest between works on the local calendars and works of local

history is considerable.

The overlap in content between works devoted to the festival calendar and

those on other subjects, such as local history or dialectal issues, has a clear

point of contact with the arguments put forward by Jacoby in his Atthis

concerning the relationship between antiquarian study, particularly of a

religious nature, and local historiography. I shall return (in chapter 4) to

this relationship between local historiography and antiquarianism, and also

the question of whether antiquarianism necessarily implies exclusivity or

distance from the world of the functioning polis. It is, however, worth noting

here that, in a sense, the rather antiquarian interests of chronographers in the

small-scale recurring time of the calendar and in the large-scale progressive

time of history both Wnd a place in the works of polis historians.

This blurred boundary between the world of local historiography and that

of works on the calendar, which Jacoby reXected in his arrangement of the


fragments, gives rise to the methodological diYculty of attributing fragments

to works. Philochorus, for example, the third-century author, who is most

noted for his work of Athenian local history, also wrote a work On Feasts/

Festivals, in which he established the date of various festivals, such as the

Chytroi on the thirteenth of the month of Anthesterion;7 and a date and

aetiology for the Aloa feast, which was held in the month of Poseideon on the

Wfth day of the moon’s waning and took its name from the fact that it took

place around the threshing Xoors.8 As Jacoby suggested ‘the natural arrange-

ment for this separate book is that of the calendars of sacriWces as preserved in

inscriptions, and it is quite conceivable that the single book —�æd ��æH� [sc.

On Festivals] was merely such a calendar’.9 It would have interesting implica-

tions for the proximity or distance between scholarly works on the calendar

and temporal organization for the citizens of the polis, if the former were

essentially identical to the latter, except in terms of audience. The late second-

century bc writer, Apollonius of Acharnae, oVers another example. He wrote

On the Festivals in Athens, the extant fragments of which likewise concern the

details and dates of various local festivals. On the Pyanepsia, he concurred

with almost all the writers on Athenian festivals in saying that Pyanepsia were

brought to Apollo on the seventh of the eponymous month, Pyanepsion.10 It

is assumed that other fragments of Apollonius, even where no book title is

given by the excerptor, also belong to this work on the festival calendar,

linking feasts for the gods to the articulation of time for the polis. So, f 3 on

the Chalceia festival, which took place also in the month of Pyanepsion, or f 4

on the Hydrophoria, a festival held in Athens for those lost in the Xood, or the

slightly longer f 5 on the Athenian festival of Meilichios Zeus, which took

place in the month of Anthesterion when it was already Wve days on the

wane,11 all appear to be safely enough attributed to the work on festivals.

7 FGrH 328 f 84: %�Ł��æØH�� æ�fi � K�d ��ŒÆ. There is some debate over whether theChytroi were celebrated as part of the Anthesterion festival or whether as a separate feast. SeeE. Simon, Festivals of Attica: An Archaeological Commentary (Madison, 1983), 93, for a clearassertion that it formed the last day of the Anthesterion.

8 FGrH 328 f 83:—��Ø��H�� e� ��fi � �Ł��. Jacoby, Commentary, notes that it ishard to tell whether Philochorus would have treated calendar matters diVerently in the Atthisfrom in On Festivals.

9 See Jacoby, Commentary, ad loc.10 FGrH 365 f 2.11 FGrH 365 f 5: ��e� %�Ł��æØH�� Ł��. As Jacoby, Kommentar, observes, Apol-

lonius sets himself strangely against Thucydides (1.126.6) here by insisting on separating theDiasia from the festival of Zeus Meilichios. He makes the plausible suggestion that Apolloniuswas reXecting a diVerent and later reality, whereby the old and important festivals of Zeus hadlost their former meaning: ‘Vielleicht mussen wir mit der Tatsache rechnen, daß alle alten undbedeutenden Zeusfeste Athens . . . fruh ihre Bedeutung verloren hatten.’


We might make the same assumption of certain fragments of Philochorus,

such as f 166 on the way in which the Athenians voted the whole of the month

of Demetrion a holy month (ƒ�æ��Æ), or f 168 on the festival of the

Genesia, which took place in Athens on the Wfth of Boedromion. Caution

is, however, required. Phanodemus of Athens included in his Atthis, for

example, the proposition that the Chalceia festival was originally in honour

of Hephaestus rather than of Athena and was held in Pyanepsion, the fourth

Attic month.12 As Jacoby’s tentative approach reinforces, unless his propos-

ition that the works on the festivals resembled little more than inscribed

calendars is correct, there seems to be little diVerence in form or content

between the above-mentioned fragments which seem securely assigned to

‘technical’ works on the festival calendar and those which originally belonged

to works of local history.13

The issue is further complicated by the fact that later writers would provide

details on the Athenian festival calendar in the context of works on language.

Crates of Athens, writing about the Attic dialect in the Wrst century bc, noted

that the month of Thargelion was named after the bringing together of the

Wrst harvest;14 Istrus the Callimachean, another scholarly Wgure, claimed in

his work on Attic language that the name of the third month was Tritogeneia

because Athena was born then, and in another work on Attica that Anthes-

terion was the eighth month, sacred to Dionysus, and so called because of the

Xower of the grape, which Xourishes especially in this month;15 Jacoby too

had doubts about where to place the fragment of Ammonius of Athens which

provided an aetiology for Hecatombaion as the month when most hecatombs

were sacriWced.16 The generic problems are clearly far-reaching for fragments

which concern the arrangement and origin of the festival calendar.

12 FGrH 325 f 18. Simon, Festivals of Attica, 38, smoothes over the dispute by simply statingthat, although Hephaestus took part in the festival as patron of bronze workers, the oVeringswere always to Athene Ergane. Jacoby, Commentary, attempts a more detailed explanation,positing a development of the festival along the following lines: Hephaestus festival?—commonfestival [presumably with dedications to Athene]—diminishing importance of Hephaestus—hisreintroduction. Adducing epigraphic evidence (IG 22 674), he argues that the Athene must beAthene Polias rather than Athene Ergane.13 Except perhaps that the local histories took as a starting point for their discussion the

historical origins, rather than the place in the calendar.14 FGrH 362 f 6. It is noteworthy, though, that Crates was also attributed a work on Athenian

festivals, making his interest in the etymology of festival names unsurprising.15 FGrH 334 f 24 and f 13. For Anthesterion so deWned see also the late Wrst-century bc work

of Lysimachides (FGrH 366 f 6).16 FGrH 361 f 6. See also the work of Lysimachides for this deWnition (FGrH 366 f 5). Jacoby

was doubtful over whether f 6 of Ammonius should be attributed to him at all. He commentsthat, although Ammonius was clearly one of the main experts in the Weld of cult locations, it isimpossible to add to the corpus from anonymous fragments, given that he was not the only suchexpert.


And it is indeed worth noting that, although a city such as Athens had more

than one way of articulating the year, in fact the prytany calendar, on which the

business of the boule and the ecclesia was based, did not attract attention from

chronographers, nor does it feature in the temporal frameworks used by histor-

ians who wrote about the city. This might be a result of the dominant themes in

the extant fragments of local historiography, which tend not to involve political

analysis or narrative history. Whatever the reason, study by ancient scholars of

the calendar essentially means study of the festival, or archon’s, calendar.

Furthermore, although we know from the epigraphic remains of published

calendars from several diVerent poleis, that each polis articulated time according

to a lunar festival calendar in this way, still the vast majority of such references in

the scholarly works are to the festivals of Attica, and, as we have seen (in chapter

1), this is reXected also in the focus of the modern scholarly literature on the

festival calendar of Athens rather than those of the other poleis. Although this

might seem unsurprising, given the predominance of Atthidography in the

extant fragments of local history, in fact the interest in Attic festival calendars

is, even so, disproportionately great. It might be tempting to posit that this

imbalance is at least consistent with the dominance of the Athenian festival

calendar in providing one of the chronological frameworks within which the

local historiography of other parts of the Greek world was constructed, as we

shall see (in chapter 4). However, it is impossible to prove that the use in other

poleis of identical month names, for example, demonstrates actual borrowing,

and is not simply the result of a similar set of festivals.

The predominance of Athens here cannot be attributed to its political

power, since the scholarly interest in its festival calendar seems to have

emerged from its tradition of local historiography, which Xourished after

Athens’ heyday as a Mediterranean power. Indeed scholarly interest in the

calendars of the Greek poleis continued well into the Roman imperial period,

but the range and emphasis of interests seems to have remained fairly

constant. The extant fragments of Lysimachides’ late Wrst-century bc work,

On the Athenian Months, chime in with the themes so far observed; the

establishment of what feasts, sacriWces, and so on are performed in which

month, and some aetiological and mythological background. Metageition is

noted as the second Athenian month, when sacriWces are made to Apollo;17

other fragments, without title, which are commonly assumed to belong to this

work, deal with the standard aetiologies for month names.18 In another he

17 FGrH 366 f 1.18 Besides Anthesterion and Hecatombaion, Lysimachides provides an explanation, albeit

rather weak, for the month Mounychion, which he deWnes as the tenth in the Athenian year andthe one when sacriWces are made to Artemis Mounychia (FGrH 366 f 8).


notes that the Scira festival gave the month Scirophorion its name, and was

named after the skiros, the sunshade under which the priestess of Athena and

the priest of Poseidon and that of the sun were carried from the acropolis to

some place called Sciros—either a double determination for the name, or the

place was named after the shade which was carried there.19 The idea of

‘natural’ time comes through in another fragment of Lysimachides, in

which he notes that the month of Maimacterion was when winter started

and the air was disturbed (ÆæÆŒØŒ �).20 Lysimachides is described in this

fragment as one of the writers on festivals and the months of Athens, and it is

clear from fragments ascribed to ‘anonymous cult writings’ that the categories

‘those who write about the festivals and months at Athens’ or ‘those who write

about feasts’ were signiWcant and identiWable groups.21 Furthermore, it is

clear that such writers were known to have potentially divergent opinions,

since it is noted that ‘those who write about feasts agree that the Bendideia in

the Piraeus happen on the ninth to the tenth of Thargelion’.22 The implication

seems to be that they might well have disagreed on the matter, and, as we shall

see, the element of competitive expertise in chronographic literature devoted

to historical problems is even more pronounced.

The scholarly tradition concerning the festival calendar, particularly that of

Athens, which continues throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and

to a large degree into the world of modern scholarship, has its earliest

manifestations in the world of local historiography. But it is not clear that

the tradition actually developed, as opposed to simply continuing. The

themes remain constant over two centuries or more, giving etymologies,

aetiologies, and dates. It is diYcult to say with any conWdence precisely

what the overall shape or changing preoccupations of any of these works

could have been, since the fragments are exiguous and scarce, and the

excerptors are searching for the same information in each case, which suc-

cessfully disguises any signiWcant diVerences in tone or content between the

original works. The pattern of citation deserves some attention, since almost

every fragment so far cited in this chapter is preserved in the invaluable

dictionary of Harpocration of Alexandria in the service of a speciWc purpose;

that is, to elucidate the works of the Attic orators. The dominance of this one

19 FGrH 366 f 3. See also Philochorus FGrH 328 f 14–16. As Jacoby, Kommentar, notes, thequestion is not whether the priest of Helios went in a procession, but when that traditionstarted, and therefore whether the detail was already in Lysimachides or whether it was insertedby Harpocration—Jacoby pronounces the former option ‘nicht unwahrscheinlich’.20 FGrH 366 f 2.21 See FGrH 368 f 4: �ƒ ªæ�łÆ�� æ� � ��æH� ŒÆd ��H� H� %Ł��Ø� and f 3: �ƒ ��æd H�

%Ł��Ø� ��æH� ª�ªæÆ� ��.22 FGrH 368 f 6: BØ K��Ø K�d ��ŒÆ ¨Ææª�ºØH��.


source brings both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, we

cannot use the pattern of citation to support the argument that information

about the calendar was seen as generically Xexible. On the positive side, the

fact that Harpocration did not have any reason for citing the texts except to

elucidate Athenian speeches means that his interest is not skewed by another

agenda, and in this sense matches our own.23

If there is any pattern at all tentatively to discern, it might be that works on

the calendar seem over time to have become the preserve of scholarly experts, as

opposed to those who were simultaneously local historians. At very least, on

the basis of meagre evidence, we might note that the attribution of works on the

calendar to authors also known to us as local historians, such as Philochorus,

seems to disappear. This trend itself oVers some insight into the nature and

problems of the chronographic texts, as well as into the ongoing scholarly

interest in unravelling the intricacies of the calendar. The culture of scholarly

elucidation, which dominates the preservation of works on the calendar, since

scholia on ancient texts account for almost all those fragments which do not

appear inHarpocration, translates more emphatically into a culture of scholarly

competition when we turn to the works on the longer span of historical time.

2 . CHRONOGRAPHICAL WORKS

�h ��Ø ��ŒH �æ��ŁÆØ �æ��ØŒ�E� Ø�Ø º�ª��Ø� ŒÆ� �Ø�; �R� �ıæ��Ø�Ø�æŁ�F�� ¼�æØ ��æ�� N� �P�b� Æ��E� ›��º�ª�� Æ�ÆØ

ŒÆÆ�B�ÆØ a� I�Øº�ª�Æ�.

I do not think it right to surrender it [sc. the chronologically impossible

encounter between Solon and Croesus] to any so-called Wxed chronological

tables. Although countless people have been revising them right up to this

day, they have been unable to bring their contradictory arguments to any

point which is agreed amongst themselves.24

Sorting out the intricacies of the Athenian calendar was one task facing those

who undertook to ‘organize’ time, but an even greater task was the discussion

and presentation of the large time scale of the past, that is historical chron-

ography. Chronology and history are essentially bound up together because of

23 Virtually nothing is known of the career and circumstances of Harpocration, and,although he may have been the tutor of Antoninus Verus (Life of Verus 2), this is uncertainenough for us not to be able to date him correspondingly, even tentatively, to the late Wrst orearly second century ad. With so little known about the author and his perspective, it isfortunate that his work is essentially a straightforward lexicon.24 Plutarch, Life of Solon 27.1.


the predominance of time as the matrix along which history and historiog-

raphy are conWgured: as Bouvier has noted: ‘Pour toute une tradition occi-

dentale, le temps historique est d’abord compris comme l’ordre chronologique

qui permet de dater les evenements selon un systeme coherent et objectif de

decoupage du temps’.25 So we are moving now from discussions of calendars

and of individual feast days to scholarly works devoted to more abstract issues

concerning chronology and the organization of historical time: namely,

synchronisms, the coordination of diVerent local systems in ways which

would be fundamental to those constructing the past in historiography or

oratory, standard and ongoing chronological debates such as that surround-

ing the acme of Homer or the date of the Trojan War. The extant instances of

temporal structures being employed in historical texts and in epigraphic

sources, such as the Parian Marble and the Lindos Chronicle, will be discussed

later. But here I shall discuss the extant fragments of works which deal with

the construction of time past in theory, rather than in practice.

a) Problems of method

Echoing some of the problems associated with works on the calendar, one of

the diYculties in dealing with the extant fragments of chronographical works

is gauging the nature of the original works from extremely scant remains

which are dominated by a small number of late excerptors. This is, of course,

notoriously problematic when dealing with fragments of any kind. It does,

however, seem even more pronounced in the case of chronographies, and it

remains diYcult to reconstruct their shape, form, balance, omissions, or

preoccupations with any degree of certainty. It seems indisputable that the

works devoted to chronography did have as one of their main preoccupations

the resolution of some of the chronological problems relating to Greek

history. This was clearly central to the project of creating a temporal frame-

work that would accommodate both universal and local accounts of the past.

Furthermore, the element of competition which was hinted at in works on the

festival calendar is conWrmed for the large-scale chronographic works also by

Plutarch’s comment, with which this section started, on the lack of certainty

surrounding chronological disputes. Chronography was apparently such a

contentious discipline that a chronological hitch would in no way be enough

25 D. Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps meteorologique chez les premiers historiens grecs’,in C. Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien (Paris, 2000),115–41 at 119: ‘For the whole western tradition, historical time is Wrst and foremost understoodas the chronological order which allows the dating of events according to a coherent andobjective system for carving up time.’

Chronographical works 57

to make Plutarch abandon a scenario of such dramatic value as the meeting

between Solon and Croesus. However, while we can be sure that chronogra-

phers sought competitively to present answers to issues such as the date of the

fall of Troy and the coordination of diVerent temporal systems, we are still left

wondering quite how dominant such issues were in the original works, and to

what degree our later citations have skewed the picture with their own

agendas. If we consider the remaining fragments of works which are assumed

because of their titles to be chronographical, it rapidly becomes apparent that

their contents were wide-ranging in scope.

Ancient works of chronography were often, perhaps even usually, cited by

later authors in order to solve or exemplify disputes over key dates in Greek

history.26This has the obvious advantage of giving us a strong sense of where the

problems in ancient chronology lay, and which points in the past were con-

sidered important enough for their precise date to be the subject of such

discussion. As we shall see, the importance could lie in a variety of Welds—

events of historical signiWcance in their own right were worth trying to pinpoint

in time, but so too were those whose signiWcance extended to their universal

applicability, which in turn gave them a crucial role as punctuationmarks in the

structuring of chronologies. It was thus natural that the date of the fall of Troy

would be hotly disputed, partly because the Trojan story had been endowedwith

special status by its Homeric telling, partly because the fall of the city was an

event with huge myth-historical consequences, since it gave rise to a dispersal

of heroes, both Trojan and Greek, whose tortuous nostoi would change the map

of the Greek world, as they founded cities en route, and partly because

its universal signiWcance from both these angles made it a crucial shared hook

on which other more local histories and time frames could be hung.27

26 The regularity with which chronographers disagreed about the dates of key events andimportant historical Wgures is brought out by the surprised tone in a fragment from Phlegon ofTralles FGrH 257 f 8, that on the placing of Cyrus’ rule over the Persians in a particularOlympiad, ‘the date rings true for everyone’: –�Æ�Ø ªaæ �ı�� › �æ ��. The personiWca-tion of time and the musical metaphor are both rather charming features of Phlegon’s comment.

27 The importance and contentious nature of the date of the fall of Troy in the ancientchronographic tradition is brought out in the painstaking study of Panchenko, ‘Democritus’Trojan Era and the Foundation of Early Greek Chronology’. By stating that his late Wfth-centuryDiakosmos was published 730 years after the fall of Troy (further speciWed either by himself or bya later chronographer), Democritus laid an early foundation stone for the Greek chronographictradition. Unfortunately, uncertainty over whether this was the archonship of Aristion (421/0)or of Ariston (454/3) led to untold confusion and much of Greek history ended up beingmisplaced by thirty years. See W. Burkert, ‘Lydia between East and West or How to Date theTrojan War: A Study in Herodotus’, in J. B. Carter and S. P. Morris (eds.), The Ages of Homer:A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (Austin, 1995), 139–48, for the way in which the earlydate for the fall of Troy, given by Herodotus, may have been motivated by his use of Lydiansources which wanted to link the genealogy of Gyges to the heyday of Nineveh, and stretched thechronology of Heracles and Troy backwards with it.


Leaving aside the more obviously chronographic material, to which we

shall return, we Wnd a rich variety of themes treated by these authors. In some

cases it is simply that the author wrote a wide range of works, and we should

not deduce anything about the contents and scope of his chronographic work

from this fact. So, for example, Xenagoras of Heraclea wrote,28 in addition to

his Chronoi, a work On Islands, in which he discussed the etymology of the

former name of Cyprus, Cerastia (f 26), and it seems likely that some of

the fragments which carry no book title came from this work. Fragments on

the island of Oenoe near Euboea (f 31), named after its grapes, but according

to Xenagoras renamed Sicinus after the son of Thoas and the nymph Oenoe,

or on Carpasia (f 34), a city in Cyprus and an island opposite the headland of

Sarpedon, would seem ideal candidates. Likewise, we might feel conWdent in

assigning a fragment on the identity of the man who discovered the cycles and

numbers of the moon—not Endymion nor Typhon, according to Xenagoras,

but Atlas—to the Chronoi (f 32). What, however, is to be done with the

passage (f 29) on the three sons of Odysseus and Circe—Rhomus, Anteas,

and Adreas, all of whom founded eponymous cities? It might seem obvious

that this would Wt more neatly into a work on islands and their mythological

foundations than into a work of chronography. However, even the fragments

of Xenagoras’ Chronoi themselves reveal the diYculty in drawing boundaries

for these works. All but three are derived from the Lindian chronicle, and

conversely, Xenagoras accounts for a good proportion of cited sources in the

chronicle. There is thus a very considerable overlap between the Chronoi and

the Lindian document. It is interesting, in that context, that the latter is a

chronicle attached to an island, bringing island history and chronography

tantalizingly close together, and further confusing the boundaries between the

two known works of Xenagoras, one a chronicle and one a work on islands.

Jacoby is right to conclude that the extant fragments of the Chronoi give no

picture of how Xenagoras dated events, and indeed to suggest that the extant

fragments could come from an excursus rather than the main part of the work.

The other more substantially extant authors of chronographical works

display similar ambiguity over precisely what might fall within the scope of

such writing. Eratosthenes of Cyrene at Wrst appears to be something of an

exception, in so far as there is a relatively sharp distinction between the

subject matter of fragments from his Chronographiai and Olympionikai and

those ascribed to other works. These latter fragments range from notes on

intellectuals such as his own teacher, Ariston of Chios (f 17) and Zeno of

28 FGrH 240. The date of Xenagoras is uncertain but, if he was the father of the historianNymphis, then he must have been active around the early second century bc. Jacoby, Kommen-tar, labels him ‘Kallimacheische Zeit?’.


Eleate (f 20), to marvels such as Polus the tragic actor, who at the age of

seventy performed eight tragedies in four days (f 33), Eudoxus who had

conversations with dogs (f 22) and a many-footed animal (f 36), to episodes

in Greek history—Alexander (f 28–30), Demetrius of Phaleron (f 32), the

deaths of Cleon and Brasidas (f 39), the inscription of the early laws of Athens

on triangular tablets (f 37) and the sacred wars between Athens and Phocis

over Delphi (f 38). Some of these fragments are cited as coming from

particular works,29 but others are cited without provenance, and it is worth

asking whether they have been assigned to miscellaneous ‘other works’ be-

cause their subject matter does not appear to have a natural place in works on

chronography, thereby perpetuating the notion of purely and exclusively

chronographical treatises? And even here some fragments are puzzlingly

placed. A passage (f 40) on the length of the Pisistratid tyranny, which

Eratosthenes says lasted Wfty years, Aristotle forty-one, and Herodotus

thirty-six, is a case in point, a fragment which seems obviously chrono-

graphic, but is not ascribed explicitly to any particular work.

Another example of diYculty in attribution comes in the form of the

second-century bc chronographer, Apollodorus of Athens. Described as a

grammatikos and one of the pupils of Panaetius the Rhodian philosopher and

Aristarchus the grammatikos, he was clearly a polymath, with works on

Epicurus and Carneades (t 8), on the gods in twenty-four volumes (t 9),

on the gods and history (t 11), and on Athenian prostitutes (t 17).30 It is

worth noting that some of those scholars to whom the solution of chrono-

graphical problems appealed were the same as those who had chosen to

devote attention to the minutiae of Homeric problems, and we shall return

to Apollodorus’ commentary on the Homeric catalogue (t 12), which might

have given him a particular interest in the chronological problem of the fall of

Troy. Many fragments of On the Gods are extant, and others were assigned by

Jacoby to that work on the assumption that their subject matter was suY-

ciently clear-cut. It is admittedly the case that the fragments which explicitly

declare their work of origin are unambiguously concerned with gods, relevant

etymologies, divine genealogies, sacriWces, and other rituals. On the Catalogue

of Ships is predictably concerned with places, their names,31 and some elem-

ents of mythology, particularly where they relate to heroic foundations, as in

the fragments on how Philoctetes came to Croton and founded cities (f 167),

or on the complex travels of Hesione, the daughter of Laomedon, following

the fall of Troy (f 158). Many other fragments have been assumed to come

29 f 20, for example, is from On Good and Bad, f 22 from To Baton.30 See also On Epicharmus, On Sophron, Reply to the letter of Aristocles, Languages, Etymolo-

gies, On the Earth, all of which are represented by extant fragments in Jacoby.31 See, for example, FGrH 244 f 163 on Olenus as a masculine, rather than a feminine, city.


from this work on the basis of their geographical subject matter. However, this

is a process of assignation fraught with diYculty. Several fragments (f 184–

97), for example, are all short notes on cities and islands around the Greek

world. It might therefore seen eminently sensible to assume that their original

location was in a work which concerned itself with explaining the names of

places which sent troops to Troy. But these fragments, inter alia, are all

citations made by Stephanus of Byzantium, whose interest was notoriously

focused on this Weld. Had the same passages from Apollodorus been trans-

mitted to us by a diVerent excerptor with a diVerent set of preoccupations, we

might not have ended up with a bald list of place names, which naturally

seems to come from the work On the Catalogue of Ships,32 but we might

instead have been presented with a series of mythological stories attached to

the place names, or accounts of their history, or their famous oVspring, and

we might have characterized these fragments quite diVerently and have

chosen to assign them to another work. By contrast, other fragments assigned

to On the Catalogue of Ships might, it seems, as easily have come from other

works. Fragments providing place-name etymologies, for example, such as

one on the origin of the name, Samothrace (f 178), or on how Acte in Attica

was not so called after the autochthonous Actaeus, but because it lay closest to

the coast (f 185), could surely be assigned as readily to Apollodorus’ work on

Etymologies as to the work on the catalogue.

Given that the vast majority of securely placed fragments from On the

Catalogue of Ships come from writers with a strong geographical focus, Strabo

and Stephanus of Byzantium, we are left with a problem. Either they excerpted

from this work because it oVered precisely what they were looking for, and their

citations accurately reXect the nature of the original; or the preservation of

these fragments through a very restricted number of excerptors causes real

problems in deciding what the scope and tone of the original might have been.

Either way, it is certain that we cannot take the fact that a single author wrote

many works to imply that the character of each was suYciently distinct for us to

place unassigned fragments with conWdence, nor then to use them to support

already tenuous characterizations of the original works.

Apollodorus’ Chronica is a good case in point. Every one of the twenty-six

fragments with book numbers given, except three,33 derives from Stephanus

32 See, FGrH 244 f 184 on a city in Thrace called Aenus, but Poltymbria, according toApollodorus, or f 194 on the Thracian city of Therma, which Apollodorus believes to beMacedonian.33 f 14–16 are citations from Diogenes Laertius. f 14 cites Apollodorus on the date of the

death of Crates, given in Olympiads. Diogenes’ interest here is clearly in the philosophical booksleft behind, and his citation of Apollodorus is for chronological accuracy; f 15 on Arcesilaus;f 16 on the acme of Crates, again formulated in terms of Olympiads.


of Byzantium, and all are brief notes on place names. Perhaps the only

hindrance to our assuming that these were from On the Catalogue of Ships,

had we not been told that they were from the Chronica, would have been the

considerable geographical spread, reaching as far as Zacanthe in Iberia. This

danger makes plain that our view of the original works is strongly determined

by the later excerptor, since here we would run the risk of reconstructing not

the works of Apollodorus, but that of Stephanus, gathering together all like-

seeming fragments, but whose likeness was determined by the excerptor not

the original author. As it is, Stephanus has the advantage for us of citing by

both book title and book number, allowing us to sketch out an extremely

rudimentary and thin framework for Apollodorus’ Chronica,34 and prevent-

ing us from attributing these particular fragments on place names to On the

Catalogue.35 On the one hand, Stephanus’ dominance of the securely placed

fragments of the Chronica allows him extraordinary and unwarranted control

over our vision of that work; on the other, it reveals that the parameters of the

Chronica might have been broader than expected. The list of place names is

peppered with additional details, which perhaps allow us to look beyond

Stephanus for some small insights into Apollodorus’ interests. A fragment

(f 4), for example, on the river Elorus in Sicily, provides the extra detail that

the river contained Wsh which ate out of one’s hands; another (f 7) notes that

Parparon in Asia was the place where Thucydides died; one (f 9) mentions the

battle of Chaeronea; another (f 13) adds the detail that the Iberian city of

Zacanthe was taken by Hannibal; and another (f 22) speaks of the Aedusii,

allies of the Romans against Celtic Galatia. The impression gained is that,

although Stephanus’ preoccupations show us a strangely distorted Chronica,

dominated by place names, even he oVers glimpses into a broader work than

this, though still not the chronographical work we might have been expect-

ing.36 We shall return to the more obviously chronographical fragments of

Apollodorus’ work later.

While most of the authors of chronographic texts remain entirely without

context themselves, in space, time, function, and readership, Phlegon of

34 See F. Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik: Eine Sammlung der Fragmente (New York, 1973; Wrstpublished 1902), 10, for the assertion that we can reconstruct the framework for the Wrst twobooks only: ‘die Verteilung des StoVes lasst sich aus den Fragmenten mit Sicherheit nur fur diebeiden ersten Bucher feststellen’, with Book 1 going from the fall of Troy to the Persian wars, andBook 2 from then until the death of Alexander, corresponding neatly to Eratosthenes’ Chronica.

35 This should surely act as a cautionary note as regards those many other geographicalfragments which are assigned to On the Catalogue for want of any other obvious home.

36 See T. P. Wiseman, ‘The Intellectual Background’, in Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies inGreco-Roman Literature (Leicester, 1979), 154–66 at 158, for Apollodorus’ Chronica as a broadhistory in the Hecataean and Herodotean tradition: ‘Apollodorus’ conception of history was theamalgam of mythology, geography and history (in our sense)’.


Tralles is a rare exception.37 The testimonia present him as a freedman of

Hadrian, thereby providing both date and social standing. He wrote fourteen

books covering two hundred and twenty-nine Olympiads. As for those

fragments which concern the organization of time, we shall come back to

them later. But meanwhile it is worth noting the variety of subject matter

treated in the fragments securely assigned to Phlegon’s work entitled

A Collection of Olympic Victors and Dates, which deWes any expectation that

such a work would be narrow in scope.38 There are some more obviously

chronographical fragments, but also many fragments of the kind we have seen

elsewhere—brief notes from Stephanus of Byzantium about particular

places,39 some of which are relatively far-Xung.40 This shows the same kind of

geographical spread as we have seen before, and clearly reXects both Stephanus

as source, and something of the scope of the original. But it is also the case here,

as elsewhere, that some fragments, especially those not from Stephanus, oVer

glimpses into a broader historical interest. One passage (f 17), for example,

notes that Phlegon in Book 15 of the Olympiads stated that Bosporus was ruled

by king Cotys, whom Caesar ordered to wear a crown and whom he told the

cities to obey; another (f 23) provides alternative etymologies for the Adriatic

sea, one of which is historically grounded in the fact that Dionysius, tyrant of

Sicily, founded the city of Adrias on the Ionian gulf.

An initial consideration, then, of the fragments of chronographical works

reveals problems in assessing the nature and scope of the originals. It is

certainly reasonable to assert that they contained details which were not

purely chronographical, being peppered with geographical and historical

notes. This makes it extremely diYcult to assign fragments which are not

37 He is, indeed, such a rare exception that the amount of detail seems suspicious. Jacoby,Kommentar, notes that Phlegon’s chronographic work was commissioned (‘die Chronik war einKlientelarbeit’) like that of Suetonius, in this case dedicated to P. Aelius Alcibiades (t 3). I owe toPeter Derow the interesting idea that Phlegon might be a ‘constructed’ source, concocted by theauthor of the Historia Augusta in an attempt to provide fake authority for his account. It isindeed true that Phlegon is cited by only the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta and othervery late sources, such as Stephanus of Byzantium and Photius. We may have doubts also aboutan author such as Eretes (FGrH 242), who is cited only once, and that by Censorinus as part of alist of authors who are at odds over the length of time from fall of Troy to Wrst Olympiad—according to Eretes, Wve hundred and fourteen years.38 In a sense, this is all the more striking if one has doubts about the reality of the author,

since a Wctional work of chronography should surely tell us the parameters of plausibility forsuch a work if it is set up self-consciously to convince, and it is thus all the more surprising toWnd them exceeding our expectations.39 See, for example, FGrH 257 f 2 on the Trojan city of Gergis, f 3 on the little city called

‘temple of Zeus’, f 4 and 6 on Dyspontion, the home town of Olympic victors, f 5 on the city ofHyperasia, and f 7 on the city of Lenos.40 f 10 on Nibis, an Egyptian city, f 11 on Velitra in Italy, f 15 on Creme in Pontus, f 20 on

the Paeonian tribes, f 22 on the Libyan city of Phournita.


cited with their provenance. The fact that an author wrote works also on other

subjects is simply no grounds for assuming that his chronographical work was

narrow in scope and could not accommodate fragments on a wide range of

themes. Works bearing the title Chronica, or similar, were clearly multifaceted.

Just as non-chronographical fragments have been cited to supply informa-

tion and examples for later authors with their own agendas, leaving us

uncertain as to their original context, so too it is diYcult to assess the more

strictly chronographical fragments. In a sense the problem is the same—when

a later chronographer such as Eusebius or Censorinus cites an earlier author

in the context of a chronological dispute, we cannot be certain whether the

earlier text is simply a pool of information as to which events happened in

which year, or whether that earlier work was itself interested in issues of

chronology and the organization of time. Of course, the titles of works may be

helpful here—where we are told that Euthymenes placed Homer’s acme at the

same time as that of Hesiod, about two hundred years after the fall of Troy, in

a work called the Chronica,41 we might reasonably assume that this is not

simply a case of Clement of Alexandria citing a random work which happens

to mention a date which he can then use in his chronology of early Greek

literary history. Rather, it seems likely that Euthymenes himself was already

engaged in such an activity, working out the relationship between the time of

the Trojan War and that of the earliest poets. But the precise nature and

location of the chronographical interest must remain uncertain.

b) Chronography and the organization of time

With all of these methodological diYculties acknowledged, particularly the

problem of assessing the overall nature, scope, and shape of the original

works, and that of distinguishing the interests and motives of the author

from those of the excerptor, it is time to turn to the explicitly chronographical

fragments in works which, through their titles, do at least appear to claim an

interest in conWguring, arranging, and calculating time. In order to avoid

paralysis, it seems reasonable to work here on the assumption that these

authors were consciously interested in these projects, and that their mention

of, for example, key chronological punctuation marks such as the fall of Troy

are made not incidentally, but deliberately as part of an attempt to address

chronographic problems.

The third-century bc polymath, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, makes a good

starting point, not only because he is chronologically prior to many of our

41 See FGrH 243 f 1.


authors, but also because the relatively small number of extant fragments

encompasses many widely recurrent chronographic themes. I shall therefore

use the fragments of his work to provide a framework on which to hang

discussion of other authors. Of course, Eratosthenes was by no means only a

chronographer. The pupil of Ariston of Chios, he was summoned from Athens

by Ptolemy Euergetes, and joined the Ptolemaic court for about forty years.42

As Fraser notes, his choice of Athens as the location of his education, instead of

Alexandria, suggests an interest in philosophy, for which Athens was more

renowned.43 The testimonia, however, focus on his role as expert in grammar

and philologist, although it is conceded that he was also a poet, philosopher,

and geometer.44 Whatever the precise emphasis of his early career, which is

rather obscure, his reputation must have been suYciently elevated for him to be

appointed to the post of Librarian, which carried with it tutorship of the royal

children and incorporation into the Ptolemaic household. It was almost cer-

tainly during this period that he produced his most scholarly works, including

the chronographical work which concerns us primarily.45

Just as Eratosthenes’ monumental work of geography was preceded and

underpinned by a more technical work called the Anametresis, so too did his

works on time come as a pair. TheOlympionikai are relatively disappointing, in

so far as the extant fragments are concerned not with the establishment of a list

of Olympic victors as an aid to providing a chronological framework, but rather

provide a random selection of notes on the Olympic contests.46 On the other

hand, the work represented an attempt to participate in and improve an already

existing tradition started by Hippias of Elis with his early fourth-century List of

Olympic Victors.47 It seems commonly agreed that, althoughHippias’ list laid the

42 See FGrH 241 t 1.43 See P. M. Fraser, ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, Proceedings of the British Academy 56 (1970),

175–207 at 178.44 FGrH 241 t 3. See also t 2 for Eratosthenes as measurer of the earth.45 See Fraser, ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, 183, for the view that the Geography belongs to this

period ‘and I would have diYculty in believing that his chronography and his studies in AtticComedy do not also, for they entailed detailed research most easily carried out in the Library’.46 See, for example, f 5 on the wooden or iron or bronze object that was thrown in

competition, or f 4 on how the Tyrrhenians accompany their boxing with piping, or f 8 onAstyanax the Milesian who completed the circuit of laureate games with no trouble.47 See FGrH 6 f 2 with Plutarch, Numa 1.4 for the deWciencies of the system. Plutarch notes

that there is great diversity over when Numa reigned and over chronology in general, especiallywhen it is Wxed by the list of victors in the Olympic games published by Hippias. SeeS. Hornblower, Thucydides (London, 1987), 128, for the intellectual climate in which Hippiascompiled the Wrst list of Olympic victors, which ‘shows an interest in periodization and a newawareness of ‘‘historical’’ as opposed to mythical time.’ C. Higbie, ‘Craterus and the Use ofInscriptions in Ancient Scholarship’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 129(1999), 43–83 at 49–51, also comments on the document-mindedness of this period. For thehistory of attempts in the Hellenistic period to provide improved versions of the list, seeC. Wacher, ‘The Record of the Olympic Victory List’, Nikephoros 11 (1998), 39–50 at 41.


groundwork for universal chronology, it was not designed with that purpose in

mind.48As Panchenko notes, ‘if Hippias’ work pertained to the realm of cultural

history rather than chronography, it was natural to relate the time of establishing

the Olympic games with the time of the Trojan war and to formulate how many

years elapsed since the Troica till the Wrst Olympiad, but there was no obvious

reason to relate the list of the Olympic victors with that of the Spartan kings or

the Athenian archons.’49 I shall discuss (in chapter 3) the way in which histor-

ians, notably Timaeus of Tauromenium, would bring such lists into the service

of historiography, but it is worth noting that this translation from list into

historiographical framework was not the monopoly of Timaeus.

The culture of scholarly competition which characterized the Hellenistic

period oVered a natural context within which to improve upon Hippias’ list.

But Eratosthenes’ Chronographies, just like his Geography, put Hippias’

groundwork to broader use than this in replacing the ‘multifarious local

systems of chronology by a universal chronology of Greek history embracing

the period from the sack of Troy to the death of Alexander the Great’.50 It is

worth stressing here the precision of Fraser’s words ‘a universal chronology of

Greek history’ [my italics]. The Olympic games were, in origin, exclusively a

festival for all the Greeks, and this will be worth remembering when we

consider the adoption and development of the Olympiadic temporal system

by historians such as Timaeus from Sicily. The signiWcance of the ‘universal’

application of Olympiadic, that is Panhellenic, time is easy to overlook, but

speaks volumes about both the prestige of the Greek historiographical trad-

ition and the cultural aspirations of those who would bring their works within

its conceptual frameworks. It is clear from Dionysius of Halicarnassus that

Eratosthenes’ work on the organization of time, his Chronographies, was

considered a benchmark for standards in chronography, and oVered the

Panhellenic equivalent to using the list of Athenian archons as a framework

for history.51 Dionysius says that, although Porcius Cato does not give the

48 Jacoby, Commentary, ad FGrH 328 f 92, strikingly claims that Hippias’ work ‘is more likelyto have been a local book than a universal chronicle’.

49 Panchenko, ‘Democritus’ Trojan Era and the Foundation of Early Greek Chronology’, 58–9.Panchenko notes also that victory in stadionwas not the most prestigious (Thucydides 3.8 uses thepankration and see Philostratus, Imagines 2.6, for the status of this sport), but the most ancient;therefore the stadion could be used to determine how deep in the past went the institution of theOlympic games.

50 Fraser, ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, 198.51 I would diVer from Fraser, ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, 200, who praises Eratosthenes’ system

at the expense of the ‘rather amateurish scheme, or lack of scheme’ of the Parian Marble, whichincludes mythical dates and makes no reference to a general chronological scheme such as thatof the Olympiads. Eratosthenes was engaged in a project to provide a general framework fortime, as he had done in his Geography for space; the Parian Marble had no such universalpretensions, and thus reasonably used more local time frames.


date [for the foundation of Rome] in Greek terms, he places it four hundred

and thirty-two years after the TrojanWar, and that if this time is measured out

(I�Æ��æ�Ł��) alongside the chronography of Eratosthenes it comes out as

the Wrst year of the seventh Olympiad, revealing that Eratosthenes’ work

brought into a meaningful and calculable relationship Wxed markers such as

the Trojan War and the continuous temporal system oVered by the counting

of numbered Olympiads.52 Dionysius’ praise for Eratosthenes is worth not-

ing—he says that Eratosthenes used ‘sound tables’ (�ƒ ŒÆ� �� ªØ�E�), al-

though it is implied that it is Dionysius’ achievement to have put together

Eratosthenes’ system with the information provided by Cato, enabling him to

relate the foundation of Rome to the Olympiadic system.

The relation of key points in Mediterranean history to the Olympiadic

sequence is a theme which recurs consistently through the chronographic

fragments, as we shall see.53 It is, however, worth noting at this early stage that

Olympiads were not the only system against which events might be Wxed.

Besides the Trojan War, another crucial and recurrent point in Greek history,

as we shall see in the next chapter when considering the universal historians,

was the return of the Heraclidae. Eratosthenes is cited on the time diVerence

between the return of the Heraclidae and the archonship of Euaenetus, during

which Alexander invaded Asia, as being seven hundred and seventy-four

years.54 It is interesting to see the return placed in chronological relation to

the Athenian archonship—like the Olympiads, another continuous rather

than sporadic time system—and furthermore to Wnd the mythological past

of the Heraclidae and the Athenian magisterial system linked to another

notorious Wgure in the Greek historical memory—Alexander the Great.

Thus a chronological network involving mythical and historical events and

the Wxed framework of the archons is constructed. Another framework to be

brought into play is that of the Spartan kings. We are told that those who

calculate the time (I�Æº�ª ��Ø e� �æ ��) for the succession of kings at

Sparta, such as Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, say that Lycurgus was several

years older than the Wrst Olympiad.55 In this way a local time system is

brought into relation with the Olympiadic framework, oVering a means to

place local history in a more Panhellenic temporal context.

52 See f 1b ¼ Dionysius 1.74.2. Also f 1c from Censorinus, which cites Eratosthenes on thetime diVerence between the fall of Troy and the Wrst Olympiad (407 years).53 The one properly extant fragment of Ti. Claudius Polybius (FGrH 254 f 2) relates that the

names of winning athletes were inscribed only from the twenty-eighth Olympiad, in whichCoroebus of Elis won the stadion and was the Wrst to have his name inscribed, from which pointthe Greeks could count time: � � ˇºı��Øa� Æo� �æ�� K��Ł�; I�� w� '¯ºº�� IæØŁ��F�Ø �f��æ ��ı�—a stark statement of the fundamental importance of Olympic victor lists in Greekchronography.54 FGrH 241 f 1d. 55 FGrH 241 f 2.


These glimpses into the way in which Eratosthenes attempted to bring

together diVerent time systems, partly, though not exclusively, seeking to

relate them to the Olympiadic structure, and placing individual events of

wider signiWcance from the mythological and historic period against this

backdrop, are nowhere more concentrated than in the Wrst fragment, pre-

served by Clement of Alexandria:56

From the capture of Troy to the return of the Heraclidae eighty years, and

from there to the colonization of Ionia, sixty years. The succession of events

from there to the guardianship of Lycurgus, one hundred and Wfty years, and

then to the initial year of the Wrst Olympiad, one hundred and eight.

Here we Wnd the whole panoply of set historical punctuation marks, brought

into an Olympiadic framework. And once we have reached the Wrst Olym-

piad, we are told that from that point to the crossing of Xerxes two hundred

and ninety-seven years elapsed; then there were forty-eight to the start of the

Peloponnesian War, a further twenty-seven to the defeat of Athens, thirty-

four to the battle of Leuctra, thirty-Wve to the death of Philip, and then twelve

to the death of Alexander. This provides a spectacular example of how

important moments in Greek and Mediterranean history could be used as

stepping stones in constructing a coherent chronology. But it also reveals the

advantage of a continuous temporal system such as those oVered by Olym-

piads or the archon lists. It would be quite possible, and thereafter more

convenient, to convert all the events in this list which fall after the Wrst

Olympiad into Olympiadic time.57

The importance and value of drawing together events such as the Trojan

War, Xerxes’ expedition, and a coherent system of Olympiads extended also to

the intellectual world. Placing the poets, particularly Homer, in relation to the

major events of Greek history was crucial. We are told that Eratosthenes, inter

alios, claimed that Homer was at his height a hundred years after the fall of

Troy (��a �ŒÆ��e� �� B� �(º��ı ±º��ø�), neatly providing a relative

dating for Homer, which could theoretically be translated into Olympiads.58

But Eratosthenes is also cited for the age of Euripides when he died,59 and for

56 Although it might be claimed that we are witnessing here Clement’s synthesis rather thanthat of Eratosthenes, the way in which the fragment is introduced suggests otherwise: ‘Eratos-thenes recorded the dates in this way’ ( �¯æÆ��Ł�� b �f� �æ ��ı� z�� I�Æªæ��Ø).

57 See FGrH 241 f 1a. Note that in this instance the Athenian archonship is not adduced,though this was commonly used as a continuous temporal scale. It is worth noting that onecould also incorporate events which preceded the Wrst Olympiad into such a scheme, on theanalogy with our own bc/ad system which extends both sides of the chronological marker pointof Christ’s birth.

58 FGrH 241 f 9.59 FGrH 241 f 12.


the geneaology of another intellectual, Hippocrates of Cos.60We shall see this

interest in aligning intellectual history with political history in the fragments

of other chronographic works.

One Wnal fragment of Eratosthenes is worthy of mention. f 47 is assigned by

Jacoby to ‘other works’, that is he does not give it a speculative place in the

chronographic work or that on Olympiads. This decision is probably correct,

justiWed by Jacoby on the grounds that we Wnd no trace elsewhere in Eratosthenes

of the chronographic use of the acme.61 But the fragment nevertheless oVers a

further, interesting, and rather poetic means of conWguring time, whichwemight

not expect from a scientiWc chronographer. Here it is claimed that Eratosthenes

said that the pinnacle of youth was life’s spring, and that what followed that peak

was its summer and autumn, and that old age was life’s winter,62 an interesting use

of the seasonalmetaphor to link natural and biographical time and reminiscent of

some of the forms of biographical time patterning which we saw in chapter 1.

One might be tempted to dispute Jacoby’s assumption that such a method

for calibrating time did not belong to Eratosthenes’ chronographical work,

especially given its dominance in many societies and indeed in classical litera-

ture as a form of time reckoning (as discussed in chapter 1). It is, however,

noteworthy that reckoning by the seasons, either literally or metaphorically, or

by the vague unit of the human generation is strikingly absent from the extant

fragments of formal works on chronography.63 The chronographers were

clearly engaged in projects which attempted to move beyond ‘natural’ temporal

frameworks, embedded in the physical world, towards a humanly constructed

one, formulated in terms of political or religious activities and patterns, and

60 FGrH 241 f 13. Apollodorus of Athens (FGrH 244 f 73) is also cited for this geneaology.61 Jacoby, Kommentar: ‘Von der chronographischen Verwendung der IŒ�� Wndet sich bei E

keine Spur.’ On the other hand, this would seem a rather precarious mode of argumentationwhen dealing with exiguous remains of lost texts. We Wnd little trace of anything in thefragments of most chronographers.62 ¯æÆ��Ł�� B� �ºØŒ�Æ� �� e �b� IŒ�� Ææ �r�ÆØ; e �b ��a c� IŒ�c� Ł�æ�� ŒÆd

�� øæ��; ��Ø�H�Æ �b e ªBæÆ�.63 One striking and remarkable exception, where interest is shown in the generation, might

be Phlegon of Tralles (FGrH 257). His On Wonders and Long-lived People catalogued, inter alia,people whose life spans far exceeded the normal expectations. f 37, for example, oVers a vast listof named individuals, of varied provenance and status, who lived for extraordinarily longstretches of time. The list could be seen as suspicious in many ways—it gives a level of personaldetail which sounds Wctional, the life spans are impossibly long (f 38 notes Epimenes who diedat the age of one hundred and Wfty-seven, one hundred and Wfty-four according to Xenophanesof Colophon, and a remarkable two hundred and ninety-nine according to the Cretans), and itsvery existence, given the general absence of interest in generations might seem to count againstits authenticity. On the other hand, it does not claim to be a work of chronography, but rather awork of marvels, and its marvellous nature tells us nothing about the usual generational span orthe use it could be put to in chronography. A parallel for this interest in extreme longevity is tobe found in Ps-Lucian’s Macrobioi.


punctuated by mythological events. Thus the focus was not on seeking to

uncover the temporal patterns built into the backdrop of life, but rather on

seeking to impose patterns which were created by the events that took place

against that natural backdrop—conceptualizing time, not as an integral feature

of the cosmos, but as an externally constructed and imposed framework, within

which the ordering, duration, and relationship of events could be expressed. Of

course the two were not separable. The annual magistracies, the four-yearly

Olympiads, the calendar of months were inevitably linked to the natural cycles.

But there seems to be a marked diVerence in focus between the formulation of

time in natural phenomena, and that made explicitly in terms of human

activities.

The small number of extant fragments of Eratosthenes oVers glimpses into

many recurrent themes in the arrangement of time in chronographical projects,

and it seems sensible, using his cue, now to take these in turn and see how they

are treated by the other chronographers. It will, however, rapidly become clear

that these chronographical markers and systems were of value only when

related to each other, creating a chronological network which could encompass

the whole Greek world, and that indeed it was almost impossible to express the

date of a single event without recourse to its relationship either to other events

or to a continuous counting system. Therefore there is little to say about each

recurring topos individually, and much of interest in considering the way in

which the chronographers tried to coordinate them.

First, it is worth saying more about the importance of literary and intel-

lectual activity in the structuring of time, since this phenomenon forms a

constant undercurrent against which we may then consider the various

methods for arranging time. Many of the fragments of works whose titles

indicate their chronographical interests and motives are concerned with

the birthdate, date of death, or most often the acme of authors and other

intellectuals from Homer onwards.64 Apollodorus of Athens oVers a prime

example of the importance of working out a chronology for the literary and

intellectual world, just as for the political one. The extant fragments of his

64 A Roman chronicle, found near Rome itself and inscribed in stone, neatly illustrates theway in which intellectual history and political history were inseparable for the chronographer, atleast where Greek history was concerned. IG 14.1297 (FGrH 252) oVers a bipartite chronicle—one side Roman, the other Greek. Both adhere to a rather simple chronographic structure, eachentry giving the number of years from a speciWed event or events. So, Column A f 1 (¼ ColumnI, lines 2–7) notes that from the time when Sulla set out on his Mithridatic campaign and Sotercalled Physcon II returned to Egypt to rule, 103 years had elapsed; Col. B f 8 (¼ Col. II, lines22–5) notes that from Harmodius and Aristogeiton killing Hipparchus the tyrant, and Dariuscrossing to Scythia and yoking the Cimmerian Bosporus was 528 years. But, whereas the Romanside is strictly political and military in its interests, the Greek side incorporates entries on thesophists (Col. B f 4¼ Col. II, line 15) and on Socrates, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Parmenides, andZeno (Col. B f 10 ¼ Col. II, lines 30–2).


Chronica are liberally sprinkled with literary notes of this kind. As so often, we

are hindered in our interpretation by the source problem. The vast majority of

such notes are from Diogenes Laertius, and it is impossible to tell whether

Apollodorus has simply included intellectuals and their works, among many

other Wgures and events, as examples to illustrate the happenings of a particular

year, or whether he was more directly concerned with the notion of creating a

chronology of literature or intellectual activity in its own right.65 Furthermore,

since Apollodorus is often cited in conjunction with other chronographers, it is

not straightforward to work out which formulations are his and which derive

from others. What we can do is to observe that very many philosophers are

dated in the fragments, almost exclusively linked to Olympiadic time.66 One

example on Anaxagoras will suYce for the rather formulaic treatment:

º�ª�ÆØ �b ŒÆa c� ˛�æ��ı �Ø��Æ�Ø� �YŒ��Ø� KH� �r�ÆØ; ��ØøŒ��ÆØ �b��Œ��Æ ��: ��d �� `��ºº �øæ�� K� �E� �æ��ØŒ�E� ª�ª��B�ŁÆØ ÆPe�BØ ��Œ��BØ Oºı��Ø��Ø; �Ł��Œ��ÆØ �b HØ �æ�øØ �Ø B�

��Œ��B� Oª� ��: Xæ�Æ� �b �Øº��E� � `Ł��Ø� K�d ˚Æºº��ı; KH��YŒ��Ø� þ�; u� ��Ø ˜��æØ�� › *Æº�æ�f� K� BØ H� �`æ� �ø� �`�ÆªæÆ��Ø;�ŁÆ ŒÆd �Æ�Ø� ÆPe� KH� �ØÆæEłÆØ æØ�Œ��Æ.

He [sc. Anaxagoras] is said to have been twenty at the time of Xerxes’

crossing, and to have lived seventy-two years. Apollodorus says in his

Chronica that he was born in the seventieth Olympiad, and died in the

Wrst year of the seventy-eighth. He began to be a philosopher in Athens

under Callias, when he was twenty, according to Demetrius of Phaleron in

his list of Archons, where they also say that he spent thirty years.67

This is a prime example where it is not entirely clear which elements of the

dating to attribute to which source, but it is fairly explicit in Diogenes that

Apollodorus’ contribution was the Olympiadic formulae for Anaxagoras’

birth and death.68 And there are many fragments which must come also

65 There are a few indications that Apollodorus did have some interest in the history ofintellectual endeavour, where fragments concern literary activity, but without any apparentchronographic interest noted. See, for example, FGrH 244 f 48 on Eudoxus the playwright andhis successes in various contests, or f 49 on Ctesibius, the historian. Of course, the fragmentarynature of what remains may be masking an original chronographic purpose in mentioning theseWgures. Wiseman, ‘The Intellectual Background’, 158, sees Apollodorus’ inclusion of philosoph-ical and literary Wgures as a ‘characteristically Hellenistic addition’.66 See, for example, FGrH 244 f 14 on Crates, f 29 on Anaximander, who was sixty-four in

the second year of the Wfty-eighth Olympiad, f 36 on Democritus’ birth in the eightiethOlympiad, Chrysippus’ death in the one hundred and forty-third (f 46), that of Carneades inthe fourth year of the one hundred and sixty-second (f 51), the acmes of Protagoras andMelippus both in the eighty-fourth Olympiad (f 71 and 72).67 FGrH 244 f 31 (¼ Diog. Laert. ii. 7) on Anaxagoras.68 It is worth noting, in passing, the use by another, unnamed, source of the dating in terms

of Xerxes’ expedition, a prime chronological marker in Greek history, and Diogenes’ coordin-ation, in turn, of several diVerent formulations for the same information.


from the Chronica and which array the great intellectuals of Greek history

alongside the Olympiadic framework—Simonides, Pherecydes, Heraclitus,

Parmenides, the headship of the academy by Speusippus and then Polemon.69

Literary and intellectual activity was set by Apollodorus not only against

the dating system of Olympiads, but also that oVered by other temporal

systems. Archilochus is described as already Xourishing as a poet at the time

of Tullus Hostilius’ reign in Rome, and Pythagoras’ acme came at the time of

Polycrates of Samos.70 Conversely, political events could be dated against

literary Wgures, as in f 74 where we are told that Artaxerxes took power in

Persia at the time when Antimachus the poet was at his height. Alternatively,

literary Wgures could be set in time not against a political or chronographical

framework, but simply in relation to each other. For example, Euripides died

in the same year as Sophocles (f 35).

There are many other examples of the intertwining of literary and intellec-

tual time against that of political systems or Olympiads in Apollodorus, but

those involving the combination of more than one such system I shall return

to below. It is important to remember that, although Apollodorus yields a

large crop of fragments concerning the literary and intellectual world, he was

by no means alone in this interest. We have already mentioned Eratosthenes,

but the third-century ad philosopher, Porphyry of Tyre, to whom we shall

return in earnest later, also dated key intellectuals in terms of Olympiads, inter

alia. He gives the date of Homer in terms of Olympiads and the fall of Troy,

the latter an obvious comparison, the former less so, and Hesiod he dates in

relation to Homer and in Olympiadic terms.71 Gorgias too is dated in

Olympiadic terms by Porphyry (f 23). One could certainly argue that none

of this interest in intellectuals is surprising, given that Porphyry wrote a work

called Philosophical History, the fragments of which are largely devoted to

Socrates, the seven sages, the tutors of Plato, and the like. It is nevertheless

interesting that matching up intellectuals and relevant Olympiads was con-

sidered worthwhile and was indeed possible.

We have already noted with Euthymenes that the dates of Homer and of

Hesiod could be related to the fall of Troy,72 and indeed this provides us with

our transition to another key feature in the way that chronographers such as

Eratosthenes structured the past. The fall of Troy was both an important event

in Panhellenic history, and also evidently a turning point in the practice of

69 See FGrH 244 f 337, 338, 340, 341, 344, and 346 respectively.70 See FGrH 244 f 336, 339.71 FGrH 260 f 19 and 20. f 20: —�æ��æØ�� ŒÆd ¼ºº�Ø �º�E��Ø ��æ�� ð� ˇ��æ�ıÞ �ŒÆe�

K�ØÆı�E� ›æ��ı�Ø�; ‰� º� � ��ı� K�ØÆı�f� �ı��æ��æ�E� B� �æ�� Oºı��Ø��.72 FGrH 243 f 1 on Homer’s acme at the same time as Hesiod, about two hundred years after

fall of Troy: ��æd e �ØÆŒ��Ø��e� �� o��æ�� B� � (º��ı ±º��ø�.


chronography. Apollodorus is described by Diodorus as a trustworthy source

for post-Trojan chronology, as though it marked a shift in the possibilities for

accurate calculation of past time.73 Thallus uses the Trojan War as a Wxed

point in relation to which other events and people could be placed.74 Besides

the Trojan War, in mythological times, the return of the Heraclidae was the

next most important event to act as a punctuation mark in the otherwise

amorphous centuries before the Olympic festivals could be used as a con-

tinuous and comprehensive structuring device. In the more recent past,

Xerxes’ invasion of Greece was a major hinge in Greek history, in relation to

which other events could be placed,75 as were the life, expeditions, and death

of Alexander the Great. Castor of Rhodes dates the battle between Ptolemy

and Demetrius at Gaza not only by the Olympiadic system, but also by this

monumental Wgure in history: the battle happened in the eleventh year after

Alexander’s death, in the one hundred and seventeenth Olympiad.76

The mention of Olympiads brings us to the broader set of chronological

systems which might be seen as complementary to the stress on Wxed marker

points in the past, namely those which attempted a continuous and compre-

hensive list of magistrates, religious oYcers, kings, or even more dramatically

and accurately Olympiadic years, which provide a precise and consistent

framework within which to place events. The value of ‘regal’ time in mapping

out a past that was both continuous and punctuated by signiWcant moments

(that is, points of succession) is attested by its regular appearance in the works

of those whose project was precisely the organization of time. Apollodorus of

Athens appeals to two named individuals to place an institution in history,

noting the establishment of the ephorate at Sparta one hundred and thirty

years after Lycurgus and in the reign of Theopompus.77 Two fragments cited

73 Or, of course, it may have been simply that Apollodorus had chosen to start at that point.However, even if this were the case, it would still carry some signiWcance, since the start pointcan hardly have been arbitrary. See FGrH 244 t 6 ¼ Diodorus 13.103.5. It is worth noting,however, that Apollodorus’ emulator, Nepos, conWdently took his framework back beyond theTrojan War as far as even the reign of Saturn, as well as ‘Romanizing’ the chronological schemeof Apollodorus by synchronizing, for example, Homer with the Alban kings.74 FGrH 256 f 3. Virtually nothing is known of Thallus, although hemay have been a freedman

of the emperor Tiberius. As E. L. Bowie, ‘The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic’, Pastand Present 46 (1970), 3–41 at 11, notes, we do not even know whether he was a chronographer,rather than an epitomator. C. R. Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. Volume IHistorians (Chico, California, 1983), 343, notes that he was seen by ancient sources as a historian,and considers him a Hellenistic Jew, although it is not clear on what grounds.75 See F. G. B. Millar, ‘Polybius between Greece and Rome’, in J. T. A. Koumoulides (ed.),

Greek Connections: Essays on Culture and Diplomacy (Notre Dame, 1987), 1–18 at 12–13, forPolybius’ use of key punctuation marks of Greek history in order to anchor his own narrative.76 FGrH 250 f 12: ��Œ�fiø �b� �Ø B� �`º��æ�ı �º�ıB�; K�d �b Oºı��Ø�� ŒÆd

��Œ�� ŒÆd �ŒÆ��B�.77 FGrH 244 f 335: K�d ¨�� ı �Æ�Øº��.


by Syncellus, which Jacoby deems to be falsely attributed to the Chronica,

suggest that Apollodorus included long king lists in his work—one of the

kings of Thebes in Egypt (F85) and one of the kings in Sicyon (F86). The

former is a list which gives the names of successive Theban kings, with the

length of their reigns in years, and the year of the cosmos in which each came

to power.78 Little other detail is given—just occasionally a note on the name

or status.79 But the eVect of the list is to create a continuum of regal time, set

against another continuous time frame, that of the counting of cosmic years.

The fragment relating to the kings of Sicyon is much shorter, being only a

summary which might have belonged at the end of a list similar to that of the

Theban kings. In it the Wrst Sicyonian king, Aegialeus, is related to the time of

the cosmos; we are then told the length of time occupied by the royal

succession, up to the last king Zeuxippus, at which point priestly rule took

over for another speciWed number of years. It was thus possible to perform an

easy addition and work out for how long (and crucially also from which

point, at least in cosmic time) Sicyon was ruled in this way.

Another chronographer who used regal time was the Wrst-century bc

writer, Castor of Rhodes. In his Epitome of Dates he devoted attention to

the Assyrian kings (f 1),80 the Sicyonian kings from Aegialeus, the Wrst king,

to Zeuxippus, at which point the account turns to one of priestly rather than

kingly rule (f 2),81 the Argive kings (f 3), the Athenian kings (f 4), and the

kings of Rome (f 5). f 6 shows that Castor was cited for the date of Cyrus’

reign, suggesting that he also included material on the Persian kings.82 Of

course we are hindered in gauging the tone and shape of the overall work

partly by the extremely fragmentary nature of the remains and partly by the

fact that the few fragments are dominated by the Armenian translation of

Eusebius’ Chronica, which had its own agenda in citing them. However, it

does seem reasonable to assert that Castor’s work listed kings (or priests) from

particular cities or kingdoms, giving the length of their reigns in years, and

used this information to build up a chronological framework covering several

centuries for each place. Castor’s king lists, or at any rate what has been

78 As we shall see in the next chapter, the use of king lists and cosmic time is a featurecharacteristic of chronological schemes used by authors of the Fertile Crescent. It is striking toWnd its use here by Apollodorus.

79 See, for example, the standard formula: ¨��Æ�ø� ØŁ K�Æ��º�ı�� —Æ��B� %æ��c� � º�:

�F �b Œ ��ı q� �� ªıº�. But some kings are additionally described as �æÆ�� or ŒæÆÆØ � orgiven some other deWning feature.

80 On the Assyrian kings, see also Thallus (FGrH 256 f 6).81 See FGrH 250 f 2 for the priests of Carnios, who follow on directly from the kings in being

used to map out Sicyonian time. Hellanicus of Lesbos’ work on the Priestesses of Hera at Argos(FGrH 4 f 72–84) must be seen as fundamental to the study of priestly chronographicalstructures.

82 Thallus also (FGrH 256 f 7) is cited for the reign of Cyrus, set in an Olympiadic structure.


transmitted through Eusebius, add an extra chronological anchor to this

construction of regal time by linking it to Olympiadic time. So, for each king

list we are told not how it relates to cosmic time, as by Apollodorus, but how it

relates to Olympiadic time. For example, the list of Sicyonian kings and priests

ends with the comment that from this point to the Wrst Olympiad was three

hundred and Wfty-two years. It is unclear whether this comment belongs to

Castor or to Eusebius, but, as we shall see, the attempt to tie various temporal

systems together, particularly local to more Panhellenic, is widely attested, and

indeed seems to have been fundamental to these chronographic projects.83

Perhaps the most striking attempt to combine regal time and Olympiadic

time is made by Porphyry of Tyre.84 He was born in the 230s and was the

author of a huge range of works. The similarity in the method and content of

his chronographical work strongly supports the suggestion already made

concerning the stability of the chronographic tradition over time. The frag-

ments explicitly ascribed to his Chronicle are hard to interpret, not least since

they are preserved in a German translation of the Armenian translation of

Eusebius’ work which was directed precisely against Porphyry. We thus

encounter fragments which are not only at several removes from the original

through translation, but also in the context of polemic against our author.

Besides the Wrst fragment, which dates the acme of Thales, one of the seven

sages, to one hundred and twenty years after Nebucadnezar in yet another

example of regal frameworks, we have two long sections of the Chronicle cited

by Eusebius. Both are king lists—the Wrst concerning kings of Egypt and

Alexandria after Alexander, the second rulers over the Greeks and Macedo-

nians after Alexander’s death. These two lists are of considerable interest, both

for their common features and for their points of divergence.

The list of kings of Egypt and Alexandria (f 2) stretches from 323 bc to the

battle of Actium in 31 bc. Some of the entries are brief and simply give

the name of the king and the length of his reign in years. Others give much

83 Note a rather diVerent process in Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.70–1, where he provides alist of Alban kings, together with the length of their reigns in years from Ascanius onwards to thetime of Romulus and Remus and the foundation of Rome. Here we Wnd a king list used to tieone mythologically crucial event, the fall of Troy, to a diVerent one, the foundation of Rome.The chronological separation of the death of one city and the birth of another can be formulatedusing regal time. Livy 1.3 performs almost exactly the same manoeuvre, moving generation bygeneration from Ascanius to the birth of Romulus and Remus. The link between the time ofAeneas and that of the foundation of Rome was given as a number of years by Castor of Rhodes(FGrH 250 f 10).84 For the complex perspective and identity of Porphyry, see F. G. B. Millar, ‘Porphyry:

Ethnicity, Language, and Alien Wisdom’, in J. Barnes and M. T. GriYn (eds.), Philosophia TogataII: Plato and Aristotle at Rome (Oxford, 1997), 241–62, in particular stressing the orientalcontext of this Tyrian intellectual in spite of his place in the history of Greek philosophy.


more detail about the reign in the form of a miniature narrative.85 But for our

current question concerning the relationship between regal and Olympiadic

time, the fragment is of interest, since it anchors the subsequent list of rulers

and reigns right at the start in Olympiadic terms—the second year of the one

hundred and fourteenth Olympiad. Having then mapped out time through

the successive reigns of the Egyptian kings, throughout which there is no

mention of any external time frame, the text then returns to re-anchor itself to

Olympiads right at the end—when Octavian took power from Cleopatra in

the battle of Actium in the second year of the one hundred and eighty-fourth

Olympiad. For the chronological account of the Egyptian kings, then,

the Olympiadic structure acts as a means of tying down each end of the dynasty

into a more widely applicable, although speciWcally Greek, framework.86

The corresponding post-Alexander king list for Greeks and Macedonians

(f 3) follows the same pattern. It stretches from the death of Alexander until

149/8 bc, at which point the history of Macedonia becomes merged with that

of Rome, in parallel to the end of the Egyptian king list at the point of

subordination to Rome, albeit by a diVerent process. But, in contrast to the

Egyptian list, in which Olympiadic time simply anchors the regal list at

each end, here, where the history of Macedonia and Greece is concerned,

each reign is tied into the Olympiadic system. So each reign, leaving aside the

additional narrative details that are given for some, is marked out by the name

of the ruler, the length of his reign in years, and the start and end of his reign

in Olympiadic terms. In a sense, of course, this provides superXuous infor-

mation. The Egyptian list had proved that only the start point of the dynasty

needed to be Wxed in universal time. From then one could simply add up the

reigns, and the Wnal Olympiadic date oVered a backup for faulty addition.

Here in Greece andMacedonia, not only is the Olympiadic date given for each

ruler, but in fact two are given for each—one for the start and one for the end

of his reign, in spite of the fact that we are also told the length of the reign in

years and could easily work out one Olympiadic date without the other. It

seems that the royal history of Macedonia and Greece required, or allowed, a

chronological context which was far more closely integrated with the Olym-

piadic system, hinting at a question which I shall address later (in chapter 3);

namely whether Greek authors applied diVerent temporal systems to

85 See, for example, the entry for the sons of Ptolemy Epiphanes, Philometor and Euergetes II(FGrH 260 f 2).

86 See R. L. Fowler, ‘Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation of theHellenes’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44 (1998), 1–19 at 3–4, for the focuspaid to the start and end of king lists, ‘since the revered founders tend to be remembered, andrecent generations are still present to living memory, the ones in the middle drop out continu-ally by a process of telescoping.’


non-Greek peoples. One might have wondered whether for Porphyry in the

third century ad, the ‘Greek’ associations of mapping out time according to

this exclusively Panhellenic institution had been lost under the inXuence of its

use in universal Mediterranean historiography, but these king lists seem to

suggest otherwise. Furthermore, it appears that each of the rulers in the world

of Macedonia and Greece was given the facility to have an independent

history told, with his reign being explicitly anchored at either end to the

Olympiadic system. Here there was no need for each king’s story to be read as

part of a sequence, unlike the Egyptian kings, whose stories were linked by the

continuous counting of years, making every episode crucial to the continu-

ation of the tale.

This apparent dichotomy between the integration or otherwise of the

Olympiadic structure into the temporal framework of Greek or non-Greek

king lists is unfortunately confused by other fragments, which are not attrib-

uted by Jacoby to any work, but must surely sit alongside the king lists in the

Chronicle. One passage (f 31) on the Thessalian and northern Greek kings

oVers a list of reigns from Philip onwards, but the expected ongoing link to

the Olympiadic system is nowhere to be seen until the end, when the total

extent of the reigns is summarized. By contrast, we Wnd that an extremely long

and detailed list of Asian and Syrian kings (f 32)—where we would, by

analogy with the Egyptian kings, expect to Wnd minimal anchoring in Olym-

piadic terms at either end of the sequence—mirrors the continuous and

ongoing linking to Olympiads reign by reign as seen in the list for Macedonia

and Greece—and, like that list, it takes its story right up to Roman times, with

the intervention of Pompey in the East.87

A further temporal framework which the chronographers set alongside the

Olympiadic system is that of the Athenian archons.88 A chronicle preserved

among the papyri from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 12) oVers an extremely formu-

laic version of how these systems might be juxtaposed to provide a tight-knit

chronological framework in which historical events might be placed. The

chronicle follows a strict pattern, giving the number of the Olympiad, the

winner of the stadion, the archons in Athens during that four-year period,

and then, with the chronological context Wrmly established, the relevant

world events in that period. In a sense one could say that this is a predom-

inantly Olympiadic chronicle, since it follows a four-year cycle, and places

87 Were it not for the fact that Eusebius is the source for all these lists in Porphyry, suchvariation could be explained by inconsistency in the practice of those who preserved thefragments, provided we assume that Eusebius himself is not the source of the inconsistency.88 That the two should be coordinated is suggested by the title of some lost works. See, for

example, FGrH 246 f 3 from Stesicleides (Ctesicles) of Athens, who wrote a List of Archons andOlympic Victors (Chronica).


that time unit Wrst. It is, nevertheless, interesting that the Athenian archons

are added, and not entirely clear why. One might imagine that they would

provide the obviously useful subdivision of Olympiads into four individual

years so that events could be more precisely placed in time. However, this

function is served by the simple system of listing events under each Olympiad

according to whether they occur in the Wrst, second, third, or fourth year; that

is, using a system internal to the Olympiadic structure. In chronographical

terms, it seems that the archons add nothing. Even the tighter geographical

focus which their presence lends the chronicle, by contrast with the Panhel-

lenic nature of the Olympiadic structure, is rather overshadowed by the broad

geographical spread of the material encompassed.

One or two sample entries will give a sense of the shape and form of the

chronicle:89

½�ˇºı�j�Ø��Ø K��Ø ŒÆd ��ŒÆ½��BØ j K��ŒÆ ��Ø�� %æØ�½ �ºıŒ�� j½%Ł��ÆE�� qæ�� %Ł��Ø j ½¸ıŒ��Œ�� —ı�Ł �� #ø�Øjª½��˝Ø½Œ ��Æ��: Æ�� j ŒÆa �b e ��æ�� ˜Ø��j�Ø�� › ��æ�� B�#ØŒ�º�Æ� j �æÆ�� KŒ��g� B� jIæ�B� ŒÆ��º�ı�� N� ˚ jæØ�Ł�� ŒÆd KŒ�EŒÆ��Ø�� j ªæ��ÆÆ �Ø��Œø�: ŒÆa �b j e� �Ææ�� ´Æª�Æ� j �P��F��, -�� e� �Æ�Øº�Æ H� —�æ�H� ��º��j�Æ� e� ��Æ�� ÆP�F H� j ıƒH�@æ�� ŒÆ�� Æj�Øº�Æ; ÆPe� ��Æ �Ø�ØŒH�.

In the one hundred and ninth Olympiad, Aristolycus the Athenian won the

stadion race and at Athens Lyciscus, Pythodotus, Sosigenes, and Nicoma-

chus were archons. In the second year of this Olympiad, Dionysius the

second, tyrant of Sicily, fell from power and sailed to Corinth and stayed

there as a school teacher; in the fourth year, Bagoas the eunuch slew by deceit

Ochus, the king of the Persians, and established his youngest son, Arses, as

king, organizing everything himself.

Worth noting are, Wrst, the fact that not every year is Wlled out with an

account of historical events—the chronographer provides a framework, but

it is just that, to be exploited only where appropriate; secondly, the capacity of

this system to encompass very diverse histories—here ranging from the Greek

West in Sicily, to the East in Persia. The following fragment, besides the usual

combination of Olympiadic and archonal time, exempliWes the trend which

we have seen elsewhere, to set literary history alongside political history. So, as

well as noting Philip’s success at Chaeronea and the distinction earned by

Alexander in the battle, it also records the death of the orator, Isocrates, at the

age of ninety. Another fragment (6) uses the same formulaic framework and

again demonstrates how widely applicable the Olympiadic scheme was, in

spite of its purely Panhellenic origins. This rather longer entry, for the one

89 FGrH 255 f 4.


hundred and eleventh Olympiad, when Cleomantis won the stadion, and

Pythodelus, Euaenetus, Ctesicles, and Nicocrates were archons in Athens,

ranges from the death of Philip of Macedon, the accession of Alexander and

the beginnings of his expansion of power, to a note on the Vestal Virgins in

Rome, and then back to Alexander’s campaigns in Asia, with the battles of

Granicus and Issus, before Wnally returning to Rome and the granting of

citizenship without the vote to Campania.90

We have seen above the way in which key moments in the Greek past, such as

the Trojan War and the return of the Heraclidae, as well as more recent historical

events such as the invasion by Xerxes of Europe or the retributive gesture by

Alexander against Asia were used as chronological punctuation marks in the

articulation of the past.We have also seen a variety of systems—regal, magisterial,

Olympiadic—which oVered more continuous methods for calibrating time. We

saw with Eratosthenes an early attempt to draw chronological systems together,

and indeed it has become apparentwith the other chronographers that the various

means for indicating time were largely interdependent. Now is the moment to

extend this exploration and, rather than examine one by one the chronological

frameworks used, to consider the more challenging and interesting question

of how they could be accurately, meaningfully, and productively combined.

At the simplest level, we have already noted the combination of intellectual

history with various other chronological systems, primarily, but not exclu-

sively, Olympiads; we have also seen both regal time and magisterial time

placed alongside and anchored to the Olympiadic framework.91 But there are

90 For this fascinating statement of early Roman and Italian relations in 333/2 bc, ŒÆa �b�Ææ�� .ø�ÆE�Ø ½˚Æ��Æ��f� j K��Ø��Æ�� ½�º�Æ�� j � .��:½:: ¼��ı ł��j��ı ��½. . . theextremely fragmentary nature of the text at this point is unfortunate. In fact, the groupingtogether of all Campanians en bloc is striking when set against the more piecemeal picture of thisprocess drawn by modern scholars. See T. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome fromthe Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 bc) (London and New York, 1995), 348–51, for thegradual incorporation of the cities from 338 bc onwards, based on the principle that ‘theRomans dealt with the various defeated communities individually rather than in groups’(348). In Campania, Capua, Suessula, and Cumae were joined in 332 by Acerrae. The import-ance of the innovation of ‘citizenship without suVrage’ is reXected in its inclusion in this highlyselective chronicle.91 It is important to note that sometimes the combination is not exactly a synchronism, but

rather a use of two dating systems in relation to a particular person or set of events. So, forexample, when Apollodorus notes the birth of Anaximenes around the capture of Sardis and hisdeath in the sixty-third Olympiad (f 66), or the birth of Xenophanes in the Wftieth Olympiadand death in the times of Darius and Cyrus, he is combining Olympiadic time with key eventsand Wgures in Greek history, but not oVering a precise mapping of the two systems. He is nothere formulating the capture of Sardis in terms of Olympiads, but simply using various meansof indicating time within the same sentence. Sometimes, of course, the mapping is precise: seef 332 on Periander’s death at the age of eighty, which is deWned as forty-one years beforeCroesus and three years before the forty-ninth Olympiad—both rather indirect forms of dating.f 28 oVers another example of Croesus in combination with Olympiads.


many instances where the chronographers attempted a much more complex

coordination of temporal systems, linking local with universal, myth/histor-

ical turning points with continuous sequences, and so on.92 We have already

seen the combination of Olympiadic sequence and the time patterned by

Athenian archonships as forming a structure within which world events could

be placed (P.Oxy. 12). But this combination was also regularly used as the

context within which to place intellectual and literary activity. Apollodorus of

Athens oVers several examples of this in practice. The ambiguously literary

and political Wgure of Xenophon has his acme placed in the fourth year of the

ninety-fourth Olympiad, and the start of his expedition placed when Xenae-

netus was archon and one year before Socrates’ death (f 343).93 Aristotle’s

birth is deWned both in Olympiadic terms and as occurring when Diitrephes

was archon in Athens, making him three years older than Demosthenes

(f 347). Again, intellectuals are given a chronological position, which relates

them to other intellectuals, as well as to the apparently all-subsuming Olym-

piadic framework and the local magisterial sequence of Athenian archons.

Apollodorus takes this system to extremes when treating the life of Aristotle

in full. One fragment maps out every stage in his life and career in relation to

Olympiads and archonships, and to historically important Wgures:94

He [sc. Aristotle] was born in the Wrst year of the ninety-ninth Olympiad; he

was close to Plato and spent twenty years with him; when Plato died in the Wrst

year of the one hundred and eighth Olympiad under Theophilus, he went to

Hermeia for three years; then toMytilene in the archonship of Euboulus in the

fourth year of the one hundred and eighth Olympiad. Under Pythodotus, in

the second year of the one hundred and ninth Olympiad, he went to Philip,

whenAlexander was stillWfteen years old; he came then toAthens in the second

year of the one hundred and eleventh Olympiad, where he spent thirteen years

in the Lyceum; and he Wnally travelled to Chalcis in the third year of the one

hundred and fourteenth Olympiad, where he died in his sixty-third year from

disease. Demosthenes also died at this time, in Calauria, and under Philocleus.

Every stage is tied to a precise Olympiadic year, with the Athenian archons

providing yet further chronological context.

Apollodorus’ attempt to locate chronologically the great Wgures from Greek

intellectual history goes beyond the use of Olympiads and archonships in

combination. A passage (f 34) on Socrates introduces the Athenian months as

a means of adding yet greater speciWcity. Socrates is here said to have been

92 As will be discussed at the start of chapter 3, the locus classicus for this combination of timeframes in historiography is Thucydides 2.2.1.

93 For a precise repetition of this version of Xenophon’s career, see FGrH 246 f 3 fromStesicleides (Ctesicles) of Athens.

94 FGrH 244 f 38 ¼ Diog. Laert. 5.9–10.


born under the archonship of Aphepsion, in the fourth year of the seventy-

seventh Olympiad, on the sixth of Thargelion, when the Athenians purify

the city and the Delians say Artemis was born. Another fragment (f 37) on

Plato oVers a neat parallel, claiming that Plato was born in the eighty-eighth

Olympiad, on the seventh of Thargelion, when the Delians say Apollo

was born. And yet another (f 42) takes the technique a stage further for

Epicurus, who was born in the third year of the one hundred and ninth

Olympiad, under the archonship of Sosigenes, on the seventh of the month of

Gamelion, seven years after the death of Plato. Thus he is dated not only in

Olympiads, archonships, and Athenian months, but also in relation to the life

of another philosopher.

We have already seen the way in which attempts were made to connect the

Olympiadic structure with not only the local magistracies of Athens, but also

the kingly successions of various, geographically diverse, peoples. The more

sophisticated attempts to construct a comprehensive network of temporal

systems, which would stretch beyond the conWnes of particular poleis, used

might and main to draw together disparate traditions and chronological

structures. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his attempt to prove the Greekness

of Rome, made it his business to draw their respective histories into close

alignment. Thus, by a tortuous route, he manages to provide a chronological

link between the foundation of Lavinium and the fall of Troy, in relation to

the Athenian festival calendar.95 Elsewhere he establishes that king Numa and

the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, were contemporaries, again stressing the

points of contact between Roman and Greek.96 Although chronological coin-

cidence is no proof of connection, nevertheless being able to tell the two stories

in one narrative framework, as it were, is suggestive of links which Dionysius

wishes to establish, and is, at least, proof that a particular connection is possible.

In line with the competitive context proposed for chronography at the start

of this section, Plutarch, by contrast, records the dispute over whether a

Pythagoras-Numa connection, like the Solon-Croesus encounter, was a

chronological impossibility. Plutarch notes that, while some say that Numa

was a close friend of Pythagoras, others say that Pythagoras the philosopher

lived as many as Wve generations after Numa, but that there was another

Pythagoras, a Spartan, who was Olympic victor in the foot race of the

sixteenth Olympiad in the third year of Numa’s reign, and who met Numa

and helped him to set up the governance of Rome.97 It is interesting that this

95 See FGrH 251 f 6 ¼ i.63: Lavinium was founded in the second year after the departure ofthe Trojans from Ilion, which was captured at the end of spring, seventeen days from thesummer solstice, and eight days from the end of the month of Thargelion.96 FGrH 251 f 8 ¼ ii.59.97 See Plutarch, Life of Numa 1.2–3.


version, although it replaces one Pythagoras with another in a form of

chronographic one-upmanship, still maintains that Roman and Greek history

can be brought together, with the scales simply shifted along to match Numa

up with the correct Pythagoras.

But Dionysius’ extensive analysis of Greek versions of the dating of Rome’s

foundation enables him to weave together not only the history of the two

cultures, but also their chronological frameworks, although in fact he attri-

butes the initial calculations and synchronisms to a series of prior chronogra-

phers, both Greek and Roman. Timaeus, he says, places Rome’s foundation at

the same time as that of Corinth, namely in the thirty-eighth year before the

Wrst Olympiad, Lucius Cincius in the fourth year before the twelfth Olympiad,

Quintus Fabius in the Wrst year of the eighth Olympiad. Porcius Cato omits to

use Olympiads, but instead links the foundation to the Trojan War (which it

follows by four hundred and thirty-two years), a key chronological marker, as

we have seen. Dionysius explicitly favours Eratosthenes’ careful synchronisms

over what he sees as the slapdash methods of Polybius, who claims that Rome

was built in the second year of the seventh Olympiad, or those who rely on a

single priestly record.98

It is clear that for Dionysius chronography involves serious comparative

work, and the consultation and coordination of various possible temporal

frameworks.99 His own illustration of this is a complex attempt to date the

establishment of the consulship at Rome in terms of Athenian archonships

and Olympiads, using the Gallic invasion as a key date, which could be

expressed in both Greek chronological terms and Roman ones, through

the censorial and family records. The result is that he can state with conWdence

that the consulship at Rome was initiated in the Wrst year of the sixty-eighth

Olympiad, when Isagoras was archon at Athens. Here, Dionysius interestingly

combines a piece of competitive chronographic accuracy with some political

interpretation. His linking of Athenian and Roman liberation, through the

replacement of tyranny by Cleisthenic and Republican democracy respect-

ively, can hardly be accidental. From here, using the known length of the reign

of each king, he can calculate that Romulus’ reign started in the Wrst year of

the seventh Olympiad, when Charops was archon. Thus by an ingenious

mechanism, Dionysius makes it possible to express early Roman history in

Greek chronological terms, thereby reaYrming his thesis that Roman history

is essentially a form of Greek history.

98 See FGrH 251 f 2 ¼ i.74.3: K�d �F �Ææa �E� Iæ�Ø�æ�F�Ø Œ�Ø��ı ��ÆŒ�� e� ŒÆd � ��ı.99 This is entirely in line with what J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Histori-

ography (Cambridge, 1997), 244–6, identiWes as a self-conscious and systematic attempt onDionysius’ part to forge a special place for himself in the historiographic tradition: ‘continuingthe work of such masters as Herodotus while at the same time using the example of Rome . . . ina thoroughly Greek way’.


It was not only Greek and Roman history whose chronological frameworks

could be usefully synchronized. The temporal frameworks used to tell the

history of the Old Testament and the regions of the Fertile Crescent could also

be brought into contact with the Greek, with suYcient care and imagination.

Given the subject of Porphyry’s Against the Christians, it is not surprising to

Wnd that he had an interest in relating biblical time to the chronological

frameworks he was familiar with from his other works. He notes that Moses

was one thousand, four hundred and Wfty years prior to the Trojan War,100

not only establishing the extraordinary antiquity of the Jewish tradition, but

also making it theoretically possible to express biblical history in Greek terms.

But other authors too were engaged in the same synchronizations. Apollo-

dorus found ways in which to relate Moses chronologically to the apotheosis

of Dionysus, from which point one could trace a route through Heracles and

Jason, Asclepius and Castor, up to the fall of Troy.101 Thus, rather tortuously,

one could draw the world of the Old Testament into the same chronological

frame as that of Troy, and from then on through the calculable centuries of

Greek history.

Castor of Rhodes, who wrote not only chronographic works, but also about

Babylon, the Nile, and the world of the Fertile Crescent, enabled his reader to

skip from Moses across to the Wrst Olympiad, from which point, as he says,

the Greeks thought it possible to calculate dates accurately (›� Ł�� '¯ºº��

IŒæØ��F� �f� �æ ��ı� K� �Ø�Æ�).102 The crucial link here, the equivalent of the

Gallic sack for Roman chronography, was the ruler Ogygus. One fragment

(f 14) relates that Moses was leader of the Jews at the time of Ogygus (�E�

�æ ��Ø� � -ª�ª�ı), and in another this turns out to be a point in Greek history,

at which there was the Wrst great Xood in Attica and when Phoroneus was king

of Argos, from which one could reliably count the years to the Wrst Olym-

piad.103 The synchronism of Moses with the mythical period of the Greek past

would play nicely into the hands of later Christian writers, who could assert

the priority and superiority of the Jews, who were receiving their constitution

and laws at a time when the Greeks were still enveloped in myth and

uncertainty.

For George Syncellus, writing in the early ninth century ad, it was a set of

diVerent and still more resonant moments in history than the reign of

100 FGrH 260 f 33. 101 FGrH 244 f 87.102 Photius clearly agreed. He claims (FGrH 257 t 3) that Phlegon of Tralles started his

chronography at the Wrst Olympiad because everything before that had not been dealt with inany accurate or true account: �Ø Ø a �æ �æÆ . . . �PŒ ı�� Ø�� IŒæØ��F� ŒÆd Iº�Ł�F�I�ÆªæÆ�B�.103 FGrH 250 f 7: I�e � -ª�ª�ı; �F �Ææ� KŒ��Ø� ÆP �Ł�� Ø��ıŁ��; K�� y ª�ª�� ›

��ªÆ� ŒÆd �æH�� K� fi B %ØŒfi B ŒÆÆŒºı�� ;*�æø��ø� %æª��ø� �Æ�Øº�� . . . ��æØ �æ��Oºı��Ø�� . . .


Ogygus, which were pivotal in the relationship between a range of diVerent

chronological systems. Although the world of Christian chronography lies

outside the scope of this book, it is worth considering his project moment-

arily, since it both echoes some of the earlier phases in the chronographic

tradition and highlights some distinctive features. What he set out to prove is

that ‘in am 5500104 our Lord and God was made incarnate from the Holy

Virgin and in the beginning of the year 5534, as has been previously stated, on

the 1st of the Hebrew month of Nisam, the 25th of the Roman month of

March, and the 29th of the seventh Egyptian month of Phamenoth, he

trampled upon death and arose from the dead’.105 Of course, for Syncellus,

the virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ were not simply convenient

chronological hooks; the fact that they fell at particular moments in time was

not the starting point for establishing chronologies, but rather the end point

of a long and painstaking compilation of diVerent chronologies. Thus, al-

though Syncellus is for us a major source of earlier chronographic works, he

has a clear and deWned agenda of his own, which dictates his pattern of

citation.

Furthermore, Syncellus was interested not only in establishing a Christian

chronology, encompassing all others, which allowed the accurate placing of

key events in the long timescale of history. The date of the Resurrection is, in

fact, placed in historical time only according to Syncellus’ system of years

from the point of creation. It is on the smaller scale of annual time where the

synchronism takes place. Thus Syncellus pinpoints not just a particular year,

but a particular day within the year at which all temporal systems converge on

a momentous event.106 The date within the year, expressed in Hebrew,

Roman, and Egyptian terms, when the Resurrection took place, was also the

date when the world was created.107 As Syncellus goes on to make explicit,

‘with good reason, then, the Holy Trinity, creator of all things, began the

creation of the visible world also on this day, since it preWgures the holy day of

the Resurrection.’108 Here, then, we Wnd a fascinating combination of the

annual cycle of the calendar and the progressive time of history brought

together in the service of a Christian view of history. The notion of ominous

days (discussed in chapter 1) is interestingly reversed. In the divinely ordained

104 Syncellus, like those who wrote about other parts of the Fertile Crescent, such as Egyptand Babylonia, adopted a system of ‘cosmic’ time. Thus every date could be expressed in am

terms where am is an abbreviation for annus mundi.105 Syncellus, Chronography 1.106 The importance of the individual day is brought out very clearly. It is in terms of days that

the creation story is formulated, and, as Syncellus states explicitly, ‘it is abundantly clear that aday is at the head of every monthly and yearly chronological cycle’ (2).

107 The date of the creation is declared at the very start of the Wrst chapter.108 Syncellus, Chronography 2.


world of the Holy Trinity, which revolves around the crucial and deWnitional

event of the Resurrection, creation is retrospectively made to foreshadow

that event by occurring on the ‘right day’. Setting the world oV on a date

whose signiWcance would not become apparent to others until 5534 years later

would not exceed the capabilities of an omniscient and prescient god.

It is worth noting yet again the competitive way in which the chrono-

graphic tradition develops. Syncellus states at the beginning of his work:

‘I have made every eVort to arrange the chronology presented here with tables

and explanations, disagreeing as it does with the majority of historians in

claiming the following . . .’. Thus, although for us Syncellus is the source of

fragments of many earlier chronographies, he himself set out not to preserve

their views, but to disagree with them.109 But, although Syncellus seems to

have set new scholarly standards in terms of supporting evidence and careful

criticism of the sources, he devoted considerable attention to the task of re-

establishing the traditional synchronism between Moses, Inachus, and Ogy-

gus, thereby reasserting the antiquity of Judaism compared with Greek cul-

ture.110 Thus, although within a completely diVerent Christian framework, he

returned to the chronology represented for us by authors such as Castor of

Rhodes. It is ironic that the opponent of this view, Eusebius, rather than

Syncellus, should be one of our major sources for Castor, but it serves as a

salutary reminder that both proponents and opponents cited earlier authors

in order to refute or conWrm their claims in the agonistic world of chrono-

graphic scholarship.

Syncellus’ work of chronography stretched from the Wrst day of the world

until the reign of Diocletian, but most chronographies made it their task not

to set out a vision of a whole world order, but rather to bridge gaps, both

chronological and spatial—bringing together temporal systems from diVer-

ent cultures, and forming links between early chronological markers and the

continuous counting system of Olympiadic time. In this context, the idea that

one could simply add up the years which preceded the Wrst Olympiad was

clearly a widespread one. We have already seen the way in which Eratosthenes

used key moments in history as stepping stones to enable him to traverse the

huge span of time separating the fall of Troy and the death of Alexander, and

109 See, however, W. Adler and P. TuYn (eds.), The Chronography of George Synkellos:A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation (Oxford, 2002), p. xxxix, for anapparently contradictory view of Syncellus: ‘Synkellos saw his task as that of defending a time-honoured consensus, and drawing on it to Wll in chronological gaps.’ This is contrasted with themore bullish attitude oVered by Eusebius, who made it his business to disagree with all hispredecessors.110 This was in direct opposition to Eusebius, who had proposed a radical redating of Moses

which placed him at a later stage in Greek history (Cecrops instead of Ogygus) and thus lost theadvantage of Jewish priority over the Greeks.


noted that from the Wrst Olympiad onwards, a more convenient, uniform, and

continuous measure of time was available. Porphyry of Tyre performed pre-

cisely that smaller calculation, from the fall of Troy to the Wrst Olympiad, but

using the same technique as Eratosthenes.111 From the fall of Troy to the return

of the Heraclidae was sixty years, another sixty to the colonization of Ionia,112

one hundred and Wfty-nine to Lycurgus, and then one hundred and eight to the

Wrst Olympiad, making a grand total of four hundred and seven years.

There were multiple ways in which the disparate chronological frameworks

and historically or mythologically important moments could be put together.

The greatest chronographers were clearly past masters. Eratosthenes provided

our cue by incorporating in his scheme virtually every form of temporal

construction imaginable. But he had strong successors, not least Apollo-

dorus.113 Diodorus, whose universal history required him to Wnd ways to

make time coherent across space, relied on Apollodorus for help in bringing

together the key moments in the Greek past with the continuous temporal

systems oVered by Olympiads and, here, the Spartan king lists: ‘Following

Apollodorus of Athens, we place eighty years between the Trojan period and

the return of the Heraclidae, and from there three hundred and twenty-eight

to the Wrst Olympiad, reckoning up the lengths of time from the kings of

Sparta’.114 And it is worth stressing here, in the light of the theme of this book,

that the world of the chronographer was of enormous relevance to the world

of the historian; that chronography was not merely an end in itself, the

pastime of scholars, but also served a practical function when it came to

putting together histories which were more than just local tales.

One of the values of the Olympiadic systemwas its Panhellenic nature, which

avoided the inevitably parochial feel of systems based on local magistracies. But,

as we shall see (in chapter 3), this essentially Greek system came to be applied to

wider Mediterranean and universal histories, either as though it were itself

somehow neutral or universal, or perhaps in a self-conscious bid to aspire to

111 FGrH 260 f 4.112 This was clearly a more important chronological marker than we might have imagined.

Apollodorus too uses it in conjunction with the fall of Troy in dispute over Homer’s acme,saying that it fell one hundred years after the Ionian colonization (��a c� � (ø�ØŒc� I��ØŒ�Æ��Ø� �ŒÆ �), which was itself two hundred and forty years after Troy (FGrH 244 f 63).

113 Apollodorus clearly became a major model for later chronographers. Nepos’ Chronicathrough its title naturally invited comparison with the work of Apollodorus.

114 FGrH 244 f 61 I�e �b H� æøØŒH� IŒ�º��Łø� %��ºº��æøØ HØ %Ł��Æ�øØ �Ł��Oª��Œ�� æe� c� Œ�Ł�� H� � ˙æÆŒº�Ø�H�; I�e �b Æ�� K�d c� �æ�� Oºı��Ø��Æ�ı�d º��Æ H� æØÆŒ��ø� ŒÆd æØ�Œ��Æ; �ıºº�ªØ� ��Ø �f� �æ ��ı� I�e H� K�¸ÆŒ��Æ��Ø �Æ�Øº�ı��ø�. That Apollodorus, like Eratosthenes, made full use of the Spartanking lists is clear also from f 64 where he is cited as having calculated from the succession ofSpartan kings the fact that Lycurgus was not many years prior to the Wrst Olympiad. For the useof Spartan king lists by later chronographers, see Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik, 80–91.


Greek culture. This wider application had the beneWcial eVect of bypassing local

systems, each of which changed at diVerent times of year, as did the consuls of

Rome and the archons of Athens. Phlegon of Tralles makes plain this point in his

Collection of Olympic Victories and Dates. The fragments of this work include a

long account (f 1) of the foundation of the Olympic festival, culminating with

the information that Daicles the Messenian was the Wrst to be crowned for

winning the stadion in the seventh Olympiad.115 But another fragment (f 12) is

of greater interest to us here, since it reveals how all-encompassing the Olym-

piadic structure could be. It starts in the formof a list relatingwhich person from

which place won each event for the 107th Olympiad. This list begins with the

triple victory byHecatomnus fromMiletus in the stadion, the double stadion or

diaulos, and the race of men in armour, and moves on through the full panoply

of events and winners, ending with the victory of Callippus of Elis in the young-

horse chariot race. The Wrst thing to note is that the list of winners is itself

geographically diverse, with successful competitors coming from Elis, Miletus,

Rome, Sicyon, Cyparissus, and so on. The Olympic festivals, in spite of their

original exclusively Greek nature, have become all-embracing, or at least for all

who would aspire to a share in that Hellenic heritage. The fragment then moves

on to relate the political and cultural events of that Olympiad year by year,

making clear that the chronographical work has provided a vessel for narrative

history, rather than an ediWce whichwill serve no further purpose. The events of

this Olympiad (72–69 bc) include in the Wrst year Lucullus’ siege of Amisus, the

exploits ofMurena, an earthquake in Rome and the note that ‘many other things

happened in this Olympiad’;116 in the fourth, the war between Tigranes and

Mithridates and Lucullus, inwhich Lucullus is victorious, andMetellus’ exploits

in Crete. The third year of the Olympiad is of particular interest, in terms of the

themes we have been considering, since here political and literary events come

together under the Olympiadic umbrella. As well as the death of the king of

Parthia, here is noted the birth of the poet Vergil in the month of October.117

There is thus a strong resemblance to the chronicle on the papyrus from

Oxyrhynchus, discussed above, in which the Olympiadic framework is used

115 According to Phlegon (f 1 §10), for the Wrst Wve Olympiads no one was crowned, and in thesixth they decided to send Iphitus to ask the oracle whether they should institute a crown for thevictors. The oracular response was that they should not use cultivated fruit for the crown, butthe wild olive which was covered in delicate spider’s web. The following Olympiad, they followedthe instructions and chose a wild olive tree in the precinct which was covered in spiders’ webs.116 FGrH 257 f 12: ŒÆd ¼ººÆ �b �º�E�Æ K� Æ�fi � �ı��Ł� fi B Oºı��Ø��Ø. It is interesting that

Plutarch’s Life of Lucullus uses an Olympiadic dating near the start (Lucullus 5.1 notes thatshortly after the death of Sulla, Lucullus became consul with Marcus Cotta, in about the 176thOlympiad), raising the question of whether Lucullus’ extensive intervention in the Greek worldhas any bearing on the chronological frameworks used to articulate his Roman story.117 f 12: ŒÆd ˇP�æª�ºØ�� !�æø� › ��Ø�c� Kª��Ł� ��ı �F �ı� �N��E� � ˇŒø�æ�ÆØ�. But

note the striking use of a Roman date for the Latin poet. Clearly not everything was subordin-ated to Greek frameworks.


for a wide-ranging account, moving around the various theatres of action, in

exactly the same way as would be done by universal historians such as

Polybius and Diodorus, in spite of Polybius’ claim that after 220 bc world

history was a single story.118 Indeed, the combination of political and intel-

lectual history within this chronological structure is also highly reminiscent of

Diodorus, who regularly rounds oV his account of a year with a summary of

the literary or philosophical products of that period, or a note on the birth or

death of a prominent writer.119 We shall see a striking example of this

phenomenon in epigraphic form when looking at the Parian Marble. For

now it is worth noting its existence simply to reinforce again the point that the

world of chronography and its preoccupations was neither remote from

the world of the historian, nor apparently from the much wider world of

publicly displayed inscribed stones.

What we have here is a weaving together of both various Greek chrono-

logical structures and those from some diVerent cultures and traditions, and

furthermore a stunning array of not only political events from a huge

geographical and chronological range, but also the history of invention and

civilization as well, just as we shall see on the Parian Marble. Nowhere in the

chronographies is this better paralleled than in the work of Thrasyllus. One

single citation exists, preserved by Clement of Alexandria, and Jacoby ex-

presses serious doubts about the existence of the work.120 But it is a substan-

tial passage and, just like Eratosthenes, our starting point, it encapsulates

much of what has gone between. The fragment does not make clear which

elements are provided by Clement himself and which are citations from

Thrasyllus, so I shall present the entire passage, as printed by Jacoby:

I shall bring together Greek chronography fromMoses onwards. From the birth

of Moses to the exodus from Egypt of the Jews was 80 years, and the rest of the

time up to his death was 40 years. The exodus happened at the time of Inachus,

since Moses set out from Egypt 345 years before Sothes’ circumnavigation.

From the time of Moses’ expedition and of Inachus to the Xood (I am

referring to the second one) and the burning of Phaethon, all of which

happened under Crotopus, is reckoned to be 40 generations. They reckon

three generations to 100 years.121

118 Polybius 4.28.4: Œ�Ø�c� . . . c� ƒ��æ�Æ�.119 See K. Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits

of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden, 1999), 249–79, for ananalysis of this feature of the work.

120 See Jacoby, Kommentar, ‘Daß Th eine Chronik geschrieben hat, ist nicht bekannt, auchnicht wahrscheinlich.’

121 FGrH 253 F1 The Greek does not make clear whether Thrasyllus’ contribution to thischronographic survey starts only after this point, and whether we should therefore attributewhat precedes to him or to Clement.


From the Xood to the conXagration of Ida and the discovery of iron and the

Idaean Dactyls, was 73 years, according to Thrasyllus, and from the burning

of Ida to the snatching of Ganymede 65 years.

From here to the expedition of Perseus, when Glaucus and Melicerte

founded the Isthmian games, 15 years.

From Perseus’ expedition to the foundation of Troy, 34 years.

From there to the voyage of the Argo, 64 years.

After this until Theseus and the Minotaur, 32 years.

Then, to the Seven against Thebes, 10 years.

To the Olympic contest which Heracles set up against Pelops, 3 years.

To the campaign of the Amazons against Athens and the rape of Helen by

Theseus, 9 years.

From there to the apotheosis of Heracles, 11 years.

Then, to the snatching of Helen by Paris, 4 years.

From there to the capture of Troy, 20 years.

From the sack of Troy to the arrival of Aeneas and the foundation of

Lavinium, 10 years.

To the rule of Ascanius, 8 years.

To the return of the Heraclidae, 61 years.

To the Olympiad of Iphitus, 338 years.

Here biblical and Greek history are brought into a single temporal frame. As is

so often the case in chronographic works, Thrasyllus builds up in the Weld of

discovery and innovation a parallel for the political stepping stones. After

moving in small leaps from one key event to another, he resumes with the

comment that from here to the Olympiad of Iphitus was three hundred and

thirty-eight years. Since this was the Wrst Olympiad, we have been carefully

guided through time from Moses, via the history of civilization, to the point

at which we can safely start to use the accurate and continuous system of

Olympiads.


III

The world outside the polis

1. THUCYDIDES AND THE PROBLEM OF SUPRA-POLIS TIME

��ÆæÆ �b� ªaæ ŒÆd ��ŒÆ � K��Ø�Æ� Æƒ æØÆŒ��Ø� ��Æd ÆQ

Kª�� ¯P��Æ� –ºø�Ø�: fiH �b ��fiø ŒÆd ��Œ�fiø �Ø; K�d�æı�� K� @æª�Ø � ��Œ��Æ �ı�E� ��Æ � ƒ�æø�� ŒÆd

`N��ı K� æ�ı K� #��æfi � ŒÆd —ıŁ��æ�ı Ø �� B�Æ� ¼æ��

%Ł��Æ��Ø�; ��a c� K� —��Ø�Æ�fi Æ �� d �Œfiø ŒÆd –�Æ qæØ Iæ��fiø . . .

For the Thirty Years’ truce which was established after the recovery of

Euboea lasted for fourteen years, but in the Wfteenth year, when Chrysis

was in the forty-eighth year of her term as priestess at Argos, and when

Aenesias was ephor in Sparta and Pythodorus still had two months of his

archonship at Athens to run, six months after the battle at Potidaea and at

the start of spring . . . 1

Thus Thucydides introduces his account of the Theban attack on Plataea,

placing it in a chronological context which spans several diVerent poleis in its

references to the magistracies of Sparta and Athens and the oYce of the

priestess of Hera at Argos, alongside a dating which is expressed in relation

to another important event of the war at Potidaea, and Wnally the ‘natural’

time frame of the seasons. In so doing, he pins down the crucial moment at

which the truce was broken not only to a year, but also to a time within that

year,2 and in terms which are meaningful to the inhabitants of more than just

one polis. As we shall see, Thucydides had no need to date the event in this

way, since he developed his own dating system which required one to specify

only which year of the war it was and which season. As Hornblower suggests,

the reasons for such an elaborate introduction must be manifold, including

the use of chronological accuracy as a means of lending gravitas to the Wrst

1 Thucydides 2.2.1.2 As E. Greenwood, Thucydides and the Shaping of History [Classical Literature and Society]

(London, 2006), 46, comments, the sequences of temporal references move down not only fromdecades to years to months and seasons, but Wnally concentrate on a single point in time whenthe attack took place, ‘about the Wrst watch of the night’. This increasingly precise reference hasthe eVect of focusing the reader on the initiation of the narrative proper.

event of the war proper, the wish to correct Hellanicus, and possibly also a

more general interest in Athens in the 420s in chronology and periodization.3

Thucydides was able to beneWt from the chronographical groundwork that

had been carried out both by Hellanicus himself, who had compiled a list of

priestesses of Hera at Argos for chronological purposes, and by Charon of

Lampsacus, who was similarly gathering together a list of Spartan magistrates

for the same ends in the late Wfth century.4 But the relationship between

Thucydides and Hellanicus has been much debated. It is clear that, in the

passage above, Thucydides nods to both the Priestesses of Hera and Hellani-

cus’ Atthis, which followed an archonal chronological scheme. Furthermore,

he again in Book 5 accumulates several dating devices relying on magistracies

in diVerent poleis in order to give the clearest account of precisely when the

treaty between Sparta and Athens of 421 bc came into eVect:

@æ��Ø �b H� ��H� <K� �b� ¸ÆŒ��Æ��Ø> ��æ�� —º�Ø� ºÆ�

%æ��Ø��ı ��e� ��æfi � �Ł��; K� �b %Ł��ÆØ� ¼æ�ø� %ºŒÆE��

� ¯ºÆ��ºØH�� e� �Œfi � �Ł��.

Pleistolas, the ephor in Sparta, on the twenty-seventh day of the month of

Artemisium, and Alcaeus, the archon in Athens, on the twenty-Wfth day of

the month of Elaphebolion, established this treaty.5

Here Thucydides dates the eVective start of the treaty according to a diVerent

chronological system for each of the participating poleis, and furthermore

does so by means of both calendar month and eponymous magistrate for each

respectively.6

In a sense, Thucydides here displays through example the importance of

developing some kind of synchronic temporal system for works of history

which took as their scope more than the aVairs of a single polis. It is noticeable

that Thucydides exploits the notion of synchronism throughout the narrative

in order to add interpretative resonance. In the summer of 422, for example,

‘at the same time’ as Athens captured the town of Torone in Thrace, the

Boeotians captured Panactum, an Athenian fortress on the frontier of Attica,

and simultaneously Phaeax embarked for Sicily as an Athenian ambassador.7

3 S. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides. Vol. I: Books I–III (Oxford, 1991), ad loc.Hornblower points to the publication of the inscribed archon list (ml 6) and the chronogra-phical research of Hippias and Hellanicus himself as additional spurs for a serious historian,such as Thucydides, to prove himself au fait with all the latest debates.4 Of course, the date of composition of the various works is relevant if we are to assert

Thucydides’ direct use of, say, Charon’s work, but at the very least, the intellectual climate of thelate Wfth century can be gauged by the surge in chronographical interest.5 Thucydides 5.19.1.6 It is possible, however, that Thucydides here simply copied the contents of the decree, in

which case, at the very least, it gives an insight into local dating systems.7 Thucydides 5.3.5–6 and 5.4.1–2.

Thucydides and supra-polis time 91

The synchronism allows Thucydides to bring together three separate theatres

of war. As Rood has noted, ‘Thucydides’ chronological scheme creates juxta-

positions which may themselves suggest parallels’, such as that between

Plataea and Mytilene, both of whom are let down by their allies.8 Even the

carefully expressed synchronism between seasonal changes and events can

contribute positively to the interpretative framework, as when the siege of

Mytilene starts as winter begins—rather than summer ends (3.18.5), thereby

emphasizing the sense of harshness.9

Drawing together into a single narrative framework poleis which ran on

diVerent dating systemswas a feat whichwould tax historians of Hellenic aVairs,

and yet more so those who attempted universal history. Doing so successfully

could be seen as a real coup, and the competitive and polemical context inwhich

historiography took place must have encouraged bold attempts. Greenwood

oVers some interesting comments on this chronological one-upmanship, stating

that Thucydides recognized the way in which his contemporaries saw events in

local perspectives, ‘but he also piles up diVerent systems of chronology in order

to transcend the limits of local knowledge . . . By using chronological systems

that span several diVerent regions, Thucydides creates the impression that he has

space and time covered—unlike most of his contemporaries.’10

The task was clear—to produce a chronological framework for a narrative

history, which would accommodate the necessary geographical range. But the

solution of piling up magistracies from diVerent poleis or oVering ‘something

to everyone’, was vehemently rejected by Thucydides only a chapter after he

had used it to date the treaty between Sparta and Athens in 421. In a much

discussed chapter in Book 5 (5.20), he dramatically rejects the dating by

eponymous magistracies as inherently imprecise (since a magistracy covers

a whole year) and additionally complicated by the fact that magistracies rotate

at diVerent times in diVerent poleis, making eVective synchronism across

space almost impossible to achieve:

8 T. Rood, Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation (Oxford, 1998), 120. On the one hand, asChris Pelling has pointed out to me, the interplay between the Plataea and Mytilene episodeshighlights the impossible dilemma facing ‘little’ allies, since whether one stayed loyal and trustedAthens, as did Plataea, or whether one defected from Athens and trusted Sparta, as did Mytilene,the outcome was the same. On the other, it could be said that Potidaea oVers a closer parallel toPlataea than does Mytilene, since Mytilene had actually defected from Athens in the Wrst place.The narrative proximity of episodes has the eVect of not only stressing similarities, but alsoimplying that the same patterns were operative all over the Greek world. I owe this point toSarah Cottle.

9 Rood, Thucydides, 118. See also C. Dewald, Thucydides’ War Narrative: A Structural Study(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), 45, for further examples of the way in which Thucydides’choice of temporal marker, particularly natural phenomena such as the ripening of the grain,could be used as a tool of interpretation as well as chronological punctuation marks.

10 Greenwood, Thucydides, 46–7.

92 The world outside the polis

ÆyÆØ Æƒ ��Æd Kª�� º�ıH�� F ��Ø�H�� –�Æ qæØ; KŒ ˜Ø��ı��ø��PŁf� H� I�ØŒH�; ÆP ��ŒÆ KH� �Ø�ºŁ �ø� ŒÆd ��æH� Oº�ªø�

�Ææ��ªŒ�ı�H� j ‰� e �æH�� K��ºc � K� c� %ØŒc� ŒÆd � Iæ�c �F

��º��ı �F�� Kª��: �Œ��ø �b Ø� ŒÆa �f� �æ ��ı� ŒÆd �c H�

�ŒÆ�Æ��F j Iæ� �ø� j I�e Ø�B� Ø�e� K� a �æ�ª�ª��Æ ��ÆØ� �ø�

c� I�Ææ�Ł��Ø� H� O��ø� �Ø��Æ� �Aºº��: �P ªaæ IŒæØ�� K�Ø�; �x�ŒÆd Iæ��Ø� ŒÆd ��F�Ø ŒÆd ‹�ø� ı�� fiH K��ª�� Ø: ŒÆa Ł�æ� �b ŒÆd��Ø�H�Æ� IæØŁ�H�; u��æ ª�ªæÆ�ÆØ; ��æ��Ø; K� ��Ø��Æ� �ŒÆ�æ�ı �FK�ØÆı�F c� ��Æ�Ø� ��; ��ŒÆ �b� Ł�æ�; Y��ı� �b ��Ø�H�Æ� fiH �æ�fiø

��º��fiø fiH�� ª�ª��ı�.

This treaty was concluded at the very end of the winter and the beginning of

spring, directly after the City Dionysia, just ten years, with the diVerence of a

few days, after the Wrst invasion of Attica and the beginning of this war. It is

better to calculate according to the actual periods of time than to rely on the

lists of archons or other oYcials whose namesmay be used in diVerent cities to

mark the dates of past events. By this method there can be no accuracy, since a

particular event may have taken place at the beginning or the middle or at

any time during their periods of oYce. But by reckoning in summers and

winters, as I have done here, it will be found that, each of these being equivalent

to half a year, there were ten summers and ten winters in this Wrst war.11

Thucydides thus deals a blow to one of the primary systems of temporal

designation used in the Greek poleis, namely that of eponymous magistrates,

which he himself has been using and which was underpinned by the enor-

mous eVorts of his contemporaries to produce accurate lists of magistrates,

kings, priestesses, and so on.12

Thucydides’ complaint concerns lack of precision (�P ªaæ IŒæØ�� K�Ø�),

which directly conXicts with his stated desire for accuracy (IŒæ��ØÆ) in his

preface. This was a complaint which Thucydides targeted particularly at

Hellanicus, claiming that the latter’s account of the Pentecontaetia was

brief and ‘chronologically inaccurate’.13 In matters of chronology, then, as

elsewhere, Thucydides stakes his claim to be the most precise, the most

careful, the most trustworthy historian, and he will devise his own system

in the service of that aim, if need be. The combination of ‘war years’ and the

natural cycle of the seasons might strike us as rather less precise than the

alternative combination of magistracies and months,14 and it is indeed not

11 Thucydides 5.20.12 Other late Wfth-century signs of interest in the past included the puriWcation of Delos in

426, an indication of interest in archaeology as well as possibly a shrewd if desperate propagandamove, and the inscribing of the archon list in the Athenian agora during the 420s, possiblydrawing on the research of Hippias.13 Thucydides 1.97.2: �E� �æ ��Ø� �PŒ IŒæØ�H�.14 See Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Thuc. 9 for an ancient criticism of the system:

‘Thucydides wished to follow a new path, untrodden by others, and so divided his history by


entirely clear what his exhortation that one should calculate ŒÆa �f� �æ ��ı�

really means. Gomme translates ‘by natural divisions of time’,15 that is by the

seasons, and that is certainly implied by the system as set out more fully by

Thucydides in terms of winters and summers, by no means irrelevant phenom-

ena in warfare. In Gomme’s view this is a better solution to the chronological

problem than simply using the combinations of eponymous magistracies and

calendar dates, as Thucydides had done near the start of Book 2 (2.2.1), since

the time of year was of direct military signiWcance and therefore oVered not a

neutral dating device, but rather an additional layer of meaning.

The notion that a seasonal chronological system might better accommo-

date the needs of a military narrative is implied several times within Thu-

cydides’ narrative. The speciWcity of the comment that Athens marched

against Boeotia on the sixty-second day after the battle of Tanagra seems, as

both Rood and Smart have noted, to be a piece of concealed polemic against

Hellanicus, whose system of archonal dating would have placed the two

events in separate years, whereas they clearly belong together in terms of the

logic of the war and its narration.16 For Smart, the polemic against Hellanicus

was determined and relentless, and motivated, for example, Thucydides’

decision to make the start of the war an event which validated his chrono-

logical scheme of seasonal time, namely the attack on Plataea, rather than the

invasion of Attica which coincided with the start of an archonal year.17

Smart’s claim that ‘Thucydides, then, was obsessed with the superiority of

his own seasonal chronology over the eponymic chronology of Hellanicus’,18

may seem rather extreme, but it is clear that Thucydides was intent on

propounding the superiority of his historiographical skills in terms of both

accuracy and interpretative quality.

Pritchett has noted that the irregularity of the calendar, with intercalations

and so on disrupting the sequence, would render a ‘magistrate and month’

system less useful than it might appear, and potentially less useful than

Thucydides’ ‘war year and season’ system.19 As we have seen in chapter 1,

the ability of magistrates to manipulate the archonal calendar is well illus-

trated in the epigraphic evidence, and suggests that a system based on

summers and winters. The result of this division was contrary to his expectations: the seasonaldivision of time led not to greater clarity but to greater obscurity.’

15 A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides Vol. III (Oxford, 1956), ad loc.16 Rood,Thucydides, 235 and J. D. Smart, ‘Thucydides andHellanicus’, in I. S.Moxon et al. (eds.),

Past Perspectives: Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing (Cambridge, 1986), 19–35 at 30.17 See Smart, ibid. 27.18 Smart, ibid. 31.19 W. K. Pritchett, ‘Thucydides V. 20’, Historia 13 (1964), 21–36 at 26. In ‘Thucydides’

Statement on his Chronology’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 62 (1986), 205–13,Pritchett oVers a further strong defence of Thucydides’ claims to chronological accuracy.


astronomical dates might be more reliable. In terms of the relationship

between ‘artiWcial’ and ‘natural’ time (as discussed in chapter 1), the sugges-

tion that Thucydides favoured the use of seasons over that of magistracies in

order to assert the superiority of physis over nomos, on the grounds that

‘[o]nly a natural chronological scheme, grounded in phusis through its

employment of astronomically deWned summers and winters, could reveal

the true nature of human history and so enable its beneWcial comprehen-

sion’,20 oVers an interesting perspective.21 There may also be a further reason

for the choice, which concerns not authorial interpretation, but audience

reception. Pritchett claims that astronomical dates would have been well

known within the Greek cities, since parapegmata containing such calendars

were set up around the Greek world. Therefore, Thucydides was using ‘the

only available accurate (within a few days) method of dating which would be

understood, not in one city state, but throughout the Greek world’.22

We see Thucydides struggling with the diYculty which would tax all writers

of universal history, be it truly all-encompassing or simply Panhellenic, that

is, how to Wnd a chronological system which was readily comprehensible and

meaningful to the inhabitants of more than one polis.23 Thucydides’ revela-

tion of the limitations of an apparently well-organized system for indicating

time outside the boundaries of a single polis, that is, the combination of

diVerent eponymous magistracies, raises the issue of boundaries and limits

more generally, not least with regard to this book. I have chosen to focus on

local historiography partly in order to give some detailed attention to com-

monly neglected fragmentary texts, and partly in the hope that this will enable

us to draw some conclusions about local identity and shared views of the past.

However, it is worth considering also whether there was something actually

distinctive in the possibilities for chronological patterning and its expression

in the local historiography of the Greek poleis, which set it apart from

20 Smart, ‘Thucydides and Hellanicus’, 36.21 On the other hand, where Thucydides brings the role of physis in determining history to

the fore, it is associated with periods of chaos and crisis such as the plague (Thucydides 2.47–55)and civil strife in Corcyra (3.69–85, espec. 82–3), giving it a negative connotation.22 Pritchett, ‘Thucydides V. 20’, 28. But see D. Bouvier, ‘Temps chronique et temps meteor-

ologique chez les premiers historiens grecs’, in C. Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions dutemps dans le monde grec ancien (Paris, 2000), 115–41, for the proposition that Thucydides’ useof seasonal time was not necessarily dependent on a revolution in chronological accuracy andthe calendar of Euctemon. Rather, in Bouvier’s view, it was simply a systematization of theappeal to seasonal time found in Herodotus, no more accurate than the time used by Hesiod,but devoid of a sense of divine order.23 The question of applicability to not only more than one place but also more than one time

is relevant in the light of 1.22. I owe to Sarah Cottle the interesting suggestion that Thucydides’profession to write ‘an eternal possession’ (ŒB�Æ K� ÆN�d) might actually have been enhanced bya lack of local speciWcity in dating.


‘universal’ historiography or the accounts of non-Greek lands. This chapter,

then, is about establishing some parameters through the exploration of the

historiographical border-lands of the project.

2 . INVENTING UNIVERSAL HISTORY:

EPHORUS’ CONTRIBUTION

The predicament facing Thucydides concerned a relatively small-scale prob-

lem of how to construct a narrative time frame which would accommodate

more than one Greek polis. However, the most helpful starting point for a

consideration of where the world of local historiography, which forms the

focus of this book, ends and what is distinctive about it, may be to look at the

opposite extreme, namely a work of Greek historiography which claims to

have no limits, either temporal or spatial. Such is the work of the Wrst-century

bc writer, Diodorus Siculus, and this will be discussed in detail in this chapter.

But Diodorus wrote as part of a tradition of universal historiography, and one

which takes us back to the same period as that occupied by the bulk of our

local material, namely the fourth century and particularly the Hellenistic

period. It is thus worth devoting some attention to the pioneers of the

‘universal’ genre, partly by way of background to the more fully extant

universal writers, Diodorus and Strabo; partly as a foil to the local historians

who will be discussed later; partly in order to explore (not only in terms of

priority) the complex relationship, which is so central a theme in this book,

between the universal and the local, the great and the parochial, the macro-

and the micronarrative, the large and the small historiographical project.

Ephorus of Cyme was, according to Polybius, the Wrst (and to date only)

predecessor to have attempted a ‘general history’, devoting thirty books to the

‘shared deeds’ (Œ�Ø�Æd �æ��Ø�) of Greeks and barbarians from the return of

the Heraclidae to his own time.24 Polybius’ praise was echoed by Strabo,25

who admired Ephorus’ account of foundations, kinships, migrations, and so

on.26 Little, however, is known of Ephorus as an individual. The Suda notes

that he was the son of Demophilus or of Antiochus, and was a pupil of

Isocrates. Controversy surrounds the date of his birth, which is given in two

24 See Polybius 5.33.2. Also 9.1.4 and 34.1.3.25 See Strabo 9.3.11 and 10.3.5.26 He was listed as one of the ten canonical historians along with Thucydides, Herodotus,

Xenophon, Philistus, Theopompus, Anaximenes, Callisthenes, Hellanicus, and Polybius (FGrH70 t 34).


contradictory forms by the Suda.27 Even the parameters of his history are

diVerently presented by diVerent authorities. The Suda claims that the work

covered the period from the fall of Troy to Ephorus’ own times; Diodorus that

he started with the return of the Heraclidae, ended with the siege of Perinthus

(341/0 bc), and thereby covered a stretch of 750 years;28 Clement of Alexan-

dria gave yet another set of boundaries, starting with the Heraclidae, ending

with the archonship of Euaenetus (335/4 bc), and covering 735 years.29 As we

saw with the chronographers and shall see repeatedly with the universal

writers, both the fall of Troy and the return of the Heraclidae were signiWcant

chronological punctuation marks in early Greek history, so either could have

made a natural starting point for Ephorus’ universal history. Dispute over the

end point is complicated still further by the fact that the last (thirtieth) book

of his history was not written by Ephorus himself, but by his son, Demophi-

lus. Thus, in spite of the existence of whole books on Ephorus, given the little

known about him and also, more importantly, the scant remains of a work

which was originally thirty books long, we can draw only tentative conclu-

sions on his reputedly important role in the development of universal history.

It may help us to gauge the contribution made by Ephorus to the devel-

opment of historiography and of appropriate chronological systems, if we

keep in mind also to what extent his project diVered from that of the ‘great’

historians of the Wfth century, Thucydides and Herodotus. Any attempt to

contrast, say, Ephorus with these illustrious forerunners by a single criterion is

quick to fail. One cannot simply characterize Ephorus’ work as truly universal

as opposed to the more limited Panhellenic scope of his predecessors.30

Fourth-century Panhellenism has been seen as the primary stimulus to

universal historiography, as represented by Ephorus.31 But in fact, in both

the Wfth and the fourth centuries, the relative unity of the Greek world and its

rhetoric of self-deWnition in opposition to the barbarian foe generated works

which were not merely Panhellenic in scope, but explicitly and perhaps

27 It is clearly a chronological impossibility that Ephorus was born both at the time ofanarchy in Athens (404/3 bc) and in the 93rd Olympiad (408/5 bc), as the Suda claims.28 Diodorus Siculus 16.76.5.29 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.139.3–4.30 Herodotus 1.1: a �b� '¯ºº��Ø; a �b �Ææ��æ�Ø�Ø I��Ł��Æ, is suYcient to complicate

any such stark contrast in geographical scope.31 See, for example, G. L. Barber, The Historian Ephorus (Cambridge, 1935), 78: ‘a universal

history, devoting the larger part of its space to the issues of the Greek-speaking world, wasbound to emphasise the concept of the unity of that world in opposition to the barbarian; andthe strange belief in the alliance of east and west against the Greeks tended to stress theimportance of their collaboration.’ But C. W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greeceand Rome (Berkeley and London, 1983), 42–3, oVers an alternative explanation, namely that thehuge accumulation of history, ethnography, and antiquarian material was ripe for synthesis anduniWcation, and that Ephorus was stimulated by the demands of the educated circles of his day.

Universal history: Ephorus’ contribution 97

paradoxically concerned with relating the deeds of both Greeks and barbar-

ians.32 In any case, Thucydides’ tale of an ongoing war between two great

Hellenic powers was entirely diVerent in scope from the geographically and

temporally expansive narrative of Herodotus. Just as Ephorus’ geographical

universalism cannot be seen as revolutionary, it should be acknowledged that

other historians had included elements of the remote past in their works.33

But it would be fair to assert Ephorus’ innovation in providing a systematic

account through time across a broad geographical compass, and devising

narrative strategies and chronological frameworks accordingly. As a close

forerunner of many of the local historians who form the focus of this book,

Ephorus is an important exponent of this diVerent style of historiography, and,

according to Schepens, representative of a more widespread fourth-century

attempt to bridge the gap between the ‘prehistory’ of Panhellenic myths and

sagas and the more recent past of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.34

a) Spatium mythicum: spatium historicum

The great temporal scope of Ephorus’ work, from the return of the Heraclidae

onwards, if we accept Diodorus’ account,35 is the most striking diVerence

between his work and that of the great Wfth-century historians. Whereas Thu-

cydides and Herodotus each had a sense of limits in terms of how far back one

could reasonably go with any accuracy, Ephorus chose to take his account far

back in time. Scholars have been quick to note that Ephorus did not in fact take

the story as far back as hemight have done, and have stressed Ephorus’ exclusion

of much of the mythical age on the grounds that he was concerned with sources

and the importance of truth in historiography.36 Schepens underlines the lack of

a written tradition contemporary with mythical events and sees this as one

major reason for its exclusion from Ephorus’ account. Still more explicitly,

Strabo notes Ephorus’ scorn for mythographers and approval of the truth,

with the implication that the latter was incompatible with mythography.37

32 See ch. 4 for the complicated status of Hellenica as a form of historiography, caughtbetween the local and the universal.

33 See R. L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography. Volume I: Text and Introduction (Oxford, 2000),for the extant fragments of authors who dealt with the mythical period.

34 G. Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems in Ephorus’, in Historiographia antiqua. Com-mentationes lovanienses in honorem W. Peremans septuag. editae (Louvain, 1977), 95–118 at 97.We shall see again in ch. 5 this same tendency in the orators who were contemporaries ofEphorus.

35 See Diodorus 4.1.3 ¼ FGrH 70 t 8.36 See Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 106–7.37 FGrH 70 f 31b: K�ØØ��Æ� ª�F� �E� �Øº��ıŁ�F�Ø� K� BØ B� ƒ��æ�Æ� ªæÆ�BØ ŒÆd c�

Iº�Ł�ØÆ� K�ÆØ��Æ�.


Parmeggiani sees the distinction between myth and history as absolutely

fundamental in the development of historiography as a scientiWc discipline,

but notes that it is approached diVerently by each historian:38 for Herodotus,

Polycrates of Samos was the Wrst thalassocrat of ‘the so-called human gener-

ations’ (I�Łæø�� º�ª�� ª��B�) excluding his famous predecessor,

Minos (3.122.2); Thucydides presents Minos’ thalassocracy as a concrete

historical phenomenon (1.4). For Parmeggiani, Ephorus was engaged in the

same process, but simply chose a diVerent point at which to draw the dividing

line. However we classify the return of the sons of Heracles, whether as a

mythical or as a historical event,39 it seems clear that Ephorus has a sense of

limits, while drawing them further in the past than most. But even if his is

simply the choice of a diVerent point at which to start writing,40 the conse-

quences are nevertheless dramatic in terms of temporal scope, and entail the

development of chronological strategies for a much broader time frame.

Although Thucydides may have delved into the more distant past in the

Archaeologia and in his account of Sicily, and although Herodotus may have

set a nominally strict limit on how far back in time the historian could go with

certainty, but nevertheless related, for example, foundation accounts, it seems

that Ephorus both took historiography further into the world of myths and

heroes, and did so not only in sporadic digressions, but as the starting point of

a continuous account, thus redeWning the boundary between spatium mythi-

cum and spatium historicum.41 It has been noted by others that Ephorus’

concern with evidence and accuracy which might preclude any treatment of

the mythical period was in fact simply applied to it, as far as was possible, as

well as to more recent times,42 and that there was ‘no concern that a real gap

existed between current times and the distant past’.43

38 See G. Parmeggiani, ‘Mito e spatium historicum nelle Storie di Ephoro di Cuma (Note aEph. FGrHist 70 t 8)’, Rivista Storica di Antichita 29 (1999), 107–25 at 107–8.39 Or whether we adopt Schepens’s point, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 107, that the dis-

tinction may be formulated in terms of heroic versus human periods.40 And note the suggestion of F. Pownall, Lessons from the Past: The Moral Use of History in

Fourth-Century Prose (Ann Arbor, 2004), 114, that the starting point was partly determined by asense of historia perpetua, since it picked up from Hellanicus’ work.41 It is thus my view that we need not be apologetic about Ephorus’ occasional forays even

deeper into the mythical period. Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 107, points, forexample, to the inclusion of the founding of the Delphic oracle (f 31) as explicable because itis introduced in a rationalizing way, but it seems that no such explanations are needed. SeeJ. McBride’s review of Pownall, Lessons from the Past, in BMCR 2004.07.17, for the view thatEphorus’ rationalization of the behaviour of gods and heroes followed ‘a procedure for thehistorical treatment of myth known since Hecataeus’, thereby mitigating any ‘transgression’ ofthe anti-myth principle.42 See Parmeggiani, ‘Mito e spatium historicum’, passim.43 J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), 98.


Here Polybius’ deWnition of diVerent types of history associated with

diVerent periods of the past may be helpful. ‘The genealogical side appeals

to those who like to listen to a story; the account of colonies and foundations

and kinship ties, as are to be read in Ephorus, for example, appeals to the

person who is full of curiosity, perhaps even excessively so; the aspect which

deals with the actions of peoples and cities and dynasties is of appeal to the

reader who is interested in political life.’44 It may be that Ephorus’ choice to

start with the return of the Heraclidae implied that he was excluding the

‘genealogical’ phase of history and starting with colonies and foundations.

But in fact, as Walbank has pointed out, the diVerent aspects identiWed by

Polybius were not mutually exclusive.45 After Hecataeus’ work in the early

Wfth century, devising a genealogical framework and sorting out the gener-

ations of epic heroes,46 and Hellanicus’ work on foundations, it was a natural

move to bring the various strands together. By the early fourth century, the

mythical and the genealogical were closely linked. The blurring is visible in the

regular use by Ephorus of the standard unit of time for the period of

genealogy, namely the generation,47 while he is cited by Polybius as the

chief example of a historian for the succeeding period, that of colonies,

foundations, and kinship. So, for example, Lycurgus is said to have lived

Wve generations after Althaemenes (f 149) and in the eleventh generation after

Heracles.48 Homer was to be placed many generations after the return of the

Heraclidae.49 The conclusions are in a sense obvious—that the generation was

a unit of time which suited more than just the ‘genealogical’ period,50 and that

Ephorus was by no means restricted to Polybius’ second phase of history, but

44 Polybius 9.1.4.45 See F. W. Walbank, ‘Timaeus’ Views on The Past’, in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic

World: Essays and ReXections (Cambridge, 2002), 165–77 at 169.46 It is important not to attribute more than can be attested to Hecataeus. See T. S. Brown,

‘The Greek Sense of Time in History as Suggested by their Accounts of Egypt’, Historia 11(1962), 257–70 at 260, for a cautious approach to Hecataeus with regard to his role in devising auniversal chronology.

47 We can surely not reasonably follow Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 171–2, in using thegeneration as a precise unit for solving chronological conundrums. His second appendix,devoted to establishing the exact date of the return of the Heraclidae and of Lycurgus, dependson the span of a generation being precisely thirty years (and also on the date of Heracles being1200 bc!). The attempt to calculate in terms of single years or even decades seems to meastonishing for these chronologically vague periods. See D. W. Prakken, Studies in GreekGenealogical Chronology (Lancaster, 1943), 96, for the proposition that Ephorus used a 35- or331

3-year generation, again on the methodologically dubious basis of the length of stretches from

one chronologically key point in the text to another.48 f 173: ��ŒÆ � K�Ø� I�e � æÆŒº��ı�.49 f 102: ��ººÆE� ª��ÆE� ��æ�E� ÆP � �Æ�Ø� (sc. 'ˇ��æ�� B� H� � æÆŒº�Ø�H� ŒÆŁ ��ı).50 Barber, The Historian Ephorus, declares that it is impossible to know whether Ephorus

applied generations only to the genealogical period and then moved to a more annalisticsequence (within the kata genos arrangement).


rather was quite willing to blend ‘genealogy’ with the phase of foundations—

and we should not Wnd this surprising, although the latter may seem to soften

the signiWcance of Ephorus’ supposedly careful choice of starting point to

avoid the potential uncertainty and inaccuracy associated with the spatium

mythicum.

An alternative approach to emphasizing Ephorus’ exclusion of the earliest

mythical tales is rather to lay stress on the still extraordinary breadth of his

project, and to examine, in so far as this is possible given the fragmentary

nature of the work, some of his strategies for managing this scope.51 One of

the disadvantages of taking the story back as far as the Heraclidae was the

problem of evidence. Although some modern scholars have seen the return of

the Heraclidae as the beginning of Greek civilization and the era ‘which would

stand the test of the search for truth’,52 in fact, the decision to include the

remote past had a clear impact on the sources available. Schepens sees

Ephorus’ consequent shift from primary to secondary research as one of the

most important aspects of his contribution to historiography, marking a

crucial new departure from Herodotus and Thucydides’ stress on autopsy

and oral enquiry to a focus on the consultation of extant historical litera-

ture.53 It is striking, therefore, that Ephorus continued in this focus on literary

citation even for the more recent past, for which primary evidence in the form

of inscriptions and archaeological remains was available. It could be said that

the obvious opportunity to use diVerent methods and approaches for diVer-

ent phases of the past was passed over in favour of a uniWed methodology.54 It

is, in any case, clear that Ephorus did diVerentiate between the distant and the

more recent past in terms of evidential quality and reliability, even if he chose

51 Pownall, Lessons from the Past, 121, argues alternatively that Ephorus overcame his concernabout the lack of safe evidence for the mythical period because he found there a valuable stock ofexamples for moral instruction. The idea is an interesting one, but founded on the assumptionthat Ephorus was driven by a moral didacticism (see 141: [his] ‘primary purpose seems to havebeen the moral instruction of his readers’), which prevented him from always sticking to hisown rules for how to write history, in particular those which encouraged him to avoid themythical period as part of his search for accuracy. As Pownall herself concedes, there is littleverbatim that would justify this assumption (119), but she makes her search for moral messagesnevertheless, somewhat weakening any conclusions.52 See Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 22.53 See Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 104–5, and passim for an excellent treatment

of this subject. The range of evidence needed to cover 750 years of history is certainly striking,including as it does historiography, poetry, documentary sources such as epigraphy, oracles, andso on.54 This appears to cast doubt on Ephorus’ having a sense of periods with distinctive features

and distinctive methodological approaches, in favour of a more uniWed vision of the wholesweep of time from the return of the Heraclidae onwards. In fact, the picture is rather morecomplex, since Ephorus did not turn his back on primary evidence for the more recent past, butcombined it with an ongoing stress on the literary accounts of others.


not to replace secondary with primary sources at the point where that became

possible.55

Furthermore, Strabo’s citation of Ephorus on the history of Aetolia reveals a

careful use of the oral reports of current inhabitants about the foundation, of

inscriptions, and of geographical detail (10.3.2), showing that he was not

neglectful of non-literary forms of evidence. He was keen to use the present as

a source of visible traces of the past, while being aware of the possibilities for

misinterpretation.56 Perhaps it would be more accurate than claiming either

complete coherence through exclusive use of literary evidence or an absolute

distinction between use of secondary and primary evidence for the distant and

recent past respectively, to see the unity in Ephorus’ work as lying in its

methodological awareness. Some of this is a direct development within the

historiographical tradition—as Schepens notes, the logographers worked with-

out explicit criticism, Herodotus vowed ‘to say what was said’ (º�ª�Ø� a

º�ª ��Æ), and Antiochus of Syracuse wasmore critically selective still, claiming

to tell ‘the most trustworthy and the most true of the ancient tales’;57 Ephorus,

however, moved the level of source criticism up a notch with his careful

combination of primary and secondary sources, as appropriate and as available,

and within the latter, his ‘combination of historians and logographers’, accord-

ing to Polybius.58Hewas critical of Hellanicus (t 30a), fromwhomhemust have

taken much of his material on the earliest periods covered, and he corrected

Herodotus and Thucydides using diVerent types of evidence, including poetry.

An excellent case study of the way in which Ephorus used literary, and in

this case speciWcally poetic, sources to correct Herodotus has been put

forward by Michael Flower.59 When Diodorus cites Simonides’ poem on the

battle of Thermopylae, Flower considers it ‘beyond reasonable doubt that

Diodorus found these lines in Ephorus’, giving other examples, which make

plain that Ephorus habitually cited poetry in support of his account.60 The

55 He argues interestingly in FGrH 70 f 9, that accuracy and detail create the oppositepresuppositions depending on whether they are applied to contemporary events, for whichthey are the sign of reliability, or to ancient events, when they lead to a presumption of Wction:��æd �b� ªaæ H� ŒÆŁ� ��A� ª�ª��ø� �f� IŒæØ��ÆÆ º�ª��Æ� �Ø��ı� �ª��ŁÆ; ��æd�b H� �ÆºÆØH� �f� �oø �Ø��Ø �Æ� I�ØŁÆ�ø��ı� �r�ÆØ ��.

56 See Thucydides 1.10, the locus classicus for this concern, but also Strabo 10.4.17 forEphorus’ awareness of variant tales concerning Cretan customs.

57 See FGrH 555 f 2: KŒ H� Iæ�Æ�ø� º ªø� a �Ø� ÆÆ ŒÆd �Æ��ÆÆ. Here I take �Æ��to be an approximation to ‘true’ or ‘certain’, rather than just ‘clear’, as at Thucydides 1.22.

58 See Polybius 12.28.11: ��æd B� �ıªŒæ��ø� �Yæ�Œ� B� H� ƒ��æØ�ªæ��ø� ŒÆd º�ª�ªæ��ø�.59 M. A. Flower, ‘Simonides, Ephorus, and Herodotus on the Battle of Thermopylae’,

Classical Quarterly 48 (1998), 365–79. See Walbank, Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World,167, for a similar kind of competitiveness vis a vis Herodotus with Timaeus, who subversivelysubstitutes the synchronism of the battle of Himera with victory of the Greeks at Salamis with aGreek defeat, that at Thermopylae.

60 Flower, ibid. 369. See Diodorus 11.11.6. Flower notes that Diodorus quotes Eupolis andAristophanes on the causes of the Peloponnesian War at 12.40.6, explicitly citing Ephorus as his


interesting overlap between the world of history and that of poetry is one to

which I shall return in more detail in chapters 4 and 6, but the treatment of

historical themes in known poems, such as the Smyrneis of Mimnermus, and

Simonides’ composition of poems about the episodes of the Persian wars,61

provided, as Flower suggests, an excellent source for those who would later

wish to challenge Herodotus.62Whatever the merits of either version, in terms

of Ephorus’ approach, a poetic source for a historical account was not

necessarily less accurate than that of a historian, and indeed one might

reasonably prefer the version of Simonides, who was a much closer contem-

porary of the events of the Persian wars than was Herodotus.

Ephorus’ continued interest in using literary sources even for contemporary

history might seem less explicable than his preference for Simonides’ account

over the later one of Herodotus. However, as Schepens points out, Ephorus’

task was a quite diVerent one from that of ‘great’ historians with whom he

might be unfavourably compared.63 Thucydides might have been able to give

preference to autopsy and primary reports over literary accounts and thereby

secure the prize for historical methodology, but Ephorus was dealing with not

only a vastly greater chronological span, but also a great geographical spread, not

least because the polycentric world of the fourth century in which he lived

stimulated interest in a broader set of theatres of action.

Bringing spatium mythicum and spatium historicum into a single work

entailed a vast temporal span, and diVerent phases might require diVerent

time systems. We have already seen the use of the generation as a chrono-

logical unit. But many of the other chronological markers, such as the Trojan

War and the return of the Heraclidae, which we shall see recurring in later

universal writers such as Diodorus and Strabo, are to be found among the

fragments of Ephorus. The methodological diYculty is determining whether

the inclusion of these commonly known points in the past, on which to hang

other lesser-known events, was primarily the work of Ephorus himself or of

his successors, since this is precisely the kind of issue which the nature of

citation in ancient literature obscures. Common sense suggests that it would

be remarkable for Strabo or Diodorus, for example, to have added their own

chronological markers on an extensive scale if there were no traces of these in

their sources. Nevertheless, some of these Ephoran fragments will appear

source for the causes, and several of Strabo’s poetic citations (of which there are many—seeD. Dueck, ‘Strabo’s Use of Poetry’, in D. Dueck, H. Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s CulturalGeography: The Making of a Kolossourgia (Cambridge, 2005), 86–107), are channelled throughEphorus, such as 6.3.3—Wve lines of Tyrtaeus on the foundation of Tarentum.

61 Of which the new Simonides on Plataea is but one.62 Flower, ‘Simonides, Ephorus, and Herodotus’, 370.63 See Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 112.


again as ‘duplicates’ later in this chapter, and so they may rightly belong either

to Ephorus or to his later citers.64

The sons of Heracles not only formed the probable chronological starting

point for Ephorus’ great work, but they also featured prominently in the

narrative.65 In a sense, of course, the two points are interrelated, since it is

likely that it was precisely the importance and legacy of their deeds which led

to the choice of starting point. We hear of the adoption by the Dorian king,

Aegimus, of one of the sons of Heracles, Hyllus, in addition to his own two

sons, Pamphylus and Dymas, in thanks for Heracles’ restoration of the king

from exile.66 Strabo makes clear that Ephorus dealt with the aftermath of the

arrival of the Heraclidae, particularly the division of the Peloponnese,67 in

which circumstance, they were both a chronological marker and part of the

narrative. Their mention in the story of Oxylus (f 115), the son of Aetolus

(after whom Aetolia was named), with whom they led their expedition back

to the Peloponnese, shows yet again the way in which they can be both active

players and a form of chronological note, since they allow us thereby to place

Aetolus a generation back in time from this.

The Heraclidae are not, however, the only well-known temporal indicator

to appear in the fragments of Ephorus. One passage (f 11) provides a

temporal framework for the foundation of the city of Carides on Chios

with the information that it was carried out by ‘those with Macar who had

been saved from the Xood which happened under Deucalion’.68 The Trojan

expedition, which lay just outside the chronological scope of Ephorus’ work,

nevertheless was mentioned by him, according to Strabo.69 It seems that the

period of intensive colonization, which would enable later writers such as

64 Occasional fragments indicate that the later writers sometimes introduced the well-knowntemporal markers independently of their sources. See, for example, f 121 (¼ Strabo 9.4.7) on thenaming of Naupactus. According to Strabo, it was either the Heraclidae who built a Xeet thereor, in Ephorus’ account, even earlier the Locrians. Of course, Strabo is here not using theHeraclidae as a temporal indicator, but nevertheless it is clear that he was by no meansdependent on Ephorus for every mention.

65 We shall see the same doubling of certain events as both chronological markers andnarrative episodes in their own right with Strabo.

66 See f 15. f 16 also notes Heracles’ benefactions and refers to the expedition of theHeraclidae to the Peloponnese.

67 f 18a: a ��æd c� �ØÆ�æ��Ø� B� —�º��ı ŒÆa c� H� � ˙æÆŒº�Ø�H� Œ�Ł��. See alsof 117 from Strabo’s extensive account of the return (8.5), which he claims to have taken fromEphorus and f 118 on the handing over of land to the Dorians by the suspiciously namedPhilonomus (Lover of laws), ‘at the time of the return of the Heraclidae’ (ŒÆa �b c� H�� ˙æÆŒº�Ø�H� Œ�Ł��).

68 �ØÆ�øŁ��Æ� KŒ �F K�d ˜�ıŒÆº�ø�� ª��ı ŒÆÆŒºı��F ��a !�ŒÆæ��.69 See f 123 ¼ Strabo 10.2.25 and 7.7.7. But f 34 on Heracles’ conquest of the giants of

Phlegra ‘after having taken Troy’ must refer to the separate expedition against Troy undertakenby Heracles with Telamon, the son of Aeacus, whose son, Ajax, would be one of the greatestwarriors in Homer’s Trojan War.


Strabo to create a chronological mesh of foundations in relation to each other,

was treated extensively by Ephorus.70 One fragment (f 22) hints at the

possibility that Ephorus engaged in some of the scholarship on the origin of

festivals and the development of the festival calendar of the type discussed in

chapter 2, dealing as it does with the origins of the festival of Apatouria, which

took place on the fourth of Pyanepsion.

Although we have little evidence for the chronological systems adopted for

the later periods dealt with by Ephorus, the earliest periods are, as far as scant

evidence allows, mapped out using a mixture of generations and well-known

chronological markers. Whether we are witnessing a retrojection by Diodorus

and Strabo on to Ephorus, or rather gaining some tantalizing glimpses into

Ephorus’ own chronological strategies, remains uncertain. Continual caution

is required—the fragments are massively skewed towards the mythical and

earliest periods, since Strabo’s practice of citation by name gives him a far

greater presence in Jacoby’s collection than in Diodorus, and therefore Stra-

bo’s own preference for the earliest phases of a place’s history means that we

have a great deal more to say about Ephorus’ early phase too.71

We can for the most part only speculate on how Ephorus dealt with the

chronological framework of more recent times. One rare moment of enlight-

enment is oVered by Polybius, who comments in the course of his polemic

against Timaeus that Timaeus had falsely accused Ephorus of ignorance,

alleging that Ephorus claimed that Dionysius the Elder took power in his

twenty-third year, ruled as tyrant for forty-two, and died at the age of sixty-

three.72 The chronological diYculty here is, according to Polybius, a slip that

no one would attribute to a historian, only to a scribe, thus answering

Timaeus’ criticism of Ephorus. But the episode gives rare support to the

idea that Ephorus himself probably took a careful year-by-year approach to

the historical period, and calculated the passage of time accordingly.73 The

lack of more than scarce glimpses into the chronological structure and

terminology of the majority of Ephorus’ work, the ‘historical’ narrative, is a

great loss. It would be of great interest to see whether and how a universal

historian, working before the development of the Olympiadic system,

70 See f 125 for the Ionian colonization; f 127 for Miletus. On Strabo’s complex web ofinterrelated foundations, see K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructionsof the Roman World (Oxford, 1999), 265–70.71 Just brief glimpses of chronological indicators emerge from the later fragments and they

bring little illumination to our problem. See, for example, f 207 with its helpful ‘later’ (�æ �øØ �bo��æ��).72 f 218 ¼ Polybius 12.4a3.73 Note the opportunity here also for the development of regnal time as a means of signifying

the passing of time as well as the relative chronology of diVerent rulers.


managed to provide an adequate and meaningful method for mapping out

the temporal progress of his multilocational narrative.

b) Synchronism and topicality: writing across time and space

If we are frustrated by the lack of extant material which might allow us to

establishwhether or not Ephorus distinguished between the remote past and the

historical period in terms of the chronological systems used, similar vagueness

surrounds the question of how he arranged a work of such vast scope. The issue

is of some relevance for the relationship between the local and the universal, as

well as for our understanding of the use of temporal units and synchronicity.

Discussion hinges on the statement in Diodorus (5.1.4) that Ephorus was very

successful in his organization of the subject matter, which was carried out ŒÆa

ª��, each book containing the achievements of cities or of kings individually,

from beginning to end. The phrase ŒÆa ª�� has proven particularly elusive.

As modern treatments have demonstrated, it is unclear whether it should be

taken to mean ‘episodic’ or ‘thematic’ or ‘geographically organized’, meaning

that each book or section would deal with a particular region.74 The weight of

opinion has, however, tended to come down on the side of a geographical

interpretation, which, as Schepens points out, would have been helpful since,

when Ephorus wrote, ‘no general system existed for a uniform dating of the

events in Greece, let alone in the West and the East as well’.75

As Schepens’ statement implies, the relationship between time and space is

at the heart of the problem. If Ephorus’ work was geographically organized,

we might expect the relationship to be predominantly spatial, with a close

preservation of local accounts. Indeed, whereas there is real debate over the

priority of the Herodotean project or the local accounts of individual poleis, as

discussed in the next chapter, it is clear that when the Wrst universal historian

embarked upon his project, there was no question as to the existence of local

histories on which he might draw. In amongst the huge range of literary

sources which Ephorus privileged throughout his work, might have featured

not only Herodotus, Hecataeus, and Thucydides, but also Hellanicus, the

other Atthidographers, and the regional historians such as Ctesias and

Xanthus, later to be embodied in numerous Persica, for the East.76 Josephus

74 See R. Drews, ‘Ephorus and History Written KATA GENOS’, American Journal of Philology84 (1963), 244–55.

75 Schepens, ‘Historiographical Problems’, 116.76 See Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 133. Hellanicus could, of course, provide the histories

of many more individual states than Athens alone, and his huge chronological scope must havemade him invaluable for the earliest period.


notes, for example, that Ephorus pointed out many mistakes in Hellanicus,

which oVers clear proof that Ephorus had read the latter carefully.77

Although Barber is somewhat scathing of the value of regional and local

accounts,78 the assumption that they loomed large among Ephorus’ sources

leads us to various possibilities. Either Ephorus’ work was fragmented and

incoherent in its chronological, mythological, conceptual frameworks, simply

recording the local sources as he moved from one theatre of events to another,

or he carefully ‘reformulated’ the diverse sources to Wt his own frameworks

and style. In fact, just as we shall see again with the more fully extant Diodorus

and Strabo, the extant fragments of Ephorus’ account give no hint of ‘local’

time systems, although, as we shall see (in chapter 4), these were a common

feature of local historiography,79 thus suggesting that the temporal and

conceptual framework of the source was substantially replaced in works of

universal scope. This might seem too sweeping a generalization in the case of

a fragmentary work. It can, however, be noted that at least Diodorus, even if

not one of his major sources, Ephorus, did not choose to preserve local time

systems, and preferred instead to allow his universal system of Olympiads and

magistracies to cut across space.

The notion of a geographical arrangement thus comes under some pres-

sure, if a universal chronology subsumed local time systems. However, the

supposition that Ephorus’ status as forerunner to Diodorus means that we

can infer Ephorus’ historiographical practice from that of Diodorus is clearly

Xawed. It has been noted that Ephorus provided a crucial model for subse-

quent Greek universal historiography in not trying to provide a truly syn-

chronized, synthetic account across several arenas.80 It should also be noted

that, while Diodorus, for example, as soon as he reached the ‘historical’

period, placed his tour of various theatres within a strict annalistic frame-

work, which was continuous at least year by year, and was counted by means

of a carefully comprehensive combination of Olympiads and magistracies,

Ephorus provides us with no evidence for a uniWed and universally applicable

chronological framework. Barber may well be correct to defend Ephorus

against charges of chronological neglect,81 but the supposed adoption of an

77 See FGrH 70 t 30.78 See Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 121: ‘The literature of the Persica and Atthides,

belonging more to the fourth than to the Wfth century, was the embodiment, not of historicalfact, but of popular legends which easily accumulate around the personalities of great men.’79 This was, however, not to the exclusion of more widely understood and applicable

frameworks at least at the Panhellenic level. The issue of to what degree local historians useda common mythological and chronological currency will be discussed further in ch. 4.80 See Drews, ‘Ephorus and History Written KATA GENOS’, 253, on the model followed by

Polybius and Diodorus, at any rate.81 Barber, The Historian Ephorus, 47: ‘Nevertheless the criticism that Ephorus’ system implied

the total abolition of an annalistic framework is unjustiWed, except perhaps in the earliest books,


annalistic framework still leaves unanswered the question as to the terms in

which such a framework might have been calibrated.

But, assuming that Fornara is correct to surmise that ‘events were tied

together synchronistically and dated in relation to well-known epochs such as

the reign of Croesus, the era of the Persian War, and the outbreak of the

Peloponnesian War, by generations in archaic times, and by intervals of years

thereafter,’82 is this radically diVerent from what we might expect, or indeed

from what we Wnd in other authors? Both the gathering together of contem-

porary events and the association of those events with well-known chrono-

logical landmarks can be executed at a greater or lesser level of speciWcity.

Although Fornara sees Ephorus’ method as a rejection of Thucydides’ syn-

chronistic approach, which would have been incompatible with a topical

arrangement,83 Drews must be right to stress that both were simply operating

at diVerent points along a spectrum of synchronization. Episodic history was

not necessarily a deliberate replacement of synchronicity with rapidly chan-

ging scenes, and indeed Thucydides’ own form of synchronism was not

precisely that, allowing a unit of six months.84 Drews points out, very

convincingly, that the issue here is the unit of chronology, which for Polybius

would be larger still—not the year, but the Olympiad. As he says, for Polybius,

synchronic and episodic history were not mutually exclusive, ‘but instead of

advancing all players on the board one move each season, or each year, he

would feel free to follow one player’s progress to a logical halt, covering several

years in the process.’85 And he rightly brings Thucydides back into the frame

with the comment that his synchronistic history ‘diVers from episodic only in

the degree to which the unit of synchronism has been articulated’.

This attempt to soften the contrast between synchronistic and episodic

history seems entirely sensible, not least since, alluring though the prospect of

identifying a distinctively Ephoran stance on the relationship between time

and space in his work might be, especially if it brought him into conXict or

competition with the approaches adopted by his predecessors, the extant

fragments oVer nothing like suYcient insight into his chronological scheme

to allow this characterization.86 But it may be safe to go as far as Fornara in

where a total reckoning by generations was coupled with the parallel exposition of the history ofvarious states.’ This would appear to imply a geographical sense of kata genos in the Wrst books,followed by something else (unspeciWed). But it seems that we simply cannot draw argumentsfrom silence where a fragmentary author is concerned.

82 Fornara, The Nature of History, 44.83 Fornara, ibid.84 Drews, ‘Ephorus and History Written KATA GENOS’, 245.85 Drews, ibid. 246.86 In any case, as Drews, ibid. 249, notes, it is easy to attribute deliberate intent and

innovation to the results of pure lack of precision or concern: ‘laxity in carrying through a


seeing Ephorus as breaking new ground with his topical organization within

relatively narrow chronological limits, which would be adopted in some form

or another by many subsequent Greek historians. It is hard to be sure whether

the lack of rigidity here is the result of ignorance on our part as to exactly how

Ephorus organized his work, and in particular what chronological framework

he used, or whether it was a deliberately Xexible system, allowing for the

inclusion of digressions where relevant. Fornara gives Ephorus the beneWt of

the doubt, praising a narrative arrangement which allowed Ephorus ‘to

organize intelligibly a sequential narrative consisting of lengthy historical

segments that were at once independent and synchronous.’87 It is that com-

bination of independence and synchronicity which will prove key in trying to

understand the world not only of the universal historians but also, perhaps

more unexpectedly, that of the local writers, who chose to compose their

histories in such a way as to maintain the uniqueness and superiority of each

polis, but with an awareness that the past of that polis ran alongside and often

in conjunction with that of others.

3 . EXTENDING TIME ACROSS SPACE:

THE OLYMPIADIC REVOLUTION

One limitation of Ephorus’ work, about which we can only guess in the absence

of the more complete text, is the lack of a single chronological system, which

could be used for all theatres of events. Attempts to synchronize, to draw

together events which took place across a wide geographical area into a chrono-

logical unity, provided a certain validation for the universal historiographical

enterprise. It was not necessary, however, for geographically disparate events to

coincide chronologically. The mere use of the same chronological currencies

would reveal something about the unity of the world being described.

Thucydides, with whom this chapter started, had already begun to hint at

the desirability of drawing together disparate time systems into a more

coherent whole. His combination of Argive priestesses, Spartan ephors, and

Athenian archons, his lament over the problem of placing a multilocational

narrative in time, given the local nature of chronological frameworks, and

thirdly the unsatisfactory nature of Thucydides’ own solution of seasons and

war years, applicable as it was only to a single narrative, strongly indicate the

synchronistic presentation must not be confused with an intentional episodic approach’. It isfurthermore easy to pounce too quickly on the mere mention of elements which could be part ofa chronological framework, such as seasons, and assume that they are precisely that.

87 Fornara, The Nature of History, 45.

The Olympiadic revolution 109

value of a uniWed system that could be used to provide an accurate temporal

framework for universal historiography. Such a system was developed, just a

little too late for Ephorus, through the cumulative labours of Hippias of Elis,

Timaeus of Tauromenium, and Eratosthenes, all of whom were in some way

responsible for the fact that, when Polybius set out to write a universal history,

he would do so within a clear chronological framework which transcended

the local magistracies and calendar systems of the various places encompassed

by his narrative, namely that of Olympiads.

The earlier stages of this development have already been outlined (in

chapter 2), since the practical use of Olympiads in historiography was depen-

dent on more purely chronographic interests. Hippias of Elis, with his early

fourth-century List of Olympic Victors, set the trend for compiling such lists,

but it was the historian Timaeus of Tauromeniumwho, according to Polybius,

Wrst produced a comparative list of ephors and kings of Sparta from the

earliest times, Athenian archons, priestesses of Argos, and, the missing ingre-

dient from Thucydides’ list and of great importance in oVering continuity,

length, and universality, the Olympic victors.88 The quest to improve the list

was taken up by Eratosthenes, who produced not only the Olympionikai, an

apparently random selection of notes on Olympic contests, but also more

revealingly a work of Chronographia, which, as already noted, was a serious

attempt to bring the Olympic victory list into a meaningful and accurate

relationship with key events in Greek history. As we have seen (in chapter 2),

many chronographers attempted to tie more local temporal systems to the

Olympiadic frame, seeing it as a central, shared, apparently detached, measure

of time. The advantages of a Panhellenic festival for marking out time over the

many local ones were multifaceted—the victors were representative of a wide

spread of Greek poleis, and the history which could be attached to the list as a

chronological frame was even more geographically diverse.89 I have already

discussed the chronicle from Oxyrhynchus in which the Olympiadic frame-

work is used for a historical account which ranges widely around diVerent

theatres of action (pp. 77–9), and this is, of course, what we see most vividly

exempliWed for the Wrst time in Polybius’ Histories.

But it is Wrst worth recalling Polybius’ namesake, Ti. Claudius Polybius,

who points out the fundamental importance of the published Olympic victor

lists in the Greek organization and measurement of time by stating that it was

88 Polybius 12.11.1 ¼ FGrH 566 t 10: › ªaæ a� �ıªŒæ��Ø� ��Ø�� I��ŒÆŁ�� H� K� æø��æe� �f� �Æ�Øº�E� �f� K� ¸ÆŒ��Æ��Ø ŒÆd �f� ¼æ��Æ� �f� %Ł��Ø; ŒÆd a� ƒ�æ��Æ� a� K��¢æª�Ø �ÆæÆ��ººø� �æe� �f� � ˇºı��Ø��ŒÆ�. As Polybius goes on to comment, Timaeus con-victed cities of inaccuracies in these matters when there was a diVerence of only three months.

89 See ch. 2 for the way in which Phlegon of Tralles displays the geographically diverse natureof the victory list, as well as the universal nature of the history which would be tied to it.


not with the Wrst Olympiad, but only with the Wrst inscription of a victor’s

name, that of Coroebus of Elis, who won the stadion in the twenty-eighth

Olympiad, that the Greeks counted time.90 This ability to ‘count time’ under-

pins the historiographical enterprise undertaken by Polybius, for whom the

framework of numbered Olympiads provided the structure within which both

synthetic and geographically disparate accounts could be located.91

It is something of an irony that it should be Timaeus, for whom Polybius

had little but scorn, who pioneered the application of Olympiadic time to the

writing of history, of which Polybius would become our chief exemplar.

Timaeus, whose life spanned the second half of the fourth century bc and

the Wrst of the third, was noted for his interest in chronological accuracy and

for his synthesis of diVerent time frames with each other against the continu-

ous backdrop of Olympiadic counting, with a view to creating a narrative

framework for history. Although Timaeus himself wrote Sicelica, as we shall

see in chapter 4, Sicilian historiography seems to have held a rather more

elevated status than most local historiography. Whether this was due to its

inherent scale and themes, which lifted it above the scope of most local

historiography, or whether to a more self-conscious wish on the part of its

authors to reXect Sicily’s wider aspirations to Hellenic culture and Hellenic

identity in its historiography is a question to which we shall return. But we

might at least question whether Polybius’ description of Timaeus’ wish to be

seen on a par with ‘those who gave accounts of the whole inhabited world and

of universal history’,92 is the whole story, or whether it is indeed signiWcant that

the ‘universal chronology’ adopted and developed by this Sicilian author was

one with such strong connotations as an essential marker of Greekness.93

Besides an elaborate system of synchronisms and Wxed markers from both

the mythical and historical periods,94 the fragments of Timaeus reveal Olym-

piads brought into conjunction with other temporal frames and also used on

their own as the Wrst coherent, universal, and continuous dating device. The

synoecism of Camarina, for example, happened, according to Timaeus, in the

42nd Olympiad (ŒÆa c� �� Oºı��Ø��Æ), and its capture was at the time of

90 See FGrH 254 f 2: � Oºı��Øa� Æo� �æ�� K��Ł�; I�� w� '¯ºº�� IæØŁ��F�Ø �f� �æ ��ı�.We should probably assume that this character is the freedman who held the position of a studiisunder the emperor Claudius.91 F. W. Walbank, Polybius (Berkeley and London, 1972), 99, points out the need for a good

and eVective chronological structure when covering 75 years.92 FGrH 566 f 119: �E� ��bæ B� �NŒ�ı�� ŒÆd H� ŒÆŁ º�ı �æ��ø� ��Ø��Ø� a�

�ı��Ø�.93 See Herodotus 2.160.3 for the answer given by the Eleans to king Amasis of Egypt when

questioned about who could compete in the Olympic festival: ‘They said that it was open to anyof the Greeks who wanted, including themselves (ŒÆd ��ø� ŒÆd H� ¼ººø� � ¯ºº��ø� ›��ø� fiH��ıº��fiø), to compete’.94 These will be discussed in ch. 4.


the expedition of Darius, son of Hystaspes (ŒÆa c� ˜Ææ��ı �F �0��ı

�æÆ��Æ�).95 We have already seen the attempts of the chronographers to

determine the chronological relationship between the Trojan War and the Wrst

Olympiad; for Timaeus, it was four hundred and seventeen years.96 But, just

as Olympiadic time could be used independently of other chronological mark-

ers—in order to date, for example, themagniWcent procession in Acragas which

took place ‘in the Olympiad before this one’97—so too could pre-Olympiadic

time be used without reference to other chronological markers. In a wonderful

combination of synchronism and Olympiadic dating, Timaeus places the foun-

dation of Rome at the same date as that of Carthage, its arch-rival, namely in the

thirty-eighth year before the Wrst Olympiad.98 As Walbank comments, the

beneWt of the Olympiadic structure was that it both enabled the calculation of

intervals between events and provided a set of externally established points to

which elements of the narrative could be anchored; both features are clearly

perceptible even in the extremely fragmentary remains of Timaeus’ work.99

It should be easier to assess the use of the Olympiadic system as a structure

for the writing of history in the Histories of Polybius, of which far greater

continuous stretches of text are extant. It is, however, worth noting that even

here the exercise is severely compromised, since the continuous stretches of

extant historical narrative fall predominantly in the Wrst few books, before

Polybius reaches the point at which his standard ‘universal’ Olympiadic

framework comes into play.100 Thus, we are more reliant on Polybius’ explicit

statements of intent than on the extensive exempliWcation of the Olympiadic

structure. Polybius nowhere actually states that he is adopting Timaeus’

chronological system for universal historiography, but he does explicitly

claim to be his continuator, which might, but clearly need not, given Polybius’

criticism of Timaeus on other counts, imply some continuity of frame-

works.101 But at the end of his work Polybius neatly recounts his practice,

95 FGrH 566 f 19b. 96 FGrH 566 f 125.97 FGrH 566 f 26. The Olympiad in question is further deWned in victory list terms, as the

one when Exaenetus won the stadion.98 FGrH 566 f 60: Oª� øØ ŒÆd æØÆŒ��HØ �æ �æ�� Ø B� �æ�� Oºı��Ø��.99 Walbank, Polybius, 99.100 Walbank, ibid. 101–4, stresses the distinction between the Wrst books in which Polybius

follows an Ephoran model of writing kata genos, and the later books when he adopts Timaeus’Olympiadic structure. He notes the way in which, in the 140th Olympiad, when world historywas not yet intermingled, Polybius allows geography to override Olympiads, and observes thathe uses synchronisms to make the chronological connections in this section. Even in Books 4and 5, says Walbank, the East and West are kept separate and Olympiads not strictly observed.This must surely be right to a degree, but I would prefer to see a more blurred boundary betweenthe early books and the point at which Olympiadic dating comes fully into play. We haveconsiderable evidence for the use of Olympiads in the Wrst books, and much less for the later ones.

101 See Polybius 1.5.1 for his starting point as the Wrst time the Romans crossed the sea fromItaly, which followed immediately on the close of Timaeus’ history (Æo� �� Ø �ı��c� �b� �E�


broadly speaking, for its organization; namely, that he undertook to begin

with the 139th Olympiad and henceforth to deal with the general history of

the whole world, ‘classing it under Olympiads, dividing those into years and

taking a comparative view of the succession of events’.102

Elsewhere, he explains further how this arrangement will work. In Book 9

he speciWes how the Olympiadic span is to relate to the number of books, with

two years dealt with in each book: ‘These are the main events in the above-

mentioned Olympiad, that is in the space of four years which we term an

Olympiad and I shall attempt to narrate them in two books’ (9.1.1). It was,

however, perfectly possible for this scheme to be overridden when events were

particularly worthy or unworthy of attention. As Polybius concedes at the

start of Book 14, ‘perhaps it is true that in all Olympiads the range of events

holds the attention of the reader, owing to their number and importance,

since the actions of the whole world are brought under one point of view, but

in fact this Olympiad was particularly engaging. Therefore, this time I have

not used a book for every two years, as I have done in previous cases’.103 Thus

we learn from this exceptional case Polybius’ normal practice also. Elsewhere

he adds further Xesh to the plan. Within the dominant Olympiadic frame-

work, he will subdivide material according to geographical area: ‘in narrating

in their proper order the events of each year (ŒÆŁ � �ŒÆ�� ), I try to

include under a separate heading the events which happened in each place in

each year’.104

So much for the theory, and there are some extant examples of the practice.

Some are explicitly historiographical, where Polybius marks out the progress

of his narrative and that of his task through reference to the Olympiad he is

treating. So, for example, he states that he will start his history with the 140th

Olympiad, anchoring the text to a temporal framework as well as to a

particular event (1.3.1). The Olympiad as structuring device for the text is

reiterated many times—he declares that he will end the third book (3.118.10–11)

now that he has dealt with Spain and Italy in the 140th Olympiad; again

at the end of Book 5 (5.111.9) he states that he has chosen this date for

interrupting his narrative, having now described events in Asia and Greece

I�� z� ��ÆØ�� I��ºØ��) and took place in the 129th Olympiad, an early indication that thischronological system will form the basis of Polybius’ account too. At 11.1.1, he states hispreference for giving the summary of events in each Olympiad over writing prologues asbook introductions, as most historians do, thus further emphasizing the central importanceof the Olympiad in his historiographical pose.

102 Polybius 39.8.6: ��æØªæ�� ŒÆ� Oºı��Ø��Æ� ŒÆd �ØÆØæ�F�� ŒÆ� �� ŒÆd �ıªŒæ��KŒ �ÆæÆ��ºB� a� ŒÆÆºº�º�ı�.103 Polybius 14.1.5. Walbank, Polybius, 108, discusses the reasons for each aberration from

the two years per book system.104 Polybius 28.16.10–11: K� ��d ŒÆØæfiH �ıªŒ��ÆºÆØ�F�ŁÆØ a� �Ææ� �Œ��Ø� �æ��Ø�.


for this same Olympiad. Keeping an eye on which of his material lay in which

Olympiad was worthy of comment. One explicit changeover point in the

narrative comes near the start of Book 4, where he states that ‘this [sc. the

background on Achaea] fell in the previous Olympiad, whereas what followed

fell in the 140th.’ (4.14.9)

Sometimes Olympiads are used simply to indicate ‘when’ an event hap-

pened. In the second year of the 149th Olympiad, for example, the senate

heard embassies from Eumenes, Pharnaces and Philip, the Achaean league,

the exiled and the non-exiled Spartans (23.9.1). This was in keeping with the

tone of an Olympiad which overall saw more embassies in Rome from Greece

than ever before (23.1.1). Another bumper year expressed in Olympiadic

terms was the third year of the 140th, when the battle of the Romans in

Etruria, that of Antiochus in Coele-Syria, and the treaty of the Achaeans and

Philip with the Aetolians took place (5.105.3). But again, it had been an

Olympiad full of action, a pivotal one for Polybius, the one in which the

famous interweaving of events across the Mediterranean world took place,

after which world history would progress in unison. The Wrst year was marked

by the start of the Social War (4.26.1) and the dispatch of a Roman force to

Illyria under L. Aemilius just before the summer, oVering a neat combination

of diVerent levels of detail: the number of the Olympiad, the year of that

Olympiad, and the season within that year.105 Strikingly, the year of the

Olympiad itself acts as the subject of the verb as it draws to an end.106

The clustering of events in particular Olympiads was sometimes so speciWc

and extraordinary as to be presented as a synchronism. The succession of

rulers in diVerent parts of the Mediterranean world seems to have been the

single most important factor determining Polybius’ sense of periodization. As

he states explicitly, his choice of start date for the main narrative was decided

by various factors: Wrst, the end point of Aratus’ narrative, and second, the

possibility of using autopsy and eye-witness accounts as evidence if his chosen

period coincided with his own and the preceding generation. However, the

most important motivation was that this was the point at which Tyche made

the world new through the succession of a whole panoply of new rulers—

Philip in Macedon, Achaeus in Asia, Antiochus in Syria, Ariarathes in Cap-

padocia, Ptolemy Philopator in Egypt, Lycurgus in Sparta, while Hannibal

105 Polybius 3.16.7: ��e c� ‰æÆ�Æ� . . . ŒÆa e �æH�� B� �ŒÆ��B� ŒÆd �ÆæÆŒ��B�Oºı��Ø��.

106 Polybius 4.66.11: ŒÆd e �b� �æH�� º�ª� B� ��Œ�Ø�� Oºı��Ø�� (‘And the Wrstyear of the current Olympiad waned.’). The corresponding phrase for the last year of anOlympiad occurs at 21.40.1, where the arrival of embassies from the Greek cities of Asia andseveral other quarters to Gnaeus Manlius, the Roman consul, who was wintering in Ephesus, isdated to ‘the last year of this Olympiad’: ŒÆa e� �º�ıÆE�� K�ØÆıe� B� ��Œ�Ø��Oºı��Ø��.


became general of the Carthaginians. This set of new leaders resulted in an

array of new wars—Antiochus and Ptolemy over Coele-Syria, the Achaeans

and Philip against Aetolia and Sparta (4.2).

While these formulations may lead to the impression that, in fact, bio-

graphical history or the history of personalities was a more important struc-

ture for Polybius than that of the Olympiad,107 he makes clear elsewhere that

the two go hand in hand, since the synchronization of several successions was

what characterized some Olympiads as pivotal. Such was the importance of

the 124th Olympiad (284–281 bc)—when not only did Patrae and Dyme

enter into alliance, but the deaths of Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and

Ptolemy Ceraunus all occurred—that the synchronism is mentioned

twice.108 On the second occasion, this synchronism of successions is cited as

a parallel for yet another extraordinary coincidence of transitions of power,

namely the succession of Ptolemy Philopator on the death of Ptolemy Euer-

getes, of Antiochus on the death of Seleucus, and of Philip on that of

Antigonus, but again it is striking that the Olympiadic framework is so

prominent for Polybius. All of the successors of Alexander who provided

the early model by dying at roughly the same time did so in the 124th

Olympiad; their later parallels died in the 139th.109 It would have been

quite enough to note the synchronistic deaths of major personalities without

anchoring these to the Olympiadic system,110 but for Polybius the coinci-

dences of successions and the impact these have on the tone of their respective

Olympiads seem to carry roughly equal weight.

We have already seen with Timaeus the way in which synchronisms could

suggest that the history of the world was at times moving in unison, and could

thereby oVer validation to the broad extent of the historiographical enter-

prise. Polybius rejects the possibility that separate histories could add up to a

coherent picture of events (8.2.1–11), and explicitly sets himself in contrast to

107 See also Polybius 14.12.1, where he explains why he has broken away temporarily from hisnormal practice of dealing with successive events of each year separately, and instead, in the caseof Egypt alone, is giving a narrative of events extending over a considerable period. The answeris that he has chosen to focus on the character of Ptolemy Philopator. Walbank, Polybius, 113,makes the interesting observation that Polybius describes this reign as �ø�Æ��Ø�� (‘organic’,‘corporate’), just as he would describe the history of the world as whole after the 140thOlympiad. Are we, then, to extend the biological metaphor and see the individual life as amicrocosm of the life of the world, in an echo of Theopompus and his universal Philippica(‘events associated with Philip’), or of Dicaearchus and his Life of Greece?108 See Polybius 2.41.1 and 2.71.3–7.109 Polybius 2.71.3–7. It is interesting that on this occasion he ignores one of the previous list,

Lysimachus, presumably because he wants to make the repetition of the scenario seem as preciseas possible.110 This is indeed the case at 4.1.3–9, his potted recall of what he related of Greek history in

Book 2. Here he notes that he took the story up to the deaths of Antigonus Doson, SeleucusCeraunus, and Ptolemy Euergetes, all of which occurred at about the same time.


those predecessors who have treated only the aVairs of Greece or of Persia,

instead undertaking to relate the events occurring in all the known parts of

the inhabited world (2.37.4). But that Polybius’ rejection of local historiog-

raphy, the Hellenica and Persica of his predecessors, would amount to more

than just a compilation of separate histories, is explicitly claimed in his

famous identiWcation of the point at which the occasional synchronism was

transformed into a systematic universal approach. As he suggests, the ‘inter-

weaving’ or �ı��º�Œ� of events took place towards the end of the Social War

in the third year of the 140th Olympiad,111 after which he would give a general

history of events in chronological order. The transformation from a history

made up of separate local histories into one which would follow time rather

than space as its dominant matrix is all the more eVective, Polybius claims,

precisely because he keeps the narratives distinct right up to the relevant

moment: ‘The circumstances of Italy, Greece, and Asia were such that the

beginnings of wars were particular to each country, while the ends were

shared; therefore I give a separate account of each until the point where

they came into connection, so that each individual narrative should be clearer,

and the point of conjunction more conspicuous.’ Yet again, it is worth noting

that the point at which his compilation of local histories makes the transition

into an integrated universal history is dated in terms of the most obviously

universal chronological system, that of the Olympiad, although one wonders

whether there was any deliberate irony in the fact that this ‘universal’ system

within which he would explain to the Greeks how it had come about that they

had been taken over by Rome was in origin associated with the assertion of

Greek culture and identity.

But in spite of the development by Timaeus of the Olympiadic system for

historiography, and Polybius’ appropriate adoption of it for his universal

history of the rise of Rome, local time systems are strikingly and surprisingly

also present in the narrative. Dating by consuls is a feature throughout,

continuing beyond the point at which the systematic use of Olympiads was

to come into force. This is a dating system which marks both the passage of

time and the point in time reached (on the assumption that one has a list,

which is the clear weakness in the system) through the succession of named

magistrates, on the whole indirectly through the mention of their actions. The

fact that the year 223 bc has been reached is indicated by the note that ‘the

next year’s consuls, Publius Furius and Gaius Flaminius, again invaded Celtic

territory’ (2.32.1). Shortly afterwards in the narrative, the Celts respond with

an embassy to Rome, and the transition to a new year is marked by the fact

111 Polybius 4.28.5: Kª�� b � �ı��º�Œc H� �æ��ø� ��æd c� �F ��º��ı �ı��º�ØÆ�ŒÆa e æ�� B� �ŒÆ��B� ŒÆd �ÆæÆŒ��B� Oºı��Ø��.


that it is new consuls, Marcus Claudius and Gnaeus Cornelius, who urge its

rejection (2.34.1).

The mention of the consular elections themselves fulWls the same function

of indicating the passage of time, and several examples can be found. At

3.106.1, we are told simply that it was time for the consular appointments,

and that L. Aemilius Paulus and Gaius Terentius Varro were elected; at 18.42.1

that, after Claudius Marcellus had entered oYce as consul, ambassadors came

from Philip and from Flamininus; and at 16.24.1 that, at the start of the

winter when Publius Sulpicius was appointed consul in Rome, Philip at

Bargylia was worried that the Rhodians and Attalus were not disarming

their ships, but were making further preparations. But it is interesting and

signiWcant that Polybius refers both to the election and to the accession of

consuls, two events which occurred at diVerent times of year. This makes very

plain that there is nothing systematic about Polybius’ use of consuls as a means

of articulating time, but rather that they oVer an incidental opportunity for the

reader to orient the narrative in relation to the major magistracy of Rome.

Sometimes the change in consuls is mentioned alongside other temporal

indicators—when Philip dismissed his troops to winter quarters, the winter is

identiWed as the one when Hannibal went into quarters at Gerunium in

Daunia, and the Romans had just elected G. Terentius Varro and L. Aemilius

Paulus to the consulate (5.108.9). Perhaps most striking is the fact that

Polybius chooses to date the Wrst treaty between Rome and Carthage not in

terms of Olympiads, but using a combination of consular dating, the foun-

dation of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and a Wxed marking point in

Greek history. The treaty was formed ‘in the consulship of L. Junius Brutus

and M. Horatius, the Wrst consuls after the expulsion of the kings and the

founders of the above-mentioned temple, and twenty-eight years before the

crossing of Xerxes to Greece’.112 This treaty lay perhaps so far out of the time

frame of Polybius’ main narrative that a date given in terms of the counted

scale of Olympiads would be less meaningful than one given in relation to a

well-known event from the relevant period.

Alongside the use of consular dating, we also Wnd extensive use of the

chronological frameworks oVered by the local magistracies of the Greek

112 See Polybius 3.22.1–2: ŒÆa ¸��ŒØ�� (��Ø�� ´æ�F�� ŒÆd !�æŒ�� -æ�Ø��; �f� �æ��ı�ŒÆÆ�ÆŁ��Æ� ��ı� ��a c� H� �Æ�Øº�ø� ŒÆ�ºı�Ø�; �� z� �ı�� ŒÆŁØ�æøŁB�ÆØ ŒÆd e�F ˜Øe� ƒ�æe� �F ˚Æ��øº��ı: ÆFÆ �� Ø �æ �æÆ B� ˛�æ��ı �ØÆ��ø� �N� c� � ¯ºº��ÆæØ�Œ�� Ø º��ı�Ø �ı�E�. As we shall see, the crossing of Xerxes was an importantchronological marker for universal historians such as Diodorus, but we might note the morespeciWcally Polybian observation made by F. G. B. Millar, ‘Polybius between Greece and Rome’,in J. T. A. Koumoulides (ed.), Greek Connections: Essays on Culture and Diplomacy (Notre Dame,1987), 1–18, that Polybius regularly locates events from early Roman history in relation to keyevents in Greek history.


world. There is a unique instance of a Byzantine eponymous dating, appro-

priately enough to place in time a treaty made by the Byzantines and the

Rhodians ‘in the year of Cothon, son of Calligeiton, hieromnemon in Byzan-

tium’.113 Presumably this reXects the wording of an epigraphic source, but it

could, had Polybius so wished, have been ‘translated’ into Olympiads. Coin-

cidentally, it is Byzantium’s partner in this treaty, Rhodes, which provides the

only other use of Greek magistracies for dating in Polybius, to my knowledge,

besides the important and substantial exceptions, namely the generalships of

Achaea and Aetolia. A letter from Gaius Lucretius arrived in Rhodes, we are

told, asking for ships, ‘at the time when Stratocles was prytanis for the second

half-year’.114

As with the Roman consuls, the strategoi are sometimes used purely as

temporal reference points for the events of the narrative—‘the strategos of the

Aetolians was Ariston, when . . .’ (4.5.1). Sometimes their election is a point

worth noting in its own right, as well as incidentally locating the reader in

time—‘at this time, it being the date for their annual election (�ı��łÆ�� F

H� Iæ�ÆØæ��ø� �æ ��ı), the Aetolians elected as strategos Scopas’ (4.27.1).

The election could itself be further anchored in time by its relation to the

Olympiadic system, as is the case at 4.66.11, where Polybius notes that the Wrst

year of the Olympiad in question was drawing to a close, and it was now the

date for the elections in Aetolia, at which Dorimachus was made strategos.

As with the consuls at Rome, the decision to date according to the Aetolian

and Achaean generals could be attributed to at least two factors other than

that Polybius chose to complement his Olympiadic chronology with more

local systems. First, there is the question of sources. It is impossible to ignore

the fact that all of the instances of dating by general belong to two single

books—4 and 5—and may very well have been a feature of Polybius’ main

sources for that stretch of the narrative.115 Furthermore, just as can be

argued for the Roman consuls, the generals of Achaea and Aetolia are not

merely dating devices, but predictably active players in the narrative. It is,

however, clear that Polybius was interested in, and frustrated by, the use of

these magistracies as chronological devices. We have already noted the lack of

accuracy entailed by the fact that the election and accession of Roman consuls

happened at diVerent times of year. Polybius encountered a similar problem

113 Polybius 4.52.4: K�d ˚�Łø�� F ˚ÆººØª�� ƒ�æ��F�� K� fiH ´ı�Æ��øØ.114 Polybius 27.7.2: #æÆ�Œº��ı� �æıÆ�� c� ��ı�æÆ� �Œ��.115 SeeWalbank, Polybius, 106–7, for the suggestion that the dating by Achaean generals came

directly from Aratus, just as other sources must have used a variety of systems—consular datingfor Fabius Pictor, ‘war years’ for Philinus. Walbank points out that there was no reason forPolybius to convert local dating into Olympiads in the Wrst few books before the point at whichthe interwoven narrative started.


in the fact that Greek poleis changed their magistracies at diVerent times of

year. As he explains at 4.37.1–2, when Aratus’ term of oYce in Achaea was

expiring and his son was on the point of succeeding him as strategos, Scopas

was still the general in Aetolia, his term being about halfway through, ‘since

the Aetolians held their elections after the autumn equinox, whereas the

Achaeans held theirs in early summer at about the time of the rising of the

Pleiades’.116 In a way which is strongly reminiscent of Thucydides,117 exactly

the same point is made at the start of Book 5 about the lack of synchronism

between the elections in each place. Here Polybius notes that the year of oYce

of the younger Aratus ended at the rising of the Pleiades, ‘for this is how the

Achaean people reckoned time then’,118 and he was succeeded by Eperatus,

while Dorimachus remained strategos of the Aetolians. The mention of yet

another successive election in Achaea at 5.30.7, when Eperatus laid down his

oYce and the Achaeans elected the elder Aratus as strategos ‘at the start of the

summer’ (B� Ł�æ��Æ� K�Ææ��), the third in a row, suggests that, at least

for this section of the narrative, Polybius is quite consistently using (or

adopting from his source) a systematic form of local dating.

In many instances of dating by Achaean or Aetolian generals, the succession

of a new oYcial is explicitly linked to the appropriate season of the year.119 Of

course, this may be seen as a simple piece of factually correct detail, but it is

also the case that Polybius, less systematically than Thucydides, but never-

theless with some frequency, uses the natural seasons as a means of marking

the progress of time in the narrative. This is hardly surprising, given the

importance of the seasons in campaigning,120 but worth noting as an add-

itional level of chronological detail. Sometimes the mention of spring is our

only indication in the extant text that a new year has started—it was ‘at the

beginning of spring’ (K�Ø�Æ�� b B� KÆæØ�B� uæÆ�) that Gaius Flaminius

advanced through Etruria, and that Antiochus and Ptolemy were ready to

Wght.121 The start of the summer is marked out to add Xesh to the temporal

location of other events: ‘at the start of summer’ (X�� B� Ł�æ��Æ�

K�Ø�Æ��), following the victory of the Romans over Antiochus, King

116 a� ªaæ Iæ�ÆØæ��Æ� `Nøº�Ø �b� K��ı� ��a c� �ŁØ��øæØ�c� N��æ�Æ� �PŁ�ø�;�`�ÆØ�d �b � ��æd c� B� —º�Ø�� K�Ø�º��.117 See Thucydides 5.20 and the discussion of this passage at the start of this chapter.118 Polybius 5.1.1: �oø� ªaæ qª� �f� �æ ��ı� � e H� � `�ÆØH� Ł��.119 See, for example, 5.91.1, where we are told that ‘in early summer (¼æØ �b B� Ł�æØ�B� uæÆ�

K�Ø�Æ��) of the year [217 bc] in which Agetas was strategos of Aetolians and shortly afterAratus had entered the same oYce in Achaea, Lycurgus of Sparta came back from Aetolia.’120 It is worth noting the point made by Walbank, Polybius, 102, that Polybius adapts the

notion of Olympiad years so as to make them coincide with the end of campaign seasons,decisive battles and so on, rather than always halfway through summer, further underlining themilitary nature of this narrative.121 Polybius 3.77.1; 5.79.1.


Eumenes, the envoys of Antiochus and those from Rhodes and elsewhere

arrived in Rome (21.18.1). The harvest too provided yet another marker

through the year.122 The fact that these cases rarely come in the context of

actual campaigns suggests that they oVered something of a temporal system in

their own right, though by no means in the way developed by Thucydides.

The sense of competition, though, yielded a further sense of historical

patterning. The notion that ‘this was the biggest and best occurrence’ of

whatever phenomenon was under discussion, mostly martial, was not only

a direct echo of the claims of Herodotus and Thucydides,123 but also lent a

sense of historical progression and the culmination of the past in the present

narrative. The Wrst part of Polybius’ narrative is littered with claims to the

superlative, as he builds up the importance and status of his work. The

twenty-four-year war between Rome and Carthage for Italy was ‘the longest,

most relentless, greatest war’ that Polybius knew of;124 the Libyan war for

Carthage, which lasted three years and four months, ‘excelled all wars we

know in cruelty and lack of principle’ (1.88.7); the war against the Celts was

second to none in terms of the desperation and daring of the combatants and

the numbers who took part and perished in battles (2.35.2). At the start of

Book 3 he notes that the Wfty-three years with which the main body of the

work is concerned contained more grave and momentous events than any

other period of this length in the past, implying that a Wxed span of time could

be elastic in terms of content and importance, and that this particular span of

history was the most tightly packed of all (3.1.9–11).

He goes on immediately to locate this superlative period in history in the

Olympiadic system, starting with the crucial and pivotal 140th Olympiad, and

this neatly recalls for us Polybius’ prime chronological structure for the bulk

of his narrative, as explicitly declared by the author. But it is worth observing

that Olympiads are reWned, complemented, sometimes perhaps even sup-

planted, by other methods for indicating time. We have seen local time

systems in play, as well as the use of the seasons within each year. On a couple

of striking occasions Polybius speciWes the timing of key events with reference

122 Polybius 5.95.5: X�� b �F Ł�æØ��F �ı��.123 Herodotus’ decision at 1.1.1 to record ‘great and wonderful deeds’ (æªÆ ��ª�ºÆ � ŒÆd

Łø�Æ��) and Thucydides’ claim at 1.1.2 that the Peloponnesian War was ‘the greatest up-heaval’ (Œ��Ø� ªaæ Æo� ��ª��) set the tone for the Greek historiographical tradition. Seealso Thucydides’ account of the Sicilian expedition (7.87), which more than any other episodeepitomized the tragedy of the war as a whole, with a spectacular sequence of superlatives. Theexpedition was the greatest (��ªØ��) event of the war, most glorious (ºÆ��æ Æ��) for thevictors, most disastrous (�ı�ı��Æ��) for the defeated. The destruction was total. SeeC. Macleod, ‘Thucydides and Tragedy’, in The Collected Essays of Colin Macleod (Oxford,1983), 140–58, especially 140–1 and 153.

124 Polybius 1.63.5: ��ºı�æ��Ø�Æ�� ŒÆd �ı��Æ�� ŒÆd ��ªØ��.


to several Wxed points in Greek and Mediterranean history, another way of

stressing the universal impact of the events he relates, without using the

Olympiadic framework.125 Even the time within each day receives attention,

since Polybius stresses the importance of astronomy for dealing with vari-

ations in the length of day and night, with a view to assessing distance

(9.14.6–12). Polybius’ concern to keep control over the pacing and ordering

of his narrative is also made explicit on several occasions, not least at the close

of the Wfth book. Here he declares that he has continued his history of Greece

up to the date of the battle of Cannae, the decisive Carthaginian victory over

Rome with which he had broken oV his account of the war in Italy, and that he

would thus bring this book to a close, not overstepping the aforementioned

date (5.105.10).

The Loeb translation for 9.15.1 enticingly runs: ‘It is time, indeed, which

governs all human action and especially the aVairs of war’ (tr. Paton)—an

apposite summation of Polybius’ concern for matters of chronology. In fact,

the Greek dictates that ‘time’ (› ŒÆØæ �) must surely rather be ‘timing’, doing

and saying things at the ‘right time’,126 giving a quite diVerent sense, but one

which perhaps suits my point even better; not ‘time’ in the abstract being

dominant, but ‘timing’, human control over when things happen, as exercised

so carefully by Polybius himself.

4 . DIODORUS SICULUS AND THE CULMINATION

OF UNIVERSAL CHRONOLOGY

Diodorus wrote his account of ‘all the events which have been handed down

to memory and took place in the known regions of the inhabited world’

during the period from around 60 to 30 bc (1.9.1). He might therefore seem

to be a strange inclusion in a book whose primary chronological focus is the

fourth century bc and the Hellenistic period. He does, however, oVer a useful

foil for understanding the temporal organization of earlier players in the

Greek historiographic tradition. On the one hand, he furnishes an extensive

and largely complete model for how to deal with similar problems to those

125 See Polybius 1.6.1, where the key date is the nineteenth year after the battle of Aegospo-tami and the sixteenth before that of Leuctra, in the year when the Spartans ratiWed the peace ofAntalcidas with the king of Persia, and when Dionysius the Elder, after defeating the ItaliotGreeks in battle at the River Elleporus, was besieging Rhegium, and when the Gauls after takingRome itself by assault occupied the whole of that city except the Capitol; and 2.20.6 on the defeatof the Gauls by Rome, which happened three years before the crossing of Pyrrhus to Italy andWve years before the destruction of the Gauls at Delphi.126 ŒæÆ�E �� K�d ��ø� �b� H� I�Łæø��ø� æªø� › ŒÆØæ �; ��ºØ�Æ �b H� ��º��ØŒH�.

The culmination of universal chronology 121

which faced the authors of chronologically large-scale histories in the Greek

poleis; notably how to handle the mythical period in an account which also

ran through to the contemporary world. But he simultaneously casts into

relief some of the strategies adopted by those who wrote universal history

which were diVerent from those whose spatial scope was more restricted.

I have discussed elsewhere some of Diodorus’ more general organizational

strategies for handling a work of huge temporal and spatial scope,127 so here

I shall focus on the aspect which is most relevant to the theme of this book;

namely his use of temporal frameworks for the composition of accurate,

comprehensible, and meaningful history. It is worth raising from the start

the signiWcance of the fact that Diodorus, like his great forerunner in the

development of universal chronology, Timaeus, was a Sicilian, from the town

of Agyrium. As with Timaeus, we may wonder to what degree Diodorus’

‘universality’ was underpinned by a deeply rooted Sicilian perspective,128 and

whether Diodorus’ extensive adoption of an Olympiadic framework was

motivated not merely by convenience or by tradition, but also by a desire to

aYliate himself and his Sicilian background to Greek culture, in spite of his

absorption into the world of Rome.

a) The problem of time, space, and historiography

Diodorus is one of the most explicit historians on the nature of his task, and

thereby oVers extensive insights into questions of approach in ancient his-

toriography. The problem of time and the writing of history is no exception.

As he points out at the start of Book 5, historians need to take especial care

over the arrangements of varied material. This immediately leads him to

consider the case of his fellow Sicilian, Timaeus, who demonstrated great

accuracy over chronology (H� �æ �ø� IŒæ��ØÆ), but was criticized for

excessive censure, whereas Ephorus was successful in his universal history in

both style (º��Ø�) and organization (�NŒ��Æ), with each book written

‘according to theme’ (ŒÆa ª��), a principle to which Diodorus himself

will adhere (5.1.3–4). Taking care over chronology clearly earns Timaeus

some praise, even if other aspects of his work come in for criticism. It is

clear that Diodorus himself took seriously the two related problems of

127 See K. Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits ofHistoriography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden, 1999), 249–80 at 255–76.

128 K. S. Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century (Princeton, 1990) sees the Sicilian angleas deliberately muted in Diodorus’ text: see 17 for the observation that in the early periods,Diodorus includes Sicilian aVairs ‘only at sensational moments’; 154–7 on the playing down ofAeneas’ Sicilian connections. But Sacks has almost nothing to say on Diodorus’ chronologicalstructures, and these may tell a rather diVerent story in terms of cultural aYliations.


accuracy in chronology and appropriate organization of a work which would

span vast tracts of both time and space.129 As he famously laments, ‘one could

censure the art of history because in life many actions happen at the same

time (ŒÆa e� ÆPe� ŒÆØæ �), but those who record them must interrupt the

narrative and parcel out diVerent times to simultaneous events contrary to

nature, with the result that the written record mimics events, but lacks the

true arrangement’ (20.43.7). On the other hand, the astute historian needed

to be alert to cases where adhering inXexibly to a particular narrative structure

might not prove the most eVective strategy. In the cases of Philip of Macedon

and his son, Alexander (dealt with in Books 16 and 17 respectively), the

thematic unity brought by the individual life overrides other structures, and

each is treated in his own book ‘topically’ (Œ��ÆºÆØø�H�).130

Diodorus’ careful, and often self-referential, attention to the business of

organizing his text is evident throughout. At 18.19.1, for example, he declares:

‘Now that I have narrated all the actions of the Lamian War, I shall turn to the

war in Cyrene so that the course of my history may not deviate too much

from chronological sequence.’131 He regularly signiWes his control over the

historical narrative by summing up where he has reached, how much time has

been covered, and what the next stage will be.132 A good example is the start of

Book 13, at which point he explains that the scale of his undertaking forces

him to abandon the usual self-indulgent prefaces on reXective themes, which

might be enjoyed had he taken ‘a brief chronological span’, in favour of the

more practical need to keep the reader informed of the chronological progress

of the narrative. ‘But since I have undertaken in few books not only to set

forth events, but also to embrace more than 1,100 years, I must forgo long

discussion in introductions and treat long events themselves, with only this

preface—that in the preceding six books I have set down events from the

Trojan War to the war of Athens against Syracuse—768 years from the fall of

Troy. In this book, I shall add to the narrative the next period from the

129 John of Antioch, the chronicler, described Diodorus as ‘the wisest chronographer’(› ��Æ�� æ��ªæÆ� �) (Diodorus 6.5.3).130 Diodorus 16.1 and 17.1. The biographical arrangement of this part of the history raises

anew the issue discussed in ch. 1 of how appropriate biological metaphors and models might befor historiography.131 ¥ �Æ �c �ÆŒæa� �E� �æ ��Ø� I��ºÆ�H�ÆØ e �ı��b� B� ƒ��æ�Æ�. It is worth noting how

close a temporal parallel this oVers for the adherence to spatial order striven for by the authorsof periplus texts. See Clarke, Between Geography and History, 204–5, discussing Ps-Scylax inC. Muller, Geographici Graeci Minores I (Paris, 1855) §13, 53, 58.132 The standard place for such progress reports is at the start of each book, although, as we

shall see, the earlier books lend themselves to a rather diVerent chronological treatment and thelater fragmentary books tend to lack the relevant opening chapter. These accounts are thusclustered in the central books of the work.


expedition against Syracuse to the beginning of the second war of Carthage

against Dionysius of Syracuse’ (13.1.2–3).

The following book starts similarly: ‘I shall now continue the account,

deWning the temporal limits.133 The preceding books deal with the capture

of Troy until the end of the Peloponnesian War and of the Athenian empire—

a total of 779 years. I shall now start with the Thirty Tyrants until the capture

of Rome by the Gauls, a period of eighteen years.’ Book 15 follows suit,

looking both backwards and forwards in order to embed itself chronologic-

ally. It notes the point that has been reached at the end of Book 14 and

declares the intention to continue with the period from the war of the

Persians in Cyprus against Euagoras and the year preceding the reign of

Philip, son of Amyntas. Books 16 and 17 follow a diVerent pattern and

format, as noted above, due to the appropriateness of a more biographical

and thematic approach, but Book 18 returns to the pattern. Book 19, coming

like Book 13 after the end of another hexad, takes the opportunity to oVer a

fully resumptive summary: ‘In the preceding eighteen books I have described

as far as possible the events in the known parts of the inhabited world from

the earliest times up to the year before the tyranny of Agathocles, up to which

time is 866 years from the destruction of Troy. Now I shall tell up to the battle

at Himera between Agathocles and the Carthaginians, a period of seven years’

(19.1.10). Finally, before fragmentation of the extant text disrupts the se-

quence, Book 20 opens, after a brief discussion of the place of speeches in

historiography, with a note of the chronological scheme of the narrative, and

yet another summary of the state of play. Having dealt with Greek and

barbarian deeds from the earliest times to the year before Agathocles’ Libyan

campaign, a point which was 883 years after the sack of Troy, he would now

start with Agathocles’ crossing to Libya and end with the year in which the

kings started joint operations against Antigonus, a span of nine years (20.2.3).

In all of this it is interesting to note not only Diodorus’ concern to present

himself as Wrmly in control of the chronological progress made by his

narration through the events, but also to consider the terms in which he

formulates this progress. It is the Trojan War, or more speciWcally the fall of

Troy, which provides the chronological benchmark from which the distance

to other events can be counted in years. This is only one of many chrono-

logical frameworks against which his narrative is constructed, but the fall

of Troy is a recurring theme throughout this chapter on the structures of

universal history. I shall consider (in chapter 4) whether this is true also of the

local histories, or whether the Mediterranean-wide marker of the Trojan War

is deemed appropriate only for universal narrative. But it is worth noting also

133 14.2.3. This becomes something of a stock phrase for Diodorus: �f� �æ ��ı� � ��Ø�æ��.


that, while the overarching scope of Diodorus’ work is articulated in relation

to this single and momentous event, his narrative is also, signiWcantly, divided

up according to marker points in Sicilian history such as the Athenian

expedition to Syracuse and the battle of Himera. These give Diodorus’ native

land a pivotal role in the periodization of Mediterranean history and show

that a study of the temporal structuring of historiography may oVer new

insights into the perspective and aspirations of the text in question, since this

Sicilian focus plainly belies the view put forward by some scholars, on the basis

of the narrative contents, that Sicily was played down in Diodorus’ text.134

b) Time for myths

The mythical period was naturally problematic for the historian, not least

because there was ‘no proof of dates, with the result that the whole account

was untrustworthy’ (4.1.1). Most historians had therefore tended to avoid this

period, and to conWne their accounts to more recent events, even Ephorus

starting his account only with the return of the Heraclidae. Diodorus himself,

by contrast, decided to tackle, rather than evade, the diYculty, in spite of the

inevitable chronological vagueness which characterizes the early books.135

Even so, certain strategies for indicating time immediately emerge. The Trojan

War, which we have already noted as the benchmark against which the

progress of the narrative was measured, appears in the early books as a crucial

hook on which to hang mythical episodes. The third, and most famous,

person to be called Heracles was born ‘shortly before the events at Troy’

(3.74.4); it was ‘after the Trojan War’ that the Carians became thalassocrats

and took control of the Cyclades (5.84); and the Amazons disappeared from

Libya ‘many generations before the Trojan War’, whereas those near the

Thermodon river were still Xourishing until ‘shortly before these times’.136

The last of these examples introduces two further important features of

Diodorus’ treatment of time in the earliest period, namely the use of the

generation as a temporal unit, and the links between the distant past and the

present. Generations as a measure of time have already been discussed (in

chapter 1), but it is easy to see how appropriate they might seem in a work of

134 See Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, for this view.135 See, for example the narrative of Crete and the mythologically associated islands at 5.50–80,

especially 64–80. The chronological framework is formulated in vague relative terms such as ‘afterthis’ (K� �b �E� o��æ�� æ ��Ø�) at 5.63.1. From the seventh book onwards a diVerent, moresystematic, approach to the combination of various dating systems for use in the historicalnarrative begins to emerge. I shall, therefore, treat the Wrst six books together.136 Diodorus 3.52.2: ��ººÆE� ª��ÆE� �æ �æ�� H� æøØŒH� and �ØŒæe� �æe ��ø� H�

�æ �ø�.


huge temporal scope. It is interesting, in the light of the calculations per-

formed by modern scholars in relation to ancient texts, that they are on the

whole used by Diodorus not as a unit, say thirty years, to be multiplied by a

particular factor, but rather more vaguely with the adjective ‘many’ to indicate

the passage of ‘a long period of time’. Minos, for example, was honoured ‘for

many generations’, until more recently, after the city of Acragas was founded,

his tomb was dismantled and given back to the Cretans (4.79.3); Aphrodite’s

worshippers at Eryx, after the establishment of the cult by Aeneas, was carried

out by the Sicanians ‘for many generations’ (4.83.4); Heracles was said to have

pitched camp at the site where Romulus would found the city of Rome ‘many

generations later’ (4.21.1).137

Diodorus goes on to explain in the same chapter that some Roman families

from that period, such as the Pinarii, still survived to his day, as did certain

customs, such as tithing. This sense of continuity across such a vast temporal

scope, the notion that the mythical period and Diodorus’ own day were part of

the same story, is a recurring theme of the early books. The narrative concern-

ing Heracles is no exception. Heracles founded Alesia in Gaul, which Diodorus

says was never sacked until his own times.138 The oVerings to the Mother

Goddess of gold and silver continued ‘right up to the writing of this history’,

a very personal link being made to Diodorus himself in authorial capacity.139

In spite of Diodorus’ concerns over the chronographical diYculties of the

mythical period, he keeps close control over the ordering of events, and seems

to have a strong sense of the ‘right place’ for each story.140 But, in accordance

with the limitations of the period—the lack of precision in dating by contrast

with later periods for which he can use the panoply of ‘counting’ systems—his

universally applicable temporal frameworks here are vague and strikingly

relative.141 ‘Many generations later’ does not assign an event a place in a

Wxed counting system, such as that of Olympiads, or to a magisterial list.142

137 See also 5.6: the Sicani inhabited eastern Sicily until they were forced by an eruption ofEtna to move west, but ‘many generations later’ the Siceli crossed from Italy to eastern Sicily. SeeClarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, 257–8, for the use of generations by Dio-dorus.

138 Diodorus 4.19.2: ��æØ �F ŒÆŁ� ��A� �æ ��ı—a clear reference to Caesar’s siege of Alesiaand eventual defeat of Vercingetorix there in 52 bc.

139 Diodorus 4.80.4: ¼�æØ H�� H� ƒ��æ�ø� ªæÆ��ø�.140 The set formula ‘I shall relate this at the appropriate time’ is a commonly recurring

feature of the entire text, including the earliest books: 5.6, 5.21. So too, is the notion of runningback in time to Wll in necessary details: 4.67, 4.73.

141 One more speciWc example of relative dating is the foundation of the city of Eresus byCarthage sixty years after the foundation of the mother city itself: 5.16.3.

142 Both Olympiads and archon/king lists are, of course, in a sense relative, but they are notonly anchored to a Wxed start point, but also part of a continuous and evenly spaced sequence,resulting in a comprehensive and veriWable system.


c) Hitting the historical period

After the generally vague chronology of the Wrst six books, the seventh heralds

a noticeable change. In chronological terms, Books 7–10 might be seen as

transitional, perhaps even pivotal, in so far as we here see the Wrst glimpses of

the complex chronological system which Diodorus will employ for the rest of

his work. One of the diYculties in interpreting Book 7 is that its fragments are

so heavily derivative from Eusebius, the great Christian chronographer. All of

the usual cautions over precisely where a fragment starts and Wnishes are

particularly relevant here, if we are concerned with assessing the chrono-

logical approach of Diodorus, rather than that of Eusebius.143 Thus it is with

caution that we note, for example, the interesting mixture of the temporal

strategies which were used in the early mythical books, such as the contem-

poraneity of Orpheus and Heracles, one hundred years before the Trojan

war,144 together with several references to the universal chronological systems

which were used to structure Greek historiography from Timaeus onwards.

The statement that Rome was founded in the second year of the seventh

Olympiad, that is 433 years after the fall of Troy (7.5.1), oVers a neat

illustration of the way in which the two systems could be brought together

for maximum accuracy and comprehension.

As we have seen when considering the formal chronographical works, the

problem of how to bridge the gap between Wxed markers such as the Trojan

War and the Wrst Olympiad from which, in crude terms, one could simply

count the years in groups of four to denote the passing of time, attracted

much scholarly attention. What is unclear is whether it is really Diodorus in

7.8 who makes the point that it was ‘hard to determine the interval from the

events at Troy to the Wrst Olympiad because there were no annual magistra-

cies then either in Athens or in any other city’, with the result that the Spartan

king list was used as the bridge; or whether this is Eusebius speaking. The

notion of bridging the gap from the Trojan War to another key point in Greek

history, Xerxes’ invasion of Europe, is approached diVerently in another

fragment, where a list of thalassocracies, with the length of each, is used in

similar fashion to the Spartan king list to map out the temporal span.145 But,

if Eusebius is accurately representing Diodorus, he showed a distinct interest

143 See the classic article by P. A. Brunt, ‘On Historical Fragments and Epitomes’, ClassicalQuarterly 30 (1980), 477–94.144 Diodorus 7.1. It is worth noting also in Book 7 (fr. 9) the appearance of the return of the

Heraclidae, another of the key chronological markers for universal writers such as Ephorus andStrabo.145 Diodorus 7.11. See also 12.2 where Diodorus notes the span of the previous book as being

from the crossing of Xerxes to the year before Athens’ war against Cyprus.


in regal time, using periods of rule to measure out the time occupied by his

history. A list of tyrannies, the Argive kingship of 549 years, and the period of

Macedonian kings all feature in Book 7.146

If Book 7 is atypical in terms of the provenance of its extant fragments,

Books 9 and 10 give a more reliable picture of the way in which Diodorus

builds up a coherent and precise chronological framework within which to set

the ‘historical’ part of his narrative. He describes Solon as having lived at

Athens in the period of the tyrants before the Persian wars, and states that

Draco lived forty-seven years before him.147 It might be argued that this is

qualitatively little diVerent from designating an event as happening before or

after the Trojan War, but the note that Cyrus was king of the Persians in the

Wrst year of the Wfty-Wfth Olympiad moves us to a higher level of speciWcity

and to a new and universally applicable chronological system (9.21). In Book

10, we see two chronological systems combined to increase the apparent

reliability of the temporal reference—Pythagoras was, according to Diodorus,

already famous when Thericles was archon in Athens in the sixty-Wrst Olym-

piad (10.3.1). The twist comes in connection with his theory of the transmi-

gration of the soul, which allowed Pythagoras to claim to have lived in two

historical contexts, the one speciWed by Diodorus in his authorial voice, but

also as a man named Euphorbus ‘at the time of the Trojan War’ (K�d H�

æøØŒH�), neatly linking the traditional chronological marker and the new

system of Olympiad and magistracy combined through the two ‘lives’ of a

single man (10.6.1).

These ‘transitional’ books, in which the narrative moves from the mythical

to the historical period, oVer glimpses into the development of a more

coherent and speciWc chronological framework within which Diodorus lo-

cates his main historical narrative. We have already noted the concern which

he expresses over the need for chronological control by the author, particu-

larly when writing universal history, both in time and in space.148 Book 11 sets

the pattern for how Diodorus will thenceforth indicate where in ‘time’ the

events he relates are to be placed. It is worth noting that this terminology

I have adopted hints at the notion of absolute time, which exists independ-

ently of the events, and against whose scale Diodorus needs simply to place

the episodes of his narrative. This is misleading, since the systems for denot-

ing ‘when things happened’ in terms of Olympiads and magistracies are no

less ‘constructed’ and therefore, in a sense, random in terms of where ‘in time’

146 Diodorus 7.10, 14, 15.147 Diodorus 9.17: K�d H� �æ �ø� H� ıæ��ø� . . . �æe H� —�æ�ØŒH� �æ �ø�.148 See Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, 265–71, for Diodorus’ ‘weaving’

technique, whereby he intertwines the ongoing events of diVerent theatres in order to maintainchronological progress in all of them.


they start and Wnish than simply anchoring events to well-known markers

such as the Trojan War. Both entail a ‘relative’ rather than an ‘absolute’ sense

of time. And yet, there is something qualitatively diVerent about the two

patterns. The regularly calibrated aspect of the Olympiadic and magisterial

systems, which continue to record the notching up of another year’s passing

regardless of the presence or absence of noteworthy events, creates the im-

pression that the ‘chronological system’ is marking time independently. It is

this humanly constructed, but regularly calibrated, time rather than an

abstract and absolute Newtonian time against which Diodorus places his

narrative.149

The narrative of Book 11 opens with a note of how the preceding book had

Wnished, and then moves on to announce its own limits as the campaign of

Xerxes against the Greeks and the year before the campaign of Athens against

Cyprus under Cimon. It proceeds to anchor this time span to a variety of

chronological systems: ‘Calliadas was archon at Athens, the Romans made

Spurius Cassius and Proculus Verginius Tricostus consuls, and the Eleans

celebrated the seventy-Wfth Olympiad in which Astylo of Syracuse won the

stadion; this is when Xerxes campaigned against Greece’ (11.1.1). Diodorus

then tells the events of this year in various diVerent theatres, marking his

geographical transitions explicitly.150 He rounds oV his tour with a note of

cultural events worthy of mention—in this case the fact that, of the lyric

poets, Pindar was in his prime at this period. Those, he says, are the notable

events of the year.

With the next chapter, the next year starts, marking quite clearly the

predominance of time over space in the organization of the historical narra-

tive. But this year, 479 bc, does not mark the start of a new Olympiad, and so

the opening dating formula lacks that element, and instead tells simply that

‘Xanthippus was archon at Athens, and the Roman consuls were Q. Fabius

Silvanus and Servius Cornelius Tricostus’, when the Persian Xeet, except the

Phoenician contingent, after their defeat at Salamis, lay at Cyme (11.27.1).

The battle of Plataea, yielding Greek victory over Mardonius and the Persians,

is noted by Diodorus as happening on the same day as the battle of Greeks and

149 One striking instance of Diodorus’ assuming the existence of time as a concept which canoperate independently is in the fragments of Books 34 and 35.17, where he says that themourning in Antioch for the death of Antiochus continued until sadness was taken away by�æ ��, the best healer (NÆæ �) of grief. See also 10.12 where Diodorus comments on theephemeral nature of inscribed monuments as records of human behaviour, by contrast withthe eternal power of words. Here again, time (�æ ��) is assumed to be an active and inde-pendent agent, which can destroy memory.150 See, for example, 11.20.1, where he declares that he has Wnished telling about Europe and

will shift the narrative to another set of events: ��Æ�Ø�� c� �Ø�ª��Ø� K�d a� ��æ�ª��E��æ��Ø�.


Persians at Mycale in Ionia (11.34.1), raising the issue of synchronisms, to

which we shall return. Diodorus’ account of this year includes another literary

note, this time that Herodotus started with the period ‘before the Trojan War’

and wrote in nine books a general history of the ‘events which were virtually

shared across the inhabited world’ up to the battle of Mycale and the siege of

Sestos.151 Diodorus thus marks Herodotus out as a predecessor universal

historian, although in fact the geographical scope of Herodotus’ work is,

unlike that of Diodorus, very much focused on the eastern Mediterranean

and Fertile Crescent, and the chronological focus is strangely bipolar—the

early ethnographic books being virtually timeless, and the later books being

predominantly devoted to the relatively compact period of the Persian

wars.152 Meanwhile, in Italy the Romans were warring against the Volscians,

and Spurius Cassius, the consul, was suspected of tyranny and executed.

Then, with the standard formula ‘these were the events that took place this

year’ (ÆFÆ �b� �s� K�æ��Ł� ŒÆa �F�� e� K�ØÆı �), Diodorus closes

another annual cycle.

The following year is denoted by the archonship of Timosthenes at Athens

and the consulship of Caeso Fabius and Lucius Aemilius Mamercus at Rome,

and the geographical focus starts in Sicily with the seven-year rule of Gelon, to

be succeeded by his brother, Hieron, for eleven years and eight months

(11.38). The length of reigns is a recurring theme in Diodorus, and oVers

yet another chronological strand, though clearly not a comprehensive system,

either in space or in time. The Wnal year of the Olympiad is introduced by

mention of the archon and consuls, and focuses on Themistocles and the

fortiWcation of Piraeus. Diodorus then moves on to restart the cycle with the

opening of the next Olympiad, and hence the more elaborate dating at

the start of 11.48, giving the archon’s name, the two consuls, and the fact

that this was now the seventy-sixth Olympiad, in which Scamandrius the

Mytilenian won the stadion.

The opening of Book 11, the Wrst fully to employ the chronological

frameworks which will dominate Diodorus’ account of the ‘historical’ period,

thus already introduces many temporal structures and patterns which recur

throughout his narrative. The combination of Olympiads, universally mean-

ingful across the Greek world, both eastern and western, with the eponymous

151 Diodorus 11.37.6: Œ�Ø�a� �� Ø a� B� �NŒ�ı�� æ��Ø�. This is an interestingreading of Herodotus’ own description of his work, as commemorating ‘great and wonderfuldeeds, accomplished by both Greeks and barbarians’ (1.1.1).

152 Of course, one might argue that the structure of Herodotus’ Histories is entirely hung onthe framework oVered by the progression of Persian imperial ambitions, and that the apparenttimelessness of the earlier books is digressive from (or subordinate to) rather than indicative ofany overall lack of chronological structure.


magistrates in Athens and Rome, oVers a strong web of chronological systems.

The Olympiadic system, as already noted, was already established as the

appropriate time frame for universal history, but may also still have carried

more speciWcally Panhellenic connotations. Besides this, since there were

magistrates in cities across the Mediterranean world,153 Diodorus was clearly

making an implicit comment through his choice of Athens and Rome.

Athens, whatever its reduced state and status in Diodorus’ day, deserved

inclusion partly by virtue of its former glory; furthermore, the Athenian

archonship had, alongside the Spartan kingship and the priesthood of Hera

at Argos, become one of the essential features of attempts to locate events in

time, and was therefore built into the historiographical tradition as a dating

device. Rome, as the dominant power across the Mediterranean in Diodorus’

own time, naturally becomes an integral part of the universal history at an

early stage, its progress interlocking both chronographically and in terms of

real power, with that of the other great Mediterranean forces, which it would

eventually overcome. Diodorus encapsulates the need to look in all direc-

tions—his Sicilian background seems to dictate a wish for Greek cultural

aYliations, but his understanding of Roman realities means that he also has

an eye Wrmly on the location of power, and we shall see (in chapter 6) some

further indications of how Rome was impinging on even the apparently

untouched world of local Greek historiography from as early as the 180s bc.

The web of interlocking chronological systems generated is clearly appro-

priate to the scope of a universal history, but also suYciently strong to

withstand damage and omissions. In 444 bc, for example, one could list the

archons at Athens and give the number of the Olympiad, but Rome had no

consuls, but rather decemviri who were elected to draft laws (12.23–6). The

civil strife attendant on this period of reform led to a constitutional revision

of the consulate and the tribunate,154 which Diodorus records, and it was only

in 442 that the consuls could Wnish oV the Laws of the Twelve Tables, and

order was restored. Diodorus’ chronological scheme regularly carries on

regardless of internal strife at Rome, which disrupts its ability to provide a

continuous sequence of magistrates by whom to articulate time. In 431 bc

there were again no consuls, but three named military tribunes (12.32.1), and

153 This is true not least of his own native Sicily. At 16.70.6, Diodorus notes the institution byTimoleon of the annual oYce called the ‘amphipoly’ of Zeus Olympios. The Syracusansdesignated their years (�f� K�ØÆı�f� K�Øªæ��) by these oYcials right up to the writingof Diodorus’ history, at which point the oYce became insigniWcant, after three hundred years’importance, due to the spread of Roman citizenship.154 See H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome 133BC to AD68 (5th edn.,

London and New York, 1982), 6–8, for the relationship between the tribunate and the senatorialoligarchy.


the same happened again in 427 bc.155 In 404 bc the situation was even more

severe, as Athens too was in turmoil and had no eponymous archon (14.3.1).

Diodorus seems to Wnd this upheaval particularly signiWcant, since, in the

absence of an archonship, he dates this momentous occasion by reference not

only to the fact that it was the ninety-fourth Olympiad, or to the four military

tribunes who provided some kind of temporal marker in Rome, but also to

the note that this was the 780th year from the capture of Troy. Thus, this year

which sees such chaos in Athens and in Rome that neither can come up with

its usual eponymous magistrates, is placed in time by the combination of the

ever-ticking counter of the Olympiadic system and the stable Wxed point in the

great scheme of Mediterranean history, the fall of Troy—both of these super-

sede the ephemeral and unstable magistracies of even the greatest city states.

This closely woven net of Olympiadic and bilocational magisterial time,

supplemented by reference to the great Wxed markers of Mediterranean history,

is further augmented at a microlevel in the narrative with other indicators of

time. Diodorus occasionally refers to the individual season at which events took

place, sometimes in the most poetic language: ‘When spring with its warmth

was melting the snow, and crops were now, after long period of frost, beginning

to develop and grow, and men too were resuming activity’, Arsaces VII Phraates

II sent envoys to Antiochus to discuss peace.156 The reference to dating by

seasons leads naturally to the point that, for his narrative of the Peloponnesian

War, Diodorus regularly adopts Thucydides’ system of ‘war years’.157 He sums

up in 422 bc that ‘the PeloponnesianWar, whichwas so far ten years old, ended’

with a Wfty-year truce between Athens and Sparta, and then, following its

recommencement, at the end of his account of 417 bc that ‘these were the

events of the Wfteenth year of the Peloponnesian War’.158

A skeletal decline theory sits alongside the Olympiadic and magisterial

framework to add further nuance in patterning the temporal layout of

another part of Diodorus’ work, that is the history of Rome. The later

books of the work are seriously fragmented, but nevertheless we can gain

some sense of this decay. Diodorus notes, in one of the fragments (8) of Book

155 Diodorus 12.53.1. See also 15.75 for the year 367/6 bc when no Roman date could begiven because civil strife had led to I�Ææ��Æ.

156 Diodorus, Fragments of Books 34 and 35.15: ‹Ø B� KÆæØ�B� uæÆ� fi B �ºØfi A �Œ�� c��Ø �Æ ŒÆd H� ŒÆæ�H� KŒ �F �ı��F� ��ª�ı �æe� c� �ıc� ŒÆd �º��Ø� �æ�Ø �ø�; H� �bI�Łæ��ø� K�d a� �æ��Ø� ‰æ��ø�. See also 19.50.1: �F �� Ææ�� Iæ��ı ‘as spring started’.

157 In fact, the Wrst instance of this system is not borrowed from Thucydides for use inrelation to the Peloponnesian War at all, but concerns the war of Athens against Cyprus in 450bc, in his account of which he sums up by stating at 12.3.4 ‘such were the events in the Wrst yearof the war’ (ŒÆa e �æH�� F ��º��ı). However, at 12.37.2, Diodorus signals explicitlyhis knowledge of Thucydides’ narrative, commenting that, although the war itself lasted twenty-seven years, Thucydides covered twenty-two of them in eight, or possibly nine, books.

158 Diodorus 12.74.5 and 12.81.5.


30, that the Roman senate of those days (c.170 bc) left models and patterns

for all those who strive for empire. The implication is clearly that the early

second-century senate was an exemplary institution by contrast with the

current one. Further, in the fragments of Book 37 (3–8), he discusses the

old-fashioned virtue which led the Romans to the greatest empire known to

history, whereas more recently (K� �b �E� ��ø�æ�Ø� ŒÆØæ�E�), when most

nations had been subjugated and peace prevailed, ancient practices at Rome

had fallen into decay. And in the scant fragments of Books 38 and 39, he

interestingly ties this notion of Roman decline to the Etruscan theory of

temporal patterning by races, each assigned an age, the end of which would

be marked by the gods with a great year, marked by extraordinary phenom-

ena. The catastrophic decline in Rome’s politeiawas marked out in 88 bc with

civil war, portended by natural phenomena—the gods and the natural world,

as it were, ratifying the passing from one age to another.159

Yet another temporal layer is added by the multiple references to the length

of reigns, which are often stacked up into continuous dynastic lines, giving an

extensive sense of regal time. A few examples will suYce, although the

selection will not fairly indicate the considerable volume of such references.

The early books do contain references to mythical and divine kings, but these

are not accompanied by any form of chronological note.160 We have already

observed that Book 7 is atypical, in being represented almost entirely by

fragments from Eusebius. Here we Wnd the Wrst references to regal time as

the basis for continuous chronology.161

It is, however, worth noting that the impression gained from the fragments

of Book 7 is out of line with Diodorus’ practice elsewhere. Even where the

great Hellenistic monarchies are concerned, these regal time systems are in no

way universal in geographical scope, nor does even the combination of all the

dynasties in Diodorus amount to a systemwhich is comprehensive in chrono-

logical extent. Regal time is bitty and fragmented, both temporally and

spatially. References to the regal period in Rome are vague and chronologic-

ally dispersed,162 but the Persian monarchy oVers a recurrent punctuation

159 Diodorus, Fragments of Books 38 and 39.1.160 See, for example, Diodorus 3.55.10 V. on the exile of Mopsus by Lycurgus, king of Thrace;

3.72.2 V. on Silenus, the Wrst king of Nysa; 4.55.5V. on king Medus, who gave his name to theMedes; 4.79 for the expedition of Minos against king Cocalus of Sicily. The reign of this kingforms the starting point for Antiochus of Syracuse’s nine-book history of Sicily, which reachedto 424 bc (12.71.2).161 Diodorus 7.11. It is worth noting the neat geographical symmetry here—from the attack

made from West to East to the counter-attack from Asia to Europe.162 See Diodorus 8.14 for the peaceful reign of Pompilius, 8.25 for problems with the Albans

under the reign of Tullus Hostilius, and 8.31 for the virtuous andwise king, Lucius Tarquinius. Onlywhen we reach the reign of Servius Tullius (10.2) do we Wnd a time span given, of forty-four years.


mark in the narrative. The accession of Cyrus the Great, a momentous

episode in the history of the eastern Mediterranean, is, uniquely among the

regal datings, tied to Olympiadic chronology, being placed in the Wrst year of

the Wfty-Wfth Olympiad (9.21). Thereafter, the reigns of the Persian kings run

like a thread through the text. The year 424 bc is marked by the rapid

succession from Xerxes II, who ruled for one year and two months, to his

brother, Sogdianus, who reigned for seven months, and then Darius II

Nothos, with his nineteen-year rule (12.71.1). The story of Persian kingship

is picked up in the year of Darius’ death, with the accession of his son,

Artaxerxes, who reigned for forty-three years (13.108.1).

Other Asian kingships feature intermittently. The succession between

Satyrus of Bosporus and his son, Leucon, each of whom ruled for forty

years (14.93.1); that between Dionysius of Heraclea Pontica after thirty-two

years and his sons, Oxathras and Clearchus, who ruled for seventeen

(20.77.1); and that between Eumelus of Bosporus, who died in the sixth

year of his reign, and his son, Spartacus, who ruled for twenty—all help to

measure and pace events at a regional level (20.100.7). The whole story of

Asian kingship acquires a certain ring composition in the fragments of Book

31, where the ancestry of the Cappadocian kings is noted as reaching back to

Cyrus the Great of Persia (fr. 19), and the 160-year dynasty of seven Cappa-

docian kings begins. Thus a continuity could be traced from Cyrus right

through to the end of that dynasty.

The history of kings and the development of a sense of regal time applied

also to parts of Europe. Sparta, of course, was the notorious case. Diodorus

marks the death of Pleistoanax of Sparta after a Wfty-year reign and the

accession of Pausanias for fourteen years (13.75.1); he notes the death of

Agesipolis after fourteen years and the succession of his brother, Cleombro-

tus, for nine years (15.23.2); later he picks up on the death of Cleomenes after

a ten-month reign, and his succession by Atreus for forty-four years (20.30.1).

But kings elsewhere are also mentioned, together with the lengths of their

reigns. Perhaps the most striking instance of the ending of a royal life is the

ignominious death of Agathocles, who was killed after seventy-two years of

life and twenty-eight years of royal power, by Menon of Segesta through a

drug implanted on a toothpick quill!163

Another kind of ‘parallel’ chronology formed out of successions is to be

found in the world of literary production. It has already been noted in relation

to Book 11 that Diodorus tends to publish literary notices at the end of a

year’s account. We shall see in a moment the way in which this applies to

163 Diodorus, Fragments of Book 21.16.4. See 14.84.6 for another, non-Spartan, royal death,that of Aeropus of Macedonia, who died from illness after six years of power, and was succeededby Pausanias for one year.


historiographical productions, whereby the continuous and comprehensive

time of the narrative is replicated in the sequence of historical accounts which

encompass them. Before that, it is worth observing the prominence that

Diodorus accords to cultural history alongside the history of politics and

war. The momentous year with which Philistus would end his Wrst history of

Sicily was also the year of Sophocles’ death at the age of ninety, overcome with

pleasure at his eighteenth victory with a tragedy (13.103.4), and also possibly

the year of Euripides’ death. Another momentous year in history, historiog-

raphy, and literature, was 398 bc, when war was declared against Carthage and

Ctesias ended his history of the Persians; it was also a vintage year for

dithyrambs with Philoxenus of Cythera, Timotheus of Miletus, Telestus of

Selinus, and Polyidus all at their prime.164

As we shall see with other attempts to map out the past, including both

mythical and historical times, such as the Parian Marble, the histories of

intellectual life, of invention, and of literature could routinely Wnd a place.

One striking instance for our purposes is Meton’s revelation of his nineteen-

year cycle after which the stars would have returned to their original places—a

discovery which had important implications for the management of time

(12.36.2–3). But it seems that Diodorus’ interest in non-historiographical

literature, and perhaps speciWcally poetic production, goes beyond this. He

cites poetic sources on several occasions,165 and recognizes the closeness in

subject matter between historical and poetic themes, noting that the brave

defeat of the Spartans at Thermopylae was the stuV of not only histories, but

also poetry like that of Simonides (11.11.6), as we have already noted in

relation to Ephorus. He likens the battle between Cyrus and his brother

Artaxerxes to the conXict between Eteocles and Polynices, celebrated in

tragedy.166 Roman history too could evince some tragic situations, as when

Aquillius defeated the Sicilian rebels at the turn of the Wrst century bc, while

the dramatic death of the prisoners at Rome at the conclusion of four years’

war was a tragic catastrophe.167

164 Diodorus 14.46.6. It is not only literary acmes that Diodorus notes. 14.43 concerns theWrst play of Astydamas, the tragedian.165 See 11.14.4 where he cites elegiacs commemorating Delphi’s deliverance from the Per-

sians; 32.27.1 where he gives a poetic source on the brightness of Corinth (now reversed byRoman action in 146 bc); 37.30.2 where he cites poetic fragments in support of his moralizingon the evils of wealth.166 Diodorus 14.23.5: ŒÆŁ��æ �N� I��Æ B� �ÆºÆØA� KŒ�� ŒÆd æÆªfiø��ı�� B�

��æd e� � ¯��Œº�Æ ŒÆd —�ºı��Œ�� º��.167 Diodorus, Fragments of Book 36.10.3: æÆªØŒc� �� c� ŒÆÆ�æ��c�. One wonders here

whether Diodorus’ Sicilian background heightens his sense of tragedy on this occasion. Therelationship between poetry and historiography is one to which we shall return in the context oflocal historiography and performance contexts.


But let us return now to the notion that not only history with its kings and

magistrates could be lined up end to end to form far-reaching and measurable

chains across time, but that this can also be extended to the narratives which

related that history. Unsurprisingly, it is the late Wfth century and fourth

century in Diodorus’ account which are littered with notices concerning

historiographical activity, but of course, the works he notes extend over a

much wider time span than this, and thus oVer relatively comprehensive

parallel coverage across the historical scope of Diodorus’ work. The year

411 bc is marked by Diodorus as the end point of Thucydides’ history, after

twenty-two years covered in eight (or nine) books,168 but, as he comments,

Xenophon and Theopompus began where Thucydides left oV, Xenophon to

cover forty-eight years and Theopompus seventeen of Greek history.169 Thus,

the historiographical note for one year in Diodorus’ narrative is made to

extend across seventy years in terms of the scope of the works produced, no

doubt some of the very works that Diodorus had used in order to write his

own history.

The battle of Mantinea proved to be another point which was signiWcant

historically and, not accidentally, also historiographically. Here was the end

point of Thucydides’ continuator, Xenophon. But it is also noted as the

end point of several other works of varied scope (15.89.3). Here ended

Philistus’ history of Dionysius the Younger, a work covering Wve years in

two books and, one presumes, with a fairly close biographically oriented

focus. But this year also marked the end of Anaximenes of Lampsacus’

account, which had started with the birth of the gods, including almost all

the deeds of Greeks and barbarians—an astonishing work whose spatial scope

was universal, and whose chronological scope, moving from the theogony to

Mantinea, covered both mythical and historical time.170 Thus, a whole pan-

oply of historiographical treatments overlap at this point, whether they

stretch way back into the past or concern a much more restricted period.

Besides Mantinea, another key historiographical turning point was

the seizure of the temple at Delphi by Philomelus the Phocian. This was the

168 The issue of book division was clearly of interest to Diodorus. We have already seen at12.37.2 the possibility that Thucydides’ work was divided into eight or nine books. Diodorusnotes at 15.37.3 that Hermeas of Methymne ended his narrative of Sicily ‘in ten or twelve books’this year [sc. 376/5 bc].

169 Diodorus 13.42.3. He returns at 14.84.7 to note the end of Theopompus’Hellenica and torepeat that this work had formed the continuation of Thucydides’ Histories, from the battle ofCynossema. At 16.3.8 he comments that this is the point at which Theopompus’ history ofPhilip started, extending over Wfty-eight books, of which Wve were lost.

170 Another work of large chronological scope was Ctesias’ history of the Persians, whichreached to 398 bc (at which point it receives its notice fromDiodorus) from the time of Ninus andSemiramis. The reign of Ninus was clearly a key moment in the formulation of histories whichclaimed to be universal—it was the starting point for Pompeius Trogus’ universal account (1.1.4).


end point of Callisthenes’ thirty-book history (14.117.8), and the start point

of the history written by Demophilus, son of Ephorus, who treated the Third

Sacred War, omitted by his father (16.14.3).171 It was also the start of Diyllus

the Athenian’s twenty-six-book history of Greece and Sicily. Diyllus would

come back into play later in the same book of Diodorus, this time as the

continuator of Ephorus himself, since Diyllus started the second part of his

history with Philip’s sieges of Perinthus and Byzantium, just where Ephorus

ended his 750-year account of Greek and barbarian history which had begun

with the return of the Heraclidae.172 Diyllus, according to Diodorus, saw

himself as clearly taking up the challenge of this literary legacy by attempting a

connected narrative of the Greeks and the barbarians until the death of Philip,

son of Cassander. And so the succession continues. In Book 21, Diodorus notes

that Diyllus compiled a universal history in twenty-six books, of which Psaon of

Plataea wrote the continuation in thirty.173 The need of continuity and com-

prehensive coverage, which could be developed by a single author, is made most

explicit in Book 15, where we are told that Athanas of Syracuse wrote thirteen

books starting with the expedition of Dion, but that he felt the need to preface it

with a book which recorded the seven years not included by Philistus (363 to

357 bc), so as to achieve a continuous history, with no chronological gaps.174

However, alongside this range of temporal conWgurations—the temporal punc-

tuation marks oVered by the seasons, the time of dynasties mapped out and

counted, the time of historiography, most notably in the form of historia perpe-

tua—the dominant temporal structure for the narrative of the historical period is

undoubtedly that provided by the framework of Olympiads and magistracies.

d) Spanning space; synchronizing narratives

Within this predominantly annalistic arrangement, it is worth noting the way

in which Diodorus makes his history geographically universal by paying an

annual visit to each of the major theatres of events. Very occasionally, as in

171 Here Diodorus repeats his note about Callisthenes’ account, which ended at this date.172 Diodorus 16.76.6.173 Diodorus Fragments 21.5: �ıªªæÆ��f� a� Œ�Ø�a� �æ��Ø� �ı��Æ�.174 Diodorus 15.94.4. Philistus himself had acted as his own continuator. He ended his Wrst

history of Sicily with the year 406 bc, having treated 800 years in seven books, and then wrote hissecond history in four books, starting fromwhere the Wrst had Wnished (13.103.3). See V. J. Gray,‘Continuous History and Xenophon, Hellenica 1–2.3.10’, American Journal of Philology 112(1991), 201–28, for interesting comments on Athanas’ work, and particularly at 204–5 fordiscussion of why Athanas chose a summary for the ‘bridging’ period between Philistus’ workand his own. Possibilities include a reluctance to write in full about events of which he was notan eye-witness, or the tension between the need for continuity and the wish to start his ownwork at a memorable and signiWcant point in history.


Books 16 and 17, we Wnd a more extensive treatment of a single theme—the

lives of Philip and Alexander, respectively. Occasionally, too, there are hints at

global perspectives.175 However, the more usual arrangement is a tour, some-

times very rapid, in which the universal aspect of the account lies in the

comprehensive nature of the geographical coverage for each year, without any

attempt made at synthesis into a single, interwoven narrative.

Book 15 oVers a good example of the way in which Diodorus’ narrative

moves around the various theatres of action. Within the Wrst dozen chapters

covering 386 and 385 bc, Diodorus has moved from the Persian campaign

against Euagoras in Cyprus, to the Spartan deportation of Mantineans from

their native land, to Sicily, where the poetry of Dionysius forms the subject in

the absence of any current wars, to Cyprus again, then back to the siege of

Mantinea, and a return to Sicily where Dionysius is plotting foundations on

the Adriatic to gain the Ionian sea routes (15.2–13). Book 19 also opens with a

rapid tour of the current most signiWcant theatres of events, opening with the

Sicilian history of Agathocles’ rise to tyranny, then moving swiftly to the ninth

year of the Samnite war in Italy, followed by Macedonia, with the capture and

death of Eurydice and king Philip, and then the broad picture in Asia, where

Eumenes was gathering satraps and armies (19.1–15).

This rather fragmented approach to universal historiography, which allows

no doubt as regards the dominance of temporal over spatial organization, is

tempered by moments at which diVerent parts of the world acted in harmo-

nious synchronism, thereby validating the notion of universal history rather

than a series of individual local projects. These were the moments at which

not only could the temporal systems be brought into some kind of harmony

(and it is worth noting that for the limited universalism of Diodorus’ world,

the same temporal frameworks could apply),176 but the events themselves

coincided. We have already seen Timaeus’ predilection for historically sign-

iWcant synchronization, but it appealed no less to Diodorus. The end of Book

13 oVers such a moment, when the Peloponnesian War in Greece and the war

between Carthage and Dionysius in Sicily came to an end independently, but

at the same point in time (13.114). Sometimes Diodorus makes the coinci-

dence more explicit, as is the case with the three deaths of Amyntas of

Macedon, Agesipolis of Sparta, and Jason of Pherae in the same year, or the

even more striking coincidence between the battle of Chaeronea and that

175 See, for instance, 17.113, where embassies come to Alexander at Babylon from almost thewhole inhabited world as enumerated at length by Diodorus.

176 See §6 in this chapter (‘Telling the time for the non-Greek world’) for a systematicconsideration of the lesser chronological coherence of the genuinely non-Greek world, whichwas prone not to Wt into Olympiadic and magisterial structures.


between Tarentum and the Lucanians which took place not only in the same

year and on the same day, but even at the same time on that day.177

A rather diVerent form of temporal and spatial mapping occurs among the

fragments of Book 37, where Diodorus claims that the greatest war in

memory was the Marsic War. He does so by setting it in a succession of

wars across history and across the world which had claims to be considered

great. The Trojan War dominated Homer and tragedy because it involved

Europe against Asia; Xerxes’ expedition was so great that even the streams

dried up; the war of Carthage against Sicily was huge; Alexander took Persia;

Rome took Macedon; Carthage fought against Rome over Sicily for twenty-

four years; then came the Hannibalic war; then the defeat of the Cimbri by

Rome; then fortune set Rome against Italy and the two great forces clashed in

the Marsic War (Book 37, fr. 1). This array of references to other great wars

takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of diVerent locations and diVerent times.

But in a sense the repetitive nature of history lends the diversity of times and

places a certain unity—not the synchronism brought by great events happen-

ing in diVerent locations at the same time, but nevertheless the sense that

great things could happen anywhere at any time, as Herodotus had noted and

as we have seen with Polybius.178

Diodorus, although he lies outside the primary chronological scope of this

work, oVers an important and extensive insight into the temporal structures

and organization of a universal account. His universality led him to extend his

account temporally across not only the whole historical span, but also the

mythical period, and I have noted some of the strategies he adopts in order to

mark both the passage of time in this period through the use of generations,

and the existence of key chronological turning points which aVected the

history of many diVerent regions simultaneously—the Trojan War and the

return of the Heraclidae. But he reserved the vast majority of space in his work

for a systematic, roughly annalistic account, structured and calibrated by a

combination of magistracies and Olympiads. The extensive chronological

span of Diodorus is very much like that found in the fragments of local

histories, and it will be interesting to consider whether or not they adopt the

same shift in chronological strategy. In terms of spatial scope, Diodorus’

universal work is by deWnition at variance with local historiography, and

here the point of comparison will concern whether, as we might predict, the

more universal chronological systems, such as appeal to the Trojan War or the

use of Olympiadic dating, are absent, and only more local eponymous dating

is in play.

177 Diodorus 15.60.3–5; 16.88.3. 178 See Herodotus, Histories 1.5, as noted in ch. 1.


5. STRABONIAN STRATEGIES:

BETWEEN LOCAL AND UNIVERSAL

In the case of most peoples, myth is kept apart from history, which desires

the truth, whether it is ancient or more recent. But in the case of the

Amazons, the same stories are told now and of the distant past (ŒÆd �F�

ŒÆd ��ºÆØ), even though they are incredible. Even now, strange tales are told

about them which reinforce beliefs in the ancient accounts (a �ÆºÆØ�)

rather than in the recent ones.179

The work of another universal writer, Strabo, allows us to see played out a set

of quite similar, though not identical, strategies for constructing time in a

work of huge scope. Again, a study of these strategies should help in identi-

fying what, if anything, is distinctively diVerent about the construction,

delineation, and expression of time in local historiography. I shall not elab-

orate in detail here the actual historical events or periods to which Strabo

chooses to give coverage. The one exception will be the mythical period,

which looms so large in what purports to be a work of Augustan geography,

and which is itself the generator of some of the key chronological markers in

Strabo’s account. Nor shall I discuss the way in which Strabo himself,

although writing a universal geographical account, does so largely as a string

of local histories, telling the distinctive story of each place individually as he

reaches it.180 I shall, however, consider how, if at all, Strabo attempts to

provide a universal chronological structure for his universal account, in the

way that Diodorus illustrates more systematically. If not, what emerges

instead in terms of temporal indications to give shape to an account of

considerable chronological depth? Does he, indeed, demonstrate a coherent

approach to the chronological articulation of his work at either the local or

the universal level?

179 Strabo, Geography 11.5.3.180 For both of these angles, see Clarke, Between Geography and History, ch. 5. It is clear from

the sources which Strabo cites by name that he did indeed use earlier local histories quiteextensively for some areas. See 5.2.4, on the history of the Pelasgians, where he cites not onlyEphorus and, through him, Hesiod, but also Aeschylus, Euripides, and the Atthidographers;9.1.6, where Strabo notes the agreement of all the Atthidographers, in spite of their generaldisputes, on the fact that Pandion had four sons, of whomNiscus was given Megaris when Atticawas divided up. He then gives a hint of the kinds of disagreement between Atthidographerswhich relate to this division: according to Philochorus, his rule extended from the Isthmus toPythium; according to Andron, only to Eleusis. Also 9.1.20 where he cites Philochorus again, onthe settlement by Cecrops of the people of Attica into twelve separate cities, as in the Pelopon-nese, only for them to be synoecized by Theseus.


a) Myths, Heraclids, and Troy

First of all, however, let us return to the opening quotation. Strabo comments

here that the Amazons were exceptional in the lack of distinction between

tales concerning them from the mythical period and those relating to later

times. This, however, belies the great attention and space which he himself

devotes to the myths associated with the places he describes, alongside their

later history. The juxtaposition, or rather lack of diVerentiation in treatment

between mythical and historical associations, is brought out most clearly

when Strabo notes that the demes of Attica were mostly associated with

mythical or historical Wgures and events. He gives some examples—Aphidna

and the rape of Helen by Theseus; Marathon and the battle against the

Persians; Decelea and the base of Peloponnesian operations; Phyle, from

where Thrasybulus brought back the popular party to the Piraeus (9.1.17).

He apparently Wnds it entirely natural to cite the battle of Marathon alongside

the rape of Helen as events of equal status. Another such juxtaposition again

relates to Marathon—the location at which Miltiades destroyed the troops of

the Persian, Datis, without waiting for the Spartans, but also the setting for

the myth of the Marathonian bull, slain by Theseus (9.1.22).

Some of the mythological elements are scattered randomly through the

work—such as the note that Tarsus was founded by Argives with Triptolemus

in quest of Io (14.5.12). But there is a distinct concentration of such material

in Strabo’s description of Greece, southern Italy, and Asia Minor. The Troad is

naturally dominated by the world of the Homeric epics, although the prom-

inence of the Aeneas story here and in Italy suggests that Strabo had also

absorbed the promotion of that strand of the past in Augustan Rome. Strabo

himself observes the existence of competing accounts of what happened to

Aeneas after the fall of Troy, and the consequent discrepancies in matters of

geography. Scepsis was, for example, supposedly the royal kingdom of Aeneas,

but this was incompatible with the view that Aeneas had continued west-

wards, having sailed with Antenor to the Adriatic in the great post-Troy

migration of heroes (13.1.53).181 But more typically, he uses the stories

associated with Troy—the scenes of Homeric battles, the rivers Scamander

and Simoeis, for example—to evoke a mythical landscape through which the

reader may be guided as though transported in time back to the heroic age.182

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

in which the past still lived on through the associations of the place.

Strabonian strategies 141

This combination of reference to episodes from the mythical past and the

creation of a mythological landscape which transcends the passage of time is

found as far west as Italy.183 Pisa is described as having been founded by the

Pisatae, who made the expedition to Ilium with Nestor and went astray on

their return to the Peloponnese (5.2.5); Nestor turns up in the heroic geog-

raphy of southern Italy too, since Metapontium was founded by Pylians

sailing with him from Troy (6.1.15). The island of Aethalia had a port

named after the Argo because of its connections with Jason, giving the

whole island a mythical association (5.2.6); and naturally, the history of

Rome itself was bound up with the myths of Aeneas and of Amollius, of his

brother Numitor, and of Romulus and Remus, which Strabo carefully com-

bines with an unusual piece of relative chronology, noting that the latter story

was to be placed four hundred years after the former (5.3.2).

But it is in his description of the Greek mainland that Strabo most fully

makes plain the central place held by the mythical landscape in the geograph-

ical imagination. Some instances simply note a particular place as the setting

for a well-known myth: Temenium, where Temenus was buried and the scene

of the myth of the Hydra (8.6.2); the setting for the myth of Sciron and the

Pityocamptes, robbers killed by Theseus (9.1.4); Harme, where some say

Amphiaraus fell in battle from his chariot where the temple now stands and

others say the chariot of Adrastus was destroyed (9.2.11); Hyria, the scene of

the birth of Orion and of the myth of Hyrieus (9.2.12); Mount Messapius, the

scene of the myth of Glaucus, the Anthedonian, who turned into a sea

monster (9.2.13); Mount Cithaeron where Pentheus was torn to pieces by

the Bacchae (9.2.23); Potniae, another scene of mythical sparagmos, where

Glaucus was ripped apart by the Potnian mares (9.2.24); Daulis, the scene of

the Philomela and Procne story (9.3.13); and Panopeus, the scene of the myth

of Titus, where could still be found a hero temple at which honours were paid

(9.3.14). Although much work has been done on the creation by Pausanias of

a mythical landscape in which monuments and tales from the present evoke a

long-distant past,184 it seems that Strabo’s account, at least of Greece, can be

read in a similar way. Examples abound—in northern Greece, the abode of

Deucalion and the grave of Pyrrha were to be found at Cydnus (9.4.2); the

183 It is found sporadically elsewhere too—sometimes close to home, as at 13.1.46, whereStrabo notes the myths associated with the island of Tenedos. ‘In it is set the myth of Tennes,after whom the island was named; as also that of Cycnus.’ Both Dionysus and Heracles were saidto have visited India (15.1.6); Armenia and Media itself were infused with the myth of Jason andMedea—Medea had introduced a peculiar mode of dress, says Strabo at 11.13.10, when sheruled there with Jason, and the country was named after her son, Medus; at 11.14.14, theArmenians are noted as kinsmen of the Thessalians and descendants of Jason and Medea.

184 See, for example, K. Arafat, ‘Pausanias’ Attitude to Antiquities’, Annals of the British Schoolat Athens 87 (1992), 387–409.


monument of Thetis in Thessaly proved that Achilles ruled there; and the

Melitaeans claimed that the Hellenes had migrated to their own city, pointing

as evidence to the tomb of Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha in the

agora (9.5.6). Both the associations of the location and the physical monu-

ments and rituals act as bridges between the past and the present, adding

temporal richness and depth to the spatial description.

Besides these more or less concentrated, but one-oV, references to particu-

lar myths, there are some clusters of several references to the same mythical or

heroic Wgures. Nestor, for example, is alluded to several times in diVerent

contexts.185 Even gods could walk on earth and make an impact on the

mythical landscape. Strabo relates the account that the people who dwelt on

Parnassus were civilized by Apollo, having helped him to quash Tityus and

Python as he travelled from Athens to Delphi by a route which was still used

now (9.3.12). And the demigod Heracles, not surprisingly given his itinerant

career, turns up repeatedly. In the fragments of the seventh book (25), Strabo

notes that the site of Potidaea had previously been inhabited by giants, and

then broken up by Heracles when he sailed back after capturing Troy.186 He

cites Hecataeus for the view that the Epeans and Eleans had joined Heracles

against Augeas and Elis, although he notes that ‘the ancient writers’ tell many

lies (8.3.9); the cavern through which he led Cerberus out from Hades could

be seen near Sparta (8.5.1).187

Just as the wanderings and exploits of Heracles formed a major element in

the creation of a mythical landscape for the Mediterranean, so too the return

of his descendants was a key factor in forming the Greek mainland,188

especially the Peloponnese, but also further aWeld in the Mediterranean.189

Sometimes their return is used straightforwardly as a temporal indicator—it

was after their return, for example, that the Aetolians gained control of

Olympia and invented the games (8.3.30); Messenia was subject to Menelaus

‘before the events at Troy’, but to Melanthus at the time of the return of the

Heraclidae (8.4.1).190However, their prominence in the text is almost entirely

due to the fact that, like the TrojanWar and the subsequent dispersal of heroes

185 See 8.3.7 and 8.3.19.186 Strabo thus provides a neat link between the world of Heracles and the world of Troy—

each would give rise to one of the key chronological indicators of Strabo’s text.187 See also 9.2.40 for the murder of Erginos, tyrant of Orchomenus, by Heracles.188 The start point for their momentous return is noted at 9.4.10.189 Even as far as Sardinia, the children of Heracles made their presence felt. There was a

mountain tribe called the Diagesbes, who were formally called the Iolaes, after Iolaus who wentthere with some of the sons of Heracles (5.2.7).190 The chronological relationship between these two key events is attempted at 13.1.3. The

expedition of Orestes’ son, Penthilus, to Thrace is given as sixty years after the Trojan period, ataround the time of the return of the Heraclidae to the Peloponnese: ��Œ��Æ ��Ø H� æøØŒH� o��æ��; �� ÆPc� c� H� � ˙æÆŒº�Ø�H� �N� —�º�� Œ�Ł��.


around the Mediterranean, the return of the Heraclidae was seen as having

had a profound eVect on the shape and texture of Mediterranean settlement

patterns. As we have seen in relation to Ephorus, who made their return the

starting point of his universal history, the eVects of their return on the

political landscape of the Peloponnese were dramatic. They ‘expelled those

who were previously in power’, razing cities like Mycenae.191 Indeed, the

return of the Heraclidae was not merely chronologically coincidental with

the reign of Melanthus in Messene, since they actually drove him out of power

(9.1.7). The ramiWcations of such actions were far-reaching. Two of the sons

of Heracles, Eurysthenes and Procles, according to Ephorus, had taken pos-

session of Laconia, divided it into six, and founded cities there (8.5.4); their

return gave rise to the emigration of Achaeans from Laconia to Ionia (8.5.5),

and conversely the settlement of Ionians at Epidaurus with the Carians

(8.6.15). In apparent contradiction, or at very least confusion, the return of

the sons of Heracles meant the exodus of Ionians from the Peloponnese,192

ousted by the Achaeans, who forced them back to Athens, from where they

colonized the coast of Caria and Lydia (8.7.1). According to Strabo, Attica was

full of exiles after the return of the Heraclidae, provoking the latter to attack,

through fear. They were defeated on that occasion, but nevertheless clung on to

the Megarid, which they populated with Dorians rather than Ionians (9.1.7).

The period of the Trojan War, which, like that of Heracles and his descend-

ants, looms large in the mythological geography of Strabo’s world, is used by

Strabo, no less than by Diodorus, as a chronological benchmark, against

which other world events can be placed. Sometimes this seems to be purely

a temporal marker, bearing no relation to the subject matter. Posidonius, for

example, is cited as saying that the ancient theory of atoms originated in

Sidon with Mochus ‘before Trojan times’ (16.2.24); the city of Sardis is

described as ‘ancient, but more recent than Trojan times’ (13.4.5). It is,

however, the case that, as with the return of the descendants of Heracles,

which so altered the political and settlement landscape of mainland Greece in

particular, so too with the TrojanWar were the consequences and fallout most

keenly felt in certain parts of the Mediterrranean world. Thus, although its use

as a chronological marker could be seen as independent of content and

relevance,193 in fact, its usage in Strabo is concentrated in his account of the

191 8.6.10.More detail is given at 8.6.19, where Strabo explains that Eurystheus, ruler ofMycenae,had participated in an expedition against Iolaus and the sons of Heracles at Marathon, in which hewas defeated. Mycenae then fell to the descendants of Pelops and later to the sons of Heracles.

192 The Athenians had sent a colony to the Peloponnese after the death of Ion, because ofoverpopulation (8.7.1). Elsewhere Strabo cites Polybius on the Peloponnesian foundations andsettlement patterns emerging from the return of the Heraclidae (8.8.5).

193 Some cases of the Trojan War being used simply as an indicator of time ‘when’ do exist.See, for example, 8.4.1, where Strabo notes that Messenia was subject to Menelaus ‘from Trojan


Troad and, particularly, of the Greek mainland. As in the case of the Her-

aclidae, it is the dispersal of heroes and the consequent changes in population

and settlement which feature repeatedly and make this a far from neutral

chronological indicator, but one with geographical resonance.194

It was, for example, starting from Trojan times (I�e H� æøØŒH�) that

Greeks penetrated the inland area behind the Adriatic coast of the Leucani

(6.1.2), and ‘after the events at Troy’ (��a �b a æøØŒ�) that all kinds of

transformations took place: Mycenae was reduced (especially after the return

of the Heraclidae);195 the Boeotians took Coronea when they returned from

Thessalian Arne (9.2.29); cities were founded by Dorians with Althaemenes

the Argive (10.4.15); there were migrations of Greeks and attacks by Cim-

merians and Lydians, all leading to confusion of peoples (12.8.7); Abydos was

inhabited by Thracians (13.1.22); and, according to Xanthus, the Phrygians

moved to Asia (14.5.29). The Trojan War was thus seen as something of a

turning point for the map of Greece and of the eastern Mediterranean.

There were, however, elements of continuity which spanned this period of

transition, and yet which are described by Strabo in terms of this chrono-

logical marker. Sometimes this amounted simply to the continuous history of

certain settlements, such as Eretria and Chalcis, which he says were founded

by Athens ‘before Trojan times’, and then settled with colonists from the same

city ‘after the events at Troy’ (10.1.8). Here the Trojan War does not alter the

continuing development of the settlements concerned—they are not suddenly

populated with returning heroes, but the original mother city continues with

its programme. It does, however, act as a chronological punctuation mark,

and perhaps there is the implication that the disruption of the war in the

eastern Mediterranean delayed the completion of the Athenian plan for

Euboea? A case in which the Trojan War is used as a chronological marker

in an ongoing, but disputed, story is that of Amphilochian Argos. According

to Ephorus, this was founded by Alcmaeon ‘even before the Trojan period’,196

but Thucydides and others said that Amphilochus moved there ‘after events at

Troy’. The confusion of peoples across the Mediterranean was certainly

times’. It was ‘during the Trojan period’ (ŒÆa a æøØŒ�) that Cephallenia and Samothrace werecalled Samos (10.2.17) and Echinades was ruled over by Meges (10.2.19). At 13.1.7, Straboexceptionally uses a diVerent formula, noting that all the coast was subject to Troy ‘during theTrojan War’ (ŒÆa e� � (ºØÆŒe� � º��).

194 As Strabo notes at 1.3.2, the migration of heroes across the inhabited world ‘shortly afterthe events at Troy’ (�ØŒæe� H� æøØŒH� o��æ��) should be seen as part of the description ofancient peoples.195 8.6.10. Note that this conWrms the relative chronology of the Trojan War and the later

return of the Heraclidae, as given at 13.1.3.196 10.2.26. This is described as an account ‘contrary to the Homeric version’ (�Ææa c�

� ˇ��æØŒc� ƒ��æ�Æ�), although the discrepancy or contradiction is not elaborated upon.


something which Strabo saw as by no means restricted to the aftermath of

Troy. As he states at 12.8.4, there were many incursions especially ‘during the

Trojan War and after this’, because Greeks and barbarians both wanted to

acquire land at the same time, but mass migrations, such as those of the

Pelasgians and Cauconians, also took place ‘before the Trojan period’, al-

though it was not possible to prove that the Cilicians already existed before

this point.

Intimately connected with, but importantly distinct from the use of the

Trojan War as a chronological marker, is the appeal to its primary narrator,

Homer. Homer features throughout Strabo’s Geography, not only because his

compositions are so dominant in the mental geographies of Strabo’s own

readers,197 but also as the indicator of a time period in his own right.198 Three

times he claims that the Cimmerian invasions took place either slightly before

or during Homer’s own time;199 elsewhere Homer’s time is explicitly distin-

guished from the heroic period, since Strabo claims that at the time of Homer

and Stesichorus Arabia was already so called after Arabus, whereas it may not

have been so ‘at the time of the heroes’.200

b) Measuring time for geography

These ‘mythical’ periods, which clustered around key articulation points such

as the Trojan War and the return of the Heraclidae, could be further delin-

eated in Strabo’s account only in limited units of time. Magistracies and

Olympiads were clearly of no use, king lists did not exist. As Ephorus had

already observed, and Diodorus showed in practice, the mythical period was

prone to be mapped out in terms of generations, and Strabo too conforms to

this pattern. Of course, as with Diodorus also, many cases can be attributed

directly to Strabo’s sources. The Wrst Greek cities in Sicily, according to

Ephorus and in a way which was adopted by Strabo, were founded in the

tenth generation after the Trojan War;201 it was in the tenth generation after

the foundation of cities in Aetolia that Elis was settled by Oxylus, the son of

197 See 8.3.3. Strabo claims to be comparing the current situation with ‘the things said byHomer’ (a �� ˇ��æ�ı º�ª ��Æ) because he is famous and well known. See also 8.3.23.

198 See, for example, 8.3.2 where Strabo claims that the current polis of Elis had not yet beenfounded in Homer’s time.

199 1.1.10; 3.2.12; 1.2.10—here he attributes the information to ‘the chronographers’ (�ƒ�æ�� ªæÆ��Ø), who use it to argue that Homer knew of these people, hardly a logically necessaryconclusion. The argument of familiarity derived from contemporaneity is implicit also at 7.3.8where Strabo notes that ‘those near the times of Homer’ were as he described.

200 1.2.34. At 10.5.2, the heroic age appears again as an identiWable period of the past—at thistime, Delos was revered because of its connection with Leto’s children.

201 6.2.2: ��Œ�fi � ª��fi A ��a a æøØŒ�.


Haemon, from Aetolia (10.3.2). Generations linked foundations to great

events like the Trojan War, but also to each other. They could also connect

prominent historical individuals with the age of colonization, providing

something of a bridge between the heroic and the historical periods. Lycurgus,

the Spartan lawgiver, was placed ‘Wve generations later’ than Althaemenes,

who led the colony to Crete (10.4.18).

The diVerent waves of colonization could be brought into chronological

relation with both the return of the Heraclidae and the Trojan period all in a

single breath:202 the Aeolian colonization preceded that of the Ionians by four

generations, but was delayed and took a longer time; Orestes had led an

expedition to Thrace, succeeded by his son, Penthilus, sixty years after the

Trojan War at around the time of the return of the sons of Heracles to the

Peloponnese, and it was Penthilus’ son, Archelaus, who led the Aeolian move

to Cyzicene, and his son in turn who led the Aeolians to the river Granicus

and to Lesbos (13.1.3). This account, complex and rambling though it may

be, nevertheless allows us to place the events in some order—the Trojan War,

followed sixty years later by the return of the Heraclidae and Penthilus’

expedition,203 then the Aeolian colonizations in the succeeding two gener-

ations, and three generations after the latter of these, the Ionian colonizations.

The observation that the return of the Heraclidae came around sixty years

after the Trojan War is unusual in Strabo for its speciWcity, and is no doubt

reXective of the amount of scholarly time spent on both as chronological

markers in the ancient world. On the whole, the generation was the most

precise unit that was appropriate for the vagueness and longue duree of the

heroic age. But other forms of chronological system do appear in Strabo’s

Geography when dealing with later periods of history. Occasionally, he uses

202 This was also true of various phases of colonization which could be linked to each other,independently of the standard chronological markers. See 14.1.3, where Strabo picks up fromEphorus the various colonizing ventures to aVect the coast of Asia Minor. Androclus, the son ofCodrus of Athens, led the Ionian colonization (I��ØŒ�Æ) and was founder (Œ��) of Ephesus,with the result that the royal seat of the Ionians was placed there; Miletus, meanwhile, wasfounded by Neleus from Pylos. However, the kinship between Messenians and Pylians meantthat the more recent poets claimed that many Pylians followedMelanthus (the father of Codrus)to Athens and that they all joined in the general colonization of Ionia which took Athens as itsbase. He then lists individually the foundations made in this and other phases: Myos byCydrelus, son of Codrus; Lebedus by Andropompus; Colophon by Andraemon, a Pylian; Prieneby Aegyptus, son of Neleus and later by Philotas, who brought a colony from Thebes; Teos Wrstby Athamas and during the Ionian colonization by Nauclus, son of Codrus, and after this byApoecus (a suspicious name if ever there was one) and Damasus, both Athenians, and Geres, aBoeotian; Erythrae by Cnopus, son of Codrus; Phocaea by Athenians under Philogenes;Clazomenae by Paralus; Chios by Egertius; Samos by Tembrion and later by Procles.203 It is worth noting that Thucydides 1.11.3 maps out the intervals rather diVerently, with

sixty years between the fall of Troy and the expulsion of the Boeotians by the Thessalians, butthen a further twenty years before the return of the Heraclidae.


the straightforward unit of the year to indicate duration or interval. It was, for

example, not until the eightieth year of their war against the Sallyes that the

Romans were successful (4.6.3). For thirty-three years already, at the time of

Strabo’s composition, the people around Aquileia had been at peace and

paying tribute.204 Both instances are strikingly late chronologically, and at

the other end of the spectrum from the mythical period in terms of the

opportunities for speciWcity.205

The time of kings is also used, sparingly, by Strabo of the historic periods

treated in his work.206 Naturally, these focus on the eastern Mediterranean

where the Hellenistic dynasties held sway. Thus, Pergamum is described as

prospering under the Attalid kings for a long time (13.4.1). But it also extends

back to the period of tyranny in Greece, such as the tyrants of Lesbos (13.2.3),

and even further back to the time of Persian rule and the reign of Croesus

(14.1.21). Rome too, of course, incorporated a regal period in its history, and

Strabo’s compressed history of that city naturally maps out that time in terms

of royal generations, that is reigns.207 The same is partially true of Corinth,

where Strabo uses a combination of years and then generations to denote the

history of the successive rules of Bacchiads and Cypselids.208

We are far from a systematic or comprehensive framework of dynastic

successions or royal eras, but rather see glimpses of reigns, which oVer

some chronological context for the event in question. As with his use of

generations and of years, Strabo oVers a very fragmented sense of regal time.

By contrast with Diodorus, Strabo’s strategy for encapsulating a vast temporal

and spatial scope in a universal framework is distinctively geographical. Both

authors follow the Ephoran scheme in distinguishing between the mythical

and historical periods in terms of the chronological systems which could be

satisfactorily applied, and indeed both see Wt to include the mythical period in

accounts which culminated in the world of the late Wrst century bc. But

whereas Diodorus moves on from the vague time of generations in the

204 4.6.9: X�� æ�� ŒÆd æØÆŒ��e� ��.205 One notable instance of chronological speciWcity is at 6.4.2 where Strabo is oVering a

potted history of Rome from its foundation. The loss of the city to the Gauls is dated to thenineteenth year after the naval battle at Aegospotami, at the time of the peace of Antalcidas.The information is, however, attributed to Polybius, and therefore still contributes nothing tothe notion of Strabo as a careful chronographer.

206 Exceptionally also of the heroic age at 1.3.17, where he mentions the earthquakes whichtook place long ago in Lydia and Ionia, swallowing up villages and shattering Mount Sipylus inthe reign of Tantalus (ŒÆa c� Æ��º�ı �Æ�Øº��Æ�).

207 The city was ruled ‘for many generations’ by kings, until Tarquinius Superbus (6.4.2). Thelack of strict identity between royal generations and reigns should be noted, but the diVerencetends to be overlooked in literary treatments.

208 8.6.20. The Bacchiads ruled for nearly two hundred years (�ØÆŒ �ØÆ � �� ), afterwhich Cypselus and his family were in power for three generations (æØª��Æ�).


mythical age to a thorough and systematic combination of Olympiadic and

bilocational magisterial time, which he uses to provide an almost unshakable

framework within which to present a geographically integrated account of the

historical period, Strabo does not develop, either universally or locally, any

sophisticated way of indicating and measuring the passage of time, or indeed

Wxed points in time.

Counterarguments can be put forward to both elements of this characteriza-

tion. In universal terms, besides his use of the helpful markers of the Trojan

period and the return of the Heraclidae for the mythical age, Strabo exception-

ally ties into both of these key moments a mention of the Olympiads, which

proved so useful to those writing universal history. At 8.3.30, where he tells the

history of Olympia and its games, he notes that the Eleans were not prosperous

‘in Trojan times and even before this’ (ŒÆa �b� ªaæ a æøØŒa ŒÆd Ø �æe

��ø�), having been humbled by the people of Pylos and later by Heracles,

when king Augeas was overthrown. Later still, after the return of the Heraclidae,

the Aetolians under Oxylus enlarged Coele Elis, gained control of Olympia and

invented the Olympic games.209 The Eleans remained in charge, as he states,

from theWrst to the twenty-sixthOlympiad. It is, however, noteworthy that there

is nothing systematic about this juxtaposition of various chronological indica-

tors, and no mention of the chronographic importance of the Olympiads.210

It is, however, not the case that Strabo had no interest in time and its eVects.

Indeed, he goes so far as to use ‘time’, in the abstract, as the subject of the

sentence, when he describes its destructive eVects.211 Strabo also, interestingly,

provides a deWnition of ‘extinction’ (Œº�ØłØ�) in relation to peoples and

places, namely when a people has vanished and their country is now totally

deserted, or when the ethnic name no longer exists and the political organ-

ization is no longer the same (9.5.12). If there are signiWcant changes of this

kind, he says, he must mention them. His concern for chronology, even when

dealing with the vague mythical past, is sometimes striking. At 8.6.2 he

worries about the chronological impossibility in genealogical terms of the

myth of Nauplius. If later writers grant that he was a son of Poseidon, he asks,

how can a man who was still alive at the time of the Trojan War have been the

209 At this point he comments that one should disregard accounts about the founding of thetemple and the establishment of the games by Heracles.210 I can Wnd only one instance of the use by Strabo of Olympiadic time, at 14.2.10 where he

notes the Rhodians’ expertise at sea, not only from the time of the synoecism of the current city,but ‘even for many years before the establishment of the Olympic games’ (ŒÆd �æe B�� ˇºı��ØŒB� Ł��ø� �ı��E� ��Ø�). It is clear that, although this phrase locates the Rhodianseafaring in chronological relation to the Olympics, this could not be described as a true use ofthe Oympiadic dating system.211 See 3.5.6: › �æ �� ØÆ�Ł��æfi �. See also 8.1.1, where Strabo notes that Homer tells of

ancient matters, ‘which are mostly obscured by time’.


son of this god and of Amymone? In fact, Strabo is himself guilty of the

chronological confusion here, since he is mixing up Nauplius, the son of

the aforementioned and distant ancestor of Palamedes, with Nauplius,

the father of Palamedes. Nevertheless, his identiWcation of a chronological

inconsistency for the mythical period is in itself noteworthy.

But temporal extent is regionally variable; some areas have a spatium mythi-

cum and a spatium historicum, others only the latter. Whether this is deter-

mined by the nature of sources for diVerent areas is diYcult to judge. Strabo’s

sense of change over time is both universal and localized. The great Mediter-

ranean chronological markers, such as the destruction of Troy and the return of

the Heraclidae, feature not only as markers of time, but also as events in their

own right at the mythological end of the spectrum covered by Strabo’s account.

But, through his presentation of city histories, his sense of change over time is

constructed discretely for each place described, in sharp contrast to Diodorus’

use of a coherent, systematic chronological framework.212 In that sense, Strabo

sits interestingly between the universal and the local.213

Having considered some of the strategies used in universal accounts for

indicating both the passage of time and the placing of particular events in

chronological relation to each other, I turn Wnally to another ‘foil’ for the way

in which local history was presented to the polis, namely the presentation of

time in works which deal with the non-Greek world.

6 . TELLING THE TIME FOR THE NON-GREEK WORLD

Next to the library and separated from it by a wall is an exquisitely built hall,

equipped with twenty dining places and containing statues of Zeus and Hera

and images of king Osymandeas. Here it seems the body of the king is

212 For the way inwhich Strabo relates the lives of individual cities, using predominantly relativechronological markers, such as ‘earlier’ or ‘later’, all that was needed for the internal life history of asingle place, see Clarke, Between Geography and History, 264–76. For the contrast with Diodorus,see Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’. The contrast is highlighted by the diVerenttreatment of literary history in each author—forDiodorus, the place for lists of literary and culturalevents is at the end of each year; for Strabo at the end of a description of a place, where he lists itsfamous oVspring. A tantalizing question remains over how Strabo might have ordered space andtime in his lost historical work. Generic considerations must surely be relevant here.

213 A further angle is, of course, the dominance of the universal power of Rome in the work.On this see Clarke, Between Geography and History, 210–28. For the way in which the Romanpresent dominates even Strabo’s interest in certain foundation stories, see F. Trotta, ‘TheFoundation of Greek Colonies and their Main Features in Strabo: A Portrayal Lacking Homo-geneity’, in D. Dueck, H. Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s Cultural Geography (Cambridge,2005), 118–28.


buried. And around this building in a circle is a huge number of chambers in

which are excellent pictures of Egyptian sacred animals, and through these

chambers is a staircase up to the tomb as a whole, with a golden border at the

top, three hundred and sixty-Wve cubits in circumference andone cubit wide.On

this the days of the year are inscribed, each one cubit long. By each day are the

risings and the settings of the stars as ordained by nature, and the eVects which

the Egyptian astrologers hold that they produce. They said that this border

was plundered by Cambyses and the Persians when he conquered Egypt.214

Diodorus Siculus’ wonderful description of the calendar frieze running around

the top of the staircase in the hall which formed the mausoleum of king

Osymandeas forms a perfect introduction to a consideration of how Greek

authors chose to articulate time and the past for parts of the non-Greek world

to which they devoted often extensive works. The passage is resonant with

associations. The hall containing the staircase is next to the library, with the

result that constructing, rather than merely being familiar with, time as an

abstract and malleable concept is appropriately juxtaposed with a repository of

learning and science. The context is not only intellectually charged, but also a

religious one,215 and furthermore the religious associations are both Greek and

native Egyptian. The time of the annual solar cycle is measured out spatially up

the stairs, and accompanied by the movements of the stars, both natural cycles

brought under the representational control of man in this context. The value of

such power and knowledge is encapsulated in the theft of the border of days by

the Persian conquerors. Such ‘alien wisdom’ in the Weld of time and its

construction will be one of the themes of this section.216

I shall, however, be considering not only the appreciation by Greek authors

of the same tendencies towards controlling and manipulating time in non-

Greek lands as they could Wnd in their own poleis, but also the chronological

frameworks which they themselves used to articulate the temporal aspects of

their own works in relation to other parts of the world. The two, of course,

often overlap, since Greek authors regularly claim to use native sources and

records in composing their accounts. Josephus, not without his own agenda,

claims in Contra Apionem to have shown that the tradition of keeping

chronicles of antiquity is found rather among non-Hellenic races than with

the Greeks.217 He notes that Berossus’ account of Phoenicia is supported by

214 FGrH 665 f 179 ¼ Diodorus Siculus 1.49.4.215 We have already seen the way in which religion and time management go hand in hand

through the festival calendar of Athens and other Greek poleis.216 A. Momigliano’s classic work, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge,

1975), does not in fact focus so much on the actual intellectual achievements of non-Greekpeoples as on the interaction between clashing civilizations.217 Josephus, Contra Ap. 1.58. This echoes his point earlier in the work that huge care was

taken by the Egyptians and the Babylonians over chronicles from ancient times. In Egypt thesewere entrusted to the priests; in Babylon to the Chaldaeans.

Telling the time for the non-Greek world 151

the Phoenician archives, which tell how the kings of Babylon subdued Syria

and all of Phoenicia.218 He comments that for very many years the people of

Tyre had kept public records (ªæ��ÆÆ ��fi Æ ª�ªæÆ��Æ), compiled and

carefully preserved by the state, of memorable events in their internal history

and in their relations with foreign nations.219 And, of course, Egypt was

notorious for its tradition of priestly record-keeping, which was the source

of much information for authors from the Greek world. I shall return to the

more speciWcally chronographical nature of Egyptian records, preservation

and commemoration of the past, but for now note simply their famed

expertise in keeping records of any kind.220

That even unlikely places could be prone to historical record-keeping in

this way is demonstrated by a fragment from the history of Armenia by Moses

of Chorene. When Valarsace had Wnished organizing his empire and wanted

to know his lineage, he sent to his brother Arsaces to open the Syrian royal

archives at Nineveh. There was found a document with a subscript in Greek

claiming that ‘this book was ordered by Alexander the Great and translated

from Chaldaean into Greek, and contains a list of the Wrst ancestors’.221 The

book was taken to Valarsace, who treasured it in the palace and had some of it

inscribed in stone—an interesting case of the royal records of Babylon being

used and immortalized in stone by an Armenian king.

An immediate methodological objection to setting such ‘alien wisdom’

against works of Greek historiography might be raised in so far as the writings

about non-Greek lands might be described as ethnographic rather than

historical, and therefore less prone to have a strongly articulated temporal

dimension.222 This is undoubtedly true of certain regions, for which the

extant works, admittedly fragmentary and scarce, give little or no indication

of any temporal patterning.223 Taking a geographical, rather than Jacoby’s

alphabetical, approach would lead us to identify particular large areas which

218 Ibid. 1.143. 219 Ibid. 1.106–11.220 See Herodotus 2.100.1, where he says that the priests told him the names of 330 kings;

FGrH 610 f 1, where it is stated that Eratosthenes had taken from the sacred records in Diospolisand translated from Egyptian into Greek the list of Theban kings, with the number and length ofeach reign, and the age of the cosmos; Diodorus 1.44.4–5 takes a diVerent view of the utility ofEgyptian records, noting that the priests have records of all the kings of Egypt, including theirstature, character, and deeds, information which Diodorus deems mostly useless.

221 FGrH 679 f 7 ¼ Moses, Hist. Arm. 1.7.3–8.222 For the view that historiography was appropriate only to Greek lands and ethnography or

geography to non-Greek lands, see F. Prontera, ‘Prima di Strabone: Materiali per uno studiodella geograWa antica come genere letterario’, in F. Prontera (ed.), Strabone: Contributi allo studiodella personalita e dell’Opera I (Perugia, 1984), 189–256, at 194.

223 This is true (in terms of Jacoby’s regions) of Aethiopia, Arabia, Bithynia, Epirus, Getaeand Goths, Illyria, India, Celts and Galatians, Caria, Cilicia, Cyprus, Libya, Lydia, Lycia,Macedonia, Pamphylia, Paphlagonia, Pontus, Scythia, Spain, Thrace.


were apparently not suited to chronological treatments, although they

attracted the interest of Greek authors for their customs, Xora, and fauna.

In short, chronologically interesting accounts survive of only Egypt in Africa,

Greece and Italy in Europe, and in Asia of the Fertile Crescent from Phoenicia

and Judaea round to India, and to a lesser degree some of the Greek cities of

Asia Minor. Thus there are large swathes of the known world, which authors

writing in Greek appear from the fragments not to have submitted to a

chronological treatment.

But yet more methodological problems arise. Is it the case that works on

these regions really were devoid of chronological interest, or has our picture

been distorted by the excerptors and citers who chose to write about them, and

selected from their sources in ways which answered their own ethnographic

requirements? One check on this might be to consider the patterns which

emerge from an author who treated the entire range of regions, such as Strabo,

to see whether the patterns are borne out there too. There are, however, dangers

of circularity here, since Strabo is often one of only few sources for the

fragmentary remains of works on an area, and we cannot determine whether

he is reXecting the original works in dealing with certain regions more chrono-

logically than others, or conversely skewing our picture of those sources with

his own view of how each region should be treated. It seems best to proceed

with caution here, reserving judgement on areas which appear to be lacking

chronological interest, in order to avoid the pitfalls of arguing ex silentio. At the

same time, it is possible to take a more positive approach to those areas where

chronological frameworks can be detected. Of particular interest are those

regions where there was a strong native interest in chronography and record-

keeping, with which Greek authors could and did engage.

In those areas for which little in the way of a chronological structure

emerges from the fragmentary remains of Greek writings, there are very few

hints of the chronological markers and systems which we have observed to be

used in Greek chronographic works, in more everyday contexts, in universal

historiography, and which we will see again in the fragments of local Greek

historiography. The technique of relative dating with reference to a well-

known event such as the Trojan War or the return of the Heraclidae is present

in the Hellenistic work on Phrygia by Hermogenes, with the note that king

Nannacis reigned ‘before the times of Deucalion’ (�æe H� ˜�ıŒÆº�ø��

�æ �ø�).224 The marker itself is not a standard one for the historiography of

Greece, although one might argue that it was clearly indicative of ‘very early’,

that is ‘before the Xood’. Etruria oVers an interesting case, since, although its

archaeology and epigraphy show that it was a polis-based region, Greek

224 FGrH 795 f 2.


writers do not seem to have seen it as such. Thus it attracted primarily

ethnographic and timeless treatments from Greek authors rather than anything

resembling historical narrative. However, one of the most striking of Etrurian

customs was precisely their interest in the arrangement of time. Thus, although

the region did not attract chronologically organized accounts, its own temporal

constructions are noted as a feature of its timeless present. Censorinus com-

ments on Etruscan cycles, not only as a form of natural time-measurement

(naturalia saecula), but also as a means of patterning and thereby, broadly

speaking, indicating when things happened. He mentions, for example, some

histories which were written in the eighth of their cycles (quae octavo eorum

saeculo scriptae sunt).225 The Suda notes under the heading ıææ��Æ (‘Etruscan

matters’) the account of an expert (��Øæ�� I�cæ) who told a creation story

lasting 12,000 years, with 1,000 years allocated to each major stage in the

development of the world.226 In fact the creation came in only six phases (as

in the Old Testament version) leaving 6,000 years as the span which man’s

presence on earth had to Wll out. We shall return to the more familiar traditions

of creation when considering the fragments of Greek historiography which

concern the Fertile Crescent, but the Etruscan notion of progressing cycles or

eras is one which is clearly not unique to that region.

The strange combination of complex views of the longue duree with a lack

of historical narrative which seems to characterize Etruria is strikingly at odds

with the writings on the rest of Rome and Italy. Dionysius of Halicarnassus

alleges that Fabius Pictor, the Wrst native to write a systematic account of

Roman history in Greek, was negligent in matters of chronology, as in other

aspects of his work.227 Nevertheless, the use of the annalistic structure as a

framework within which to write history immediately marks out Fabius and

the subsequent tradition of Roman annalists as engaged in an elevated level of

chronological interest and sophistication, albeit one which may seem unre-

markable given Rome’s political system. As the painted inscription from

Tauromenium so beautifully illustrates, Fabius clearly discerned a succession

of stages in Roman history.228 In the next chapter I shall discuss in more detail

225 FGrH 706 f 7b ¼ Censorinus, De Natura Deorum 17.5.226 FGrH 706 f 7a.227 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 4.30.2. Dionysius attributes the lack of chronological accuracy

to a broader trend: ‘so little evidence of a laborious enquiry over truth do we Wnd in thatauthor’s history’ (�oø� Oº�ª�� K�d� K� ÆE� ƒ��æ�ÆØ� ÆP�F e ��æd c� K��Æ�Ø� B� Iº�Ł��Æ�ÆºÆ��øæ��).

228 For the inscription, which summarizes Fabius’ history, see G. Manganaro, ‘Una bibliotecastorica nel ginnasio di Tauromenion e il P. Oxy. 1241’, Past and Present 29 (1974), 389–409, withC. P. Jones, ‘Graia Pandetur ab Urbe’,Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 97 (1995), 233–41 at235. As J. Reynolds, ‘Roman Inscriptions 1971–5’, Journal of Roman Studies 66 (1976), 174–99 at180, notes, the inscription makes indisputable the claim that Fabius wrote annals in Greek.


Jacoby’s arguments which dissociate the local historiography of Attica from

the annalistic tradition at Rome in terms of its dependence on priestly

records.229 But whatever the strength of the local annalistic formulation in

terms of magistracies at Rome, the annalists seem also to have located their

accounts in a wider framework of Olympiadic dating. As Dionysius states,

it was necessary to correlate Greek and Roman chronology,230 and he notes

that Quintus Fabius placed Rome’s foundation in the eighth Olympiad,

whereas Lucius Cincius Alimentus placed it in the fourth year of the twelfth

Olympiad.

The methodological diYculty here is, of course, that we cannot be certain

whether it really was the annalists who gave the Olympic dating or whether

that is Dionysius’ own gloss. If the Roman annalists themselves chose to place

Rome’s history not only in the framework of its own political system, but also

that accepted as the common currency for the history of the wider Mediter-

ranean, then it would say something about their historical interpretation of

Rome’s place in the world and perhaps, because of the Greek origins and

associations of the Olympiadic system, it would also reXect on Rome’s

cultural aspirations. On the other hand, interest by non-Roman historians

in drawing Rome and its past into that broader context might suggest that

Greek writers recognized Rome’s special status in the Mediterranean from

very early on and oVered it a chronological treatment which set it apart from

other non-Greek parts of the world. We may be witnessing early glimpses into

a widespread fascination (and fear) concerning the great Polybian question—

how had a single polis become so great so quickly? The Polybian story might

have focused on a Wfty-three year period of astonishing expansion, but a

broader question was also relevant and in a longer time span—where had this

emergent city state in the West come from? What were its mythological

claims? What, if any, links did it have to the Trojan story? What kinship

claims could it make?

The mythological origins of Rome formed a major element in the accounts

of both Roman and Greek writers on this area. Diodorus comments that

Fabius Pictor ‘mythologized’ on Aeneas and Romulus (7.5.4) and Dionysius

of Halicarnassus cites his extensive account of the Romulus and Remus story,

with the comment that others ‘consider that nothing of the more mytho-

logical element has any place in historical writing’ (�P�b� H� �ıŁø��æø�

229 Cicero, De Oratore 2.52 on early writers such as Fabius: historia nihil aliud nisi annaliumconfectio. Serv. Dan. on Vergil, Aeneid 1.373, notes that the record of ‘achievements at home andabroad by land and sea day by day’ (domi militiaeque terra marique gesta per singulos dies) gaverise to the Annales Maximi.230 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.74.1: ŒÆd �H� ¼� Ø� I��ıŁ��Ø �f� � .ø�Æ�ø� �æ ��ı� �æe�

�f� � ¯ºº��ØŒ��;


I�Ø�F�� ƒ��æØŒfi B ªæÆ�fi B �æ��Œ�Ø�).231 Other Roman annalists too incorp-

orated the mythical foundations of the city into their accounts, though

presumably not within the chronologically rigid structure of the rest of

their works.232 Greek authors writing about Rome clearly gave their works

the same extensive chronological scope. Promathion’s third-century history

of Italy dealt with the origins of Rome, according to Plutarch,233 Galitas’

work, supposed to be from roughly the same date, covered the period from

the death of Aeneas to the establishment of Romulus on the Palatine,234 and

Zenodotus of Troezen’s work from the second century bc took the broader

scope of Italy too, dealing with the early history of the Umbrians and Sabines,

and giving the mythological aetiology for Praeneste, named after the grand-

son of Odysseus.235

The diYculty entailed in providing the story to explain Rome’s growth not

just as an imperial power, but as a great city state with a link to Troy itself, is

made explicit by the authors themselves. Dionysius complains at the lack of

an accurate history of the Romans in Greek, even by his own time (1.5.4) and

asserts that even then most Greeks were ignorant of the early history of Rome,

thinking the Romans vagabonds, and successful through luck rather than

good judgement (1.4.2). He often stresses the hotly debated nature of the early

phases—the date of the foundation of Rome, on which he states his prefer-

ence for using Roman over Greek historians, but in view of their lack is

pushed towards older accounts on sacred tablets (1.73.1); the multiple ver-

sions of where Aeneas went; and the diversity of foundation myths for the city

(1.72.5). His decision to start his history ‘from the most ancient myths’

(1.8.1) is due to the fact that earlier historians have omitted the early period

as being diYcult to clarify. His citation of other authors rather contradicts

this, but his project clearly implies the validity of including the mythical

period in a historical work.

Rome thus constitutes a most unusual example of a non-Greek region. It

has a myth-history which more strongly resembles the past of the Greek poleis

than any other and a historiography to match—extended over a huge time

span from the foundation myths to the present day and, for the historical

period, employing some kind of systematic chronological framework.236

231 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.79–84.232 L. Cincius Alimentus is cited byDionysius 1.79.4 (¼ FGrH 810 f 2) on the founding of Rome

by the twins; C. Acilius by Plutarch, Life of Romulus 21.4 (¼ FGrH 813 f 2) on the same story.233 Plutarch, Romulus 2.3–8 ¼ FGrH 817 f 1.234 FGrH 818.235 FGrH 821 f 3 and 1.236 For more discussion of the historiographical appeal and complexity of early Rome with its

variant foundation myths, see ch. 4 with the excellent book by E. Dench, Romulus’ Asylum:Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian (Oxford, 2005).


Furthermore, the fact that it is presented to us by both native and Greek

writers is striking. It is true that many of the extant fragments of works

concerning Egypt and the Fertile Crescent were written by authors whose

Greek or non-Greek identity was hard to discern. Blurred boundaries in the

cultural identity of authors are, however, a rather diVerent matter from

discrete accounts by native and non-native writers. The growing supremacy

of Rome in the Mediterranean at the time when much of the historiography

was generated is surely a crucial factor in explaining the strong interest of

Greeks as well as Romans in formulating a past for the new world power. We

shall see later (in chapter 6) some of the ways in which the presentation of the

local history of Greece seems to have been tailored in distinctive ways in direct

response to the emergence of Roman dominion.

The Greek texts concerning Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, round through

Judaea, Phoenicia, and Babylonia, have an even stronger chronological focus.

If we consider these accounts in terms of mythological frameworks, then they

share with those even further round towards and into India a non-Greek

Xavour which is distinctively diVerent from the world of the Mediterranean.

But in chronological terms, India falls into a category containing only itself.

The fourth-century writer, Ctesias of Cnidus, creates a picture of India which

is almost timeless, setting out the customs, Xora, and fauna as though they

were eternally unchanging in a land unaVected by the progress of time. But

even here, a more careful reading reveals that the Indian landscape and its

inhabitants are imbued with temporal rhythms, and that the natural world

somehow pulsates of its own accord.

According to Ctesias, the Indians’ lifespan is one hundred and twenty, or

thirty, or even Wfty years; and at the most, they live for two hundred years.237

This extraordinary longevity is matched at the other end of the spectrum by

the bird which dies as the sun sets, thus providing the opposite extreme of the

way in which the individual life might be used to map out time in the way that

Solon indicated.238 The mountain-dwelling people oVer a further example of

how unusually human time operates in India. Reproduction is strikingly

presented as being a unique occurrence—no woman gives birth more than

once, and the babies are born already with teeth and hair, thereby defying the

usual eVects of the progression of time on the human form. The colour of

their hair is a measure of time, but inversely to the usual pattern, since they

are covered in white hair for one year and this gradually darkens until it

is entirely black by the time they reach sixty.239 Furthermore, the Indian

237 FGrH 688 f 45 §32.238 FGrH 688 f 45 §34. See the opening quote of ch. 1 and following discussion for the

attribution of this view of biographical time by Herodotus to Solon.239 FGrH 688 f 45 §50.


landscape has striking temporal rhythms—the sitachora tree weeps sap at a

particular season; the river Hyparchus runs with electrum one day each

year—thus oVering an internal clock with its own remarkable manifestation

of the passage of time.

India clearly operates in its own unique way. Its apparent timelessness

belies the existence of strong underlying temporal rhythms, but these are

naturally occurring and naturally manifested. If we are looking for humanly

constructed temporal patterns, it is the sweep of lands from Egypt to the

Persian Gulf which forms a discrete unit, and its coherence comes not only

from the similarity or equivalence of the systems used for organizing histor-

ical time, but also at a more basic level from the strikingly high degree of

interest in the calibration of time at all.

I have already cited Josephus several times for his notes on the record-

keeping practices of certain near-eastern peoples, such as the Chaldaeans and

the Egyptians. But his citations of Greek authors often reveal a very speciWc

interest in the precise dating of key events in the history of these regions. After

commenting that the people of Tyre had kept public records of memorable

events in their internal history and in their relations with foreign nations, he

goes on to note that the temple in Jerusalem was built by Solomon one

hundred and forty-three years and eight months before the foundation of

Carthage by Tyre, a strikingly precise piece of relative dating.240 There were

clearly key marker points in the history of this region, to which other events

could be anchored. According to Josephus, the great Xood was mentioned by

all writers of ‘barbarian histories’.241 But writers place the events of Phoen-

ician history also in relation to other markers, such as reigns and founda-

tions.242 The source of the later work on Phoenicia by Herennius Philo of

Byblos (Wrst to second century ad)243 is described as ‘older than the events at

Troy’, interestingly setting the historiography, if not the history, of Phoenicia

in a Greek chronographical framework.244 However, this source is also set in

240 FGrH 794 f 1c ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.106–11.241 Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae 1.93.242 FGrH 789 f 1a ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 10.228 citing Philostratus’ Phoenician

Histories in which he said that Nebuchodnosor was king at the same time as Ithobalus wasking of Tyre. See also FGrH 794 f 9¼ (Aristot.),Mis. Ausc. 134 on the foundation of Tyre placedtwo hundred and forty years before that of Carthage by Phoenicians, according to those whowrite Phoenician histories.

243 Working out precisely what part of the fragments is to be attributed to Philo is extremelydiYcult. His work is described as a translation into Greek of the history of Sanchuniathon,which Porphyry considers the truest account of the Jews, having taken the records fromHierombalus, the priest of the god Ieuo.

244 FGrH 790 f 1 ¼ Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 1.9.19–29 at 20: H� æøØŒH� �æ �ø� . . .�æ��æ��.


the same fragment in a near-eastern framework ‘close to the times of Moses’,

making the interstitial nature of the context clear.

Besides these attempts at chronological context, however, there is some-

thing prehistoric about the account brought from Sanchouniathon via Philo

into Greek. Sanchouniathon wanted, we are told, to know the history of all

the nations from the start of the world. He searched out the history of

Taautus, the Wrst to invent letters (›H� ªæÆ��ø� c� �oæ��Ø� K�Ø��Æ�)

and the writing of records (B� H� ��ø� ªæÆ�B� ŒÆ�æ�Æ�), and

started his history with the Egyptian Thoyth. The story resembles a creation

myth, including the discovery of Wre, the birth of allegorical Wgures in human

development such as Agreus and Halieus, the hunter and Wsher, the invention

of ships, and the building of the Wrst city by Cronus, namely Byblos.245

The theme of patterning time through the history of inventions, which we

shall see again when considering, inter alia, the Parian Marble, is one which

characterizes Greek accounts of the Fertile Crescent no less (and perhaps even

more) than those of the Greek world itself. The anonymous second-century

bc work attributed to Eupolemus and cited by Eusebius is replete with such

discoveries.246 Abraham is ascribed the invention of astronomy and Chaldaic

art. He is indeed seen as the source of such knowledge for other peoples too,

being sent by God to Phoenicia to teach astronomy, and travelling to Heli-

opolis in Egypt to introduce astronomy and the other sciences to them, with

the explicit claim that he and the Babylonians, rather than the Egyptians, had

made these intellectual discoveries.247 Thus Ps-Eupolemus develops Abraham

into not only an important ancestor of the Israelites, but also an international

Wgure, bringing culture and civilization to other peoples of the Mediterra-

nean, and thereby enhancing the status of the Jews and of Judaism. Artapanus

in his On the Jews also makes much of the inventor status of Abraham—

attributing to him the instigation of land distribution and the invention of

measures.248 Moses is ascribed by Artapanus an even greater role in the

development of civilization, being the inventor of ships, stone-laying ma-

chines, arms, water-drawing equipment, and hieroglyphics, alongside his

245 FGrH 790 f 1 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 1.9.19–29 at 23 for Taautus and literacy.246 For the fragments and excellent commentary, see C. R. Holladay, Fragments from Hellen-

istic Jewish Authors. Volume I Historians (Chico, California, 1983), 157–87. Holladay notes, 157,that the work seems to have interwoven biblical stories with elements of both Greek andBabylonian myth. Scholarly consensus is that the fragments are to be attributed not toEupolemus, but to an anonymous Samaritan author. But see E. S. Gruen, Heritage andHellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley and London, 1998), 147, for criticismof this view.247 See FGrH 724 f 1 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.17.248 FGrH 726 f 2 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.23.2.


status as a philosopher.249One could see the promotion of Jewish ‘heroes’ and

bringers of civilization in the writings of Hellenistic Jews as a clear manifest-

ation of cultural competitiveness, but caution is needed, since the tone of

these works seems often to be either scholarly or light-hearted and entertain-

ing, rather than motivated by serious patriotism.

Babylonia too gave rise to some interesting invention myths—again, map-

ping out time through the history of the development of civilization. The

early third-century bc author Berossus250 included in his work on Babylonia

not only the Xora and fauna of the region, but also something resembling a

creation myth, in which the sea creature, Oanne, is the driving force. He says

that in the Wrst year this creature emerged from the Red Sea, having the body

of a Wsh, a man’s head over that of a Wsh, and a man’s feet emerging from a

Wsh’s tail. His voice was that of a man, and he spent the daytime giving men

knowledge of letters, learning and all the arts, the creation of cities and

hunting of wild beasts, laws, geometry, agriculture, and all life skills. There

was, according to Berossus, no time of greater invention.251 Further hybrids

follow in Berossus’ account and this peculiar world was ruled over by a

woman named Omorca (‘Thalassa’ by the Greeks). The god Belus cut this

woman in half and made her into earth and heaven and completed the

creation of stars, sun, moon, and Wve planets.

The appearance of sea creatures seems to have articulated Babylonian time

for several writers. Berossus himself uses the appearance of the Wshlike

Annedotus from the Red Sea to punctuate his list of kings, in which he starts

with Alorus and gives the length of each reign.252 But the later writer,

Abydenus, uses the same technique, again incorporating into his king list

for Babylonia not only the lengths of reigns, which in succession provide

a continuous sweep across the whole span of time, but also the discrete

249 FGrH 726 f 3 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.27.4. Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic JewishAuthors, 189, notes the obscurity of Artapanus’ identity—the fragments being too syncretisticto have been produced by a Jew, but the preoccupation with Jewish heroes too pronounced tohave been produced by a non-Jew. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 87, more conWdentlydescribes Artapanus as ‘a Hellenized Jew in Egypt’. As Holladay, 190, notes, the genre is perhapsbest described as ‘popular romance literature’, and the author, for all his Judaism, seems to feelfree to reshape biblical traditions at will. Gruen, 156–60, presents a convincing case for aneven more subtle and humorous version of Moses in this tradition, displaying playful invent-iveness rather than serious and competitive patriotism.

250 Berossus wrote for Antiochus I, and clearly used his work to present Babylonian culture andwisdom to the new Greek/Macedonian regime of the Seleucids. But, as S. M. Burstein, TheBabyloniaka of Berossus (Malibu, 1978), 9, notes, there were few concessions made to Greekreaders in terms of conceptual framework, and the diYculty of accepting, for example, theexistence of Oanne, a sea creature living 432,000 years before the Xood, was almost insurmount-able for those brought up on a notion of the past which essentially started with the Trojan War.

251 FGrH 680 f 1.252 FGrH 680 f 3b.


moments at which Annedotus came out of the sea.253 Water dominates these

accounts in other ways too, since the standard chronological marker is the

great Xood. Berossus is said by Josephus to have related the history of

Babylonia from the Xood onwards and to have told of Noah and his descend-

ants, giving dates—a neat combination of a chronological marker-post,

generational spans, and years.254 His king list which started with Alorus

runs as far as Xisuthrus, ‘under whom was the great Xood’.255

The wisdom of Babylonia and of Judaea was clearly not only the general,

albeit useful, wisdom of the inventor Wgures; it also extended to matters

chronological.256 Berossus’ king list is detailed and systematic—giving the

lengths of reigns in the local measures of saroi, neroi, and sossoi, for which the

equivalent number of years is noted.257 But he also oVers a striking example of

macro- and microtime combined. When Cronus stands over Xisuthrus in a

dream he foretells that mankind will be destroyed by a Xood on the Wfteenth

of Daisios.258 This is an interesting juxtaposition of an event, which had

catastrophic consequences and which would be used in grand-scale chron-

ology, and a date which is speciWc to the day and formulated in terms of a

monthly calendar as was characteristic of the Greek poleis.

Ctesias of Cnidus had a reputation for being inaccurate over matters of

chronology and preferring, in essence, to tell a good story.259 Plutarch com-

plains that Ctesias should know the chronology of events well, especially those

at which he was himself present, but that he ‘changes the action away from its

proper time’.260 His narrative at times clearly supports this allegation, being

non-speciWc in terms of chronological relationship to other events, lacking

indications of temporal duration or punctuation markers. Other fragments,

however, suggest that Ctesias was interested in the large timescale of the rise

and fall of empires.261 When the Assyrian empire of Sardanapallus fell to the

253 FGrH 685 f 2b. 254 FGrH 680 t 3 ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.128–31.255 FGrH 680 f 3b: › ��ªÆ� ŒÆÆŒºı�� .256 Although the dominance of Eusebius in the preservation of the fragments relating to

Judaea should not be overlooked. It is quite possible that his own chronographical interests aredistorting our view of the historiography of these regions. However, Josephus’ similar pictureprovides some reassurance.257 FGrH 680 f 3b.258 FGrH 680 f 4b.259 See D. Lenfant, Ctesias de Cnide: La Perse. L’Inde. Autres fragments (Paris, 2004), whose

superb and substantial introduction to her new Bude edition treats the life, works, literary andhistorical qualities, as well as the textual tradition, in such depth and detail as to settle once andfor all the question of whether Ctesias is a historian of suYcient interest and complexity as torepay serious analysis.260 FGrH 688 f 29: KŒ �F �æ ��ı ��Æ�B�ÆØ e æª��. Here Plutarch accuses Ctesias of

turning to ‘the mythical and the dramatic, away from the truth’.261 See FGrH 688 f 33a, a scholion on Aristeides, Panathenaicus 301, in which the theory of

the succession of Wve empires is set out, with Ctesias’ dates up to the Persian empire, whichsuggests that he was a well-known authority on such matters of chronology.


Medes, it was, according to Ctesias, after more than 1,300 years, the longest-

lasting empire in history, having endured thirty generations from the time of

Ninus, a neat combination of two chronological systems.262 The notion of a

king list with names of kings and lengths of reigns is explicitly rejected on the

grounds that nothing worthy of mention was achieved by individual rulers in

that time, with one exception—namely, the sending of an Assyrian force

under Memnon to help Priam of Troy. This is a fascinating admission of

the tedium of the Assyrian period, at least from the Hellenocentric perspec-

tive, and a clear indication that the lack of history worth relating implied the

lack of need for chronological calibration and articulation. If there were no

events for the historian to discuss, then there was no need to know where to

place them in a chronologically ordered narrative, nor how large the gaps

between them were. But the sole event worthy of mention was one which

acted as a bridge between the world of eastern kings and that of perhaps the

most famous of all chronological landmarks in the Greek chronographical

tradition, the Trojan War.

Greek authors writing about Judaea also entered into a world of numbers.

Demetrius, for example, probably writing in late third-century bc Alexandria,

relates the complex story of Jacob’s Xight to Mesopotamia after his quarrel

with Esau, his marriages to Leah and Rachel, his journey back towards

Canaan during which he is intercepted by an angel and renamed Israel,

followed by his travels to Emmor’s house, then to Bethel, then Chaphratha

and Ephratha (Bethlehem), and to his father, Isaac.263 The tale continues as a

series of apparently perpetual migrations, but perhaps even more striking is

the number of Wgures at every point in the story—the age of each player in

years and months, often combined with relative dates. For example, Jacob is

said to have arrived in Egypt in the third year of the famine there, when his

relatives (all named) were their respective ages (most, but not all, in years and

months). The account then continues to Joseph’s stay in Egypt, which it notes

as being of thirty-nine years’ duration. This is set in the grand chronological

context of the history of the area, there being 3,624 years from the time of

Adam until Joseph’s relatives came to Egypt and 1,360 years from the Xood

until Jacob came to that region. It is ironic that, in spite of the proliferation of

Wgures and calculations, through this kind of comparison, involving two

diVerent Wxed chronological points, Demetrius leaves the reader signiWcantly

more confused about the order of events than before. A further fragment of

Demetrius’ work charts the genealogy of Moses’ wife, Sephora, stating with

pleasure, satisfaction, and no doubt some relief that ‘the generations are in

262 FGrH 688 f 1b ¼ Diodorus 2.1–28. 263 FGrH 722 f 1 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.21.1–20.


accord’,264 since he can then go on to list the ancestors of Moses from

Abraham onwards.

The fragments of Demetrius’ history give us a remarkable range of methods

for conWguring, mapping out, and measuring time, albeit in the most con-

fusing manner. Indeed, he has sometimes been deemed more of a chrono-

grapher than a historian,265 and his focus is clearly on solving the

chronological problems of the biblical stories,266 rather than on the creation

of a glorious and heroic past for Judaea, which characterizes the work of later

Hellenistic Jewish historians such as Artapanus. It appears that Demetrius was

not trying to place Judaea or its history within a broader narrative or within a

set of comparative chronological schemes, but to solve some of its internal

inconsistencies presumably for an educated, Greek-speaking, Jewish reader-

ship. The introspective nature of his work is interestingly reXected in his

articulation of time. Some of the temporal systems he uses are local—the

Egyptian famine, like the Peloponnesian War for Thucydides, provides its

own internal time frame; some make use of the great Wxed markers of the

history of the region, such as the Xood and the exodus;267 some use an even

broader time frame including elements of the creation story; and alongside

these huge chronological sweeps stands the time frame of the individual

human life.268 It seems to make as much sense to map out time by successive

generations or to date an event to a particular point in the life of an individual

as to the third year of a major famine. But, whatever the scale, the time is not

Panhellenic or universal, but Jewish throughout.

But for the most stunning example of a non-Greek land which was notori-

ous for its chronographical interests, we should turn to Egypt. We have

already noted the marvellous staircase by the tomb of Osymandeas, and,

more prosaically, the general predilection for accurate record-keeping in

Egypt.269 The Egyptian fascination with recording and measuring time was

264 FGrH 722 f 2 ¼ Eusebius, P.E. 9.29.2: ŒÆd a� ª��a� �b �ı��ø��E�.265 See Holladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors, 52.266 But see Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism, 113, for the view that Demetrius’ interest in

chronology is part of a broader concern for solving puzzles and inconsistencies in Genesis andExodus. The fact remains that many of these problems were of a chronological nature, such ashow Jacob could father twelve children in seven years, for which Demetrius ingeniously providesa workable timetable (FGrH 722 f 1).267 For other examples of the Xood used as a chronological marker, see FGrH 724 f 1 and 728

f 1; for the dating of the exodus as a controversial matter, 728 f 2.268 Of course, the lives of some individuals were more obviously resonant than others. The

importance of the individual life in conceptualizing or measuring the time of history isreminiscent of Herodotus’ Solon, with whom this book started.269 An interesting parallel is the corselet, with 360 threads, dedicated by King Amasis at the

temple of Athene in Lindos—clearly referring to the number of days in a year (minus theintercalary ones) and beautifully encapsulating the Egyptian preoccupation with time throughthe choice of gift. See FGrH 532, and discussion in ch. 6.


a spectacular aspect of their culture, which attracted much admiration and

comment. Herodotus noted that the Egyptians were always keeping calcula-

tions and writing down the years.270 Indeed he attributes to the Egyptians the

invention of the year and its twelve-part division, based on their observation

of the stars (2.4.1). Strabo too made Egypt into the source of chronographic

wisdom for the Greeks, saying that the priests of Heliopolis could tell the

fractions of day and night which Wlled out the time of the true year.271 It was

only ‘recently’ that the Greeks gained access to this wisdom, which was clearly

superior to their system of intercalary months.272

One of the reasons for the development of Egyptian excellence in matters

chronographic was the extreme longevity of the land and its people. The

Egyptians were widely claimed to be the oldest race on earth, and the second-

century ad author Asclepiades wrote a history of them which covered more

than 30,000 years.273 Egyptian history was thought to go back to the times of

the gods—Diodorus Siculus states that it is the only land in the inhabited

world where many of the Wrst cities were founded by gods.274 He and other

writers would try to establish a chronology for Egypt which could incorporate

this divine period as well as being anchored to more conventional markers

and chronological systems from the Greek historiographical tradition. He

records (1.44.1) the mythical claim of some that gods and heroes ruled Egypt

for 18,000 years, followed by 5,000 years of mortal rule down to the eightieth

Olympiad and he notes (1.26.1) the claim of the priests that there were 23,000

years from the reign of Helios to the crossing of Alexander to Asia.275

270 Herodotus 2.145.3: I��ªæÆ� ��Ø a �Æ. Indeed it is Egyptian priests’ knowledge of thedistant past which qualiWes them to be described as logioi. According to P. Vannicelli, ‘Herod-otus’ Egypt and the Foundations of Universal History’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craftin the Age of Herodotus (Oxford, 2001), 211–40 at 214, deciding who was logios outside the worldof the Greek polis was one of Herodotus’ concerns; that is, determining the location of alienwisdom.

271 Heliopolis was clearly a centre of chronographic excellence. Herodotus (2.3.1) notes thatits inhabitants were the greatest chroniclers of the Egyptians.

272 Strabo 17.1.29. Strabo later (17.1.46) gives some detail on the Egyptian system of solar,rather than lunar, reckoning, with the intercalation of an extra day every so often, the equivalentof our leap year. Herodotus 2.4.1 also notes the superiority of Egyptian over Greek calendricwisdom.

273 See FGrH 614 f 1 for some of those who propounded this view contra Herodotus. ForAsclepiades, see FGrH 624 t 1.

274 1.12.6. The divine history of Egypt was noted too by Herodotus, who claimed a place forHeracles among the Egyptians when, 17,000 years before Amasis, the eight gods became twelve(2.43.4). He records (2.145.2) that the Egyptians believed that Heracles was part of a secondphase of gods and that even between Dionysus and Amasis was a span of 15,000 years.

275 Elsewhere (1.23.1), he puts the length of time between Osiris and Isis and the reign ofAlexander at more than 10,000 years, but notes that some give the Wgure as 23,000. Again,Alexander the Great makes an appropriate marker against which to align the divine history ofEgypt.


He marvels at the age of the pyramids (1.63.5), some over three thousand

years old, and indeed the Wgures involved in Egyptian history are strikingly

large. For Diodorus, they were not only too high, they were unbelievable. His

explanation is that at Wrst they reckoned the year by a lunar cycle with the

result that a ‘year’ was really only thirty days; and that later they counted each

season—spring, summer, and winter—as a ‘year’, a period of four months.276

A further problem lay in the fact that, in spite of the Egyptians’ best eVorts to

keep accurate and full records, such things were vulnerable to destruction. As

Dio Chrysostom states, the Egyptians wrote their history in sacred books and

on stelae, but the stelae were destroyed and the inscriptions erased.277 Chaer-

emon of Alexandria records a more dramatic tale of how the Nile Xooded and

destroyed all the Egyptian astronomical books, so that the Egyptians were

obliged to consult the Chaldaeans to Wnd out the eclipses and re-establish

their grip on time and its management. The Chaldaeans were reluctant to

share their knowledge and deliberately ‘changed the times’ (�� æ ��ı�

��ººÆ�Æ�). So the Egyptians in despair established their own scholars and

discovered and wrote the truth on baked bricks so that they could not be

destroyed by Wre or Xood.278 The value of ‘knowing time’ was clearly high.

Bearing in mind this association of Egypt with chronological expertise, it is

no surprise to Wnd a wide and sophisticated range of temporal systems in play

in the texts concerning Egypt, even when these are the products of Greek pens.

The two voices are not, in any case, dissociable, as I have mentioned before,

since the existence of detailed and accurate sources would have facilitated as

well as encouraged the incorporation of chronological features into the Greek

accounts. Some standard elements of Greek chronography appear. The Wrst-

century ad author Apion of Oasis and Alexandria was said by Josephus to be

in accord with previous writers in placing the exodus under Moses in the Wrst

year of the seventh Olympiad, the year when the Phoenicians founded

Carthage.279 The same author, clearly interested in the relationship between

Egyptian and Greek culture, notes that the Egyptians also call Aphrodite

276 Diodorus Siculus 1.26.3–5. See also FGrH 665 f 170¼ Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum 22B,commenting that, if Eudoxus is right, the Egyptians call a month a year, with the result that thecounting up (I�Ææ�Ł��Ø�) of these years is not remarkable. A strange reference in Augustine’sDe Civitate Dei (12.11) to Leon of Pella (c.300 bc) on Alexander, which relates various eventschronologically to his lifetime, comments that the numbers work out in Egyptian accountsmuch larger than when the Greeks calculate them, since ‘the Egyptians have short years’ (FGrH659 f 3).277 Dio Chrysostom, Oration 11.38.278 FGrH 618 f 7. Berossus of Babylon relates that, when the great Xood was foretold, the

Babylonians were advised to preserve the writings in the city of Heliou Sispari, before embarkingon a boat with their relatives and friends, so that they could come back and collect them whenthe waters receded (FGrH 680 f 4b).279 FGrH 616 f 4 ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 2.15.


Athor, and have given this name to the third month of the year.280 We might

argue for the same kind of assimilation, this time on a grander chronological

scale, with Josephus’ comment that, if one added up all the years enumerated

by Manetho, one would discover that the Jews left Egypt 393 years before

Danaus went to Argos, which contradicted the commonly held view that

Danaus was the most ancient of men, but it seems fairly clear that Josephus is

the force behind wishing to line up two diVerent chronological worlds here.

But by far the most common conWguration of time in the accounts of Egypt

is that of the king list. Herodotus notes that after the Wrst Egyptian king, Min,

one could name 330 kings, including eighteen Ethiopian ones and one

woman, Nitocris (2.100.2). The Egyptian records included the king list

from Thebes, which Eratosthenes was said to have taken from the sacred

records at Diospolis and translated into Greek.281Herodotus wrote of the king

lists in terms of generations (2.142.1), and it is easy to see how this conWgura-

tion would lend itself to such calibration.

The standard format for an Egyptian king list is most clear to see from the

fragments of Manetho of Sebennytos. This Egyptian historian and priest

(probably of Ra at Heliopolis) broke new ground by organizing his history

of Egypt according to dynasties. Josephus describes Manetho’s account of the

Hyksos dynasty, which lasted 511 years before their expulsion from Egypt, as

having given the length of each reign.282 He says that he consulted it for ‘the

chronological order’ (� H� �æ �ø� ��Ø�), going on to cite the series of reigns

from Tethnocis onwards in terms of years and months.283 Eusebius and

Syncellus oVer a picture of Manetho’s king list which is rather hard to

interpret, but it seems that it listed monarchs, lengths of reign, lengths of

dynasties, and noteworthy events. This includes both human and divine

dynasties, as noted before, in an almost entirely formulaic way, relating

these also to the age of the cosmos. The last fragment to appear under

Manetho’s name in Jacoby’s corpus is an extensive king list stretching from

Hephaestus to the capture of Egypt by Cambyses. It concludes with the note

that, in the 4,986th year of time, the dynasty of the Egyptians which reached

from the 2,776th year of the cosmos in 10 dynasties and 86 kings and covered

2,211 years, was captured by Cambyses, in the 86th year of Amasis’ reign.284 In

Brown’s view, ‘Manetho provided a chronology that might well have become

a universal standard of reference, far better than the priestesses of Hera, the

archons of Athens or the Olympic Games,’285 but it was the Aegyptiaca of

Hecataeus of Abdera rather than that of Manetho which continued to be read.

280 FGrH 616 f 20. 281 FGrH 610 f 1 and f 2.282 FGrH 609 f 8 ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.74–92.283 FGrH 609 f 9 ¼ Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.93–105.284 FGrH 609 f 28.285 Brown, ‘The Greek Sense of Time in History’, 268.


The king list, then, oVers a continuous account, in so far as each reign is

contiguous with the next and by adding up the consecutive lengths of reigns,

one can calculate the entire chronological span of the series of dynasties.

However, it is a span of time which is anchored to the ‘natural’ time of the

cosmos, and shaped not only by the transition of power from one individual

to another, but also by great events which act as chronological punctuation

marks. Apion of Oasis showed that the great events could be marvels, in

keeping with the miraculous nature of the land itself. Aelian cites him for the

point that, in the reign of Athotis a two-headed crane appeared and Egypt

Xourished; while in the reign of Hyllus, a four-headed bird was seen and the

Nile Xooded as never before.286 Other wonders marked out Egyptian time.

Every Wve thousand years the phoenix Xew to India, made a nest, and was

burned up, but soon afterwards another was born on an altar in Heliopolis—a

striking, though one might argue fairly unhelpful, mapping out of time on the

grandest scale.287

This section started with an example of how the calibration of time could

be a marvel in its own right. Nowhere was this more vividly illustrated than in

the dynamic form of the procession which took place in Alexandria under

Ptolemy Philadelphus, related by Callixenus of Rhodes in the mid-second

century bc, and cited by Athenaeus.288 The scene is set for a temporally

striking display, with the note that the temperate nature of Egypt enabled it

to defy the constraints of the seasons in its produce, including astonishing

Xowers at this winter procession. The procession itself started in the morning

and was thus led by the group of the morning star. Then followed others, with

the evening star bringing up the rear. There were victories and incense bearers

and a man called ‘the year’ (n� �æ��ª�æ�� ¯�ØÆı �),289 a woman called

Penteteris (a period of Wve years), accompanied by four seasons carrying

appropriate fruits, and images of empire with representatives of a panoply

of diVerent exotic lands. Thus both space and, here more interestingly, time

were ordered, lined up, and made to process in honour of the ruler in exotic

fashion, as beWtted the ‘alien’ context.

The purpose of this chapter has been to look at the chronological systems and

structuring devices by which the past was conWgured in accounts of places

other than the Greek polis. This may highlight more clearly whether the

writers and composers of Greek city histories had particular and distinctive

286 FGrH 616 f 13.287 FGrH 661 f 4.288 See FGrH 627 f 2 ¼ Athenaeus 5.25–35.289 See E. E. Rice, The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Oxford, 1983), 50, for the

point that eniautos rather than etos signiWed any twelve-month span made up by the accom-panying horai, rather than a calendar year.


strategies in this regard, which in turn might be revealing of the relationship

between the polis and the telling of its past. The writers of universal or

Panhellenic accounts clearly had a range of chronological options which

enabled them to create narratives which meaningfully spanned many diVerent

places. Their strategies tended to diVer between the mythical period and

historical time, but both were important to the account, and we shall need

to consider whether the same distinctions and inclusions apply in more local

histories. The earlier periods tend to be punctuated by large-scale Panhellenic

events such as the Trojan War or the return of the Heraclidae; later periods are

articulated either by the universal Olympiadic system or by a combination of

this with the magistracies of signiWcant places such as Athens and Rome.

Again, we shall need to see whether in the local histories such universal

chronological systems, or at least common chronological currencies, are

used, or whether time is marked out for the past of individual poleis in

terms which are meaningful at only a local level, making the account less

comprehensible to a wider audience but perhaps more signiWcant to the

inhabitants of the polis in question. A Wnal consideration which we may use

to cast into relief the nature of historical time in the Greek polis is that of the

historiography of the non-Greek world and, as we have seen, although the

concern with time, especially in the case of places such as Egypt, rivals that of

the more chronologically interested polis, the frames used are distinctively

non-Greek, comprising relevant local punctuation marks such as the great

Xood, or local king lists. With these questions in mind, let us turn to consider

the extant fragments of local Greek historiography.


IV

‘City is history incarnate’:1

writing the past of the polis

1. FROM THE CITY OF BYZAS TO CONSTANTINOPLE

�� ŒÆd ��Œ��Æ ŒÆd æØÆŒ��ø� I�e B� `Pª��ı ˚Æ��Ææ�� Ææ��Æ�

�Ø�º�ºıŁ ø� K�ØÆıH� . . . ˚ø��Æ�E�� › ˚ø��Æ��ı �ÆE� . . . c� ��Æ�I��Ø � .�� . . . º�Œ�� b ��E� ‹�ø� � K� Iæ�B� ª�ª�� ŒÆd ��e ��ø�I�øŒ��Ł�; KŒ H� Iæ�Æ�ø� ��Ø�H� ŒÆd �ıªªæÆ��ø� c� �� Ł��Ø�

��Ø�ı��Ø�.

When three hundred and sixty-two years had passed since the monarchy of

Augustus Caesar, Constantine the son of Constantius . . . established the new

Rome . . . I must tell how it [sc. Constantinople] came into existence right from

the start and by whom it was founded, forming a judgement of my subject

from the ancient poets and historians.2

The sixth-century ad account by Hesychius Illustris of Miletus of the foun-

dation of Constantinople might seem an unlikely starting point for exploring

a historical and literary phenomenon, for which the majority of our evidence

relates to the fourth century bc and the Hellenistic period. However, the

‘potted’ city history, which follows the introductory comments above, neatly

encompasses very many of the elements which occur in a more disparate form

throughout the fragmentary remains of earlier Greek local historiography.

The declared use of poetic and historiographical sources (§2),3 the initial

foundation expedition undertaken by the Argives on the advice of an oracle

(§3),4 the entry of the colonists into an already mythical landscape, at the

1 The quote is from Y.-F. Tuan, ‘Space, Time, Place: A Humanistic Frame’, in T. Carlstein,D. Parkes, and N. Thrift (eds.), Timing Space and Spacing Time I: Making Sense of Time(London, 1978), 7–16 at 15.2 FGrH 390 f 1.3 On the combination and the blurred boundary between poetic and historiographical media

for the exposition of the past, see discussion in ch. 6.4 The Pythian oracle concerned, promising wealth to those who settle in a particular place, is

given in verse. Oracles are a common element in Herodotean stories of colonization. At Herod-otus 4.155, Battus is told by the Pythia, unprompted, to found a city in Libya and misunderstandsthis unsolicited instruction; at 4.156 the Therans themselves seek clariWcation and set out on theinitially ill-fated, but Wnally successful, colonizing expedition. At the opposite end of the spectrum

conXuence of the rivers Cydarus and Barbyse where they Xowed into the sea

by the altar of the nymph called Semestre (§3)—all are common features of

the local histories of the Greek poleis. The existence of an alternative account

(§5) involving the Megarians under the leadership of Byzas, after whom they

named the city, raises the importance not only of named founder Wgures,5 but

also of etymological explanations in local history, linking place names with

particular events and people in the past. Furthermore, etymological accounts

themselves often took various forms—others, we are told, explained the name

of the city of Byzantium not through the leader of the Megarians, but through

the story of the nymph, Semestre, whose son was called Byzas (§5).6

Hesychius, following those who wish for a trustworthy account (�ØŁÆ�c�

c� ƒ��æ�Æ�) interestingly rejects all of these versions in favour of a story

involving Io, the daughter of Inachus the Argive king, in an interesting

combination of the local and the Panhellenic. This version relates the well-

known tale of how Io, raped by Zeus, turns into a cow, and is driven forth

by a jealous Hera. In this version, her daughter, Ceroessa, having been

brought up by the nymph, Semestre, bears a son to Poseidon, namely Byzas

(§§6–9). The exploits of Byzas lead him through a landscape which is tied to

the Trojan tale—he reaches the Bosporan headland named Chrysopolis after

Chryses, the son of Chryseis and Agamemnon, who has Xed there from

Clytemnestra after the death of his father, and whose burial the name com-

memorates for the locals.7 There Byzas founds his city with the help of

Poseidon and Apollo, and establishes a panoply of cults, including not only

gods, but also heroes.8

of enthusiasm, at 5.42–3, Dorieus of Sparta sets oV to found a city in Libya without consulting thePythian oracle and is driven out. Having learned his lesson, he consults Delphi before securingthe winning formula, namely to found a colony in Sicily instead. For an interesting analysis ofthe narrative pattern whereby foundations are channelled through Delphi, especially where theyfollow a murder, thereby playing on the identity of Apollo the puriWer and Apollo the colonizer,see C. Dougherty, ‘It’s Murder to Found a Colony’, in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.), CulturalPoetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics (Oxford, 1998), 178–98.

5 For the named individual as founder of a city, see the famous example of Battus who led theexpedition to found Cyrene (Herodotus 4.150–8). M. Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past:Colonial Traditions and the Writing of History. The case of Cyrene’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), TheHistorian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford, 2001), 116–37, suggests that the ritual contextsurrounding the hero cult of Battus acted as a context for the continued circulation andtransmission of the story at a local level (121). For the complexities of the tradition surroundingthe foundation of Cyrene, see R. Osborne, Greece in the Making 1200–479 bc (London and NewYork, 1996), 8–17. Battus’ tomb is still pointed out to visitors to Cyrene.6 See Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 185, for the importance of autochthonous Wgures in local

foundationmyths: ‘Byzas spielt die Rolle des inmutterslandischen Œ��Ø� hauWgen Autochthonen.’7 It is worth noting the local element here (§11: �E� Kª�øæ��Ø�) set alongside the much

broader context of the Trojan story.8 Here there are yet more Trojan echoes. Not only do major divinities such as Hecate and

Rhea receive cults, but so too are altars set up to Ajax and Achilles (§16).

170 Writing the past of the polis

The city founded by Byzas comes under successive attack, not least from

Scythians led by Strombus, joined by the leaders of Greece, the Rhodians, and

Dineus of the neighbouring city, Chalcedon, who had come there as a colonist

from Megara ‘nineteen years before the rule of Byzas’ (§20).9 Not only does

this provide a relative chronology linking the histories of the two cities, but it

also gives rise to another set of place name etymologies, this time for

Chalcedon, which was named either after the river, or after the city of Chalcis

in Euboea fromwhich colonists were sent, or after the son of the seer, Chalcas,

‘who was born after the Trojan War’ (§21).10 Thus we Wnd yet another thread

linking this local history to a well-known and universally understood chrono-

logical marker.

The linked histories of Byzas and Chalcedon continue with a shift of policy

on Dineus’ part from attack to alliance, and ‘a little later’ (�ØŒæHØ ª� �c�

o��æ��) he takes control of Byzantium ‘at the time when races of monsters

were attacking the city’ (§23). The transition of power from Dineus to Leon

marks a new stage in the chronological framework of the city’s history, since it

was under his rule that Philip of Macedon besieged it, only to be defeated by

the Byzantines (§§26–7). In this city history, structured at this stage by the

apparently endless stream of visitors, the next to call is Chares the Athenian.

His wife falls ill and dies, but Hesychius cites the inscribed verse epitaph

which was set up for her, which, as he states, had been preserved to his own

day, forming a neat proof of historical veracity and a link between past and

present.11 The civilizing of the site chosen by Byzas is completed by Timesius,

an Argive who synoecized the city of Ephesiate with Byzantium and, as

strategos of the whole, developed it greatly, establishing laws for everyday

transactions and ‘modes of behaviour which had the polis in mind and were

gentle, through which he made the citizens thoughtful for the town and

humane’ (§32).12 This process naturally involves piety to the gods—Timesius

9 ��ŒÆ ŒÆØ K��Æ ��æ��Ł�� Ø� B� ´��Æ�� ÆPÆæ��Æ�.10 o��æ�� F æøØŒ�F ��º��ı ª��ı.11 FGrH 390 f 1 §29: lØ� �Øa H� Kªª�ªæÆ��ø� ��ø� ��æØ H� ŒÆŁ� ��A� �ØÆ��Ø��ÆØ

�æ �ø�. Supporting a historical narrative by physical remains, which guarantee the truth of thetale and thereby the authority of the historian is, of course, a technique used extensively byHerodotus. See 1.24 for the small bronze Wgure of a man on a dolphin in the temple atTaenarum, which veriWes the tale of Arion, or 1.50 for the diminished remains of the goldenlion dedicated by Croesus to appease the Delphic god, which ‘lies today in the Corinthiantreasury’, along with a golden mixing bowl ‘which now stands in the treasury of the Clazome-nians’, a silver one ‘which is in the corner of the ante-chapel’ (1.51), and a golden shield andspear ‘which were still at Thebes in my own day, in the temple of Ismenian Apollo’ (1.52). ThusHerodotus, in a very Pausanian mode, evokes a partially-ruined landscape made up of theguarantors of his narrative.12 The language here is very suggestive: Ł� ŒÆŁØ�a� ��ºØØŒ� � ŒÆd l��æÆ; �Ø� z� I��ı� �

ŒÆd �ØºÆ�Łæ��ı� �f� ��º�Æ� I��Ø��. The terminology of political life and civilizationbrought to bear on barbarism with positive eVect is utterly unambiguous.

From the city of Byzas to Constantinople 171

paid attention not only to extending but also to restoring the religious life of the

city (§33), a context which oVers yet another opportunity to embed the

narrative in a wider framework, since one of his restorations was of a temple

on the Pontic coast ‘which Jason had once dedicated to the twelve gods’ (§33).13

From this point, Hesychius adopts a diVerent strategy, no longer building

up the history of Byzantium through time, but rather taking a broad brush-

stroke approach to the political systems employed by the city across the ages:

mostly a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, with occasional tyrannies

(§35), until the Roman empire replaced dynastic rules with governors and

enslaved the Greek peoples. But the town was embellished under Severus’

reign (§36),14 with a huge bath building by the altar of Zeus Hippios or the

so-called grove of Heracles, where they say Zeuxippus tamed the mares of

Diomedes, giving the name its place. Thus we are suddenly taken back to the

world of mythical aetiologies, with a striking bridge across the span of the

city’s history which has intervened between the foundation and the Severan

period. And, with this ring-composition unifying its history, the city moves

oV into new phases, renamed ‘Antonia’ by Severus’ son, Antoninus (§38) and

then refounded altogether by Constantine.

The entire life of Byzas’ city is thus neatly encapsulated within a relatively

small number of chapters, which oVer a concise but resonant piece of local

historiography. It is worth recalling some of the most striking features which,

as we shall see, also characterize local historiography from the period on

which this book focuses, namely the fourth century bc and the Hellenistic

period, where our evidence is more scattered and fragmentary. The declared

use of poetic and historiographical sources; the existence of alternative foun-

dation accounts; the importance of named founder Wgures, and of etymo-

logical explanations in local history, linking place names with particular

events and people in the past; the crucial move to tie the local into a wider

framework, here exempliWed by references to the myth of Io, to events at Troy

(both for personalities and as a chronological marker), to the stories of the

House of Atreus, of Jason, and of the mares of Diomedes. The shift in register

from the vague relativism of the mythical period to the chronological spe-

ciWcity of the late fourth century bc onwards15 reXects a phenomenon which

13 n� � (��ø� ��b �E� ��ŒÆ Ł��E� ŒÆŁØ�æø��: �� places the event in the distant and non-speciWc past, by stark contrast with the increasingly careful chronological framework which thehistory of this city gains over time.

14 §36: #��æ�ı �Æ�Øº��Æ��. The use of regal time is a common feature of local histori-ography, but it is revealing of the location of power that this is no local king, but the Romanemperor.

15 See Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 187, however, for the rejection of any suggestion thatHesychius used a city history in which a list of strategoi delivered ‘the chronological framework’(‘das chronologische Gerust’).


we have already observed with the universal historians, namely the period-

ization of history in terms of diVerent temporal systems and this is a feature

which we shall observe in the local historians too. We might also note the

citation of physical evidence in the form of a verse inscription to back up the

tale of Chares’ wife, and the incorporation of a civilizing Wgure, Timesius,

associated with the advent of polis life and the development of institutions.

The encapsulation of the history of a polis, in which time is articulated

according to a life cycle of foundation, followed by key moments of develop-

ment, change, even regression, leads us into the second half of this book. So

far I have explored various aspects of temporal patterning, both conceptual

and practical, both annual and linear. I have viewed these from the perspec-

tive of the scholarly and competitive environment of the chronographers,

who made the problem of structuring time, especially linear or historical

time, into the subject of their study. I have also considered how the chrono-

logical articulation of historical time was dealt with by a variety of authors,

primarily writing about aVairs which spanned beyond the boundaries of the

individual city, whether it be in the creation of Panhellenic or even universal

narratives, or in writing about the non-Greek world altogether. I hope that it

has already emerged that time is ‘made’ in these diVerent contexts, rather than

simply being a given, and that the choices about its structuring and expression

therefore say something about the aspirations, aYliations, self-perception of

those who make it, of those whom they describe, and of the audiences and

readers of their compositions.

Time as not only a constructed, but also a negotiated, aspect of conceptu-

alizing and formulating the past and present is an important undercurrent in

this picture. It seems to me that we have an opportunity when considering the

construction of the past in, for, or about a relatively restricted community,

such as a polis, to observe the dynamics of this negotiation with particular

resonance and intensity. Therefore, in the second half of this book, I shall

explore the phenomenon of city history, and with a special focus on the

temporal patterns and expressions used to articulate this ‘community past’.16

Given the underlying argument of the Wrst chapter, that historiography and,

in particular, the temporal patterning of the past, were of concern to more

than a scholarly audience, looking at the formulation of history within a civic

context should prove particularly fruitful. Both constructing time and creat-

ing pasts have been seen as modes of self-expression for communities, so

16 The notion of ‘local historiography’ is unfortunately vague, potentially referring to bothhistories written about regions and those concerning individual poleis. I shall use it to referprimarily to city histories, but with the proviso that each polis assumed a certain amount ofnon-city territory, the chora, and furthermore respecting Jacoby’s inclusion of both city historiesproper and histories of Greek peoples, although the former were clearly more numerous.

From the city of Byzas to Constantinople 173

looking at their intersection has the potential to be particularly illuminating.

Throughout these last three chapters I shall present material and arguments

which illustrate the way in which the construction of the past should be read

as a social activity, a reXection of and ingredient in the shared views of the

polis, which contributed towards its sense of identity. It is worth noting,

however, from the start that the model of polis history being presented to

its own polis audience, while an important element in the discussion, does not

accommodate all the evidence, and that we need to bear in mind wider,

politically inXuential, audiences for the reception of local historiography.

Of particular interest will be whether the chronological world of the local

historians was signiWcantly diVerent from that of those undertaking to write

about the past of many poleis, or indeed of parts of the world which were not

dominated by poleis at all. One point of methodological diYculty is, of

course, that some of the ‘universal’ authors considered in the last chapter

used local history as a prime source, and it is diYcult to say whether the

conceptual frameworks therein belonged to the original author or to the later

universal writer. In other words, one could at times be reading either the

constituent authors of Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker or a writer

such as Diodorus or Strabo. It would be hard to know whether one should

attribute one’s observations on the chronological frameworks to the former or

the latter.17 Furthermore, the structure of Jacoby’s collection of fragments can

obscure rather than illuminate the true extent and nature of diVerent types of

historiography—local, specialized, mythographic, and so on. As Fowler has

noted, Jacoby’s insistence on placing authors in the Weld which he considered

they had most contributed to in terms of the evolution of genres18 leads to

17 On precisely this problem, see G. Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories: Self-deWnitionthroughHistoryWriting’, in K. Demoen (ed.),The Greek City fromAntiquity to the Present: HistoricalReality, Ideological Construction, Literary Representation [Proceedings of the International Collo-quium, Gent, 19–20 mei 1999] (Leuven, 2001), 3–25 at 10 and n. 18, where he discusses the use of‘great’ historiography as a source for ‘anonymous’ traces of the local writings and the problemsinherent therein. ‘The rather frequent opportunities which ‘‘great’’ historiography seems to oVer forsuch a retrieval operation, illustrate oneof the complexities inherent in the distinctionbetween ‘‘local’’and ‘‘general’’ history in Greek historiography’. He speaks of ‘the diYculties of making impermeablegenre deWnitions’ and the problem of ‘the heuristic tools that can assist us in identifying localtraditions’. See also on the same methodological problems, D. Ambaglio, ‘Per il reperimento dimateriali di storia locale greca: Diodoro, Strabone e Pausania’, in D. Ambaglio (ed.), #ıªªæÆ��:Materiali e appunti per lo studio della storia e della letteratura antica (Como, 1998), 93–109.

18 This is, of course, according to the principles laid out in his programmatic article, ‘Uberdie Entwicklung der griechischen Historiographie und den Plan einer neuen Sammlung dergriechischen Historikerfragmente’, Klio 9 (1909), 80–123, whereby the fragments would beorganized in such a way as to reXect the development of the various prose genres, as thoughin a literary genealogy. See L. Porciani, ‘Il problema della storia locale’, in C. Ampolo (ed.),Aspetti dell’opera di Felix Jacoby (Pisa, 2006), 173–84 at 183, for an excellent exposition of how‘le concezioni evoluzionistiche dei fenomeni culturali’, which were current in the early twentiethcentury, inXuenced Jacoby’s vision.


books of predominantly mythographical content being placed among the

local historians. For the student of early mythography this is clearly prob-

lematic,19 although it gives a strong sense of the importance of the spatium

mythicum in the telling of local history.20 With such limitations as these in

mind, we can nevertheless Wnd in the fragments of the Greek city histories a

treasure trove of insights into the subject matter and narrative frameworks

used by writers who told the past of the various poleis.

2 . TRACING THE HISTORY OF LOCAL HISTORIOGRAPHY:

RESURRECTING JACOBY’S ATTHIS

It is striking that so little scholarly attention has been paid to the vast number

of works of local history which have survived in fragments (mostly citations

by later excerptors) by contrast with that devoted to the extant works of a tiny

number of ‘great’ historians.21 Gabba states the discrepancy bluntly: ‘Thu-

cydides and Polybius, precisely because their historical method is close to our

own, are regarded as paradigms against which to judge ancient historical

writing—quite wrongly. In fact they are untypical and exceptional.’22 The

point echoes that made by Wiseman too with regard to Thucydides and the

unusual nature of his quest for truth and accuracy.23 The very absence of

complete local histories from the body of texts to survive from antiquity

might in itself be revealing of the real or perceived value or quality of local

19 Hence the decision of R. L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography. Volume I: Text and Intro-duction (Oxford, 2000) to gather together material in response to the question, ‘what is theevidence in early prose for the state of this myth’ (p. xxx), thereby sacriWcing any sense ofintegrity of the work of each author.20 The same point might be made about the works on the festival calendar, discussed in ch. 2,

which are included among the local histories. They thereby gain a context as part of the life ofthe city, but lose in terms of chronographic interest.21 By ‘great’ I mean both those who wrote about intra-polis aVairs, such as Thucydides, and

those who turned their attention to the even larger stage covered by universal history. The term‘great’ is nebulous, but the notion derives from Jacoby, ‘Uber die Entwicklung der griechischenHistoriographie’, and it attempts to deWne a group of writings as narrative political historiestaking a larger view of the Greek world as a whole, as opposed to ethnography, chronicles, andlocal history.22 E. Gabba, ‘True and False History in Classical Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies 71

(1981), 50–62 at 50. But for the view that Polybius might, in fact, display some less Thucydi-dean, more Herodotean, characteristics, see K. Clarke, ‘Polybius and the Nature of LateHellenistic Historiography’, in J. Santos Yanguas and E. Torregaray Pagola (eds.), Polibio y laPenınsula Iberica: Revisiones de Historia Antigua IV (Vitoria Gasteiz, 2003), 69–87.23 See T. P. Wiseman, ‘Unhistorical Thinking’, inClio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman

Literature (Leicester, 1979), 41–53 at 41: ‘But Thucydides was unique.’

The history of local historiography 175

works. The processes of canon formation and the accident of survival are,

however, too complex to allow for crude conclusions to be drawn.24 As Gabba

notes, the ‘great’ historians who formed part of the canon were chosen largely

on the basis of which historians, lined up in sequence, would oVer complete

chronological coverage, rather than according to any assessment of quality.25

Schepens, who has done more than almost anyone to resurrect the study of

local Greek historiography decades after Jacoby put it seriously on the map

with his Atthis,26 states: ‘In spite of the intense interest which classical scholars

take in studying both the Greek polis and the development of Greek histori-

ography, the questions just asked about the relevance and meaning of city

histories to the historical consciousness of the ancient Greeks have failed to

attract as much attention as they deserve.’27

The fact that local histories, especially city histories, proliferated to an

extraordinary degree28 demands some explanation as to why their study has

been so neglected. Part of the preference for ‘great’ over local historiography

derives from ancient judgements. Schepens notes the impetus among Greek

historians to note and record enterprises which were taken on communally

(Œ�Ø�fi B) above those achieved by individual poleis.29 He identiWes very eVec-

tively the context for the production and reception of local historiography as a

factor in understanding its place within the political framework. ‘It is against

this background of the undisputed priority accorded in ancient historio-

graphical thought and practice to the narration of Œ�Ø�Æd �æ��Ø�, that we

24 I am grateful to Simon Price for drawing the complicating factor of canon formation tomy attention in conversation about the survival of historical fragments. See L. D. Reynolds andN. G.Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: AGuide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford,1968). For the importance of the rhapsodic tradition in the preservation of texts, see J. Wyrick, TheAscension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and ChristianTraditions. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature 49 (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 205–20.

25 See Gabba, ‘True and False History’, 50. One might argue, though, that the notion of‘coverage’ was already built in to the sense of historia perpetua. See H. I. Marrou, Histoire del’education dans l’Antiquite (6th edn., Paris, 1965), 245, for the detail that ‘ces listes [sc. de grandshommes] Wnirent par etre codiWees, sans doute dans les milieux universitaires de Pergame, peut-etre des le milieu du IIe siecle avant Jesus-Christ’.

26 F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949).27 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 3.28 See D. P. Orsi, ‘La storiograWa locale’, in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, D. Lanza (eds.), Lo

spazio letterario della Grecia antica iii 1 (Rome, 1994), 149–79, who opens her account with theclaim that ‘la storiograWa greca si conWgura principalemente come storiograWa locale’.

29 See Thucydides 1.3.4, where he disparages the eVorts made ‘city by city’ (ŒÆa � º�Ø�)compared with the great Panhellenic ventures, although, as Sarah Cottle has pointed out to me,this judgement is made in the very speciWc context of the Trojan expedition, and nothingcomparable is said about, for example, the Persian wars. When he goes on to denigrate thepower of individual cities, their weakness is attributed to tyrants rather than to the civicstructure (1.17). It is worth, as Schepens does, comparing Polybius’ claims for the superiorstatus of ‘general history’ (� ŒÆŁ º�ı ƒ��æ�Æ) over ‘particular history’ (� ŒÆŁ �ŒÆ�� ƒ��æ�Æ).


have to consider the question to what extent the Greek historians also catered

to the need of the poleis to look into the mirror of their own heritage and to

make themselves known to the outside world as entities with a political and

cultural tradition of their own.’30 But he is insistent that this ancient prefer-

ence for ‘great’ historiography is nevertheless over-represented in modern

accounts of the historiography of Greece at the expense of other genres, and

that local historiography is not only under-represented, but also misrepre-

sented, when it is mentioned at all, by the recurrent failure to note the

existence of history written about any more than one single polis, that of

Athens.31

One question to keep in mind throughout our consideration of the frag-

ments of local history, then, is the degree to which this form of composition

about the past was distinct from the relation of the ‘shared deeds’ of the

Greeks (and barbarians); to what degree the local historians told their story as

part of a larger whole; and how Wxed the enterprise was to the promotion of

the image of each polis. Schepens’ important contribution to the rehabilita-

tion of local historiography extends to explaining why it was fundamental to

the inhabitants of the Greek poleis, in spite of the prevalence of other forms of

historiography among both them and subsequent scholars. The crucial issues

of context, and of what local historiography could oVer to the citizens of a

polis, will be addressed in more detail (in chapter 6), but the case seems

compelling that modern scholarship should once again pick up the trail left by

Jacoby.32

Given the fact that, almost sixty years after its publication, Jacoby’s Atthis

remains the one serious, systematic, and substantial attempt to approach even

a fraction of the material which makes up the fragments of local Greek

historiography, it is worth taking stock of its main contributions as a starting

point.33 It should be noted that, at least in Jacoby’s view, the fact that he was

30 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 7.31 Again, the reason is a combination of the ancient and the modern—the ancient promin-

ence of the city naturally makes its history a source of widespread interest, but the modernreception of city history has also been partial, dominated as it is by a single, monumental work,that of Jacoby’s Atthis.32 Fowler, Early Greek Mythography, preface, oVers fulsome appreciation for the fundamental

status of Jacoby’s perceptions and research: ‘let it be said once and for all that Felix Jacoby is theundisputed master of Greek historiography of our time and all who work after him must labourmerely in his shadow’. See also O. Murray, ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’, ClassicalQuarterly 22 (1972), 200–13 at 213, for his description of Jacoby’s Fragmente der GriechischenHistoriker: ‘the greatest philological work of this century and the greatest work on Greek historyfor all time.’33 That is not to underestimate the importance of those who have indeed taken up Jacoby’s

work in recent times, not only the continuators of the FGrH project, but also scholars who havewritten on various sections of the fragments, such as Schepens and Fowler. But the systematiccontinuation of work on the fragments is a separate challenge from the development of the


dealing with only a fraction of the extant fragments of city histories did not

matter, since all local historiography in Greece was of the same character as

the Atthis.34 On the same premise and also because the Atthides have already

received such a thorough treatment from Jacoby, I shall treat Atthidography

alongside the local historiography of many other Greek poleis in this chapter,

since in many respects it is indeed possible to take it as paradigmatic. Jacoby’s

insistence that Atthidography was typical of the historiography of the Greek

poleis was one of the reasons why Wilamowitz’s model of historiography

emerging from the priestly chronicles, and particularly from awork attributed

to the Anonymous Exegete, found so little favour with him, since it ‘isolated

Athens and the Athenian local chronicle’,35 whereas Jacoby wanted to see

Atthidography as part of a broader phenomenon of local historiography, and

as motivated by factors which might be universally applicable. I shall argue

later in this chapter that Athens does indeed give rise to some historiograph-

ical structures which exceed in complexity those found in the local histories of

most Greek poleis, but it is not alone in this—Sicily too appears to be a ‘special

case’—and it may be simply a lack of substantial evidence from other poleis

which prevents us from seeing similar features in terms of extended narrative

and chronological structure in the local historiography of a much broader

range of poleis. Whether or not the Atthis can be allowed to stand as part for

the whole in an explanation of the nature of local historiography, Jacoby’s

study raises some crucial questions about the relationship between local and

‘great’ history, about the sources for the historiography of the Greek poleis,

and about the Wgure of the local historian—all issues which are of clear

relevance to more than just the historiography of Athens.

The starting point for Jacoby’s treatment is, as is well known, not a positive

proposition about the nature and development of Attic historiography, but

rather a negative reaction to two aspects of Wilamowitz’s model. In Jacoby’s

view, ‘the ‘‘Atthis’’, i.e. the history of Athens, as written by Athenians between

c.350 and 263 bc, does not derive from an old and semi-oYcial chronicle kept

by the priestly board of Exegetai, but was created in the lifetime of Thukydides

conceptual issues raised by Jacoby’s work and ideas. For an interesting treatment of thecircumstances in which Jacoby’s Atthis was produced, see M. Chambers, ‘The Genesis of Jacoby’sAtthis’, in E. Craik (ed.), Owls to Athens: Essays on Classical Culture Presented to Sir KennethDover (Oxford, 1990), 381–90. Jacoby had initially intended to produce a work on ‘not only theAtthidographers proper . . . but also the writers on special subjects and special parts of Athenianhistory, the remains of the books on the Athenian kings, archons etc., about Athenian consti-tution and laws, religion and festivals, demes, topography and so on’ (383). The resultingmanuscript was three times as long as Oxford University Press had agreed (1,800 instead of600 pages) and Jacoby was forced to publish the introduction alone as the Atthis, and reserve therest of his material for a separate commentary on the fragments.

34 Jacoby, Atthis, p. v.35 Jacoby, Atthis, 67.


by a learned man, the foreigner Hellanikos of Lesbos’.36 Furthermore, contrary

to the ‘general view [which is] that local history (literary or pre-literary) is the

earliest genre of historical writing and the primary source of great history,

have become more and more convinced that the local chronicle is a rather late

creation and (to put it quite crudely) an oVshoot from the main line of

historiography, which, in its turn, is a successor to epic poetry and Ionian

philosophy.’37

Schepens is perhaps right to see Jacoby’s work as too deeply absorbed in the

task of disproving Wilamowitz’s preliterary chronicle.38Nevertheless, Jacoby’s

sustained attack on the notion that the local historiography of Athens and

Attica developed from a priestly chronicle has the merit of challenging an

otherwise easily assumed parallel between the development of historiography

in the Greek poleis and that at Rome from the annales maximi.39 The

relationship between the historians of Athens and the exegetai (and even the

identity of the latter) was, according to Jacoby, obscure, and aspects of priestly

colleges, such as the ordering of the calendar, were in Athens the task and

responsibility of the polis and not only of a set of religious experts.40 The

notion that ‘the Athenian calendar neither developed into a chronicle, nor

was in itself an historical document in the sense in which the Roman became

such by the added notes’,41 is one which we may dispute.42 But Jacoby’s

36 Jacoby, Atthis, p. v.37 Ibid. pp. v–vi. Jacoby’s insistence that the local historiography of Greece had been

fundamentally misunderstood, is brought out by his comment to Oxford University Presswhen trying to explain why his treatment of Athenian historiography had ended up being somuch longer than he had anticipated, ‘My Introduction and the commentary rest on theconviction that the general opinion about the foundations of our historical tradition (not forAthens alone) are laid wrong, and I have to prove this fundamental assumption.’ See Chambers,‘The Genesis of Jacoby’s Atthis’, 385.38 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 14, describes Jacoby’s ‘all-consuming, almost

obsessive dissension’.39 It is, of course, not self-evident that the model of priestly record being transformed into

literary history provides an accurate account for Rome either. See B. W. Frier, Libri AnnalesPontiWcum Maximorum: The Origins of the Annalistic Tradition (Ann Arbor, 1999; Wrst published1979), who radically questions the notion that the pontiWcal chronicle not only preserved a recordof the early Republic, but also shaped the annalistic literary tradition as Cicero seems to claim.40 See K. von Fritz, ‘Atthidographers and Exegetae’, Transactions of the American Philological

Association 71 (1940), 91–126, who explores the relationship between those two groups. He doesnot, however, ever really explain what he thinks an exegete is. At 93 he stresses the large numberof fragments of Atthides concerning religious institutions, in support of the non-secular natureof the exegetical tradition underpinning the local historiography of Athens and Attica, but hehimself goes on to ask whether the exegetai might have been involved in matters of secular aswell as religious law at least in the fourth century.41 Jacoby, Atthis, 66.42 The basic point must be right, but see ch. 1 for the idea of the calendar as a form which

oVered a telescopic vision of the past of the polis, with the key moments compressed into aversion of history which could be celebrated as part of an annual cycle.


proposition that the calendar and thereby the organization of time was a

concern not for a priestly college, but for a magistrate, the archon, represent-

ing the polis as a whole, is of great importance in understanding his argument

that Atthidography and, by extension, other forms of local historiography in

Greece, were not the oVspring of a priestly chronicle, such records not existing

in the same way as in Rome,43 and that some other origin and development

must be sought within a civic, rather than a priestly, context.

The idea that the historiography of the Greek poleis was not the product of a

particular priestly record in a particular polis is by no means unconnected to

Jacoby’s view of the distinction between antiquarianism and historiography,

and his inclusion of the Atthides Wrmly in the latter category.44 The relation-

ship is a vexed one and diYcult to deWne. We have already seen (in chapter 2)

that there was a considerable overlap in content between scholarly works on

subjects such as the festival calendar and works of local historiography.

A similar observation may be made concerning the many ancient studies of

politeiai, describing the history and functioning of the political regimes in

cities—again material which could properly belong also to a historiographic

context. Jacoby complained that Wilamowitz had overplayed the link between

Atthides and treatises concerning the politeia of various cities,45 but with

atypical inconsistency he repeatedly claimed that an Atthidographer, Andro-

tion, was the main source for the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia.46 But, as de

Ste. Croix has pointed out, such a theory was never proven, and in any case

the Atthides do not seem to have been solely or primarily constitutional.47 It

seems that Aristotle, or at least his school, should be seen as the primary

researcher for the Athenaion Politeia, rather than relying on the work of the

Atthidographers.48

43 Jacoby is rather dismissive of any link between local historiography and the temple recordsand lists of priests which do exist—he argues that Hellanicus’ Priestesses of Hera at Argos wasused for structuring the history of all Hellas, not the history of Argos; similarly that the victors atthe Carneia did not provide the framework for the local history of Sparta (59).44 Jacoby, Atthis, 99. See also 108, where he notes the increase in antiquarian literature from

Philochorus onwards, with an explosion of works on months and festivals. By the third century,these preoccupations had displaced the narrative entirely.45 Jacoby, Atthis, 99. Jacoby is guilty of further inconsistency in including in IIIB, the local

histories, references to the politeia works.46 See Jacoby, Commentary IIIB vol. II (notes), 101: ‘The Atthis of A is the book which gave

Aristotle the general frame-work, and which he used in the historical introduction for the detailsof Attic history and Attic institutions mostly, even if not alone.’47 G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Athenian Democratic Origins and other Essays (Oxford, 2004), 286.48 As de Ste. Croix, Athenian Democratic Origins, 302, states: ‘Aristotle undertook the

laborious and most unphilosophical task of investigating the records at Delphi and Olympiaand Athens, and compiling lists of victors in athletic and artistic competitions’. See alsoG. Huxley, ‘Aristotle as Antiquary’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 14 (1973), 271–86,for the innovation brought by Aristotle in terms of systematic collection of evidence, be itpoetic, epigraphic, or archaeological.


The question of the relationship between Atthidography and the study of

politeiai may seem unimportant, unduly preoccupied with irrelevant generic

divisions and artiWcial classiWcations. But the issue is of interest in our

attempt to deWne both the development and the nature of the local historio-

graphical enterprise, and particularly its reception in, and relationship to, the

functioning polis. Is the local historian simply gathering up curiosities after

the event for an erudite readership, such as we might imagine for the politeia

treatises, or playing a more active and integrated part in the ongoing image

creation and self-promotion of the city? Should we in any case dismiss

apparently ‘antiquarian’ works as disengaged from the reality of the polis?49

Momigliano has been the most avid proponent of the close link between

the practice of local historiography and that of antiquarianism. Taking his cue

from the ancient reception by writers such as Quintilian, who failed to include

a single antiquarian or a single Atthidographer in his list of important

historians, Momigliano claimed that ‘authors of local history, chronography,

genealogy, erudite dissertations, ethnographical works, whatever their merits,

did not rank as true historians’.50 He saw these forms of writing as marginal,

lacking prominent political interest, and substituting it with detail on the

past, curiosities, the systematic history of institutions, and an ‘undisguised

local patriotism’.51 It is clear that Momigliano saw a marked distinction

between the preoccupations of political history, by which he referred to the

works of Thucydides and other ‘great’ historians, and those of local history,

since he made plain that by the end of the Wfth century, ‘political history and

learned research tended to be kept in two separate compartments’,52 whereas

there was a close connection between antiquarianism and local history, to the

detriment of the latter’s status.

The idea that local historiography was ideologically as well as practically

isolated from the mainstream of polis aVairs conforms with the view of

Ephorus’ local history (� ¯�Ø��æØ�� º ª��), which he composed in addition

to his more notable universal history, as being written ‘when, apart from the

49 Jacoby, Atthis, 109, observes that Atthidography ends with the Wnal loss of independenceafter the Chremonidean war. At 111 he makes plain the implications of this for the connectionbetween historiography and political life. Just as Tacitus would so vividly explore for imperialRome, ‘the old form did not long outlast the destruction of ‘‘freedom’’ ’.50 A. Momigliano, ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, in The Classical Foundations of Modern

Historiography (Berkeley, 1990), 54–79 at 59. He repeatedly cites the passage in Plato, HippiasMaior 285d in support of the view that the subject matter of local historiography—genealogiesof heroes and men, traditions on foundations of cities, and lists of eponymous magistrates ofcities—was classiWed as ‘archaeology’ by Plato and thus, in Momigliano’s view, was a form ofantiquarianism.51 Momigliano, ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, 61.52 A. Momigliano, ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’, in Studies in Historiography (Lon-

don, 1966), 1–39 at 4.


feeling of kinship which far-sighted politicians sought to instil into the Greek-

speaking peoples, the tiny city-states in their geographically watertight com-

partments vied with one another for the triXing distinction of greater

antiquity or more famous stock.’53 But it is not clear that this view of the

Greek poleis as ‘geographically watertight’, and each Wghting its own individ-

ual and isolated corner, can be allowed to stand, and indeed one of the aims of

this book is to challenge this old orthodoxy from the fragments of the local

historians. The notion of isolated and watertight poleis has been convincingly

laid to rest from a variety of angles by a range of scholars in recent years.54 The

association of local historiography with the works of scholarly, rather paro-

chial Wgures, detached not only from other poleis, but also from the main-

stream life of their own polis, oVers a very diVerent reading from the one

which I shall elaborate in this and the following chapters.55

More recently, a subtler approach has been adopted in analysing the nature

of this relationship. Gabba does not deny Momigliano’s link between anti-

quarianism, even parochialism, and local historiography,56 but he sees this as

part of the development of an entirely diVerent approach to historiography in

the late Classical and Hellenistic periods, in which not truth and high politics,

but entertainment for a broader audience was important.57 The presence or

absence of ‘political’ strands is a question to which we shall return (in chapter

6). In this regard, Schepens has stressed the blurred boundary between the

themes of local historiography and that of ‘antiquarian’ interest,58 pointing

53 G. L. Barber, The Historian Ephorus (Cambridge, 1935), 5. Barber later (16) acknowledgesthe possibility that our sources for Ephorus distort our view of his work in such a way as tooveremphasize the parochial viewpoint: ‘his misplaced pride in an insigniWcant little town, or avague interest in antiquities unaccompanied by a sense of their historical importance.’

54 See, for example, P. Horden and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of MediterraneanHistory (Oxford, 2000) for the magniWcent and detailed exposition of a Mediterranean worldwhich was made up of interconnected and interdependent microregions; or I. Malkin, ‘Net-works and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, in I. Malkin (ed.), Mediterranean Paradigms andClassical Antiquity (London, 2005), 56–74 at 57, for the idea that microregions were comple-mented by networks of syngeneia, colonization, and religious aYliations. Delphi in particularacted as a hub for colonial enterprises and networks of theoriai or sacred embassies, as well as forspectators and competitors in the games (61–2).

55 But see T. P. Wiseman, ‘Poetry and History’, in Clio’s Cosmetics, 143–53, for excellentobservations on the aYnity of historiography, particularly that dealing with the mythical period,with the rariWed and erudite world of the Hellenistic poets. See also Murray, ‘Herodotus andHellenistic Culture’, 203: ‘Herodotus was used extensively by Hellenistic poets.’

56 Gabba, ‘True and False History in Classical Antiquity’, 54: ‘Antiquarian learning wasunderstood as covering mythology, genealogical and heroic legends, geography and the materialnecessary for an understanding of Greek poetry.’

57 Pace Thucydides 1.22.4 where he disparages those logographers who put pleasing theiraudience before the search for truth.

58 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 12 n. 23, includes in this category ‘storiesregarding Œ��Ø� and �ıªª��ØÆ, cults and ‘‘sacra’’ ’.


out the diplomatic and political value that could be derived from using

ancient traditions to support or justify contemporary claims. Furthermore,

BoVo, in her important article on local historiography in the context of civic

epigraphy, rightly argues that often in local history ‘erudizione e politica si

intrinsecavano’.59 Fornara, like Gabba, allows Momigliano’s connection be-

tween antiquarian thinking and knowledge and local history to stand, but he

tries to integrate it into a more clearly historiographical framework: ‘In

horography we are witnessing the antiquarian expansion of state records

begun in the scientiWc spirit already attested to in Hellanicus by his other

works.’60 Fornara’s brushing aside of the conceptual diVerences between

Hellanicus’ Priestesses of Hera at Argos and the Atthides would have found

little or no sympathy from Jacoby, but the mention of Hellanicus does bring

us back to that scholar, and to a consideration of his proposed model for the

development of local historiography to replace the notion of a priestly chronicle.

The proposition ‘that the ‘‘Atthis’’. . . was created in the lifetime of Thuky-

dides by a learned man, the foreigner Hellanikos of Lesbos’ was revolutionary

in its implications. That the local history of Athens might be written Wrst by a

non-Athenian raises questions over whether we should really see patriotism

and parochialism as motives for local historiography; even more importantly,

the claim that the Atthis might be a creation of the late Wfth century and

beyond raises questions over its chronological relationship with ‘great’ his-

tory. It is striking that the Wrst ‘native’ Atthidographer, Cleidemus, followed

several decades after Hellanicus, suggesting that avid patriotism was not the

principal stimulus for the development of this form, and leading Jacoby to

wonder openly ‘why an Athenian just in the Wfties of the fourth century

replaced Hellanikos’ book by a new work, the Wrst Athenian Atthis’.61

In a sense, Jacoby answers his own question by propounding the argument

that ‘it was Great History that really give the incitement to local writings.

Hekataios, Herodotos, Hellanikos, each in his time and with diVerent success,

roused the historical sense and the interest in the history of the writers’ native

towns. It is much less the absence of a political life of their own, or a romantic

absorption in a greater past . . . that leads writers to the Local Chronicle in the

Wfth century, than just this upspringing historical interest and the wish to

secure for their native town a place in the Great History of the Greek people,

both for the mythical time and for the more recent national contest against

59 L. BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta greche: un espressione di storiograWa locale’, in E. Gabba (ed.), Studidi storia e storiograWa antiche (Como, 1988), 9–48 at 45–6: ‘learning and politics are intertwined’.60 C. W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley and London,

1983), 21. He sees the development of the Atthis as a Xeshing out of annalistic records withantiquarian material, following the same scientiWc impulse as witnessed in Hippias of Elis’Olympic victor lists or the Athenian archon lists (22).61 Jacoby, Atthis, 69.


Persia. These writers did not Wnd enough details about their native towns in

the great historians, or they found wrong statements or even unfavourable

opinions; the local chronicle was compiled to redress this grievance.’62

The origin of local historiography was thus for Jacoby not to be sought in

the development of a literary form from a priestly chronicle, as Cicero

asserted for Rome,63 but rather as a reaction on the part of individual poleis

to the grand narrative of the combined achievements of the Greeks which

formed the subject of ‘great’ history.64 We shall return to the relationship

between the polis and the presentation of its past in the form of historiog-

raphy, oratory, poetry, and so on, but for now it is the priority of ‘great’

historiography over the local which is of interest.

The problematic and much discussed locus classicus for the opposite vision

of the development of historiography is Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ De

Thucydide 5, where he assesses the tradition before Thucydides and places

before him those writers who ‘separated their enquiries by peoples and cities

and brought them out individually’,65 with the aim of ‘bringing to the

attention of the public traditions preserved among the local people or written

records preserved in sacred or profane archives, just as they received them’. It

is what he saw as a plain statement of the chronological priority of local over

‘great’ historiography against which Jacoby devoted so much energy, since, for

him, local historiography must be a relatively late development with its

origins in the historiographical tradition. The impetus to write about the

polis thus came for Jacoby from a competitive desire to assert the city’s status

and place in the grand narrative and on the larger stage, rather than from

purely internal forces.66

Jacoby’s model is both full of promise and fraught with diYculty. Serious

objections have been raised about his reading of Dionysius’ comments, most

fully by Toye, who has argued thatDionysius’ ‘ancient historians’ were interested

62 Jacoby, Atthis, 289, n. 111 to chapter 1§3. For a diVerent formulation of Jacoby’s view, seeN. Luraghi, ‘Introduction’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 1–15 at 5. Only afterHerodotus, did local Greek communities ‘realize that their history too was interesting’.

63 See Cicero, De Oratore 2.52–3.64 See Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome, 20, for the opposite view,

namely that local historians do not propagate the claims of cities in the arena of ‘great history’and that ‘the salient characteristic of horography is its parochiality’.

65 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Thucydide 5: �ıªªæÆ��E� ŒÆ� Ł�� ŒÆd � º�Ø� �ØÆØæ�F��a� ƒ��æ�Æ� ŒÆd �øæd� Iºº�ºø� KŒ��æ��fi �.

66 But see Porciani, ‘Il problema della storia locale’, 175, who importantly questions themechanism and practicalities by which this stimulation of the local by the Panhellenic narrativetook place. She argues that ‘Per sollecitare qualcuno a comporre annali di Samo o di Lampsaco,infatti, la concezione storica di Erodoto doveva potersi dispiegare in tutta la sua grandezza’,rather than dispersed in the form of oral presentations.


primarily in genealogies and mythical entertainment, and were not to be

identiWedwith Jacoby’s local chroniclers.67 Further serious criticism of his vision

has come from Fowler in his important article on the intellectual milieu of

Herodotus,68 and it is indeed this ‘great’ historian around whom most of the

scholarly debate concerning the relationship between large-scale and local

historiography revolves.69 Fowler points to several weaknesses in Jacoby’s argu-

ments: the unduly schematic approach to the development of a historiograph-

ical form, dependent on a neat sequence of innovators—Hecataeus, Herodotus,

Hellanicus;70 the consequential need to date other historians, such as Charon of

Lampsacus, to a post-Herodotean phase, in spite of evidence to the contrary; the

strong historical content in much early lyric poetry, which tells against the idea

that local history needed to wait for Herodotus.71 Fowler’s analysis of Herod-

otus’ historiographical voice as being primarily characterized by the presenta-

tion of himself as preoccupied with the problem of how to assess sources is in

many ways convincing, and it seems entirely plausible to suggest that he could

have been engaged in some form of dialogue with contemporary writers.72

Indeed, Fowler presents an impressive array of parallels between Herodotus

and the fragments of other historians revealing a shared interest in etymology,

rationalization of myth, and so on. The thrust of the overall argument is

compelling—that, if Herodotus was so concerned with the use of sources, he

must have been working in a context where there were sources and where it was

necessary to forge a distinct historiographical voice.

It is, however, strange that Herodotus chooses not to cite local histories

systematically, since they would have seemed so apposite to the region-by-

region approach. A good deal of scholarly ink has been spilled over the

67 D. L. Toye, ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the First Greek Historians’, American Journal ofPhilology 106 (1995), 279–302.68 R. L. Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996),

62–87.69 In any case, Murray, ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’, argues that Herodotus was at

least as inXuential as Thucydides on Greek historiography beyond the Wfth century.70 This teleological mentality is similar to that of works like the Athenaion Politeia, which

privilege the notion of inventor Wgures in the smooth development of institutions.71 Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, 65, points to Xenophanes who wrote about

the foundation of Colophon and colonization of Elea, Herodotus’ uncle (or cousin) who toldthe story in verse of the colonization of Ionia, a whole string of epic poems which told legendarylocal history—Corinthiaca, Meropis, Naupactia, Phoronis, Phocais, the lyric poetry of Pindar, forexample, which shows a knowledge of local traditions, and Mimnermus who wrote historicalverse in the seventh century. Orsi, ‘La storiograWa locale’, 156, notes that the mysteriousSmyrneis of Mimnermus concerning the battle between the Smyrnians and Gyges’ Lydiansmay have been broader and incorporated the foundation of Smyrna and other historical eventsas well: ‘anche della fondazione di Smirne e di altri eventi storici’.72 See Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, 69, where he proposes a ‘mutually

beneWcial exchange of work and ideas’.


question of what it means when a ‘great’ historian, such as Herodotus, writes

‘the Xs say’. Luraghi uses the question as his starting point for analysing local

knowledge in Herodotus and stresses that Herodotus’ interest in local sources

was largely derived from his wish to construct a history which based its

authority in direct encounter with what he took to represent the shared

tradition of a whole community.73 Giangiulio has examined Cyrene as a

case study for the relationship between such local traditions and the ‘great’

narrative of Herodotus. As he points out, it is clear that Herodotus was doing

more than just lifting local stories and joining them together, but the idea that

great historiography not only saved local stories from oblivion, but ‘turned

local memory into universal narrative’ suggests a striking transformation.74 If

this vision is correct, then it appears to entail the priority of the local over the

universal. However, as Giangiulio notes, it is not clear to what degree we

should categorize local traditions as epichoric, and to what extent they were

shaped by contact with other cities and Panhellenic centres.75

Furthermore, we should consider carefully whether the ‘local’ traditions,

which are casually mentioned throughout the secondary literature, were

actually written histories or oral traditions, and indeed whether that distinc-

tion matters in determining the priority of local and Panhellenic. I would

venture to suggest that it does, and that by ‘local historiography’ in the

context of our debate a written version is implied; in other words, that

establishing that Herodotus used local traditions, if they are oral ones, is

not enough in itself to refute Jacoby’s claim concerning the priority of ‘great’

historiography.76 The problem of orality and literacy is Wrmly embedded in

any discussion of local historiography, since, although the extant texts are

inevitably written versions, the context for presenting the past to the polis

seems, from the epigraphic evidence, to have been a performative one. As we

shall see (in chapter 6), it seems to have been common practice that a

historian would come to a polis with a pre-prepared history in store, or

ready to mould one appropriately depending on the results of on-site re-

search, and then perform the history, often in poetic form. Particularly the

73 N. Luraghi, ‘Local Knowledge in Herodotus’Histories’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age ofHerodotus, 138–60. We shall return to the question of ‘community knowledge’ in ch. 6.

74 Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past’, 133. But see O. Murray, ‘Herodotus and Oral History’,in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 16–44 at 34, for the idea of Herodotus as heir tothe tradition of oral logopoioi, whose writing down of the tales in relation to a new greater themedestroyed, rather than preserved, the tradition.

75 Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past’, 130.76 Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, rightly makes much of Herodotus’ contri-

bution being the establishment of critical tools for testing reliability (80) and the concepts ofveriWability and falsiWability; in other words the discovery of the problem of sources, but thisdoes not entail the use of written sources.


latter of these patterns has clear implications for how Wxed and unchanging

such a historiographical tradition could be. If the notion of the ‘possession for

ever’ is not pertinent to local historiography in the way that Thucydides made

it so for ‘great’ historiography,77 then judging the relative priority and pos-

terity of local and universal versions of tales might also prove diYcult.

Further, there is more to be said about the similarities and diVerences

between poetic and prose manifestations of interest in the past. One detraction

from Jacoby’s model is indeed the existence of such strong ‘historical’ elements

in early poetry, and it is tempting to argue that local historiography had no

need for an external spur in the form of Herodotus’ ‘great’ history to goad it

into action. Rather, it had been in existence for centuries, performed at festivals,

the subject matter for competition, and deeply embedded in society’s wish to

hear the ‘famous deeds of men’ (Œº�Æ I��æH�). It has been shrewdly asserted

that ‘the distinction is not between history and poetry per se, but between

contemporary history, in the Thucydidean manner, and everything else’.78

Fowler explicitly sets the historical preoccupations of the early poets against

the need for local historiography to wait for a Herodotus Wgure, and it is easy to

see why. But the argument is hardly conclusive. To progress from the observa-

tion that poets had for centuries been telling local tales, and ones which gave the

locality a place within the context of Panhellenic myth, to the statement that ‘a

local history in prose before Herodotos would be in no way surprising’ is not a

necessary move, though the proposition is in itself not implausible.79

But the question hinges also on some vexed and diYcult questions over

how revolutionary the ‘prose revolution’ really was,80 and how radically

77 See Thucydides 1.22.4 for history as a ŒB�Æ K� ÆN��.78 Wiseman, ‘Poetry and History’, in Clio’s Cosmetics, 146.79 Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, 65. But see Schepens, ‘Greek City Histories’,

17 with n. 41, on the clearly pre-Herodotean account of Chios by Ion (FGrH 392 f 1¼ Pausanias7.4.8). As Schepens notes, this history was in all probability a prose work, although we cannot beabsolutely sure. Pausanias uses the term �ıªªæÆ��, which is usually applied to prose, and not topoetry. Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 194, wrote with more certainty on the subject: ‘Der Prosachar-akter der ��ı Œ��Ø� ist sicher.’80 S. Goldhill, The Invention of Prose (Oxford, 2002) discusses the way in which ‘prose is the

medium in which the intellectual revolution of the enlightenment is enacted. And after the Wfthcentury, almost all serious philosophy, history, medicine, mathematics, theology—the sciencesof authority—are conducted solely in prose.’ (4). Herodotus’ project was, then, part of a radicalnew way of thinking, not only about the past but also about the world: ‘The project ofmemorializing the great deeds of the past to provide not just a celebration of such grandeurbut also a model for the present draws on the epic precedents of Homer and Hesiod, butconstructs a quite diVerent image of the world and how to comprehend it.’ (27). In support ofthe view that poetry and prose really were distinct, see J. Marincola, ‘Herodotus and the Poetryof the Past’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus(Cambridge, 2006), 13–28 at 15, who makes interesting points about the diVerent authorialclaims to truth and legitimacy in poetic and prose narratives, with the historian’s laboursreplacing the muses’ inspiration in the latter.


diVerent a project that of Herodotus was made by its intellectual context of

Ionian science and philosophy.81 Recent work on P.Oxy. 3965, Simonides’

encomiastic narrative elegy celebrating contemporary historical events, high-

lights quite how problematic the boundary between history and poetry is. As

Hornblower points out, both Herodotus and Simonides dealt with the same

event in the Plataea episode, and even the form was sometimes similar, with

Herodotus breaking into Homeric metre: ‘So neither content nor form oVers

a way of distinguishing between the two genres.’82 This formulation seems a

little extreme, and indeed Hornblower proceeds to search for a distinction in

terms of the use of epiphany, although, as he rightly claims, there is no reason

in any case why we should not accept the presence of epic features in the work

of a ‘real’ historian.83 Boedeker too has examined the Plataea elegy for insights

into the relationship between epic, elegy, and historiography in the Wfth

century.84 She stresses the poetic nature of Herodotus’ text in general, includ-

ing the epic encounter at Marathon, the theme of kleos, and the many

unmarked hexameters, and suggests that, even if Herodotus did not use the

poem directly as a source,85 nevertheless it would have been inXuential in

shaping popular memory of the event.86

The context of performance is of interest here, since one of the most

compelling arguments against seeing the evolution of local historiography

as internally motivated, and derived from the world of the lyric poets, is

precisely the issue of audience. The world of aristocratic, family-based,

symposiastic performance may seem far removed from the world of the

polis in which I would wish to place the motivation and reception of the

81 On the intellectual milieu of Herodotus as the heartland of Ionian philosophy andcosmology, see R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion(Cambridge, 2000).

82 S. Hornblower, ‘Epic and Epiphanies: Herodotus and the ‘‘New Simonides’’ ’, inD. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire (Oxford,2001), 135–47 at 135.

83 See Hornblower, ‘Epic and Epiphanies’, 137, for the use of the past in the present, whichbrought the worlds of epic poetry and of contemporary events together. It was ‘precisely thepervasiveness of syngeneia concepts which made it possible for Greeks to bridge the mythicaland historical worlds in so apparently eVortless a way’. We shall return to the use of the past andparticularly of kinship claims in ch. 6.

84 D. Boedeker, ‘Heroic Historiography: Simonides and Herodotus on Plataea’, in The NewSimonides, 120–34.

85 She does not commit herself to a judgement on this, although she thinks it likely thatHerodotus had heard the poem. However, as she concedes, there is a danger of circularity insearching for similarities and echoes, since Herodotus has been used in the reconstruction of theSimonides text (127).

86 But see J. Dillery, ‘ReconWguring the Past: Thyrea, Thermopylae and Narrative Patterns inHerodotus’, American Journal of Philology 117 (1996), 217–54, for the way in which Herodotus,like Simonides, reconWgures Thermopylae as a clear Spartan victory, but enhances this throughthe parallel with Thyrea, by contrast with Simonides’ exclusively heroic context.


local histories, although, as I shall argue (in chapter 6), we may need to

accommodate a multi- or at least bilocational context for some, if not all, local

historiography. Boedeker in fact posits a very public festival context for the

performance of the Simonides poem (133), and claims that considering the

relationship between the accounts of Simonides and of Herodotus might give

insight into ‘how public memory of the great events of the Persian War was

shaped and transmitted during the Wfth century’ [my italics].87 Indeed Aloni

suggests that the Simonides elegy was commissioned by the Spartans as the

threnody for the public ceremony at which the tumuli were set up after

Plataea, with the result that ‘the narrative of the proem would act as the

aition for the ceremony, and the song would, at one and the same time, be a

compensation for the death of the ancient heroes and of those who had just

fallen in battle’.88 As with the question of orality and literacy, similarly that of

poetry and prose is complex when considering local historiography, with the

same contrast between the extant fragments and the epigraphic evidence for

context—the former almost entirely in prose, the latter repeatedly referring to

poetic performances. This relationship between poetry, prose, and local

historiography, and the issue of performance context will be re-examined

(in chapter 6) when considering the honoriWc inscriptions set up for histor-

ians by poleis around the Greek world.

But the debate over the interface between poetry and ‘great’ historiography,

such as that of Herodotus, does provide a backdrop against which we could go

on to ask how close a link one should posit between the early poetic mani-

festations of historical interest and the local historiography of the fourth and

third centuries;89 hence, precisely where on the spectrum between lyric poetry

and scientiWc prose we should place the fragments of local history. The

presence of poetic elements in Herodotus of course does not force us to

recharacterize the work as less inXuenced by the scientiWc prose revolution

than we thought, but simply provides yet another salutary reminder that stark

contrasts and choices between radically diVerent models for the birth and

development of literary forms are unlikely to prove satisfactory. As Bowie

points out, the interpretative beneWts of studying these complex relationships

are broad in scope. He argues in relation to poetic treatment of historical

87 Boedeker, ‘Heroic Historiography’, 121.88 A. Aloni, ‘The Proem of Simonides’ Plataean Elegy and the Circumstances of its Perform-

ance’, in The New Simonides, 86–105 at 102.89 On the vexed issue of the relationship between poetry, local historiography, and ‘great’ or

Panhellenic historiography, see the remarks of E. Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography in EarlyGreek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, 45–66. Bowierightly stresses our lack of knowledge of the fragmentary poetic texts—for example, both lengthand form of Semonides’ Early History of the Samians are unknown to us—making comparisonwith another set of fragmentary texts, the local histories, precarious in the extreme.


themes that, ‘whatever happened in prose works, the extant evidence for this

sort of verse suggests movement from accounts of single poleis to an account

putting together some sort of overarching narrative—of course we do not

know what sort, and it could have been wholly mythographic—concerning

several poleis’,90 suggesting that the verse trend was from local to Panhellenic.

But it cannot be safely deduced from this that the same trend was true for

prose, and, as Bowie concedes, even the apparent pattern of hexameters used

to treat ‘Panhellenic’ myth, while elegiacs were used for the early or recent

history of a polis, can easily be countered.91 Beyond some obviously shared

elements between poetry and historiography,92 the precise relationship re-

mains elusive, and it is quite possible that several forces coincided to produce

the same eVect—a wish to promote the individual polis in response to the

propagation of Panhellenic narratives, assisted by the pre-existing local tra-

ditions as expressed in verse in festival contexts.

As Fowler judiciously comments: ‘the question whether local or great

history came Wrst is ultimately unanswerable for want of evidence’,93 making

it wisest not to assume the priority of one or the other. There was a strong

sense of local history in the Greek poleis before Herodotus, in the form of

poetry and local traditions; there was also a strong sense of Panhellenic

history before Herodotus, as seen in the Xourishing of the Panhellenic

sanctuaries. Fowler stresses the considerable overlaps between local histori-

ography, universal historiography, ethnography, and mythography, both in

content and in method. He is keen to blur boundaries: between oral and

literate productions, through the notion of competitive contexts at which a

historian such as Herodotus might have recited parts of his work before

publishing the written version;94 and between the presentation of local and

Panhellenic themes in the extant fragments of local historiography, which

means that the history of Argos, for example, was told in the same way

by Acusilaus of Argos and Hellanicus of Lesbos.95 This approach, which

minimizes the diVerences, and thereby reduces the need for establishing an

90 Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography’, 50.91 E. Bowie, ibid. 55 for the new Simonides, which presented the great theme of the Persian

wars in elegiacs, and 58 for Archilochus’ historical narrative in trochaic tetrameters. SeeE. Bowie, ‘Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance of Narrative’, in A. Cavarzere, A. Aloni,and A. Barchiesi (eds.), Iambic Ideas: Essays on a Poetic Tradition from Archaic Greece to the LateRoman Empire (Oxford, 2002), 1–27, for more discussion of the Xexibility of genre associatedwith particular poetic forms.

92 Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography’, 66, on the use of generations for chronology inTyrtaeus 5.6.

93 R. Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus,95–115 at 95.

94 Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, 107.95 Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, 113.


evolutionary timetable for diVerent forms of historiography, has much to

commend it in terms of focusing on subtle cross-genre similarities, although

it leaves aside issues of inXuence, imitation, and so on, which are dependent

on a sense of priority no less than on one of interaction.

An explanation for the development of local historiography which places it

in the context of polis self-assertion in the wider world accommodates well

some of the characteristic features of the extant fragments, not least the

mixture of local and universal frames of reference (both mythological and

chronological). A model which relies on the notion of a particular form of

historiography being set in train by an external catalyst, rather than generated

entirely from within, is not inherently implausible. But it is clear that Jacoby’s

insistence on motivating the development of local historiography as part of a

neat sequence of genres, each with its own inventor, is too prone to system-

atize and too quick to ignore other contexts within which local historiography

operated. On the other hand, it would seem unfortunate to lose sight of all

distinctions and deWnitions by refusing to observe the diVerence between

prose and poetic expressions of local history, between diVerent contexts for

production, between oral and literate traditions. A form of historiography

which draws on and grows out of pre-existing local traditions is not incom-

patible with one which is galvanized into new forms by external factors such

as the development of grand narratives and the wish to assert the importance

of one’s own polis.

One aspect of the debate over ‘great’ and local historiography which has so

far been set aside is the diVerence in structure and chronological system. We

have seen (in chapter 3) the way in which the ‘great’ history of Thucydides,

but also much more systematically that of the ‘universal’ historians, gave rise

to elaborate and careful attempts at synchronism, be it through the juxtapos-

ition of diVerent temporal systems or through the subordination of a narra-

tive to Panhellenic chronologies, such as those provided by the great

Panhellenic marker posts of the Trojan War or the return of the Heraclidae,

or for the historical period by the Olympiadic or magisterial systems. By

contrast, the ‘great’ history undertaken by Herodotus has been seen by

many as singularly unconcerned with presenting its stories within any kind

of uniWed or coherent chronological framework.96 Rhodes observes that

96 See U. von Wilamowitz, Greek Historical Writing, and Apollo (Oxford, 1908), 6: ‘In hisrejection of all chronology, he consciously sets himself in opposition to the impersonal chronicles,which he must have known.’ D. W. Prakken, Studies in Greek Genealogical Chronology (Lancaster,1943) is a notable exception. He concludes that ‘from this survey of the chronological data in thework of Herodotus, it is evident that he had a deWnite system of chronology and that this systemwas founded on genealogical principles’ (47) and ‘Herodotus was a pioneer in historical chron-ology as well as in historiography’ (48). However, the gathered evidence rather gives the impres-sion of an ad hoc and fragmented approach to indicating time in the narrative.


Herodotus displays no systematic chronology even for the Babylonians; his

synchronisms simply link one king to another in the non-Greek world, and

‘for the Greek world . . . Herodotus is not writing a systematic history of

Greece or of any Greek state, and he does not have a systematic chronology.’97

There are, however, some traces of dating in Herodotus’ Athenian narra-

tives, and the momentous event of Xerxes’ arrival in Athens is dated carefully

using Athenian archon years.98 Even if his alleged lack of systematic chron-

ology for the Babylonians was matched by a failure to master Egyptian

chronology also, ‘his history oVers proofs that at least he tried.’99 For Sparta,

Herodotus knows the royal genealogies, the two lines of which he can trace

back to Heracles. His sense of relative time for the distant past is very much in

line with that used by the universal writers; that is, he has a sense of the time

intervals between key stepping stones such as the time of Dionysus (1,600

years ago), Heracles (900 years ago), and Pan (800 years ago), adding that this

placed Pan at a time after the Trojan war. Homer and Hesiod could be placed

roughly 400 years before Herodotus.100

It is made abundantly clear by Rhodes, and indeed emerges from any

reading of the text of Herodotus, that the kind of elaborate chronological

systems which were adopted and developed by the ‘universal’ historians, and

even the concern expressed by Thucydides on a small scale over the problem

of synchronism, are not prominent in Herodotus’ text. Rhodes concludes that

Herodotus was a little too early to catch the great wave of interest in putting

time, particularly past time, together in a systematic way: ‘By the time

Herodotus wrote, the process of systematising the chronology of early Greece

and its stories had begun—Herodotus’ Eurypontid genealogy for Sparta

already includes the suspicious names Prytanis and Eunomus, who look as

if they have been invented to make the Eurypontid line as long as the Agid—

but it had not yet gone very far, and I agree with those who insist that it was

not a process in which Herodotus himself was as interested as later chrono-

graphers were.’101 Rosalind Thomas has interestingly applied the notion of the

‘Xoating gap’ to Herodotus, namely the phenomenon whereby the very recent

97 P. J. Rhodes, ‘Herodotean Chronology Revisited’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (eds.),Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford,2003), 58–72 at 65–6.

98 Herodotus 8.51.1. The event took place when Calliades was archon.99 T. S. Brown, ‘The Greek Sense of Time in History as Suggested by their Accounts of Egypt’,

Historia 11 (1962), 257–70 at 261.100 See Herodotus 2.145.4; 2.53.2. R. Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Prose Predecessors’, in

C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge,2006), 29–45 at 33, stresses the importance of genealogy as providing the narrative backboneof many compositions in the Herodotean intellectual milieu.

101 Rhodes, ‘Herodotean Chronology Revisited’, 68.


and the very distant past are privileged both in memory and in historiog-

raphy.102 She concludes, in line with Rhodes, that Herodotus was not inter-

ested in Wlling in the gaps to produce a continuous chronological system.103

Even if it turns out that the local historians were using sophisticated temporal

systems, this still need not be seen as a plank in Jacoby’s argument for placing

Herodotus prior to any local historiography. But it would suggest, in spite

of Jacoby’s careful analysis of an integrated development of diVerent forms of

historiography, that Herodotean historiography was truly distinctive in the

way it chose to structure and calibrate its treatment of the past across a wide

spatial scope.104 It is to be hoped that an exploration of the chronological

strategies of the local historians of the Greek poleis might contribute a new

angle on the vexed issue of the relationship, close or distant, between ‘great’

and local historiography.

3 . TIME FOR LOCAL HISTORY: PACING THE PAST

How did the composers of local histories denote the passage of time? This is

the question which underpins this section. While work has been done on

various aspects of local historiography, and also on formal calendars, it seems

that there is room for the denotation of time and the creation of local,

especially city, histories to be brought together and explored more systemat-

ically. In particular, more general questions concerning local historiography,

such as the degree of parochialism or universality involved, or the variation in

style and contents between accounts of diVerent regions and diVerent cities,

may be additionally illuminated by a study of the temporal systems employed.

The highly fragmentary nature of the evidence can be somewhat disorien-

tating, and it is worth, therefore, giving a preliminary sense of who wrote

about what and when. All of the usual caveats concerning fragmentary texts

102 R. Thomas, ‘Herodotus’Histories and the Floating Gap’, in The Historian’s Craft in the Ageof Herodotus, 198–210.103 See Thomas, ibid. 203–4, where she suggests that Herodotus uses other currency, such as

vengeance, to create links across gaps. But see C. Calame, Myth and History in Ancient Greece:The Symbolic Creation of a Colony (Princeton, 2003; Wrst publ. 1996), whose detailed study of arange of foundation stories for Cyrene leads to exactly the opposite conclusion (95): ‘in terms ofchronology, the Herodotean narrative attempts to Wll in the gaps left by those of Pindar. Themethods of nascent historiography contribute here.’104 Jacoby’s is a relatively isolated voice in claiming for Herodotus (Atthis, 382 n. 10) that

‘interest in chronology is obvious in all parts of his work, not for mythical times only, but forhistorical times, for which he gives epochs and dates of reign of the kings’. It clearly suits his wishto integrate Herodotus fully into the history of historiography that he should share thechronological interest of other historians.

Time for local history: pacing the past 193

apply in large measure—the problem of delimiting a fragment, the problem

of citation context and its inXuence over the words cited, the near impossi-

bility of gauging a sense of original context or shape of works or date of

production.105 Nevertheless, some 350 authors of local history emerge merely

from the pages of Jacoby, and it is clear that they represent only the tip of a

vast iceberg. They stretch from the very end of the Wfth century bc to the

period of the High Roman empire, although it seems almost impossible to

date the great majority of the fragments with any conWdence and we should

exercise particular caution concerning Jacoby’s own cautious datings, likely as

it is that he was heavily inXuenced by the exigencies of his own theory of the

evolution of genres, which precluded the possibility that local histories could

have predated Herodotus’ grand narrative. There appears to be a particular

Xourishing in the fourth century bc and the Hellenistic period, but it is hard

to say more than this in view of the uncertainty of dating.

The geographical spread of places described is vast. Although, as is so often

noted, the Atthides are heavily dominant, our fragments also take us around

many of the poleis and wider areas of the Greek mainland, around many of the

islands, with Crete and Rhodes Wguring large, as one might expect, down the

coastal cities of Asia Minor such as Miletus, and Wnally to a vast section

concerning Sicily and Magna Graecia. As we shall see, the dominance of

Athens and Sicily in the evidence oVers opportunities for both distortion

and insight. It is diYcult to assess whether patterns, which emerge from these

more extensive fragments, both individually and collectively, can rightly be

assumed across the whole corpus of more fragmentary and exiguous works,

or whether each of these areas generated a rather unusual type of local

historiography. Finally, the question of who wrote the works of which these

fragments survive is, except in rare, high-proWle cases, rather unclear beyond

the existence of a name to whom the citer refers as the author. In some cases

we can be secure in assuming a native writer, since the work is entitled On his

Native Land, and one might suppose, especially if Jacoby’s argument for the

origin of local historiography as an assertion of local pride is correct, that this

model accommodates the majority of local historiography. In many cases, we

simply do not know, but it is worth keeping the question alive, not least since,

as we shall see (in the Wnal chapter), there is epigraphic evidence to show that

the range of people who could, with authority and credibility, tell the polis its

past extended beyond the boundaries of that community, bringing ‘local’

historiography into wider Mediterranean networks.

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


a) Telling the mythical past; counting the generations

Having considered the temporal scope of universal historiography and par-

ticularly its attitude towards the mythical period, it seems logical to apply the

same questions to the extant fragments of local historiography.106 We should

recall straight away that taking the story back to the distant past entails a

rather vague and less structured approach to time, since formal chronological

systems were clearly not applicable to the mythical age. The point of interest

here, then, is one of temporal extent at least as much as temporal structure.

The small potted history of the city of Byzas, with which this chapter started,

made much of the various foundation myths associated with the site, includ-

ing those which used stories concerning the founding hero to provide an

etymology for the name of the city. Schepens has rightly pointed out the

importance of foundations (Œ��Ø�) in local historiography.107 Sometimes

they occupied a share of a much longer account;108 sometimes they formed

the sole focus, though being formulated in such a way as to encapsulate many

of the essential features of the later life of the polis.109 Jacoby’s claim, then, that

‘the principle of giving the whole history of a city is so general for the Greek

local chronicles . . . that we may set it up as being compulsory for all

Atthides’,110 is overstated to the point of inaccuracy, but his insistence that

the local historian would almost inevitably look back to the very earliest

moments in the life of the polis was surely well founded.111

The extant fragments of local histories, of both the Greek and the non-Greek

world, are littered with foundation stories. The writers on Rome and Italy were

naturally preoccupied with the various foundation myths for Rome itself.112

106 I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present some of the following material andideas in a conference at Columbia University, New York, in 2002 and at a seminar in Cambridge,also in 2002. I ammost grateful to the respective organizers, William Harris and Robin Osborne,and to both audiences for their helpful and constructive insights and contributions.107 Schepens, ‘Greek City History’, 20–1. I. Malkin, ‘ ‘‘Tradition’’ in Herodotus: The Foun-

dation of Cyrene’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from aConference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, 2003), 153–70, argues for the reinstatement ofkey notions such as colonization and moments of foundation in opposition to those who woulddismiss them as anachronistically interpreted in terms of Classical models. The narrativesconcerning the origins of cities clearly made much of the moment of foundation and theinvolvement of key individuals therein.108 Though Jacoby, Atthis, 113, notes the diYculty in assessing proportions, given the

fragmentary nature of the works.109 See Polybius 9.1.4 for ktisis literature as a major branch of historical writing.110 Jacoby, Atthis, 106.111 This, in spite of Thucydides’ warning that themes from the remote past were not great (�P

��ª�ºÆ), 1.21.112 See FGrH 809 Q. Fabius Pictor, 810 L. Cincius Alimentus, 813 C. Acilius, all native Roman

writers; 817 Promathion, 818 Galitas, 821 Zenodotus of Troezen, all Greek authors writingabout the foundation and early history of Rome.


Many Greek authors oVered interesting alternatives to the standard menu of

Romulus and Remus or the Trojan myth. Agathocles of Cyzicus relates that

Aeneas’ granddaughter, Rhome, came to Italy and to the city, and dedicated a

temple, thus oVering a new aetiology for the name of the city. This version was

oVered in a competitive environment. Some claimed that Aeneas was buried in

the city of Berecynthia, near the river Nolus, and that one of his descendants

called Rhomus came to Italy and founded the city of Rome. Alcimus the

Sicilian Greek claimed that Aeneas’ son, Romulus, was born in Tyrrhenia,

that the daughter of Romulus was named Alba, and that her son, Rhomus,

founded the city; while Callias of Syracuse stated that Rome, one of the Trojan

women who came to Italy, married Latinus, by whom she had three sons,

Romus, Romulus, and Telegonus . . .When they had built the city, they named

it after their mother.113

But Rome was not the only city whose foundation mattered. Demosthenes

of Bithynia, for example, wrote in his work on his native land about the

founder of Tios, Patarus, who named the city after the worship of Zeus carried

out there;114 Apollonius of Aphrodisias told of the foundation of the Carian

city, Chrysaoris, which was later renamed Idrias, that of Tabai, a Lydian city,

named after Tabus, and those of the cities of Cibyras and Tabas, founded by

the brothers Cibyras and Marsyas.115 All of these small fragments are known

from Stephanus of Byzantium and are cited in the context of his explanations

of place names. What role they played in their original works we can only

guess, but they at least indicate an interest in origins and foundations. Among

the historians of the Greek poleis, the early fourth-century writer Aristopha-

nes the Boeotian wrote about Chaeron, the founder of Chaeronea;116 Antio-

chus of Syracuse told of the foundations of a whole host of southern Italian

cities—Elea, Rhegium, Croton, Metapontum, and Taras.117 In the same vein

113 For Agathocles of Cyzicus, see FGrH 472 f 5; Alcimus, FGrH 560 f 4, as Jacoby claims, theWrst Sicilian treatment of the foundation of Rome; Callias of Syracuse, FGrH 564 f 5. E. Dench,Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian (Oxford,2005) oVers a fascinating study of the way in which competing identities for Rome were forgedin the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods. But the earlier history of Greek attempts toconstruct myths, histories, and identities for Rome acts as an important backdrop.

114 FGrH 699 f 9.115 FGrH 740 f 8 and 9.116 FGrH 379 f 3. As Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 161, notes, it is not clear whether this detail

came in the context of a historical event, or whether it came from the account of the Boeotianmigration.

117 See FGrH 555 f 8, 9, 10, 12, 13. It is interesting, though, that Antiochus’ foundationstories concern historical, rather than mythical, times. His cities are founded by groups ofpeople rather than mythical individuals. See Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 493, for the point that,although others such as Herodotus (1.163) also told the story of the Eleatic foundation,Antiochus was the only one to name a historical leader.


as Antiochus’ interest in the historical foundation of cities by colonists, we

may note the comment that the Chians claimed to have Pelasgian founders,

oikists, from Thessaly.118 A foundation story which could be validated by

current practice was that of Phaselis, set up by Lacius, who paid for the land in

smoked Wsh, rather than barley meal, at the request of Cylabras who shep-

herded his sheep there. The people of Phaselis were, apparently, still sacriW-

cing smoked Wsh to Calabras every year when Heropythos of Colophon wrote

his account at the start of the fourth century.119

The earliest moment in a city’s existence was clearly an integral part of its

history, and this could fall within either heroic or historical times. The

tendency of local historians to blur this distinction is clearly in line with the

practice of some writers of universal history (as discussed in chapter 3), but

the fragmentary nature of the works makes it hard to assess what status such

early tales held in the account. I shall discuss shortly the way in which heroic

times might lend themselves to particular kinds of chronological calibration,

but for now I assess these early phases in the local history of cities and regions

from a diVerent perspective, namely the degree to which the most remote past

was related within a local mythological frame of reference, and the degree to

which the mythical or heroic period lent itself to a wider, more obviously

Panhellenic, context which might in turn be reXected in the expressions of

time adopted.

The importance to a polis of having the right heroes in its armoury is amply

illustrated in Herodotus’ Histories. Famous instances such as the translation

of the ‘bones of Orestes’ to Sparta or those of Theseus by Cimon to Athens

have been much discussed.120 However, the extant fragments of local histori-

ography too oVer glimpses into the importance of both local heroes and

mythologies, and those on a grander scale. Promathidas of Heraclea’s work

On Heraclea clearly incorporated tales of very local heroes—in the Wrst

fragment Titias is identiWed, a local hero (læø� Kª��æØ��) known to us

from other authors;121 the second fragment tells of Idmon, another local

118 FGrH 395 f 2.119 FGrH 448 f 1. SacriWces to Cylabras were known also to Callimachus and Philostephanus,

but it is not clear what place Phaselis had in the annals of Colophon.120 See D. Boedeker, ‘Hero Cult and Politics in Herodotus: The Bones of Orestes’, in

C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.), Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics(Oxford, 1998), 164–77, for an acute discussion of the way in which the Spartan appropriationshould be seen not as a straightforward ‘theft’, but as a reassertion of Sparta’s true Achaeanheritage. She distinguishes between the case of Orestes, which was for the beneWt of the polis atlarge and that of Theseus, whose appropriation was for the advancement of one family only (170).121 FGrH 430 f 1. Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 257, notes the importance of indigenous heroes

here: ‘Die Lokalgeschichte von Herakleia hat gewiß nicht mit der Nacherzahlung der grie-chischen Mythen begonnen, sondern mit der Reihe der einheimischen Urkonige.’


hero, who was ‘struck by a pig’.122 Promathidas’ compatriot Nymphis wrote

about the songs sung by the Mariandynians at a local festival for another

ancient hero, Bormus, who disappeared when going to fetch water one day.123

And when we reach Callistratus in the Wrst century bc, the local heroic family

tree of Heraclea begins to Wt together. From his On Heraclea we learn that

Bormus, mourned by the Mariandynians, was one of the sons of Titias.124 The

tempting conclusion would be that Heraclean local historiography was full of

stories of its own parochial heroes, but caution is needed. The fragments of

Heraclean historiography are dominated by scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes,

which may distort the picture. Certainly for the later history of the area, the

work of Memnon of Heraclea provides a counterexample, being structured, as

it is, at least in Photius’ epitome, by Hellenistic monarchs and Roman

intervention in the region.125

Indeed, the fragments of local historiography provide a good deal of

evidence for their authors presenting the earliest periods of a city or region’s

history in the context of a wider mythological network.126 Heracles, a natur-

ally itinerant Wgure, was an obvious candidate to link the histories of other-

wise isolated places into a wider framework, and a few examples will illustrate

how geographically widespread his appearances are. In the Argolid, he turns

up in the Argolica of Hagias-Dercylus with the cattle of Geryon; and in the

Argolica of Deinias in connection with the Paphlagonians, and as the father of

Megara’s children; he appears three times in the work of Socrates of Argos.127

He and the horse, Arion, are mentioned in the Arcadica of Ar(i)aethus of

Tegea;128 and naturally in many of the works on Elis, not only in connection

122 FGrH 430 f 2. It is interesting, though probably not signiWcant, that Creophylus’ fourth-century native account of the foundation of Ephesus also involves a pig. The founders were notsure of the correct location for the city, so they asked the god where they should build. Theanswer came that they should place the city where the Wsh and the wild pig showed them (FGrH417 f 1).

123 FGrH 432 f 5b.124 FGrH 433 f 3. The genealogy could be taken further still, since Mariandynus, who gave

the people his name, was the father of Titias.125 On Memnon, see L. M. Yarrow, Historiography at the End of the Republic: Provincial

Perspectives on Roman Rule (Oxford, 2006).126 An interesting parallel presents itself in the world of Anglo-Saxon saints. J. Blair, Anglo-

Saxon Oxfordshire (Oxford, 1994) suggests that every minster probably had its own local saint(mostly from the seventh and eighth centuries: Birinus at Dorchester, Diuma at Charlbury,Osgyth at Aylesbury, Eadburgh at Bicester, Frideswide at Oxford, Beornwald at Bampton), who‘would have been the focus of popular rituals, expressing both the centrality of the relic-holdingchurches and the coherence of their parochial communities.’ (76). However, the fact that theassociated stories often involved itinerancy—the journeys of saints between named places—tiedthe individual parish into the wider Christian world.

127 Hagias-Dercylus (FGrH 305 f 1); Deinias (FGrH 306 f 1 and 8); Socrates (FGrH 310 f 9,10, 15).

128 FGrH 316 f 5.


with the Olympics, but also for his labours. Echephylidas (fourth–third

century bc) seems to have collected many Heracles stories in his Eliaca.129

Heracles has a high proWle also outside the Peloponnese. Philochorus’

Attica involves him in the Theseus story;130 Aristophanes the Boeotian has

him brought up by Rhadamanthus; Hegesippus of Mecyberna takes him

north to Chalcidice, where he was involved in one version of the gigantoma-

chy at Phlegra, given as the old name for Pallene.131Writers on Italy and Sicily

naturally involved him in a gigantomachy at a diVerent Phlegraian plain.

Timaeus of Tauromenium related Heracles’ journey through Italy, via the

battle between giants and gods, and on down to Sicily.132 A more inventive

appropriation of the ‘Heracles fought the giants here’ theme is to be found in

the third-century bc work on Cyzicus by Agathocles.133 The second fragment

concerns the competitive creation of small islands near Cyzicus: one piled up

by giants; one by Kore, on which she destroyed the remaining giants with that

most Xexible hero, Heracles, at her side.134 The competition to appropriate

major Panhellenic heroes for local accounts extended to Pelops.135 Istrus the

Callimachean claimed that he was a Paphlagonian; while Autesion, an author

of Achaica, said that he was an Achaean and from the city of Olenus.136 And

the trump card was played by Pausanias, who related in his Argolica the story

of the founder Phlias, who might have been the son of Dionysus and might

have sailed on the Argo—a clear case where a local story is built into not just

one, but two wider frames of reference.137

Malkin has connected the appropriation of mythical heroes by poleis

around the Mediterranean with the need for relatively young colonies to

assert a claim to antiquity and true Hellenism through alleged heroic involve-

ment in their foundations. The pattern by which metropoleis had heroic

founders and colonies human ones necessitated some creative meddling,

129 FGrH 409.130 Philochorus (FGrH 328 f 18). The story is potentially negative with regard to Heracles,

since it tells of the transfer to Heracles, the Dorian, of shrines to Theseus, the Attic hero.131 Aristophanes (FGrH 379 f 8); Hegesippus (FGrH 391 f 1).132 FGrH 566 f 89. But, as Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 577, notes, we have no idea whether

Timaeus related the whole Heracles story, or at least this march, as a uniWed whole (‘als Einheit’)or whether it was scattered in diVerent places.133 FGrH 472 f 2.134 Other eastern Mediterranean claims to Heracles were to be found in the work by Andron

of Teos on the Pontic region, in which he claimed that Heracles had a son by the daughter ofAcheron in the land of the Mariandynians (FGrH 802 f 1); see also the work of Apollonius ofAphrodisias on Caria, in which he told of the city of Bargasa, named after the son of Barge andHeracles who was pursued by Lamos, the son of Omphale and Heracles (FGrH 740 f 2).135 Theseus too was in demand. Menecrates rather implausibly claimed that Theseus was an

integral part of the history of Nicaea in Bithynia (FGrH 701 f 1).136 For the competing claims to Pelops, see FGrH 334 f 74.137 FGrH 314 f 1.


with the result that the Italiote city of Achaean Croton, for example, which

had a good historical founder in the Wgure of Myscellus of Rhypae, started to

strike coins declaring Heracles ktistes (‘Heracles the founder’), based on the

story that Heracles had accidentally killed the eponymous hero, Croton.138

According to Malkin, the growing sense of Panhellenic identity meant that

cities wanted to ‘become as old as their mother cities, thus sharing a time that

was even more ancient than the Trojan War’.139 The idea of ‘sharing a time’

which was imbued with prestige neatly expresses the importance of time past

in the self-image of communities, and the competitive nature of the creation

of identity.

This competitive impulse could lead to extreme measures. One author of a

Thessalica, whose extant fragments are heavily dominated by a range of

mythical Wgures, was criticized by Strabo for distorting his history and

misappropriating more famous tales and prestige than the region really

deserved, in order to please his audience. ‘Wanting to gratify the Thessalians

with mythical stories’, says Strabo, ‘he says that the temple at Dodona was

transferred there from part of Thessaly.’140 But Pausanias believed that the

people of Troezen were the worst oVenders in terms of playing up local claims

for the mythical and heroic heritage of their land. ‘They glorify their own

country more than anyone else,’ he says. ‘They claim Orus was Wrst in their

land, even though Orus is not a Greek name.’141 It is a neat but resonant

coincidence that this comment falls right at the very end of over 750 pages of

fragmentary local histories collected by Jacoby, since it evokes some of the

issues that concern us here over the distinction between ‘great’ and local

historiography and the need for local communities to give themselves a place

in a wider Panhellenic world.

This tension between local and Panhellenic emerges also if we consider the

types of chronological patterning which lent themselves to the earliest times.

Just as we shall see that kings could be used as dating devices as well as

appearing as the actual narrative content of a work, so too family trees,

whether human or divine, could both constitute a subject of interest in

138 Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, 64. S. Price, ‘Local Mythologiesin the Greek East’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in theRoman Provinces (Oxford, 2005), 115–24, discusses the use of mythical associations as a meansof forming local identities within wider frameworks through the iconography on coinage. As hestates, ‘local myths can situate a community in common narratives of the past’ (116), eitherbecause the place was founded by a great Wgure, or wandering heroes stopped there, orimportant episodes happened there rather than elsewhere. He points to two coins fromAcmonia in Phrygia showing Acmon on horseback, that is, a founder Wgure from Greekmythology, but set in local scenery.

139 Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, 65.140 FGrH 602 f 11. 141 FGrH 607 f 1.


their own right and oVer a chronological framework for other events.142

Hellanicus of Lesbos, for example, reveals a strong interest in mythical

genealogy in his Atthis, tying in the descent from Deucalion through his

son Codrus and so on to the Heraclidae,143 and miraculously tracing the

ancestry of the orator Andocides right back to Telemachus, the son of

Odysseus, and Nausicaa.144 It is not, therefore, a surprise that he chooses to

date the trial of Orestes on the Areopagus to nine generations after the trial of

Ares and Poseidon over Halirrothius,145 and six generations after the trial

of Cephalus, the son of Dioneus; or the trial of Clytemnestra for the murder

of Agamemnon to three generations after the trial of Daedalus (f 22). Here we

see not only generational time, but also the emergence of a time frame

constructed from major trials—a chronology of justice.

The relationship between generational time systems and the genealogical

interests of many early historians is complex, and in some ways tangential to

this study. As Murray points out, the use of generations in reckoning time

does not in itself imply a genealogical interest,146 and it is far from clear how

much conceptual distance we should place between Hecataeus’ innovation in

his Genealogiai of genealogical chronology and the more extensive and radical

attempt to construct a chronology for the spatium historicum, which would be

the task of the historian.147 But it is a relationship to which we have already

devoted a little attention in the context of universal historiography, and it is

worth considering whether there was anything distinctively diVerent about

the function and role of genealogy, and the use of generations, in a more

local context. Fowler’s classic article on the conceptual underpinning of

142 The dominance of genealogical concerns in the local histories of Greece is striking andworthy of further attention. For some examples, see FGrH 310: Socrates of Argos; 316:Ar(i)aethus of Tegea; 451: Eumelus of Corinth; 457: Epimenides of Crete; 568: Hippostratusof Sicily; 595: Sosibius the Laconian.143 FGrH 323a f 23. See Jacoby, Commentary IIIB Supplement 43–51, for an excellent

discussion of the use of royal genealogies in the historiography of Athens. In particular, hisanalysis brings out the blurred distinction between genealogical and magisterial time, since, asthe Parian Marble shows, the king list at Athens moved straight into the structuring of time byarchons. There is, indeed, some suggestion that the transition was further blurred by the notionof kings being designated ‘archon for life’, making the shift one of tenure (from life to a Wxedperiod of oYce), rather than regal to magisterial.144 FGrH 323a f 24. This was probably introduced at the Wrst appearance in the narrative of

the Andocides concerned.145 On Halirrothius as the son of Poseidon who died at hands of Ares having wronged his

daughter Alcippe, see Philochorus (FGrH 328 f 3).146 Murray, ‘Herodotus and Oral History’, 22.147 See L. Bertelli, ‘Hecataeus: From Genealogy to Historiography’, in The Historian’s Craft in

the Age of Herodotus, 67–94. He questions Hecataeus’ novelty, asking to what extent Hecataeus’work could be seen as simply a prose version of Hesiod’s (76), but concludes that Hecataeusdoes herald a major step towards the development of a historiography, since he introduces theelement of rational underpinning and criticism (89).


genealogical works takes as its starting point the scene in the Iliad where

Nestor tells of how Peleus interrogated his visitors from the south about their

ancestry and lineage in order to give himself a means to relate the unknown to

the known: ‘Genealogy gives him his bearings. For those within the system a

genealogy is a map. They can read its signs. To the names are attached stories,

thousands of them; collectively they gave the listeners their sense of history

and their place in the world.’148 But, as Fowler goes on to argue, the apparently

compelling appeal of the universal structure oVered by a genealogical poem

such as the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women149would always be compromised by

the independence of the cities, which ‘produced a centrifugal force counter-

acting the desire for unity under the name ‘‘Hellenic’’ ’.150

A new wave of scholarship on the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women has

stressed the interplay between the local and the Panhellenic traditions. In

particular, Rutherford has posited that poets employed ‘panhellenic poetics’,

by which he refers not to a common system, but to deliberately generated

connections through the Catalogue between myths and genealogical tradi-

tions from diVerent parts of Greece.151 D’Alessio reinforces this point, noting

the important diVerence between lyric poetry, which was addressed to local

audiences, although with Panhellenic overtones, and genealogical epic poetry,

which was addressed to no speciWc or identiWable local audience, but designed

from the start as a Panhellenic form, in spite of its focus on local traditions.152

This tension between the potential for a universal, or at least Panhellenic,

genealogical structure and the constant promotion of variant stories asserting

local identities, is paradigmatic for the ongoing complexity of macro- and

micronarratives in the telling of history, whatever the priority of one form

148 R. Fowler, ‘Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation of the Hellenes’,Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44 (1998), 1–19 at 1.

149 Fowler, ibid. 15, argues that this is a production of the seventh century when themythographical ‘creation of the Hellenes’ corresponded to a living reality of uniWed Greeks ina world of colonization and contact with other peoples, and the Thessalian amphictyony couldrely on its transfer to Delphi in the early sixth century to lend authority to the message that thepeople of the South were likewise descended from Thessalian heroes.

150 Fowler, ibid. 16. But see I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Cam-bridge, MA and London, 2001), 9–12, for the complex relationship between genealogy andidentity. Malkin observes that claims often seem to be to do with ‘intra-Hellenic identity’ (12) asin Euripides’ Ion and Isocrates’ Archidamus, rather than truly ‘ethnic’. He suggests that weshould distinguish between ‘collective identity’ and a more speciWc notion of ethnicity.

151 I. Rutherford, ‘Mestra at Athens: Hesiod fr. 43 and the Poetics of Panhellenism’, inR. Hunter (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions (Cam-bridge, 2005), 99–117. The Panhellenic poetics would thus oVer a way in which the poem couldconWgure not only time, but also space.

152 G. B. D’Alessio, ‘Ordered from the Catalogue: Pindar, Bacchylides, and Hesiodic Genea-logical Poetry’, in The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, 217–38 at 217. This is indeed an interestingproposition, given that the genealogy was essentially woven out of local traditions. One wonderswhat the motivation for such a work would be.


over another. Finkelberg has pointed out the way in which the Wrst prose

writings in Greek, the logographies, were concerned with analysing precisely

this complexity and providing critical commentaries on the diVerent strands

of heroic genealogy.153 But, by contrast with Fowler’s stress on the instability

of the genealogical tradition and the power of individual poleis to present

their own versions, Finkelberg is more impressed by the overwhelming

dominance of an unassailable Panhellenic genealogical scheme, which was

strengthened by its multifaceted and incorporative nature: ‘As a result, while

individual and local genealogies could well Xuctuate, the Pan-Hellenic genea-

logical scheme largely remained untouched.’154

Finkelberg’s observation that being counted a Hellene did not entail des-

cent from Hellen himself, but could involve simply ‘becoming reckoned

among’ the Hellenes,155 allows for the ‘Panhellenic’ genealogy to be hetero-

geneous and ‘an aggregate of mutually unconnected stemmas, each of them

traced to a separate progenitor of its own’;156 and this perhaps brings her

vision closer to that of Fowler with his assertion of the independence of poleis

to manipulate or reject the scheme. The same divergent reality could be seen

either as reXecting a uniWed scheme which was itself heterogeneous, or as

deviations from a central scheme by self-asserting cities, though these two

scenarios clearly imply diVerent interpretations of the relationship between

polis and tradition. We should, in any case, keep both of these perspectives in

mind later when considering the question of the historian’s authority. Finkel-

berg comments that ‘contrary to what many are inclined to believe, even a

falsiWcation of one’s genealogical position could not be carried out arbitrarily,

that is, without making it consistent in terms of the universally agreed upon

system’.157 In other words, she asserts parameters within which the teller of the

past must remain if he wishes to win the credence of his audience. We shall

return to these issues of authority and reception in more detail when discuss-

ing the orators (in chapter 5) and the historians (in chapter 6).158

153 M. Finkelberg, Greeks and Pre-Greeks: Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition(Cambridge, 2005), 25.154 Finkelberg, ibid. 29.155 See Herodotus 5.57, for the acceptance of Phoenicians (originally from Gephyraei, but

subsequently having settled in Boeotia) into the community on certain terms. Finkelbergsuggests (37) that this incorporation of non-Hellenes into the Hellenic race might havehappened at around the time of the establishment of the Panhellenic Olympic festival in theeighth century.156 Finkelberg, ibid. 35. She notes, for example, the large number of mythological characters,

who were not associated with the Hellen genealogy, not least the river Inachus and his son,Phoroneus, whose stemma includes such prominent and geographically widespread heroes asIo, Cadmus, Heracles, and Perseus (33–4).157 Finkelberg, ibid. 28.158 Price, ‘Local Mythologies in the Greek East’, has made the same point with reference to

local identity expressed on coinage. He notes that the relocation of myths for the purposes of


b) Human history: regal and dynastic time

Just as with the universal historians, once we reach the realms of human

history, a wide range of chronological systems comes into play in the frag-

ments of local historiography. One relatively common means of denoting

time is by reference to local kings and rulers. Ion of Chios (c.480–422 bc) in

his Foundation of Chios notes the arrival of Carians on the island ‘during the

reign of Oenopion’ (K�d B� ˇN��ø�� Æ�Øº��Æ�).159 The case of the Mega-

rians neatly illustrates the shift from mythical heroes to more systematic king

lists, but also the way in which the continuity of generational thinking blurred

the boundary between them. They said that their city received its name when

Kar, the son of the mythical hero, Phoroneus, was king, and formulated their

subsequent history in relation to this and successive reigns. They said that in

the twelfth generation after Kar (�ø��Œ��Ø �b o��æ�� a ˚AæÆ e�

*�æø��ø� ª��AØ), Lelex arrived from Egypt and became king, giving the

Leleges their name. Furthermore, the capture of the city of Megara is dated to

when Nisus was king, reinforcing the use of regal time.160Or we may consider

the Argolica of Deinias of Argos (third century bc), in which the Lacedaemo-

nians were said to have worked in chains by the river Lachas as prisoners of

war in Tegea, ‘when Perimeda was in power in Tegea’.161 The fourth-century

bc work on Cyrene by Acesandrus mentioned Eurypylus, the king of Cyrene,

son of Poseidon and of Celaene, the daughter of Atlas.162 The mention of a

royal Wgure does not in itself indicate that the historian used regal time as a

structuring device for his work. However, the same fragment also attributes to

Acesandrus the claim that after Eurypylus, Cyrene, the daughter of Hypseus,

ruled Libya. Although this particular example does not constitute a dynastic

self-advancement ‘raises the question of the limits of the possible in such mythical elaborations’(119) and that ‘competing claims had to be plausible within the logic of the myths (otherwisethey would carry no weight with other Greek communities), and they had to rest on evidence(such as old oracles, decrees, and the writings of poets and historians), but there was no externalauthority (oracular or other) that could adjudicate between such claims’ (120).

159 FGrH 392 f 1. For a full discussion of the structuring and implications of Ion’s account,see Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 18–20.

160 FGrH 487 f 3.161 FGrH 306 f 4: —�æØ��Æ� K� �ª�ÆØ �ı�Æ��ı��. But, as Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 29,

notes, we cannot assume from the fact that a third-century Argive historian used a vaguedynastic reference that Arcadia already had a local chronicle from very early on. For anotherexample of ‘dynastic time’ see Timaeus FGrH 566 f 133 on the Eleatic contest, which he says wasduring Hieron’s rule in Sicily and at the time of Epicharmus the poet (ŒÆa � (�æø�Æ e� #ØŒ�º�Æ��ı�� ŒÆd � ¯��Ææ�� e� ��Ø�c�). The precise distinction between diVerent types ofmonarch—king, dynast, tyrant—is not of the essence here.

162 FGrH 469 f 3. There was clearly disagreement among ancient scholars over such funda-mental details as the king’s name and genealogy. We are told that Phylarchus called him Eurytus,and said he was the brother of Lycaon.


succession, the mention of the next ruler possibly might suggest that Acesan-

drus was marking out and articulating Cyrenian history through its royal

leaders.

Sometimes royal time was useful for locating important Wgures and events

from outside the history of the place concerned. The Spartan history by

Sosibius (c.200 bc) noted that Homer could be dated to the eighth year of

the reign of Charillus, son of Polydectes, placing him Wrmly within the chrono-

logical framework of the Spartan kings.163 This particular case illustrates a

phenomenon, to which we shall return, namely the sewing together of several

diVerent time frames to form a more extensive or mutually supportive web.

Charillus, we are told, reigned for sixty-four years, after which his son Nican-

drus ruled for thirty-nine; the Wrst Olympiad occurred in the thirty-fourth year

of the latter’s reign, allowing Sosibius to conclude that Homer could be dated to

ninety years before the establishment of the Olympics. Here, then, not only do

the Spartan kings form a dynastic chain, but they also oVer an important

chronological stepping stone—from Homer to the Olympics, but via a local

route.164 At Wrst glance it is striking to place what is apparently a piece of local

historiography alongside the chronographical works discussed in the second

chapter and to consider their similar concerns with establishing the relationship

between key chronological markers, here placed appropriately against a local

framework. However, a second look reveals the complexity of the task, and

exempliWes one of the weaknesses of Jacoby’s arrangement of authors. Sosibius’

chronological passages here are explicitly attributed to an ostensibly chrono-

graphical work—Record of Dates or On Dates, although they appear in the

volume on local histories, since Jacoby classiWed Sosibius as primarily a local

historian. We simply have no idea to what degree these chronological interests

were reXected in his works on various aspects of life in Laconia.165

163 FGrH 595 f 2. Sosibius is, unfortunately, one of those authors, like Phlegon of Tralles,about whom one might justiWably have suspicions, given that almost every citation is from asingle source, Athenaeus, who was himself engaged in an elaborate display of erudition.Furthermore, it does not inspire conWdence in the real existence of this author that he isdescribed by Plutarch (De Iside et Osimde 28¼ FGrH 595 t 2) as ��ºı�ºÆ�c� ‘much-wandering’,almost too good to be true as an epithet for an author of Dorian stock (see Herodotus 1.56 forthe description of the Dorians as always on the move). More positively on the fragments ofSosibius, see the excellent article by E. Levy, ‘Sosibius le Laconien’, in D. Lenfant (ed.), Athenee etles fragments d’historiens, Actes du colloque de Strasbourg 16–18 juin 2005 (Paris, forthcoming2007).164 Sosibius also provided an Olympiadic context for the local Spartan Carneia festival—Wrst

won by Terpander and established in the twenty-sixth Olympiad (FGrH 595 f 3).165 It must indeed be noted that the named works of Sosibius (On Spartan Festivals, On

Alcman, On Imitations, and so on) are not concerned with the type of themes to require anelaborate chronological structure. The fragments, which excerptors have not attributed toparticular works, involve a mixture of mythological and historical themes, suggesting thatperhaps here the chronological interests of Sosibius might have come to the fore.


As we have seen with the chronographers and will see further in the local

histories, the fall of Troy was a contested date whose discussion elicited the

full range of chronological systems. Amongst these were regal datings: Clem-

ent of Alexandria reported that Dionysius the Argive pinpointed the event to

the eighteenth year of the rule of Agamemnon—not a surprising choice, given

his relevance to the tale.166 Perhaps more surprising was the fact that Dio-

nysius reinforced this dating by deWning it as happening when Demophon

son of Theseus was king of Athens in his Wrst year, and on the twelfth day of

the month of Thargelion. Both the general practice of ‘borrowing’ the time of

other cities, and the common use of Athenian months, will be discussed later,

but it is interesting to note the way in which the regal time of two cities could

be synchronized for the purpose of more accurately or intelligibly denoting

when an event took place.167

But of course it was more natural that those who wrote up the past of

Athens itself should use its kings as chronological markers. It is clear from one

of the few remaining fragments of Demon’s Atthis that there he dealt with the

royal house of Athens, and furthermore that he used the reigns as a dating

device for other historical events.168 The greater surviving extent of the Atthis

of Philochorus gives a rare opportunity to glimpse how regal time might have

formed a chronological framework for the early history of Athens. He dates

the attack on Athens by Eumolpus, son of Poseidon, to ‘when Erechtheus was

king’ (�¯æ��Ł�ø� �Æ�Øº��);169 he mentions the rule for thirteen years of

the double Cecrops over what was then called Acte and is now Attica;170 he

comments on the nature of armour ‘under Cecrops’ (K�d ˚�Œæ��), which

had later changed.171 There is, of course, an important diVerence between

identifying a point in time through reference to the current king and actually

constructing a narrative which uses precise regnal dating within an organized

and complete chronological structure. But the fragmentary nature of the

evidence makes such distinctions impossible to exemplify and we are forced

to infer that a historian such as Philochorus was indeed using a structured

166 FGrH 305 f 2.167 It is interesting too that Lysimachus of Alexandria (c.200 bc) in hisNostoi (FGrH 382 f 13)

concurred exactly with Dionysius on this date for the fall of Troy—the Wrst year of Demophon’sreign as king of Athens and on the twelfth of Thargelion—but with no mention of Agamemnon.Nevertheless, the repetition of the two other elements is striking.

168 FGrH 327 f 1 tells of how Aphidas, king of Athens, was assassinated by his youngerillegitimate brother, Thymooetes, who then became king. During his reign, Melanthus ofMessenia was exiled and found a new home in Eleusis through the Delphic oracle.

169 FGrH 328 f 13. The story is given as an aetiology for the festival of the Boedromia, sonamed after Ion’s rush to help the city in its distress.

170 FGrH 328 f 93. The king was apparently so called either because of his size, or because,being Egyptian, he knew two languages.

171 FGrH 328 f 98.


regnal framework from his extensive and systematic use of a magisterial

framework for later periods (on which see below in this chapter). The fact

that regal time seemed particularly appropriate for marking out the history of

a place is brought home by a fragment concerning accounts of the ancient

events (a Iæ�ÆØ ÆÆ) of Miletus, in which we learn that Miletus was known

as Anactoria for two generations, while Anax and Asterius were kings.172 The

name of the land and the city changed when Miletus himself arrived with an

army of Cretans, Xeeing Minos. It is clear that the identity of the place,

including its very name, was bound up with the royal house, and that its

history would enter a very diVerent phase, a new temporally deWned era, when

the ruler changed.

It is worth recalling here the way in which cities might play to their dynastic

rulers not only in the construction of the past, but also in their formulation of

assertions concerning the present. Kushnir-Stein has studied Palestinian coin-

age and the way in which its dating systems reXected the changing status of

the cities:173 Wrst reXecting their position under Ptolemaic control, then

dating by Seleucid eras, and Wnally moving towards the assertion of individual

city identities through the introduction of coinage which was dated in terms

of their own eras of autonomy. Here, the commemoration of a crucial

moment in the city’s history was simultaneously an expression of local

independence, and the sense of a new beginning in history and the reconW-

guration of time, since the new situation was manifested in two ways at once:

‘The introduction of the eras of autonomy was accompanied by the adoption

of an individual calendar by each city’.174 The suggestion that Palestinian cities

used their organization of time to assert their identity might be tempered by

Kushnir-Stein’s further comment that such displays of self-assertion could

prove convenient to the ruling monarchs as well, since the Hellenistic mon-

archs liked the idea of having free cities in their kingdoms as a sign that the

classical Greek polis had not died.175Nevertheless, it still shows that individual

cities might construct, through their adoption or rejection of dynastic eras in

the dating of their coinage, their relationship with the relevant rulers.

The focus on successive members of a dynasty naturally gave rise to a

situation in which generations would be a recurrent unit of time, just as was

the case in the genealogical structure of the heroic age. We have already seen

(in chapter 1) that generational chronology is a common form of time

measurement in any culture. However, the inaccuracies of such a system

172 See FGrH 496 f 2.173 A. Kushnir-Stein, ‘City Eras on Palestinian Coinage’, in Coinage and Identity in the Roman

Provinces, 157–61.174 Kushnir-Stein, ibid. 157.175 Kushnir-Stein, ibid. 160.


require little elaboration.We have only to recall the passage of Herodotus (1.32)

with which this book started to see the disputes that could arise over the span of

even a single life. However, that passage also brings home the value ofmeasuring

time in human terms. Quite apart from its appealing simplicity, the rhetorical

value of a dating system which attached the enumeration of time to a set of

named individuals was considerable, not least in terms of its memorability. Ion

of Chios, for example, in relating the early history of that island, dates Hector’s

battle against the Abantes and Carians on the island and subsequent incorpor-

ation of the Chians into the world of the Panionium to ‘the fourth generation

after Amphiclus’, who came toChios fromEuboea, in accordance with aDelphic

oracle.176We have already seen the way in which the people of Megara mapped

out the time between the reign of Kar, when the city received its name, and the

arrival of Lelex from Egypt and the start of his reign, as lasting for twelve

generations.177 The appropriateness of generational counting in a regal context

is clear,178 although the kingly component was by no means a prerequisite.179

The structuring of the distant past in terms of heroes was in some senses

more complicated than the corresponding structuring of the historical period

in terms of rulers, be they kings or magistrates, although we have seen that

counting by generations played a role in blurring this distinction. Whereas the

drive to construct a genealogical structure that would accommodate diVerent

population groups, all claiming to be part of a ‘Hellenic’ race, made for a multi-

faceted and much contested account,180 the construction of a king list or a list

of eponymous magistrates was on the whole a more obviously linear and local

aVair. It is to the structuring of local history according to the latter of these

simpler structures, the annual oYcials appointed by the polis, that we now turn.

c) Magisterial and priestly time; counting the years

The impetus to structure and calibrate the past in terms of named individuals

was clearly strong, but not all Greek cities had kings at any stage, and none

except Sparta had them throughout their history. The use of local regal time

176 FGrH 392 f 1: I�e %��Œº�ı ��æ�Ø ª��AØ.177 FGrH 487 f 3: �ø��Œ��Ø �b o��æ�� a ˚AæÆ e� *�æø��ø� ª��AØ.178 See again FGrH 496 f 2 and the Milesian accounts of their city’s short-lived existence as

‘Anactoria’ for the two generations (K�d ª��a� �b� ��) while Anax and Asterius were kings.179 See FGrH 555 f 4, where Hellanicus is cited on the disputed date for the crossing of the

Sicels from Italy to Sicily. He denoted the date as ‘in the third generation before the events atTroy’ (æ��Ø ª��AØ �æ �æ�� H� æøØŒH�).

180 See Fowler, ‘Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation of the Hellenes’,18, for the point that writing down the Hesiodic Catalogue produced no abatement in theoVering of challenges by Hecataeus with the genealogy of Hellen and Deucalion, or by Acusilausof Argos, who revised the Catalogue with an Argive slant.


in delineating history stood alongside the use of other local administrative or

political structures as temporal devices. Whereas most of the extant evidence

for regal time is to be found in historiographical texts, many examples of the

latter phenomenon are to be found not only in historiography, but also in

inscribed public documents, making them clear expressions of the temporal

structures adopted by and understood by a polis as a whole for structuring

its past.181

We have already seen examples of magisterial time as a dating device in

public documents (in chapter 1) and other instances abound in the pages of

Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. An (admittedly imperial) inscrip-

tion from Magnesia on the Maeander notes that ‘during the prytany of

Acrodemus, son of Diotimus’ (K�d �æıÆ��ø� %Œæ��ı �F ˜Ø��ı),

the demos sent some men to Delphi to ask the god about a sign which had

occurred: namely, that a tree had been felled by the wind and inside was found

an image of Dionysus.182 Clearly the local magistracy is being used as a dating

device and was entirely appropriate for denoting the past of the polis in a

public context. Or consider Demeas (300/250 bc?) whose honoriWc inscrip-

tion on Paros relates that, besides writing about his country, he also wrote

about his compatriot, Archilochus, and of his piety to the gods and commit-

ment to his country.183He recorded Archilochus’ achievements either ‘archon

by archon’ or ‘year by year’, depending on how one reconstructs the text (ŒÆ�

½¼æ��Æ� �ŒÆ�� or ŒÆ� ½K�ØÆıe�� ŒÆ��).184 In fact, either reading carries

181 Historians during and of the Principate would associate the king-by-king vision of historyoVered by imperial biographies, but also embedded in more ostensibly non-biographical formssuch as Tacitus used in his Annals, with secrecy and deliberate concealment, while the annalisticform of historiography which derived from the Republican practice of pinning up the pontiWcalrecord of the events under an annual magistracy was naturally associated with accountabilityand public approval (see Dio 53.19). But to assert that kingly history in Greece was private, bycontrast with the public nature of magisterial history, would be to retroject a contrast thatbelongs to Roman historiography.182 FGrH 482 f 5. Another city which seems to have mapped out time in terms of its local

magistracy of prytanies is Pergamum. The anonymous marble chronicle notes that Archiaspersuaded them to choose prytanies year by year (ŒÆ� �� ŒÆ��) and that there have beenprytanies continuously from him until now (FGrH 506 ¼ OGIS 264). As A. Chaniotis, Historieund Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften (Stuttgart, 1988), 70, notes, the Wrst section aboutthe introduction of the prytany system was followed by a genealogy of Pergamene kings. This,then, oVers an interesting example of genealogical, regal, and magisterial concepts of timecombined.183 FGrH 502 f 1 ¼ IG 12 (5) 445. The inscription is to be contextualized within a much

larger cult of Archilochus in his native Paros, to which we shall return in ch. 6.184 In spite of IG 12(5), ŒÆ� ¼æ��Æ is the favoured reading, adopted not only by Jacoby but

also by D. Clay, Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis (Cambridge, MA andLondon, 2004). The context makes plain why this is the right reading—since the inscriptiongoes on to say that ‘he [sc. Demeas] began Wrst with the archon’ (qæŒÆØ I�e ¼æ�� æH��).Clay, 116, translates ‘the Wrst archon in the series’, but the �æH�� does not seem to support this.


the same annalistic implication. This latter example, as an inscription set up

to celebrate a historian who in turn was celebrating a poet and his age, leads us

from the world of the public document to that of historiography. However,

the very fact that the historian is publicly honoured is a reminder both of the

integral part that the historian had to play in the community and of the

overlap between the conceptual frameworks used by the polis in its oYcial

decrees and those used by the historian in telling the polis its past.

Athens oVers the best opportunity to see how local historiography might be

structured according to annual magistracies as well as reigns,185 neatly linking

regal and magisterial time. The best example of how history was conWgured

according to local political time is provided by Philochorus (340–263/2 bc),

of whose works well over two hundred fragments survive, and who, in

Jacoby’s eyes, held the status of ‘the last, and certainly the greatest, of the

Atthidographers’.186 The list of his twenty-seven works reveals the scholarly

nature of this Atthidographer, which perhaps explains some of the more

recondite features of the extant fragments of his Atthis. His work of local

historiography took as its scope the whole period from ‘primeval history’187

to his own day, almost certainly in an annalistic arrangement once it was

possible to adhere to such a scheme.

The extant fragments reveal that the historiographical genre was perfectly

well able to incorporate the very public political time frames which we have

already seen displayed on public monuments. As Jacoby says, ‘the Wrst

business of the local historian was to create a chronological framework for

his town’.188 The very earliest phase of Attic history was, however, prone to

the kind of chaos which upset neat chronological schemes—after Ogygus,

because of the destruction caused by the Xood, Attica was kingless ‘until

Cecrops’.189 Hellanicus gives us more detail on this interregnum, noting that

Attic chronography was worked out from Ogygus under whom took place the

Wrst great Xood in Attica, when Phoroneus was king in Argos.190 Hellanicus

puts the length of time of the washout between Ogygus and Cecrops as 189

years. But for most of the earliest period of Athenian history encompassed by

Philochorus’ work, regal time was appropriate. The festival of Boedromia, for

185 For a non-Athenian parallel, see FGrH 536 f 3, Aethlius of Samos (Wfth to fourth centuriesbc) whose Samian Horoi noted that the image of Hera on Samos used formerly to be a woodenboard, but later ‘when Procles was archon, or ruler’ (—æ�Œº��ı� ¼æ��), it was madeanthropomorphic.

186 See Jacoby, Commentary IIIB Supplement 220. It is, however, unfortunately the case thatwe know virtually nothing of his biography.

187 Jacoby, ibid. Supplement 244.188 Jacoby, ibid. Supplement 381.189 FGrH 328 f 92.190 FGrH 323a f 10. Note Phoroneus’ appearance as the father of Kar, under whose reign

Megara got its name—this interlacing of apparently discrete stories is not uncommon.


example, was named after the run made by Ion to help when Athens was

attacked by Eumolpus, the son of Poseidon, ‘when Erechtheus was king’;191 as

has already been mentioned, the style of armour ‘under Cecrops’ is noted, as

well as the fact that it later changed.192 Philochorus thus seems regularly to

have dated the early events in Attic and Athenian history by the king in power.

But the kings did not last for ever, and there are very many instances in

which Philochorus denotes when an event happened by reference to the

current archonship using the formula K�d [name] ¼æ��, or simply K�d

��ı, if the name has already been mentioned. This forms the temporal

structure for the major part of Philochorus’ work—local historiography in

the temporal framework provided by its subject matter, namely the political

history of Athens in terms of its eponymous archons. A few examples will

suYce to illustrate the pattern:193

F 31: Iª�æÆE�� ¯æ�B�: �oø� Kº�ª�� ½Z��; ŒÆd I��æı� ˚��æØ��

¼æ��; ‰� �Ææıæ�E *Øº ��æ�� K� ª.Hermes Agoraios. Thus he was called, and his temple was set up when Cebris

was archon, as Philochorus attests in Book 3.

F 52: �ØÆł��Ø�Ø�: K��º��ÆÆ �b �Ø��º�ŒÆØ ��æd H� �ØÆł��ø�; ‰�ª�ª �Æ�Ø� K�d %æ��ı ¼æ��; %��æ��ø� K� BØ %Ł��Ø ŒÆd *Øº ��æ��K� � B� %Ł��.

Voting by ballot. There has been a full discussion of voting by ballot, as was

established in the archonship of Archias. Androtion in his Atthis and

Philochorus in Book 6 of his Atthis.

F 211: *Øº ��æ�� b ��a c� �(ø�ØŒc� I��ØŒ�Æ� [sc. ��d� � …��æ��

MŒ�ÆŒ��ÆØ], K�d ¼æ�� %Ł��Ø� %æ��ı; H� �(ºØÆŒH� o��æ�� Ø��ŒÆe� Oª��Œ��Æ.

Philochorus says that Homer was at his height after the Ionian colonization,

in the archonship of Archippus at Athens, and 180 years after the TrojanWar.

The archonship thus provides the framework for Philochorus’ narrative,

although it could be tied in with other chronological devices. The subject

matter of the third fragment cited above makes it entirely unsurprising that

the archonal structure is supplemented by references to Troy and another major

migration which acted as a chronological anchor, the Ionian colonization.

We shall come back to the use of calendar months by Philochorus and other

local historians, but it is worth noting now the extraordinary similarity

191 FGrH 328 f 13: � ¯æ��Ł�ø� �Æ�Øº��.192 FGrH 328 f 98.193 For a fuller list of archonal dating in Philochorus, seeFGrH328 f 31, 36, 41, 49–51, 52, 53–6,

119, 121, 122, 123, 129, 130, 131, 134, 138, 139, 140, 154, 157, 158, 160, 211. FGrH 328 f 37, wherehe dates the building of the Lyceum not to the time of Pisistratus, as Theopompus would argue,but to the leadership of Pericles (—�æØŒº��ı� . . . K�Ø�Æ�F��) is exceptional in its formulation.


between the way in which Philochorus constructs his history of Athens and

Attica within the linear framework of Wrst kings and then archons, and the

way in which this is mirrored on the Parian Marble—an inscribed version of

Greek history from the accession of King Cecrops in Athens to 264/3 bc.194

The document is fraught with problems and, in spite of its considerable

interest, virtually neglected by modern scholarship. The reasons are to some

degree obvious. ‘Mutilated and corrupted in text, of uncertain purpose and

origin, arbitrary in scope and method, sometimes without parallel, often

unorthodox, ranging in subject over the whole of Greek history and literature

down to the third century b.c., the Parian Chronicle confronts its editor with

problems of the utmost diYculty and variety.’ So Munro described the marble

when reviewing Jacoby’s attempt at a text and commentary, early in his

career.195 But the inscription is of great importance, not least for the insights

it oVers into chronicle mentality. We shall return in more detail (in the Wnal

chapter) to questions concerning the context and purpose of the chronicle.

But relevant here is the formulaic nature of its entries—each ending with the

number of years from that point in the past to the time of composition, and a

note of which king was ruling, or later who the archon was.

A f 23: I�� y �ƒ ½� ‚ºº�� N� æ��Æ� K½��æ��ı�½Æ��; � ˙˙˙˙

((((; �Æ�Øº�� %Ł�½�H��½!��Ł�ø� æ�Ø�ŒÆØ��Œ��ı �ı�.From when the [Helle]nes marched against Troy, 954 years, in the 13th year

that [Men]estheus was king of Athe[ns].

A f 46: I� � �y ��æ�d �æH�� Mªø��Æ�� I��æH�; n� (?) �Ø��Æ� � 0� �ØŒ�� ›�ÆºŒØ��f½�� K��Œ½Æ�; � ˙˙˜˜˜˜—( (?), ¼æ�� %Ł��Ø� ¸ı�Æª æ�ı.From when choruses of men Wrst competed, which contest Hypo[di]cus the

Chalcidian won as trainer, 246 years, when Lysagoras was archon at Athens.

The change from Athenian regal time to archonal time is itself worthy of an

entry in the document, and indeed this (f 32) is the only fragment to anchor

itself in time only by the number of years separating the speciWed event from

the present. It reads ‘from when the annual archonship began, 420 years’,196

from which point on the usual formula—event, years distant from compos-

ition, king/magistrate—resumes. If nothing else, this suggests that the

methods used by local historians for shaping and representing the past were

194 The marble was bought at Smyrna on behalf of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel andbrought to London in 1627. The top half was lost and is known only in a copy by Selden. TheOxford fragment was presented to the University in 1667, and a smaller fragment was found inParos in 1897 and is in the museum there.

195 J. A. R. Munro, reviewing F. Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium (Berlin, 1904), in ClassicalReview 19 (1905), 267–9 at 267.

196 IG 12.5.444 (FGrH 239 f 32): I�� y ŒÆ� K�ØÆıe� qæ�� › ¼æ�ø�; ½�� ˙˙˙˙˜˜.


not so dissimilar from those used within the public arena—and perhaps this

should not surprise us, given the public and performative nature of history

telling. What is harder to explain is why an inscription which was set up on

Paros, apparently for a Parian audience, should choose an Athenian chrono-

logical framework. Jacoby’s assumption that the author used an Atthis as one of

his major sources (alongside Ephorus, a work on inventions, and Aristoxenus),

might explain the chronological frame, but the use of an Atthis is stated rather

than argued.197 An Athenian readership would seem perhaps a more obvious

solution, but we have no evidence for that. Nor can it be assumed that Athenian

conceptual frameworks imply Athenian audiences tomatch; theymay tell us only

about the aspirations of the author and his own, similarly aspiring, audience.

But in the light of this evidence, both literary and epigraphic, it is not

surprising that Jacoby felt able to make such strong assertions about the

annalistic structure of local historiography in the Greek poleis: ‘The year of

the Atthides, and of all local chronicles and chronicle-like products known to

us, is the year of oYce of the oYcials of the city, and there is no diVerence in

principle whether these oYcials are archons, kings, priests, or priestesses.’198

As Jacoby noted, local historiography was written annalistically wherever a list

of eponymous oYcials existed, which tended to be in the Greek city states, a

further support to the argument that local historiography really does need to

be read in the context of the functioning of the polis. For Jacoby, it was

Hellanicus’ creation of a list of Athenian eponymous oYcials at the end of

the Wfth century, linking the regal period to that of archons, which provided

the scaVolding for all future Athenian historiography, and oVered a local

parallel for the list of priestesses which underpinned universal chronicles.199

‘Hellanikos was the Wrst to narrate the history of this city-state . . . no matter

whether or no the exegetai of the city kept a chronicle; and whoever narrated

it after him could only do so ŒÆa �Æ�Øº�E� ŒÆd ¼æ��Æ�’ [‘according to kings

and archons’—my translation].200 As Schepens eloquently expresses it, the

197 See Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium, p. xviii. The further point that for the smaller fragment,whose sources are less clear, ‘Der Verteilung auf attische Jahre istWerk des Chronisten’, implies thatin the larger Oxford fragment this chronological framework was simply imported via the Atthis.198 Jacoby, Atthis, 87. The point is repeated again at 99: ‘they [sc. the Atthides] contain the

history of Athens in the form of annals, i.e. in the sequence of eponymous kings and archons.’199 Jacoby, Atthis, 89. This is very clearly proposed as an alternative explanation to the

derivation of such annalistic forms from pontiWcal records, which might seem at Wrst anobvious model to extract from the annalistic structure.200 Ibid. 126. This is clearly picking up the explicit statement in the Suda to describe the

arrangement of Philochorus’ work (FGrH 328 t 1), an interesting case of retrojection. For strongarguments against the annalistic reading of Hellanicus’ work, see Toye, ‘Dionysius of Halicar-nassus on the First Greek Historians’, concluding at 294: ‘The weight of the evidence from thefragments of Hellanicus’ Attic History and other works suggests that he did not compose annalsbut rather recounted heroic myths and genealogies.’


continuous chronological line which linked past and present ‘further en-

hances the sense of coherence within a narrative already exhibiting a concep-

tual unity of place. The unity of both time and place confers upon city

histories that very impression of oneness and wholeness that their writers

wanted to impart to their local audiences in search for historical identity.’201

The concerns over accuracy which worried Thucydides seem not to have

troubled the Atthidographers—for the majority of occasions, dating to a

year was perfectly adequate, particularly when dealing with the longue duree

of the life of a polis. The annalistic framework provided by eponymous

magistrates was clearly central to the construction of local histories. Jacoby

nevertheless concedes that the annalistic framework was not the only one in

operation in the Atthides,202 and I shall try to go further in showing that local

historians used a wide range of chronological structures in their works.

Before we move on to consider some of the chronological structures in local

historiography which do not adhere to this dominance of ‘history according to

kings and archons’, we should note another temporal indicator to which we

shall return, but which deserves preliminary mention here in the context of

time denoted through local magistracies and oYces, namely that of the priest-

ess of Hera at Argos.203Hellanicus is said to have dated the crossing of the Sicels

from Italy to Sicily as happening ‘in the third generation before the events at

Troy, during the twenty-sixth year of Alcyon being priestess at Argos’.204 The

Lindos temple chronicle, an inscription dating from 99 bc and found near the

theatre at the base of the Lindian acropolis, quite apart from the interest it holds

as a local reconstruction of the island’s heroic past, an aspect to which we shall

return (in chapter 6), also reveals the importance of local religious oYcials in

structuring time, not only that of the annual cycle, but also that of the historical

span.205Here it is the holders of the local priesthoods who are the markers. The

long description of the epiphany of the goddess at the time of Darius’ invasion

of Europe ‘was previously preserved, but under the priesthood of Halius (K�d �b

�F ƒ�æ�ø� �F <º��ı) . . . the temple was burned down, and it was burned

together with most of the dedications’ (Col. D lines 39–42). Furthermore, the

entire document is headed by a decree which neatly dates itself not only by

201 Schepens, ‘Greek City Histories’, 20.202 But see Jacoby, Atthis, 96, for his reluctance to admit this variation, and for his designa-

tion of the mention of epochal moments as borrowings from ‘Great History or perhaps evenfrom universal chronology’.203 Another priestly list was that of the priests of the Pythia at Delphi, which included the

name of the Atthidographer Phanodemus, son of Diyllus of Athens (FGrH 325 t 5).204 FGrH 4 f 79: æ��Ø ª��AØ �æ �æ�� H� æøØŒH� %ºŒı �� ƒ�æø�� K� 1 æª�Ø ŒÆa

e �Œ�� ŒÆd �NŒ��e� ��.205 See Blinkenberg, Lindos 2 (cf. Syll.3 725; FGrH 532). See C. Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle

and the Greek Creation of their Past (Oxford, 2003) for a full commentary.


reference to the priest of the moment—‘in the priesthood of Tisylus son of

Sosicrates’ (Col. A line 1) (½K�� ƒ�æ�ø� �Ø��º½�ı �F #ø�ØŒæ��ı�), but goeson to localize this further within the Rhodian calendar—‘on the twelfth of

Artamitios’ (Col. A line 1) (� `æÆ��Ø��ı �ø��Œ�ÆØ), the oYcials and Lindians

decreed . . . The inscription is to be set up ‘at the start of Agrianios’ (Col. A line

11) (K� HØ �N�Ø �Ø � `ªæØÆ��øØ), another Rhodian month.206

d) Mapping out time within the year: the religious calendar

This use of local calendars (tied to religious festivals and rituals) shows up in

the historiographical just as in the epigraphic record, and of course in the

works of those who made the calendar and its construction their explicit

theme. Although Jacoby was surely right to suggest that dating to a particular

year was suYciently accurate in the context of most local historiography, by

contrast with Thucydides’ quest for greater speciWcity, local months do

nevertheless turn up in the fragments on occasion. The use of local months

in Delphi is revealed by a fragment of Anaxandridas of Delphi (c.230/180 bc),

cited by Plutarch in response to the question of why one of the Delphic

months is called Bysios. This elicits a detailed philological analysis: many

people think that Bysios is Physios (‘determined by nature’), since it starts the

spring and many things grow then. But this is not true, since the Delphians

use � not instead of � as do the Macedonians, but instead of �. So, Bysios is

equivalent to Pysios, the appropriate name for a month in which ‘they make

inquiries and ask questions of the god’ (�ı�ØH�ÆØ ŒÆd �ı�Ł��ÆØ). They

call it ��º��Ł�� because it is when many questions are asked. For only later

did the month-by-month divinations come out for those who asked, but

formerly the Pythia delivered oracles for the whole year on this one day—an

interesting telescoping of prophetic time.207 Similarly, the third-century bc

writer, Comarchus, in his work on Elis, refers to the local month of Thosuthias

in his description of the establishment by Heracles of the four-yearly festival:

‘First of all he established a festival circuit on that day to start the Wrst day of the

month which is called Thosuthias in Elis, about which time the solstices of the

sun become wintry.’208

206 Higbie, ibid. 52 notes that after synoecism in 408 bc, Lindians used both the localpriesthood of Athena and that of Halius in the city of Rhodes to date events. On Rhodiancalendar months see E. J. Bickerman, Chronology of the Ancient World2 (Ithaca, NY 1980), 20;A. E. Samuel, Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity (Munich,1972), 107–10; C. Borker, ‘Der rhodische Kalender’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 31(1978), 193–218.207 FGrH 404 f 3.208 FGrH 410 f 1.


It could be argued that what we see displayed in the latter two examples are

not local months being used to structure local historiography, but rather a

repetition in diVerent cities of the phenomenon explored above (in chapter 2),

namely the professional interest in the construction and aetiology of the festival

calendar. In other words, this may be seen as a product of the polis, an aspect of

its social and cultural history in its own right, rather than a form of articulation

for the city’s past; a part of the contents rather than an aspect of the structure.

But again we are made aware of the points of contact between the annual cycle

of the festival calendar, which establishes a day-to-day temporal framework,

and the chronological frameworks used by the historians who set out a much

longer, and linear rather than cyclical, vision of the polis and its common story.

TheAthenianmaterial oVers awealth of evidence for the use of local calendars

as a means of designating time in historiography, and the volume and variety of

this evidence also allows us to go further in assessing the associations of calendar

time and its links to the non-literary world of the polis. Many references to the

months of Attica are, as in theDelphic andElean examples,motivated by interest

in the calendar itself—explanations of why this or thatmonth is so called reveal a

considerable amount about Athenian interest in, and facility for, the calibration

of time, the relation between natural or seasonal and humanly imposed patterns,

and the importance of religious ritual in bringing together the time of the gods

and the time ofman. The whole question of how religious festivals patterned the

year in Greek poleis is, of course, of great importance; works On Days, On

Festivals, and On SacriWces were extremely plentiful, as Jacoby reveals, and, as

we have noted, they can be seen as deeply embedded in the collective life of the

polis and its everyday consciousness of temporal manipulation.

But the works devoted to the religious calendar and their importance to the

life of the polis as a whole cannot be dissociated from the use of religious

calendars by historians to designate at what point in a year events took place,

since denoting an event as having happened in, for example, the month of

Scirophorion would naturally evoke the current world of the festival calendar,

bringing together historiographical time systems, the work of ‘professional’

chronographers, and the social experience of time and its articulation in the

life of the polis. However, for the moment it is convenient to make an artiWcial

division, simply for the purpose of gathering examples of the use of Attic

months as one of the chronological systems used by writers of local history,

which form the focus of this chapter.

Philochorus, for example, says that Athens formed an alliance with Chalcis

and freed the Oritans ‘in the month of Scirophorion (?)’,209 just as we might

209 FGrH 328 f 159: ��e� ½#ŒØæ��æ�ØH��. The extreme uncertainty of this restoration isindicated by a desperate ‘?’ in Jacoby’s text.


expect the writers of local history to use their own local calendars. But it is

striking that the Athenian months are also used for dating events of wider

Panhellenic signiWcance by authors who are not engaged in writing Atthides.

We have already seen that the much-contested date of the fall of Troy elicited

regal dating. But Hellanicus of Lesbos dated this event to the twelfth of the

Athenian month of Thargelion;210 as did Lysimachus of Alexandria (c.200

bc), who tied this precise date within the Athenian calendar to the further

information that it happened during the Wrst year of Demophon’s reign as

king of Athens.211 Lysimachus’ dating of the fall of Troy in terms of Athenian

kings and months is to be found in a work of Nostoi, presumably with a broad

scope covering the wanderings of various Greek heroes on their way home

from Troy. It is not entirely clear why a non-Athenian author should choose

these methods for denoting time unless for an Athenian audience. This case

does, however, highlight a phenomenon which is fairly widespread and raises

some important questions concerning how local, or even parochial, and how

Panhellenic, the time frames in the local historiography of Greece really were.

e) Borrowed time212

We have some noteworthy examples of temporal markers which were very

closely linked to particular local stories. A delightful instance is to be found in

the Lesbiaca of Myrsilus of Methymna (mid-third century bc), which pro-

vides a fascinating insight into just how localized and idiosyncratic the

punctuation marks in the calendar could be. There was a set day in the

Lesbian year when husbands and sons would keep away from the women of

the island in commemoration of the smell which attached to them all that

time ago when Medea sailed past and hurled a pungent drug at the island.

Now the unpleasant event had become part of the local calendar no less than

high days and holidays.213 But local historians sometimes simply used tem-

poral indicators which were not local to them or to their narrative. One

striking phenomenon is the sharing of historiographical frameworks between

Athens and Argos. Deinias of Argos in his third-century bc Argolica is said to

have dated Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon to the Athenian month of

Gamelion.214 Why should an Argive writer have chosen this method to

210 FGrH 323a f 21b: �ø��Œ��Ø ¨Ææª�ºØH�� e�.211 FGrH 382 f 13.212 See comments below for Jacoby’s scepticism over this notion, and his insistence that local

writers would use epichoric time.213 See FGrH 477 f 1.214 FGrH 306 f 2: �ƒ %æª�ºØŒ�d �ıªªæÆ��E� Øª� �r�ÆØ �Æ�Ø Æ��ºØH��; ‰� ˜�Ø��Æ� K� ��

1 æª�ºØŒH�.


indicate time in an Argive history?215 Similarly, we may recall the way in

which Clement of Alexandria reports that, according to Dionysius the Argive,

the fall of Troy occurred ‘when Demophon son of Theseus was king of Athens

in his Wrst year, and on the twelfth day of the month of Thargelion’, using

Athenian time, both regal and calendrical.216 In the same fragment, Hagias-

Dercylus is cited with an alternative dating given in terms of the month

Panemon, again not an Argive month, but a Macedonian equivalent for the

Athenian month Thargelion.217 Here, then, are two local Argive historians

using borrowed time in their works on Argos concerning a Panhellenic

event.218

Athenian time was not supremely predominant, though the use of Athen-

ian months does seem to have been widespread.219We have seen the import of

Macedonian time into Argive historiography alongside the Athenian months.

Furthermore, when Hellanicus of Lesbos worked out his chronography for

the pre-Olympiadic history of Attica from the king Ogygus, under whom the

Wrst great Xood in Attica took place, he concluded that this event occurred

when Phoroneus was king of the Argives, allowing Argive regal time to

elucidate Athenian chronology.220 In all of these instances we can only

speculate as to the reasons for Wnding the time of one polis used in the

historiography of another. One possibility is, of course, that historians had

copied the dates used by sources from other poleis; another that they were in

fact writing for non-native audiences.

Although it might seem natural for writers of local history to structure

their works with reference to the relevant local kings, as did Antiochus of

215 Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 27, believes it is hardly credible (‘schwer glaublich’) that Deiniaswould have used only an Attic month, which meant nothing in Argos nor was part of theMacedonian calendar.

216 Of course, as we have seen, Dionysius the Argive was by no means the only author to linkthese diVerent dating systems in connection with the fall of Troy, so we should perhaps not readtoo much Argive-Athenian signiWcance into this instance.

217 FGrH 305 f 2. Hagias-Dercylus pinpoints the event to the eighth day of the waning ofPanemon.

218 But see Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 20, for the view that an author of a work on Argos wouldnaturally use native dating. Thus he takes this fragment as evidence that Panemon was a monthin the Argive calendar.

219 We might not expect Athenian time to be ubiquitous in the fourth century and theHellenistic period, during which almost the entire body of extant local historiography waswritten. However, see for example FGrH 526 f 1 of Theognis, On the SacriWces in Rhodes,referring to a ritual which took place in the month of Boedromion (HØ ´��æ��ØH�Ø ��). Arewe to assume that this was the Rhodian month, Badromios? Or that it is an Athenianborrowing? Or see Timaeus FGrH 566 f 126 calculating the length of time from the return ofthe Heraclidae to the Attic marker of the archonship of Euaenetus, when Alexander crossed toAsia, as eight hundred years (I�e ��ı [sc. B� � ˙æÆŒº�Ø�H� ŒÆŁ ��ı� K�d ¯PÆ�� ¼æ��Æ;K�� y �Æ�Ø� %º��Æ��æ�� N� c� � `��Æ� �ØÆ�B�ÆØ).

220 FGrH 323a f 10.


Syracuse, who wrote the history of Sicily from Cocalus, king of that island, up

to the year 424/3 bc in nine books,221 some authors used the regal time of other

cities in order to indicate time in their own narrative. When, for example,

Philochorus states that Lacratides, an ancient archon of Athens, was in power

‘at the time of Darius’, he uses Persian regal time to deWne the Athenian past

and creates a synchronism between Persian royal time and Athenian magis-

terial time. The bringing together of Persian and Athenian time at this mo-

ment, just as the two powers come into conXict is perhaps inevitable, but there

may have been an additional point in Philochorus’ mind concerning the

contrast in systems of government reXected in the temporal systems.222 Indeed

temporal indicators relating to Persia, and particularly its invasions of Greece,

are quite common, at least in certain historians.223 Timaeus, for example, on

the subject of Corinthian prostitutes notes that they entered the temple of

Aphrodite and prayed for the Greeks ‘when the Persian led an expedition

against Greece’;224 he relates the capture of Camarina, which took place ‘at the

time of the expedition of Darius, son of Hystaspes’;225 and dates the founda-

tion of Massilia to ‘one hundred and twenty years before the battle of

Salamis’.226 This is not surprising, given the importance of those events in

Greek history, but it is nevertheless signiWcant that local histories should

indicate time by reference to events which aVected the whole of Greece,

perhaps indicating something of the breadth of audience envisaged or the

Panhellenic aspirations of the author for his subject and himself.227 It might,

221 FGrH 555 t 3. The combination of regal time and a numbered year clearly was not used byDiodorus, who cites this fragment. He describes it as ‘this year’ (�F�� e� K�ØÆıe�), which hasbeen given a bc number by later scholars. But it is still worthy of note that the lack of a singlenumbered dating system meant that histories which covered a long time span would inevitablyhave to incorporate a range of temporal markers as monarchies came and went and politicalsystems changed.222 FGrH 328 f 202. The dating is entirely incidental to an anecdote about the severe weather

at this time, leading to all things cold being designated ‘of Lacratides’.223 This temporal marker is used also in the testimonia, not by but of a local historian.

Cadmus of Miletus is himself dated with Acusilaus of Argos by reference to the Persiancampaign against Greece, which they slightly preceded: �æÆ�f B� —�æ�H� K�d c� � ¯ºº��Æ�æÆ��Æ� HØ �æ �øØ �æ��ºÆ�� (FGrH 489 t 4). Xenophanes’ dinner-party questions: ‘Who areyou, where are you from, what age are you, and how old were you when the Mede came?’ (E.Diehl, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca (Leipzig, 1949), 18) should remind us that not only historianstook the Persian invasions to be deWnitional.224 FGrH 566 f 10: ‹� �c K�d c� �¯ºº��Æ c� �æÆ��Æ� qª�� › —�æ��.225 FGrH 566 f 19b: ŒÆa c� ˜Ææ��ı �F � 0��ı �æÆ��Æ�. The synoecism of the city,

however, is expressed in the same fragment in terms of Olympiads (ŒÆa c� �� Oºı��Ø��Æ).226 FGrH 566 f 71: �æe B� �� B� K� #ÆºÆ�E�Ø ª�� Ø� �æ �æ��; u� �Æ�Ø�;

�ŒÆe� �YŒ��Ø.227 For another example of borrowed regal time, see FGrH 568 f 4 where Pindar dates the

worldwide famine during which Abaris came on an embassy from the Hyperboreans to Athensto the reign of Croesus, king of Lydia (ŒÆa ˚æ�E�� e� ¸ı�H� �Æ�Øº�Æ).


however, be worth noting the dominance of Sicilian historiography in the

examples cited to illustrate this point. We will come back to consider Sicily in

more detail, but should note now the claims that its historiography operates

rather diVerently from most ‘local’ historiography of the Greek poleis, which

might begin to explain the anomaly.

f) Panhellenic time

We have already seen when considering the structuring of the mythical or

heroic ages that local historians were keen to place their accounts within the

context of the Panhellenic picture. Both the case of the Persian wars and the

phenomenon of time ‘borrowed’ from polis to polis now lead us to consider

the use in local historiography concerning the historical period of temporal

frameworks which reached beyond the conWnes of the city or region under

discussion.

One obvious Panhellenic temporal frame was the Olympiadic system; this

was predictably less prevalent in local historiography than in the universal

syntheses discussed earlier (in chapter 3). Most of the references to Olympia-

dic time, which are found among the fragments of local versions of the past,

are in connection with the local history of Elis or accounts of the Olympic

festival itself. Pausanias, for example, notes the gaps in knowledge and

discrepancies in the accounts of the Olympic victor lists and those of ‘the

Elean exegetes’ (�ƒ K��ª�Æd �ƒ � ˙º��ø�), presumably local historians for

whom the history of the Olympic festivals was a specialist concern.228 Another

fragment also notes the discrepancy between the mention of a horse race,

celebrated in an inscription, and the account given by ‘the writings of the

Eleans on the Olympic games’.229 Competing versions of the Olympic past

and present were clearly in play. The very establishment of the festival, which

could anchor the whole chronological system, was a subject for the Elean

historians to take on. According to Pausanias, ‘those of the Eleans who recall

the most ancient things’ say that a temple was built to Cronus in Olympia by

men of the race called the golden one (H� � I�Łæ��ø�; �Q T��æı��F� ª��), oVering not only the opportunity for speculation concerning

the starting point of the festival, clearly when Zeus was not even yet supreme,

but also a striking instance of the use of ‘metal ages’ to pattern the past.230

228 FGrH 416 f 5.229 FGrH 416 f 2.230 FGrH 416 t 9 ¼ Pausanias 5.7.6. Although the mention of a ‘golden age’ does not appear

until Latin literature, the notion of the ‘golden race’ as the Wrst of a succession of people mostfamously appears in Hesiod, Works and Days 109–26.


The epigraphic record of the Olympic festivals and of their victors oVered

a public and permanent monumentalization of timekeeping, as well as a

memorial of the achievements of the past. An inscription from Athens notes

the introduction of various events each in their own Olympiad and with their

respective winners, thereby creating a combined chronology of invention and

achievement, issues to whichwe shall return: ‘In the 28th, the boys’ pentathlon

was introduced and Eutelidas the Laconian won. In the 41st, the boys’ box-

ing was introduced and Philytas the Sybarite won. In the 65th, the heavily

armed run was introduced and Demaratus the Heraian won. In the 93rd, the

paired race was brought in and Euagoras the Elean won. In the 99th was

introduced the chariot race with young horses, and Eurybiades the Laconian

won . . . From the 21st Olympiad these were the winners . . . in the 22nd . . .’.231

But it is not easy to pin down the precise relationship between on the one hand

the victor lists and the temporal conWguration they oVer, and on the other the

use of Olympic time by local historians. We may wonder precisely who were

the Elean exegetes, and whether they were signiWcantly diVerent from the local

historians or producers of the past elsewhere. I shall return (in chapter 6) to

Pausanias’ professed use of such local informers, but for now note that writing

the past of a place which held Panhellenic signiWcance might have entailed

rather diVerent consequences, audience, and use of the resulting work, from

those associated with most local versions of the past.

It is in the context of a worldwide famine that Hippostratus dates the

embassy of Abaris of the Hyperboreans, in his third-century work on Sicily, in

terms of Olympiads—the Wfty-third: a wide-ranging event Wnding its place in

a broad time frame.232 Occasional exceptions to this trend to match chrono-

logical framework to the local or Panhellenic nature of an event can be found.

Philistus of Syracuse (c.430–356/5 bc) dated an event in his narrative to the

Olympiad in which Oebotas of Dyme won the stadion.233 But we have already

noted the ‘special’ and strikingly outward-looking nature of Sicilian histori-

ography, and the use of Olympiads, which provided the opportunity to link

the histories of cities and peoples across the Greek world, is by contrast

noticeably absent from most of the fragmentary local histories. I shall argue

that the apparent localism, or even parochialism, of these works is modiWed

231 IG 22 2326 (FGrH 416 f 6). A. Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischenInschriften: Epigraphische Beitrage zu griechischen Historiographie (Stuttgart, 1988), 198, notesthe appropriate location of this inscription in the gymnasium of Cynosarges. The list of victorswas preceded by an account of the development of the games and the introduction of newevents.232 FGrH 568 f 4: ŒÆa c� < ª�> ÆPe� Oºı��Ø��Æ. See n. 227 above for Pindar’s dating of

the famine in terms of Persian kings.233 FGrH 556 f 2. The event in question is not clear. Maybe, suggests Jacoby in his

commentary, it was a crucial moment in early Greek history, such as the start of colonization.


by various ways in which they are conceived and formulated against broader

chronological and mythical frameworks. However, the use or non-use of

Olympiads is a good illustration of the fact that local and universal histori-

ography did have their own distinctive ways of manipulating and expressing

time. One of the very few appearances of dating by Olympiads in the local

historiography of Greece turns out to be deceptive. Strabo’s extensive account

of Rhodes is cited by Jacoby, presumably as a source for local traditions, and it

dates the early voyages of the Rhodians to ‘even many years before the

Olympic contest’.234 But we have no guarantee that the Olympic dating was

present in his ‘local’ source. Strabo was a universal historian at heart and, as

we have seen (in chapter 3), his conception of time and methods for calibrat-

ing it in his universal geography are naturally in line with his overall plan to

provide a coherent vision of a uniWed world, even though he must impose this

order on a set of separate city histories. This, then, does not oVer sound

evidence for the use by local writers of Olympic chronology.

Just as Persian War time was used to deWne not only the events of local

history, but also the literary life of a historian himself (Cadmus of Miletus in

n. 223 above), so too were authors of local history sometimes located in time

by those who later cited their works in terms of Olympiads, the time frame

which would come to be so crucial to facilitating not local, but universal

historiography. The Wfth-century author, Ion of Chios, is said to have begun

composing his tragedy ‘in the eighty-second Olympiad’ and to have been

educated ‘at the time of Epaminon’s archonship in the fourth year of the

eighty-seventh Olympiad’, neatly combining Athenian archon years with the

Olympiadic structure.235 Istrus the Callimachean noted that Xenophon

reached his height around the eighty-ninth Olympiad, together with other

pupils of Socrates.236 We shall see that literary Wgures and the history of

invention and intellectual achievement both oVer yet more ways of patterning

and denoting time, in the same way as political Wgures or events.

Given the attribution to Timaeus of Tauromenium of the ‘invention’ of

Olympiadic time in historiography, it is no surprise to Wnd that he notes the

synoecism of Camarina as having occurred in the forty-second Olympiad,

and the foundation of Rome in the thirty-eighth year before the Wrst Olym-

piad.237However, it is worth noting that, in each of these fragments, dating by

Olympiads is set alongside another chronology: in the former, the capture of

the city happened ‘at the time of the expedition of Darius, son of Hystaspes’,

234 FGrH 533 f 3 ¼ Strabo 14.2.5–12: ŒÆd �æe B� � ˇºı��ØŒB� Ł��ø� �ı��E� ��Ø�.235 FGrH 392 t 1 and t 6: K�d � ¯�Æ�� ¼æ�� Oºı��Ø��Ø �� Ø �.236 FGrH 334 f 32.237 FGrH 566 f 19; f 60: Oª� øØ ŒÆd æØÆŒ��HØ �æ �æ�� Ø B� �æ�� Oºı��Ø��. As will

be discussed later in this chapter, Timaeus clearly does not know quite how to deWne this event.


neatly combining Persian War time with Olympiadic; in the latter, the city’s

foundation coincided with that of Carthage. The free-standing example of

Olympiadic dating in a fragment (f 26) on preparations in Sicily before the

arrival of Hannibal, turns out to be more complex than a straightforward

piece of dating. The city of Acragas is singled out for the elaborate nature of its

preparations, leading to a long description of the temples and city and of its

amazing luxury. One manifestation of this was the magniWcent procession

enjoyed by Exaenetus of Acragas when he won the stadion in the previous

Olympiad, that is the ninety-second one. Thus the Olympiadic dating here is

not merely a chronological device, but it is motivated also by the contents of

the narrative.

We shall return shortly to the frequent combination of diVerent times,

sometimes including Olympiads, in the context of local historiography.

However, there is still another Panhellenic temporal marker, which regularly

appears in fragments of local historiography. The Trojan War, as a deWning

moment of great importance for the whole Greek world,238 was a natural

event in relation to which to place others. We have already seen in the

previous chapter that this marker was used extensively by authors such as

Strabo to create a broad brushstroke picture of the post-Trojan world in

which the travels and foundations of so many heroes transformed the Medi-

terranean.239 Sometimes, the contents of local historiography too dictated the

introduction of this marker. Istrus the Callimachean, for example, wrote

about the fortunes of Telamon ‘after the capture of Troy’;240 Hegesippus

of Mecyberna (c.350/00?) also included in his work on Pallene a discussion

of Laodice whose son by Acamas, Mounitus, went home ‘after the capture of

Troy’.241 Dieuchidas of Megara dated a quite unrelated event, the height of

Lycurgus’ power, to ‘about two hundred and ninety years after the fall of Troy’,

238 In the fourth century it naturally took on a new signiWcance as a model for the East/WestconXicts of the day. As we shall see in the next chapter, the Panhellenic campaigns directedagainst the East could be presented as retributive for the Persian campaigns against Greece, butwere also seen as symptomatic of an ongoing hostility between East and West, which was Wrstplayed out at Troy.239 The all-encompassing importance of this phase of itinerancy, whether real or imagined, is

eloquently depicted by I. Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeleyand London, 1998). As he says, ‘Faits de mentalite cannot be separated from faits accomplis;perceptions, concepts, and mythic images aVect both intention and interpretation. The nostoimediated and informed cultural, ethnic, and political encounters among Greeks, in relation tonon-Greeks, and in the relations of non-Greeks to Greeks.’240 FGrH 334 f 57.241 FGrH 391 f 4. For the complexity of the traditions surrounding the dispersal of heroes

after the Trojan war, see E. Dench, From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and ModernPerceptions of Peoples from the Central Apennines (Oxford, 1995), 33–8.


bringing Spartan history into a wider frame of reference.242 Just as with

Olympiads, Timaeus of Tauromenium is a key Wgure in the use of ‘Trojan

time’, although, as will be discussed below, the status of Sicilian historiog-

raphy as ‘local’ is debatable. He claimed that the Rhodians founded the

Gymnesian islands ‘after the return from Troy’; and that Chersicrates, a

relative of the Bacchiads, settled the island [it is not clear which] ‘six hundred

years after the events at Troy’.243

As an event which had repercussions for the whole of the Greek world, the

fall of Troy was the subject of much chronological dispute, and Trojan time,

just as Olympiadic time, was prone to be aligned with other temporal systems.

We have already seen that Lysimachus of Alexandria (c.200 bc) dated the

event in terms of both Athenian regal time and the Attic calendar.244 Ion of

Chios brought Trojan time and Athenian history into a diVerent kind of

relationship. He noted Pericles’ pride over Samos and compared the time

taken for its capture with the time taken for Troy to fall.245 Furthermore, there

was another very obvious marker from the past, taken on this occasion from

the world of Panhellenic literature, which was intimately linked to Trojan

chronology and to the dispersal of heroes across the Mediterranean in ways

which would alter the map of the Greek world and provide the aetiology and

foundation story for so many Greek poleis. The acme of Homer was a hotly

contested date, which attracted much scholarly attention, both in its own

right and as a chronological anchor for other events.

g) Literary time and the history of discovery

We have already seen that Sosibius the Laconian (c.250–150 bc) dated Homer

to the eighth year of the reign of Charillus, the son of Polydectes, and used

Spartan regal time to provide a local stepping stone from one major Panhel-

lenic phenomenon, the acme of Homer, to another, the establishment of the

242 FGrH 485 f 4. The dating of Dieuchidas has received a certain amount of scholarlyattention. See D. W. Prakken, ‘A Note on the Megarian Historian Dieuchidas,’ American Journalof Philology 62 (1941), 348–51, for the arguments which place him in the second half of thefourth century. A more interesting aspect of Prakken’s article is the consequent discussion aboutthe relationship between Dieuchidas and his predecessor, Ephorus. Contra Jacoby, Prakkenargues convincingly for Dieuchidas having used the same new, post-Hecataean, recension of theSpartan king list as Ephorus, either directly, or more likely through his universal forerunner:‘Would not the unknown writer of Megara have been far more likely to borrow from theuniversal history of his famous predecessor for his own particular purposes?’ (351).

243 FGrH 566 f 65: ��a c� KŒ æ��Æ� ¼��; f 80: ��a � ��ÆŒ �ØÆ H� æøØŒH�.244 FGrH 382 f 13. The precise date in the month of Thargelion was itself subject to dispute.245 FGrH 392 f 16. While it took ten years to capture a barbarian city, Pericles had taken the

leading and strongest Ionians in nine months.


Olympics.246 It is no surprise that a notorious chronographer, such as

Timaeus or Sosibius, should draw together major chronological markers

and attempt to relate them accurately to each other. It is, however, less easy

to explain why the third-century work on Euboea, presumably a work of local

history, by Archemachus should have left us a fragment concerning the acme

of Homer and Hesiod, and one which relates that date to the fall of Troy.

Archemachus placed the literary Wgures two hundred years after Troy fell, and

it is furthermore interesting that he is cited in this view alongside Euthy-

menes, the author of Chronica.247 Clearly there was another group of scholars

who would Wnd such chronological issues concerning Homer and other

literary Wgures of interest, and those were writers of works speciWcally devoted

to the history of literature and to its key players. Artemon of Clazomenae

(fourth century bc), for example, in his work On Homer, noted the date of

birth of the poet Arctinus, who was a pupil of Homer, and he did so in terms

of Olympiads and the Trojan War, neatly linking these major dating devices

with the age of Homer himself.248

Of course, Homer was the basis of Greek education, and the epics attrib-

uted to him also made famous the events at Troy.249 However, it is worth

noting in passing that not only he but also other literary Wgures oVered a form

of chronological framework which could be used for situating other events.

The Homeric rhapsodes needed to be Wtted into the scheme.250 Hippostratus

(third century bc) said that Cynaethus was the Wrst of these, and operated in

Syracuse in the 69th Olympiad.251 Olympiadic time is used in combination

with literary time by Persaeus of Citium (early third century), who gave details

of a people who were at their height in the 130th Olympiad, ‘when Zeno was

already old’.252 Timaeus brought literary time into his historiography, but

246 FGrH 595 f 2. Less predictably, Timaeus too linked Spartan time to that ofHomer. In answerto a chronological problem, he conjectured that there were two men called Lycurgus at Sparta atdiVerent times, the older one of whom was a near contemporary of Homer (FGrH 566 f 127).247 FGrH 424 f 3.248 FGrH 443 f 2: ŒÆa c� Ł Oºı��Ø��Æ ��a ıØ � H� æøØŒH�.249 Strabo 8.3.3 and 8.3.23 on the importance of Homer. See D. Dueck, Strabo of Amasia: A

Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome (London, 2000), ch. 2, for Strabo’s engagement with theGreek literary tradition, with Homer at its head. See also M. Biraschi, ‘Strabo and Homer: AChapter in Cultural History’, and D. Dueck, ‘Strabo’s Use of Poetry’, both in D. Dueck, H.Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia (Cam-bridge, 2005), 73–85 and 86–107, respectively.250 I shall return in ch. 6 to the suggestion that rhapsodes might themselves oVer a close

parallel for the phenomenon of itinerant local historians, whose expertise and ready versatilityencourages a supposition of professionalism.251 FGrH 568 f 5. Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 596, Wnds it implausible that this form of dating

was in the original source, since there would have been ‘mehr und sichere lokale Daten ubersizilische Dichter’.252 FGrH 584 t 3.


alongside local political time, claiming that the Eleatic contest took place

‘during Hieron’s rule in Sicily and at the time of Epicharmus the poet’.253

And the Sicyonian Record (c.400 bc), a local chronicle, was, according to

Plutarch, used by Heraclides in his work on music in order to name ‘the

priestesses in Argos and the poets and themusicians’, yet again bringing amore

standard dating system, this time the priestess of Hera at Argos, into syn-

chronism with the literary and artistic world.254

This local record neatly brings together the importance of literary and

intellectual history in the chronological framework of a polis and the role of

inventor Wgures in mapping out and structuring the past. The second and

only other extant fragment of the Sicyonian Record refers to the recording

there of Clonas as the inventor of the ‘composition in three diVerent

modes’.255 We have already observed the attraction of mapping out the past

in human terms, through the lives of individuals, and those who achieve in

the Welds of cultural rather than political life are no exception. The patterns of

pride over home-grown talent shown in the local records are quite striking. It

is not surprising to Wnd that polis identity was to a degree enhanced and

shaped by the claim to important discoveries on the part of citizens. It is also

unsurprising to Wnd that this is a theme more prominent in publicly displayed

epigraphic accounts of the city’s past than in local historiography produced

for perhaps a more restricted audience. But it is striking that the history of

invention and intellectual endeavour is perhaps even more common in the

histories of non-Greek lands than in those of the Greek poleis. I shall consider

(in chapter 6) the celebration by the poleis of living intellectuals, and particu-

larly the emergence of local heroes in the form of historians themselves, but

for now I shall focus on the appearances of other thinkers, literary Wgures, and

inventors of institutions, who seem to have provided punctuation marks in

the past of the city, and thereby constituted an (albeit local and fragmented)

temporal system in their own right.

The only clear examples of ‘the history of intellectual achievements’

appearing in the local historiography of Greece are those drawn from Dio-

dorus Siculus and assumed to be based on local accounts. For example,

Diodorus oVers a long and detailed account of what the Cretans say about

their distant past, including information concerning the inventive king who

came up with most of the features of civilization at a very early stage.256

253 FGrH 566 f 133: ŒÆa � (�æø�Æ e� #ØŒ�º�Æ� �ı�� ŒÆd � ¯��Ææ�� e� ��Ø�c�.254 FGrH 550 f 1: �� ƒ�æ��Æ� a� K� 1 æª�Ø ŒÆd �f� ��Ø�a� ŒÆd �f� ��ı�ØŒ�f� O��Ø.255 FGrH 550 f 2: K� �b BØ K� #ØŒıH�Ø I�ÆªæÆ�BØ BØ ��æd H� ��Ø�H� ˚º��A� ��æ�c�

I�Æª�ªæÆ�ÆØ �F æØ��º�F� � ��ı. For the meaning of æØ��º�� see M. L. West, Anciont GreekMusic (Oxford, 1992), 177 n. 57.

256 FGrH 468 f 1 ¼ Diodorus 5.64–80.


Diodorus’ account of the history of Samothrace is similarly a mixture of

myths, the activities of the gods, and a series of inventions.257 When it comes

to the island of Rhodes, Diodorus liberally sprinkles his account with sig-

niWcant discoveries by the early inhabitants. The Telchines are described as

‘the inventors of certain arts’, who were the Wrst to fashion statues of the gods.

The Heliadae, whose inventions include (signiWcantly in the context of this

discussion) the division of the day into hours, were claimed by both Rhodes

and Attica, each wishing for association with the innovators, and revealing a

strong sense of local pride.258 This particular fragment is taken to represent

the account given by Zeno of Rhodes, although not in a work of local history,

but rather one of chronography. The fact that all of these ‘fragments’ come

from Diodorus Siculus does raise a question over whether the interest in

intellectualhistory is reallyhis, rather thanactuallybeingamajorpreoccupation

of the local historians.259

I have discussed (in chapter 3) the extraordinary levels of ‘alien wisdom’, not

least in the Weld of chronology, to be found in the accounts by Greek writers of

those parts of the world which were neither dominated culturally and politically

nor articulated geographically by Greek poleis. But the history of invention was

of considerable importance to the Greek poleis also in more publicly displayed

conWgurations of the past. The Parian Marble oVers the most stunning dem-

onstration of how the publicly inscribed past, measured out primarily in terms

of political power—Wrst kings and then archons—could be heavily punctuated

also by the history of invention and of intellectual or literary prowess, and I shall

discuss this in some detail in the Wnal chapter.

h) Drawing together time across space: creating synchronisms

The overall chronological structure of the Parian Marble, in spite of the

dominance of Athenian kings and archons, is rather more complex than

this suggests, as is neatly illustrated by the introductory entry: ‘[From all

the records and general accounts] I have recorded [the previous times],

beginning from Cecrops becoming Wrst king of Athens, until [_____] uanax

257 FGrH 548 f 1 ¼ Diodorus 5.47–9.258 FGrH 523 f 1 ¼ Diodorus 5.55 for the Telchines; 5.57 for the Heliadae. Strabo, in his

extensive account of the history of Rhodes, mentions the Heliadae as successors to the Telchineson the island. See FGrH 533 f 3 ¼ Strabo 14.2.5–12.259 See K. Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits

of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden, 1999), 249–79 at258–9, for the suggestion that Diodorus had a special interest in intellectuals and literary Wgures,not least as chronological articulators in his own work.


was archon in Paros, and Diognetus in Athens.’260The chronological span of the

account is marked at one end by Athenian regal time, but at the other by a

combination of Athenian and Parian magisterial time. Similarly, the attempt by

historians to bring diVerent local times together was another means of creating

themselves Panhellenic temporal systems, besides the use of Panhellenic events,

such as the Trojan War or the development of the Olympic games. Indeed

sometimes these very Panhellenic markers were carefully brought into chrono-

logical relationship with each other. Timaeus, for example, would explicitly link

Trojan and Olympiadic time one to the other, calculating the gap between the

two to 417 years.261 For Sosibius the Laconian, the interval was 595 years.262

Mostly, they were brought into some kind of synchronism with more local

temporal systems. We have already noted Hellanicus’ attempt to deal with

pre-Olympiadic time in his Atthis, working out an Attic chronography from

Ogygus under whom the Wrst Xood in Attica took place, while Phoroneus was

king of the Argives. Hellanicus calculated that it was 1,020 years from then

until the Wrst Olympiad, and 189 years from the end of Ogygus’ reign to the

accession of Cecrops.263 Thus Attic regal time could be set alongside the

Panhellenic frame of Olympiadic time, and was found to exceed it. It was

not only Athenian or Attic time which could be synchronized with the great

Panhellenic markers. Pausanias places the arrangement of the games and the

re-establishment of the Olympic festival and truce by Iphitus in the context of

Spartan time by noting that Iphitus was ‘a contemporary of Lycurgus’

(�ºØŒ�Æ� �b ŒÆa ¸ıŒ�Fæª��), who drew up the Spartan law code. That this

was an old and many-stranded story is suggested by the sources adduced by

Pausanias—an inscription at Olympia calling Iphitus the son of Haemon, the

version of ‘most Greeks’ who say that his father was Praxonides, and the

support for the latter view oVered by ‘the ancient writings of the Eleans’.264

Nor was it only Olympiads which formed a broader backdrop against which

more local time could be placed. We have already noted Clement of Alexan-

dria’s citation of a variety of authors on the date of the fall of Troy, expressing

this event in terms of Athenian regal and calendrical time,265 and Lysimachus

260 FGrH 239 f 1 ¼ IG 12.5.444: KŒ �ıªªæÆ��ø�� (?) �Æ�½��ø� . . . . . . �ø� (?) I��ªæÆłÆ�f� I� . . . . . . Iæ��½�� I�e ˚�Œæ�� F �æ��ı �Æ�Øº��Æ�� Ł��H� �¥ø� ¼æ�� K�—�æøØ ½�b� {lacuna?}] [ . . . ]ı��ÆŒ��; � Ł��Ø� �b ˜Ø�ª��ı.

261 FGrH 566 f 125. It is clear from Strabo 8.3.30 that the relationship between events at Troyand the establishment of the Olympic festivals was of continuing interest. In his account, theAetolians set up the games with the returning Heraclidae. The whole episode was, for Strabo,demonstrably post-Trojan, since the Eleans, who presided over the Wrst to the twenty-sixthOlympiads, were not mentioned by Homer.

262 FGrH 595 f 1.263 FGrH 323a f 10.264 FGrH 416 f 1: a �b � ˙º��ø� ªæ��ÆÆ Iæ�ÆEÆ.265 FGrH 305 f 2.


of Alexandria revealing similarly formulated synchronisms, which unite the

Panhellenic event with the local time frame.266Wemay, as so oftenwhen dealing

with fragmentary sources, approach these with an open mind as to whether the

chronological arrangement is a major concern of the original authors or indi-

cative of the preoccupations of the Alexandrian scholars. It is certainly the case

that the latter groupwas engaged in attempts to bring together the disparate and

confusing variety of temporal schemes and chronological discrepancies. Aris-

todemus of Thebes (working in Alexandria), for example, in the Wrst century bc,

discussed in his On Pindar the problems of achieving synchronisms—bringing

Halirrothius and Heracles into line was in his view impossible.267

That the game of putting diVerent local times together was not only a

pastime of Hellenistic scholars, but a genuine concern on the part of local

communities is shown by a publicly displayed inscription from Magnesia-on-

the-Maeander about an oracle concerning the worship of Pythian Apollo and

Artemis Leucophryene, which was given ‘in the stephanephorate of Zenodo-

tus, when Thrasyph[on] was archon in Athens, when [ . . . ] the Boeotian was

the victorious lyre singer [at the Pythian games] in the previous year, and in

the following year Hagesidamus the Messenian was victorious [for the third

time] in the pankration at the Olympic games in the [one hundred] and

fortieth Olympiad’. . .268 Here we have the time of festival victories mixed

with Athenian archonal time, Delphic time, and Olympiadic time. The

obvious comparandum for this piling up of diVerent dating systems is, of

course, Thucydides 2.2.1, discussed in the previous chapter, where he dates

the attack on Plataea to when ‘Chrysis was in the forty-eighth year of her term

as priestess of Argos, and when Aenesias was ephor at Sparta and Pythodorus

still had two months of his archonship at Athens to run, six months after the

battle at Potidaea and at the start of spring.’269 One perhaps unexpected

conclusion that such a parallel might lead us towards is that the local and

the universal historiographical enterprises were less diVerent than we might

have imagined, as local communities and their historians from time to time

266 FGrH 382 f 13.267 FGrH 383 f 12. See also Hellanicus, FGrH 323a f 22 and Philochorus, FGrH 328 f 3 for

mentions of Halirrothius in Atthides.268 FGrH 482 f 2. I have adopted the translation in R. S. Bagnall and P. Derow (eds.), The

Hellenistic Period: Historical Sources in Translation (Oxford, 2003; new edition), no. 153. Thehuge dossier of documents, relating to the major diplomatic campaign of 208 bc to establish thisPanhellenic festival and send ambassadors through the Greek world to obtain recognition forthe festival and for the inviolability of the city and its territory, is discussed by A. Erskine,‘O Brother, Where Art Thou? Tales of Kinship and Diplomacy’, in D. Ogden (ed.), TheHellenistic World: New Perspectives (London, 2002), 97–115 at 98. For Erskine, the inscriptionoVers a striking use of kinship terms as the language of diplomacy and shows the vitality of localtraditions in the Hellenistic world, whereby cities exploit the mythical past to form bonds (107).269 See p. 90–1 for discussion of this passage.


showed their concern not only to express the past in terms distinctive to their

own poleis but also to bind those histories into wider frameworks, just as they

seem to have done in mythological terms.270

Jacoby’s insistence on the annalistic framework for local historiography,

derived from the kings and magistrates of the polis, runs the risk of closing our

eyes to the ways in which local historians used non-polis chronological frames

to set the past of each city into a larger historical context. Furthermore, a

consideration of the construction of time in the fragments of local historiog-

raphy provides ammunition against Momigliano’s determination to Wnd the

local histories parochial. His rather grudging assessment is that ‘we can hardly

underrate the cumulative importance of this ‘‘minor’’ historiography com-

piled on behalf of local pride and prejudice. But it was always exposed to the

damaging confrontation with the greater historiography.’271 Such a view

carries less weight if we can read ‘local pride’ in the context of presenting a

polis as an integral part of a wider world, rather than as an expression of

inward-looking complacency. It is, however, important to distinguish be-

tween isolated synchronisms and the systematic and extensive use of a

universal or Panhellenic temporal framework, such as the Olympiadic one,

which we have seen is rare in the extant fragments of local historiography. As I

shall show in the next section, a closer look at precisely where these wider

temporal frameworks come into play, outside the world of universal histori-

ography, can oVer new insights into the status of some of the most discussed

and disputed fragments of ‘local’ historiography, those concerning Sicily.

4 . BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN LOCAL AND UNIVERSAL

a) The stepping stone of Sicily

The historiography of Sicily has already been mentioned several times as one

which invites treatment as a special case, and indeed the combination of

diVerent temporal systems is particularly prominent in some of the more

famous Sicilian historians. The importance of the fourth- to third-century

historian Timaeus of Tauromenium in the development of Olympiadic

270 See Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 5, on the tension between the local pull andthe global stage: ‘On the one hand, every single polis is characterised by the urge for independ-ence: freedom, autonomy and autarchy are the foundations of the political system of the polis.On the other hand, no polis can escape the necessity to coexist, and to some extent also tocooperate, with other city-states.’

271 A. Momigliano, ‘Tradition and the Classical Historian’, in Essays in Ancient and ModernHistoriography (Oxford, 1977), 161–77 at 171.


chronology for use in historiography has already been discussed, and is clearly

in line with his practice of using synchronisms liberally as a means of broad-

ening the context for his narrative beyond the purely local. The scope of his

Histories did indeed extend beyond the ‘local’, encompassing the early history

of Sicily and Italy, of Sicily alone, and of Sicily in relation to Greece from the

earliest times to the Wrst Punic War. We have already seen (in chapter 3) the

way in which Timaeus famously ‘compared the dates of the ephors with those

of the kings of Lacedaemon from the earliest times, and the lists of Athenian

archons and priestesses of Hera at Argos with those of victors at Olympia’,

developing a historiographical structure which brought this array of both

local and Panhellenic dating systems into synchronism.272

It is worth noting that he also made wide use of Wxed chronological

markers as well as synchronisms and Olympiadic structures. The testimonia

and the extant fragments indicate that Timaeus covered the mythical

period,273 and that of colonies and foundations,274 as well as the more strictly

‘historical period’, and it is clear that he dealt with the chronological vague-

ness of these early times in similar ways to those used by writers such as

Ephorus. The Trojan era provided a useful benchmark for distant events, such

as the Rhodian foundation of the Gymnesian islands ‘after their return from

Troy’,275 or even not so distant events, such as the settlement of Chersicrates

‘six hundred years after the events at Troy’.276 The return of the Heraclidae was

another well-known point in the remote past, to which other events could be

anchored.277 Timaeus also used well-known markers from the historical

period in order to indicate when the events of his narrative took place,

whether it be, as has already been noted, the entry of Corinthian prostitutes

into the temple of Aphrodite to pray for the Greeks ‘when the Persian invaded

Greece’,278 or, again in connection with the Persian wars, the foundation of

Massilia which took place ‘120 years before the battle of Salamis’.279

272 FGrH 566 t 10.273 See FGrH 566 f 83 on Daphnis, the son of Hermes, and his exploits in Sicily or f 89 on

Heracles’ travels through Italy, culminating in the huge battle between gods and giants.274 See FGrH 566 t 7 on the inclusion in the earlier part of his work of ‘colonies and

foundations and ties of kinship’ (a� I��ØŒ�Æ� ŒÆd Œ��Ø� ŒÆd �ıªª��Æ�). See also f 92 onthe holding of Acragas by the ancestors of Theron, which gives rise to a comment on how theAcragantines were colonists from Gela.275 FGrH 566 f 65.276 FGrH 566 f 80.277 See, for example, FGrH 566 f 126, where Timaeus is said to claim that from the return of

the Heraclidae to the archonship of Euaenetus, under which happened Alexander’s invasion ofAsia, was eight hundred years.278 FGrH 566 f 10: ‹� �c K�d c� � ¯ºº��Æ c� �æÆ��Æ� qª�� › —�æ��.279 FGrH 566 f 71: �æe B� �� B� K� #ÆºÆ�E�Ø ª�� Ø� �æ �æ��; u� �Æ�Ø�;

�ŒÆe� �YŒ��Ø.

Bridging local and universal 231

But perhapsmost striking, even from the limited amount of extant text, is the

intricacy with which he builds up a chronological network against which to

place a wide-ranging narrative. This is done partly through explicit synchron-

isms of a rather diVerent kind from the synchronization generally reconstructed

for Ephorus’ history. This was not just a case of drawing diVerent locations into

a single narrative structure, but of noting precise and extraordinarymoments at

which the history of theworld seemed toXow in unison.He noted, for example,

that the birth of Euripides happened on the same day as the Hellenes fought at

Salamis against the Medes, and that his death fell on the day of the year on

which Dionysius, the oldest of the Sicilian tyrants, was born.280 This provides a

wonderful example of the way inwhich literary time could be brought into line

with the time of political andmilitary events, as we see illustrated on the Parian

Marble. Here, however, the life span of the literary Wgure is used as a bridge to

join, through the synchronisms at start and Wnish, the history of the Persian

wars, which were themselves such an important temporal marker for mapping

out the past of Greek cities, to the local history of Sicily itself.

Or, take the more intricate example of Timaean synchronism oVered by a

fragment relating the fortunes of the bronze statue of Apollo snatched by

Himilco from Gela after his storming of Acragas.281 The statue was taken to

Tyre and subjected to further abuse, but punishment came when Alexander

took the city of Tyre on the day with the same name and at the same hour as

when the Carthaginians had snatched the statue from Gela.282 Here the clear

sense of retribution is enhanced by the striking chronological coincidence, or

perhaps rather more accurately, partial repetition. Here it is not the life of a

poet, but that of an art object, which acts as the linchpin. Although the

passage has the eVect of establishing a link between the history of Carthagin-

ian plunder in Sicily and that of Alexander’s abuses in the Carthaginians’

mother cities in the Levant, in fact the primary interest is not in using this link

to establish a comprehensive time frame. Indeed, this would be impossible,

since, unlike in the case of the life of Euripides above, we have no idea at all

how long the statue’s life in Tyre was. Rather, the interest lies at the level of

microchronology. Timaeus is not bringing together disparate events which

occurred at the same time; these two episodes in the life of one object clearly

did not. Rather he is using chronological detail, at the level of particular days

and particular times of day, to point out the extraordinary nature of the object

and its history. It is not only that there is intellectual satisfaction in noting

astonishing historical coincidences.283 The Alexander episode appears as a

280 FGrH 566 f 105. 281 FGrH 566 f 106.282 FGrH 566 f 106: ŒÆa c� ›��ı�� æÆ� ŒÆd c� ÆPc� uæÆ�.283 Diodorus, our source for this fragment, notes that although these events happened at

diVerent times, it was not inappropriate to place them alongside each other because of the


precise re-enactment of the Carthaginian plunder, almost as though the clock

had been turned back and the same day was being rerun a second time

around—interesting in terms of temporal manipulation in historiography,

but also signiWcant for the implicit commentary which the parallel oVers in

terms of Timaeus’ historical interpretation.284

Furthermore, Timaeus’ version of the foundation of Rome claimed that it

occurred at the same time as that of Carthage, namely in the thirty-eighth year

before the Wrst Olympiad.285 This relatively small fragment is rich in reson-

ance. Firstly, the synchronism of two local histories needs to be located in

relation to another Wxed point—pre-Olympiadic time oVers an eVective way

of achieving this for very early events, while preserving the increasingly

universal associations of the Olympiadic system that was appropriate for

the foundations of two cities which would enjoy such geographically wide-

spread power. The history of the two great rivals for power over the western

Mediterranean is hereby inextricably linked in a universal framework from

their very inception.286 The theme would be vividly expressed in the Augustan

period through, for example, Dido’s curse of eternal hatred between Carthage

and Rome at Aeneid 4.621–9, and it is worth noting that this fragment

of Timaeus comes to us through another Augustan author, Dionysius of

Halicarnassus. It might be tempting to suggest that we are seeing an Augustan

preoccupation retrojected on to Timaeus, and partly inXuenced in its

construction of the past by a renewed triumphalism and Roman pride in its

extinction of rivals, past and present. But we do not need to seek an Augustan

explanation for the fact that an author who spanned the mid-third to

mid-second centuries might note the remarkable symbiosis of these two

great cities. The series of open conXicts between Rome and Carthage which

culminated in the destruction of the latter in 146 bc was precipitated by

Carthaginian intervention at Messina in 264 bc, precisely the date towards

the end of Timaeus’ life at which he broke oV his account, for Polybius to

pick up.287

astonishing nature of the event: ÆFÆ �b� �s�; ŒÆ��æ K� ¼ºº�Ø� �æÆ�Ł��Æ �æ ��Ø�; �PŒI��Ø��Ø�� ª��ŁÆ �Ææ� ¼ºº�ºÆ Ł�E�ÆØ �Øa e �Ææ�� (13.108.5).

284 Alternatively, we could consider this in the context of ‘ominous days’, as discussed in ch. 1,whose bad or good luck was embedded in the date after a bad, or good, event had oncehappened then.285 FGrH 566 f 60: Oª� øØ ŒÆd æØÆŒ��HØ �æ �æ�� Ø B� �æ�� Oºı��Ø��.286 On the rivalry for Mediterranean power of Rome with Carthage and Corinth, symbolically

both destroyed in the same year, see N. Purcell, ‘On the Sacking of Carthage and Corinth’, inD. Innes, H. Hine, and C. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell onhis Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Oxford, 1995), 133–48.287 See A. Momigliano, ‘Athens in the Third Century b.c. and the Discovery of Rome in the

Histories of Timaeus of Tauromenium’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford,1977), 37–66 at 54, for the point that the precise moment when Timaeus conceived the


But there is the further point of interest that it is not entirely clear (either to

Dionysius or to Timaeus—the fragment is not explicit) precisely what is

meant by looking for a ‘foundation date’ for Rome. Some kind of incarnation

for the city, ‘its settling, or its foundation, or whatever it should be called’

(�NŒØ��e� j Œ��Ø� j ‹Ø �� æc ŒÆº�E�) could be synchronized with the

foundation of Carthage (–�Æ ˚Ææ�� Ø ŒØ��Ø ª��ŁÆØ) (the same

deWnitional problem does not apparently arise here—this is a Œ��Ø�), but

the ambiguity over when a city actually comes into being is worth noting,

given the considerable interest in moments of foundation in the context of

local historiography. The precise synchronisms of a chronographer were not

necessarily themost helpful tool in creating a convincing local historiography.288

Dionysius of Halicarnassus expresses uncertainty over what chronological

system led Timaeus to his synchronism between the foundations of Rome and

Carthage (�PŒ �r�� ‹øØ ŒÆ� �Ø �æ��).289 But the suggestion is clearly

that a chronographically minded historian would have recourse to established

tables which set events alongside each other and against broader timescales.

The number of synchronisms in the fragments of Timaeus does seem to

support this extensive and systematic use of such material, and we should

not assume that Timaeus was utterly exceptional.290 It is possible that

Timaean synchronisms are simply cited more frequently than those in the

works of other historians. Again, the overlap between formal chronography

and practised historiography is at the fore.

Just like the Trojan War and the acme of Homer, key events in Sicilian

history needed to be given a chronological context, however hotly contested

the dates might be. The crossing of the Sicels from Italy to Sicily was a

much fought-over date, and historians, just as chronographers, used every

possible device to establish the authoritative version. According to Hellanicus

it happened ‘in the third generation before the Trojan War, and in the

synchronism between Rome and Carthage determined whether the relationship would be one ofhatred or friendship.

288 Timaeus’ synchronism for Rome and Carthage was, of course, implicitly challenged by thenarrative structure of the Aeneid, in which Carthage was already being built, and indeed could bevisited by Aeneas, long before the story would enable him even to arrive in Italy and visit the siteof the future city. In a sense, the ambiguity in what was meant by ‘foundation’ could be usefulfor achieving association without strict accuracy. Aeneas is cast in the Aeneid as ‘founder of aRoman nation’ even if not of the city itself. In the context of creating an adequately illustriouspast for Rome, this was perhaps suYcient.289 FGrH 566 f 60 ¼ Dionysius 1.74.1.290 Indeed, although Timaeus wrote an explicitly chronographical work—the Chronica—so

too did many local historians. Hippys of Rhegium wrote a Chronica as well as a work on Sicilyand one on the foundation of Italy.


twenty-sixth year of the priesthood of Alcyone at Argos’;291 for Philistus of

Syracuse the crossing was in the eightieth year before the Trojan War, and the

people were not Ausonians or Elymians, but Ligurians led by Sicelus, who was

son of Italus.292 It is interesting to note the various strategies here for locating

the crossing of the Sicels. Of course, since the fall of Troy was itself a contested

date, placing the crossing of the Sicels or any other more local event in

relation to the Trojan episode could be only that, a relative placing, and it is

interesting to note yet again here the use of generations as a means of

counting out the gap between one Wxed marker and another. This system

provided at the crudest level a means of ‘getting things in the right order’.

Using the oYce of the priestesses of Hera at Argos was a rather diVerent

proposition, since it oVerednot a single chronologicalmarker, but a continuous

sequence or scale against which other events could be placed.

The preoccupation of historians of Sicily with synchronisms seems to go

hand in hand with their interest in forging links between their local history

and geography and those of the wider Mediterranean world. Hippys of

Rhegium (c.300 bc) linked local events in Sicily to Athenian regal time and

to the Olympiadic framework in a clear illustration of how a very localized and

idiosyncratic event (the establishment of a building at Palici in Sicily, in which

people who went and reclined would die, but those who kept walking sur-

vived) could be set in a much broader context, ‘when Epaenetus was king in

Athens, and in the thirty-sixth Olympiad, when Arytamas the Laconian won

the stadion’.293 Just as we have seen Athenian and Argive time and history

brought together, so too does Sicilian historiography link itself up to the Greek

mainland through the Olympiadic system as well as literally through stories

about its geography. Timaeus claims that the fountain of Arethusa in Syracuse

takes its source from the Alpheus, which runs past Arcadia and Olympia,

divides, goes underground and reappears four thousand stades away under the

sea in Syracuse. Proof was oVered by the story that after Xoods at Olympia,

Arethusa threw up dung from the sacriWcial victims and a gold bowl from the

festival.294 This is not just a Timaean oddity. Lycus of Rhegium in his fourth-

century On Sicily says, in the context of discussing other unusual springs in

291 FGrH 555 f 4: æ��Ø ª��AØ �æ �æ�� H� æøØŒH� %ºŒı �� ƒ�æø�� K� 1 æª�Ø ŒÆa e�Œ�� ŒÆd �NŒ��e� ��.292 FGrH 556 f 46.293 FGrH 554 f 3: K� %Ł��ÆØ� K�d �Æ�Øº�ø� �¯�ÆØ��ı; Oºı��Ø�� Œ�� ŒÆd æØÆŒ��B�; K� wØ

%æı��Æ� ¸�Œø� �ØŒAØ ��Ø��.294 FGrH 566 f 41. The story is closely paralleled by an episode which Strabo (2.3.4) preserves

from Posidonius in which Eudoxus of Cyzicus made various attempts to circumnavigate Africa,and on his second attempt found Wgureheads from Gades oV the east coast, thereby proving thatAfrica was circumnavigable. Here again, as in Timaeus, an object proved the geographicalconnection.


Sicily,295 that the Arethusa in Syracuse had its spring in the Alpheus in Elis. His

proof is almost word for word the same as that given by Timaeus—maybe

Timaeus had borrowed it from Lycus, or maybe it was simply a well-known

tale.296 So Sicily, though an island, was tied to the mainland, not of Italy but of

Greece, both physically and through its historiographical frameworks.

The Greekness of the Olympiadic system seems absolutely key here, and it is

perhaps no surprise that the historianwhomade it fundamental to thewriting of

history on a large scale should have spentmuch of his life in exile in Athens itself.

Although Timaeus is famous for his awareness of the growing power of Rome

and has been widely seen as the Wrst great historian of the western Mediterra-

nean, he chose to develop a chronological structure for the writing of history

which was Wrmly founded on the Olympic festival, participation in which had

originally been the most compelling proof of Greek identity. By doing so,

Timaeus manifested a set of aspirations which many of his compatriots seem

to have shared. When Pindar wanted to Xatter Hiero of Syracuse, he did so by

integrating Sicily into the world of Greece, drawing Syracuse into the framework

of Greek myth (in Pythian 2.1–8) and comparing the battle of Himera between

Sicily and Carthage in 480 bcwith the contemporary battles of the Persian wars

on the Greek mainland, speciWcally Salamis and Plataea (Pythian 1.75–80).297

We have already seen the way in which Diodorus Siculus, at a time when the

world could hardly have beenmore patently Roman in political terms, laid claim

again to Sicily’s Hellenism, like Timaeus, using his choice of chronological

frameworks to create a Sicilian historiography with aspirations to Greekness.

Examining subtle diVerences in the structuring of time adopted by writers

of a single genre of ‘local history’ enables us to make progress with under-

standing more precisely the claims and aspirations of diVerent historical

works within that sweeping genre. The integration of diVerent time systems

in an attempt to bring the local into a wider, less parochial, frame of reference,

opens up the possibility that the local historians of Greece might bring the

past of their cities on to the Panhellenic stage, but it is also important to note

diVerences of emphasis and approach, such as the relative absence of Olym-

piads as a form of systematic chronology in local accounts.298 By contrast, the

295 For a Xavour of the account, so to speak, one of these springs was said to Xow with vinegarwhich was used on meat and other food and another Xowed with olive oil.

296 The latter is implied by the source, Antigonus,Mirabilia¼ FGrH 570 f 9: u��æ �ƒ º�Ø��Æ�Ø� ‘as those who remain say’.

297 I owe this point to Chris Pelling.298 See Jacoby, Commentary IIIB, Supplement 382, for further problems in the interpretation

of chronology in local historiography. As he asks, ‘are the local chronicles dependent on theirown system for local dates, or on universal systems?’, in the light of the supposition thatuniversal chronography preceded local systems.


presence of Olympiadic dating in the historiography of Sicily is an important

element in our characterization of Sicilian historians and their works as

aspiring to rise above the local, and, more speciWcally, to deWne themselves

as belonging to the Greek world. Issues of chronological approach are sig-

niWcant not only for the status of the local historians as skilled tellers of the

past, but also for the question of audience and reception, that is the real

context for the creation of these narratives, to which we shall return (in

chapter 6).

I have already adduced the famous Thucydidean parallel for the accumu-

lation of multiple temporal systems in deWning the precise timing of an event.

But, as discussed above, there are examples of ‘local’ historians performing

the same kind of chronographical feat. The distinction between ‘local’ his-

toriography and ‘great’ historiography, as has often been assumed by scholars,

both ancient and modern, may need some modiWcation. The notion that

‘great’ history should be ‘Panhellenic’, not local, is given an interesting twist by

the observation that Panhellenic chronological frameworks and markers are

sometimes used in local historiography, but we would surely not be expecting

neat dichotomies in any case, but rather gradations and degrees. Of course,

local frameworks need not imply local audiences any more than Panhellenic

ones require a broad reception.

The place of Sicilian historiography on this scale has been the subject of

some dispute, and is of considerable interest, since it encompasses some of the

most striking examples of ‘Panhellenic’ thinking. In one of the best-known

methodological sections of Polybius’ Histories, in the course of his extended

critique of the work and methods of Timaeus, Polybius comments on

Timaeus’ excessive elevation of Timoleon: ‘Timaeus thought that if Timoleon,

who had sought fame in Sicily, as if in a mere tea-cup,299 could be shown to be

worthy of comparison with the most illustrious heroes, then Timaeus, who

treated only Italy and Sicily, could claim comparisonwithwriters whose works

dealt with the whole world and with universal history.’ The charge of blowing

the subject matter out of proportion for the purpose of self-aggrandizement

carries the clear implication that, in Polybius’ view, Sicilian historiography

was a small-scale and rather unimportant aVair.

But it is somewhat unfortunate that the Wrst writer to synthesize the history

of the West, and one who strove to set his work in so ecumenical a chrono-

logical framework, should have been handed down to us largely through

Polybius’ critique, with his accusations of parochialism, especially when he

devised the Olympiadic framework for historiography, which Polybius him-

self would use. Timaeus clearly took himself seriously as an investigative

299 Polybius 12.23.7: LSJ points out that O�ı�� refers, in fact, to a shallow vinegar saucer.


historian, stressing the amount of polypragmosyne (‘investigative eVort’)

which he put into Wnding out about, for example, the Ligurians and Iber-

ians.300 Furthermore, Nepos thought Timaeus’ views were of some signiW-

cance, and cited him alongside Thucydides and Theopompus on the subject

of Alcibiades (f 99), and it is worth noting how often the Sicilian historians

are cited by later critics alongside the ‘great’ historians.301

This divergence of views on the status of Sicilian historiography encourages

an investigation into whether it displayed any distinctive and unique charac-

teristics, which might explain its apparently interstitial position. It is hard to

gauge the position of one particular type of local historiography alongside

others when so much more of it has survived. However, some patterns may be

observed. We have already seen that the Heraclidae feature as an important

chronological marker in universal works. Yet, in spite of the potential of their

return to the Peloponnese as a broadly applicable temporal marker for use in

local historiography too, the Heraclidae, like the Olympiads, are notable for

their almost complete absence from the extant material. Besides a fragment of

Hellanicus in which there are glimpses of genealogical work involving the

Heraclidae (FGrH 323a f 23), and a mention of the Heraclidae for their

honouring of Eurytione in so far as they were on the same side in the return

to the Peloponnese,302 the Heraclidae seem to turn up as a dating device only

in the fragments of Timaeus. He notes that from the return of the Heraclidae

to the archonship of Euaenetus, when Alexander crossed to Asia, was eight

hundred years.303 It is interesting and signiWcant that Hippostratus and

Timaeus, both of whom mention the Heraclidae, should share the attribute

of being a Sicilian historian. It could be that Timaeus was instrumental in

promoting the place of the Heraclidae in Sicilian historiography with no less a

political purpose than in his development of Olympiadic dating, stressing the

Dorian background of Sicily as part of its claim to Greekness.304

300 FGrH 566 f 7. See Polybius 12.27.6 for his own view that polypragmosyne is the mostimportant element in history.

301 See FGrH 556 t 16b for the criticism by Dionysius of Halicarnassus that the subject ofPhilistus was monochrome and local (��Æ� ŒÆd ��ØŒ��) by contrast with that of Thucydides; buthe set Philistus alongside Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, and Theopompus as one of thebest historians at mimesis (t 15a). According to Plutarch, when Alexander asked for additionalreading beyond the Iliad to be sent to him on campaign, Harpalus sent him the works ofPhilistus, along with the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, and the dithyrambs ofTelestus and Philoxenus (t 22).

302 See FGrH 568 f 6 for this fragment of Hippostratus.303 FGrH 566 f 126: I�e ��ı [sc. B� � ˙æÆŒº�Ø�H� ŒÆŁ ��ı� K�d ¯PÆ�� ¼æ��Æ; K�� y

�Æ�Ø� �`º��Æ��æ�� N� c�� `��Æ� �ØÆ�B�ÆØ.304 See Thucydides 7.57 for the Dorian ancestry of Syracuse. The south coast of the island was

dotted with Dorian colonies from Syracuse to Selinus.


Furthermore, it is striking that, whereas in the case of most polis history we

have very little in the way of extant narrative, or even a frame of sequential

episodes, this is not true of Sicily and southern Italy, or of Athens.305 Of

course, this could be mere accident of survival, and we should distinguish

here, in any case, between the strong arguments for assuming a careful

annalistic structure for most local histories, expressed through magistracies,

and the phenomenon here discussed, namely the development of a narrative

structured by indicators of relative time. Antiochus of Syracuse says that

the foundation of Rhegium involved Zancleans (from Messina in Sicily),

who sent for the Chalcidians and appointed Antimnestus as their founder

(�NŒØ��), joined by refugees of Peloponnesian Messenia.306 ‘Previously’

(e �ÆºÆØe�), the Siceli and the Morgetes had inhabited the whole area,

but they had later crossed to Sicily, ejected by the Oenotrians. A simple

enough story, but the feature of interest here is the relative order of events,

marked out by the vague indicator (e �ÆºÆØe�). Or take the foundation of

Metapontum, again told by Antiochus.307 He links this into the foundations

of Tarentum and Sybaris, among others. Antiochus relates that the city was

called Metabum at Wrst (�æ �æ��) and was later slightly altered—another

very vaguely expressed relative chronology. Or Wnally from Antiochus, we

have a fragment on how the present-day territory of Italy was previously

called Oenotria;308 and how the country of the Tarentini is inhabited by

Iapyges, but even earlier (Ø �� I��æ��), the names of both Italians and

Iapyges were applied only to those living in very speciWc areas, only to be

subsequently extended.

This sense of development across time, denoted by general relative tem-

poral expressions, is rare in the whole corpus of fragmentary local histories.

One small fragment of Malacus’ Siphnian Horoi notes the lapse between the

arrival of the group of Samian slaves who would go on to settle Ephesus at a

mountain on the island and their departure ‘in the sixth year after this’.309

Furthermore, there are isolated examples of general temporal expressions

with elements of relative chronology beyond the simple past-present dichot-

omy. Philochorus notes that prodigals and those who lived beyond their

means were in antiquity (e �ÆºÆØe�) brought before the Areopagites and

punished;310 and Callias of Syracuse in his account of Agathocles observed

that the city of Eryx was in the past (e �ÆºÆØe�) a city of the Sicels and of

those called Delli.311 Timaeus also employs these vague general and relative

305 We will return to the special case of Athens later in this chapter.306 See FGrH 555 f 9. 307 FGrH 555 f 12. 308 FGrH 555 f 3.309 See FGrH 552 f 1. 310 FGrH 328 f 196. 311 FGrH 564 f 1.


temporal expressions in order to enhance the chronological structuring of his

narrative. A fragment on the luxurious habits of the people of Siris, which

matched that of the Sybarites, mentions the relative phases of incoming

settlers for the former city—Wrst from Troy and later from Colophon;312

and, more generally still, he comments on stories about Pithecussae told ‘by

the ancients’ (��e H� �ÆºÆØH�) (f 58) and how it was not customary ‘in

ancient times’ for Greeks to be served by bought slaves, but instead younger

members of the family waited on the older ones (f 11).

These general or relative temporal expressions, like the Panhellenic markers

of the return of the Heraclidae and Olympiads, are very commonly found in

the universal works of Diodorus and of the historian and geographer Strabo,

as I have mentioned before and discussed at length elsewhere.313 Setting out

the past of an individual polis in a fairly systematic and coherent way, but not

necessarily with any concern for precise datings, but rather the establishment

of a relative chronology of key stages in the life cycle of the place, is, I have

argued elsewhere, an extremely common pattern in Strabo.314 But interpreting

the evidence is fraught with diYculty.

On the one hand, we might argue that these features shared between the

Sicilians and the universal writers suggest a diVerent status for Sicilian

historiography from that enjoyed by local historiography. The suggestion

could be supported by a rather diVerent comparison, that with Thucydides.

His Sicilian archaeology at the start of book six (6.1–5) presents an account of

foundations and the early history of the island which is structured by exactly

the same kind of relative chronological expressions and markers as we Wnd in

the local Sicilian historians. He notes the series of diVerent settlers and the

various city foundations. Some dates are given—the people of Gela founded

Acragas 108 years after the foundation of their own city,315 but this, like other

examples in the passage, is a relative chronology and not Wxed to local regal or

magisterial time as we Wnd in the smaller local histories. The Sicilian foun-

dations are set in an internally coherent system by Thucydides, resembling his

internally intelligible chronology for the narration of the Peloponnesian War.

Here in the Sicilian archaeology we learn that Acrae and Casmenae were

312 FGrH 566 f 51.313 See K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman

World (Oxford, 1999), 255–6.314 I would, therefore, disagree with the assertion of A. Momigliano, ‘Time in Ancient

Historiography’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford, 1977), 179–204 at190, that ‘No ancient historian, as far as I can remember, ever wrote the history of a state interms of births and rebirths. Isolated metaphors do not make historical interpretations.’ Thereis, of course, no need to see the use of biological or biographical metaphors as synonymous withcyclical history.

315 See Thucydides 6.4.4: ��Ø �b Kªª�ÆÆ OŒg ŒÆd �ŒÆe� ��a c� ��æÆ� �YŒØ�Ø�.


founded by Syracusans, Acrae seventy years after Syracuse,316 and Casmenae

nearly twenty years after Acrae. Camerina was Wrst founded by Syracusans one

hundred and thirty-Wve years after the foundation of Syracuse.317

But if the Sicilian histories seem to bear resemblance to the chronological

structure oVered by Thucydides and Strabo in ways which are not shared by

local histories on a smaller scale, what does this allow us to conclude? If we

look a little more closely at the fragments of Sicilian historiography by

Antiochus and Timaeus, cited above, they turn out to be drawn largely

from either Strabo himself or Athenaeus, another synthetic writer. It is

necessary to question yet again whether we are witnessing in the Sicilian

fragments nothing more than the preoccupations of the source, or conversely

to wonder whether Strabo drew on these authors precisely because they

oVered the kind of general, more universal, relative chronology which suited

his composition. The fact that Strabo’s use of city narratives, which are

chronologically imprecise but give a sense of development over time, is by

no means conWned to Sicily strongly suggests either that this really is an

imposition of his own, or that his sources, the local histories themselves, were

more uniformly endowed with this kind of material than our fragments

reveal. It seems that there can be no conclusive answer to whether the Sicilian

historians were substantially diVerent from other local historians in this

respect, but the patterns are visible nonetheless.

In spite of the methodological diYculties involved in assessing the nature

of Sicilian historiography from fragments which may tell us more about the

sources than about the originals, modern scholarship has expressed some

conWdent views as to its status. The place of Sicilian historiography in relation

to both local and universal models has been seen as unusual among geo-

graphically determined accounts, if not unique. Momigliano stated that ‘If the

historians of Sicily are considered real historians (as the mention of Philistus

[sc. by Quintilian] shows), it is because Sicily was a world in itself, and the

conXicts between Greeks and Carthaginians were of general political import-

ance. The historians of Sicily were more than local historians’.318 Elsewhere,

Momigliano made a rather diVerent point concerning the broader horizons of

Sicilian and especially Timaean historiography, noting that, although Sicily

was the centre of his narrative, he also included the whole political and cultural

history of theWestern Greeks, oVering a geographical-ethnographical descrip-

tion of Italy, Gaul, Spain, Britain, Corsica, Libya, Sardinia, and the smaller

islands.319 This lack of parochialism is very much in line with some of

316 See Thucydides 6.5.2.317 Thucydides 6.5.3.318 Momigliano, ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, 59.319 Momigliano, ‘Athens in the Third Century b.c. and the Discovery of Rome’, 48.


our observations concerning the way in which Timaeus and other Sicilian

historians carefully tied their narratives both historiographically and geo-

graphically into the wider context of the Mediterranean world. The point

seems to have been that, though an island, Sicily was far from insular.

But if Sicily elicited a form of historiography which exceeded the concep-

tual scope of even the most universally embedded and aspirational local

history, staking its claim to be part of the Panhellenic discourse, then was it

simply further up the same scale, or qualitatively diVerent? The form of

historiography identiWed as Hellenica, the continuous sequence of historians

writing Zeitgeschichte as successors to Thucydides, including both military

and political history, has been adduced as a parallel by several scholars.320

Walbank sees this as a signiWcant observation for the status and genre of

Sicilian historiography and its historians. The fact that Timaeus’ predecessors

in Sicily, Antiochus and Philistus, had written works which could be seen not

as a form of Greek local historiography, but as a parallel for the Hellenica,

raised the status of that project.321 Fornara also has been keen to stress that the

Sicelica should be accorded special status amongst the local historiography of

Greece, but his reading of Jacoby is interestingly at variance with that of

Walbank, since he stresses Jacoby’s classiWcation of Sicelica as ethnographic

texts, as the title suggests. Furthermore, he sees Jacoby as asserting an essential

diVerence between Hellenica, which had a relatively recent start date, and

Sicelica, which enjoyed a long prehistory.322 It seems that the chronological

angle can contribute to this debate since, if Sicilian historians used temporal

frameworks which were deliberately and self-consciously Greek, as opposed to

being more generally universal, then the notion of a western Hellenica gains

weight.

The confusion over precisely how to read the fragments of Sicilian histori-

ography is not surprising, given that Jacoby’s thoughts are themselves some-

what contradictory: on the one hand, he states that ‘Sicilian history was

written by Sicilians in resemblance to all local history’, on the other he claims

that Antiochus of Syracuse at the end of the Wfth century was writing not a

local history, but a supplement to Herodotus for the West.323 As we have seen,

approaching the material with an eye to the temporal frameworks reveals that

the writings on Sicily bear other characteristics which set them apart from the

majority of ‘local’ historiography, thus contributing a new angle to this

320 See Jacoby, Kommentar IIIB 480–1, for this parallel. He goes further still in suggesting that‘Antiochos der sizilische Herodot ist und Philistus der sizilische Thukydides’ (481).

321 F. W. Walbank, ‘Timaeus’ Views on the Past’, in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World:Essays and ReXections (Cambridge, 2002), 165–77 at 167.

322 Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome, 37.323 Jacoby, Atthis, 118, for both statements.


question. The sense of ‘narrative’ developed across time does seem to align

these works more closely with the Hellenica, although, as patterns in Strabo

and other citers suggest, this may have been a feature of much local histori-

ography. A more distinctive feature of Sicilian historiography, which strength-

ens the link to Hellenica and clearly belonged to the original sources

themselves, was the use of chronological systems such as Olympiads and the

Heraclidae, which oVer a striking illustration of political agenda inXuencing

the development of historiography.324

b) ‘All things considered, I declare that ourcity is an education to Greece’325

Pericles’ paradoxical and blatantly propagandistic presentation of Athens, in

his funeral oration at the end of the Wrst year of the Peloponnesian War, as an

exceptional paradigm nevertheless neatly expresses Jacoby’s view of its his-

toriography. The typicality of Atthidography, just as of Sicilian historiog-

raphy, is hard to gauge. Jacoby’s opinion that the works of Sicelica and

Macedonica were more like Atthidography than like ‘great’ history,326 but

with a strong ethnographic element, suggests that the historiography of

Athens did not stand entirely alone. Indeed, I have been using Athenian and

Attic evidence straightforwardly alongside that from other Greek poleis delib-

erately in order to test whether these accounts reveal the same kinds of

patterns and preoccupations as those across the Greek world. It seems so far

that, by and large, they do. Not only could the Atthides, Sicelica, and Mace-

donica stand together, but the premise which underpinned Jacoby’s study in

Atthis of a single type of local historiography, as though it could stand for the

whole genre, held true—constructing the past of Athens was not so very

diVerent from performing this task for any other polis.

But that must be a provisional and tentative suggestion, since it is simply

the case that we have vastly divergent quantities of evidence from place to

place, making comparisons diYcult. We have already seen some features of

Sicilian and Attic historiography which make them stand out from the crowd

324 For the notion that Sicilian historiography was not alone in failing to fall neatly into ahistoriographical category, see P. Funke, ‘�æ��ØŒÆd �ı��Ø� ŒÆd ƒ��æ�ÆØ: Die rhodischeHistoriographie in hellenistischer Zeit’, Klio 76 (1994), 255–62, who explores the interestingstatus of Rhodian historiography as going beyond the conWnes of the local and extending onto abroader canvas: ‘Sie zeichnen sich durch das Bemuhen aus, die rhodische Geschichte in die‘‘großere’’ Geschichte der ostlichen Mittelmeerwelt miteinzubeziehen’ (261).325 Thucydides 2.41.1: �ı��º�� º�ªø �� A�Æ� � ºØ� B� � ¯ºº�� Æ��ı�Ø� �r�ÆØ.326 See also Orsi, ‘La storiograWa locale’, 173, for the comparability of Attic and Sicilian

historiography in terms of volume and style.


through their use of more complex temporal sequences in their narratives and

a greater interest in ‘buying into’ Panhellenic frameworks. But it is striking

that the two sets of regional or local accounts which might be considered

‘unusual’—the Sicelica and the Atthides—are by far the largest bodies of

material. This may be either a symptom of their exceptional nature or a

cause of that perception.

There is a further way in which our analyses and opportunities concerning

a city such as Athens are atypical. We not only have more substantial

fragments of its historiography to assess, which may or may not oVer a

distorted vision of how its past was formulated in that medium alongside

that of other cities. But, even if Atthidography were to look more typical if we

possessed the local historiography of the Greek poleis in a more fully extant

state, Athens also oVers exceptional opportunities to the modern scholar by

virtue of its range of evidence. In a sense it is perverse not to exploit the

greater evidence which springs from a polis such as Athens, and to use it as a

test case for how the past of a place could be constructed through diVerent

media. I shall, therefore, move on to examine the presentation of the Athenian

past through the very public context of its oratory. Athens will thereby act as a

bridge between our study of local historiography, for which our evidence is

fragmentary but widespread, and our consideration of a range of portrayals of

the same place and its past.


V

Persuasion and plausibility:

history and rhetoric in the polis

1. PARAMETERS OF PLAUSIBILITY

Æƒ �b� ªaæ �æ��Ø� Æƒ �æ�ª�ª��ÆØ Œ�Ø�Æd �A�Ø� ��E� ŒÆ�º��Ł��Æ�; e ��K� ŒÆØæfiH Æ�ÆØ� ŒÆÆ�æ��Æ�ŁÆØ ŒÆd a �æ��Œ��Æ ��æd �Œ��

K�Łı��ŁB�ÆØ ŒÆd �E� O� �Æ�Ø� �s �ØÆŁ��ŁÆØ H� �s �æ��ø� Y�Ø � K�Ø�.

For the deeds which had been carried out in the past were handed down as

shared possessions for us all; but tomake proper use of themat the appropriate

time, to conceive Wtting sentiments about each one of them, and to set them

forth in polished language, is the particular talent of right-thinking men.1

The fragments of local historiography allow glimpses into the narrative strategies

and structures adopted by authors, but so far little has been said about the

recipients of such accounts of the community’s past. Now it is time to shift the

focus away from the author in isolation and towards an exploration of reception,

audience, and the relationship—authoritative, collusive, or didactic—between

those who composed history or histories of the polis, and those for whom they

were intended. I shall return (in chapter 6) to a consideration of the value of time,

and especially that of time past, in the polis and to the evidence for the status and

reception of the historian in this context. But, at least for the simultaneously

exceptional and paradigmatic city of Athens, we have multiple media through

which to glimpse the construction of, and attitudes towards, the past—oratory,

theatrical productions, and considerable amounts of material evidence—to

set alongside themore explicitly ‘historical’ evidence in the formof local histories

produced not only for Athens, but also for cities all over the Greek world.

If we focus on issues of reception, authority, and credibility, then it

becomes all the more clear that the overtly persuasive medium of public

oratory might oVer revealing insights into which versions of the past carried

weight with a broad sweep of the community at large.2 Indeed, the very

1 Isocrates, Panegyricus 9.2 The argument is naturally dependent on a meaningful relationship between the orator’s

words and the comprehension of the audience. See M. Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire par les

presence of ‘history’ in speeches which were designed to serve an immediate

need in the present is itself testimony to the value of the past to the audience.

Isocrates’ explicit acknowledgement of the coexistence of two notions—Wrst,

that of a commonly shared inheritance of knowledge about the past, and

secondly, the recognition that its eVectiveness lies in its selective deployment

by those of good sense—neatly encapsulates the interests and control exer-

cised by the audience and by the composer. Both elements of Isocrates’ claim

are important for understanding the way in which the orators of fourth-

century Athens constructed a past or pasts for the city and its people, which

they could use in the service of their primary goal—competitive persuasion.3

The fact that Isocrates explicitly raises the issue of how the past of the polis

might best be presented, together with a proliferation of explicitly ‘historical’

material in the extant speeches by fourth-century Attic orators, suggests that

it might be proWtable to examine Attic oratory speciWcally with regard to this

theme, not least to consider the extent of common ground between the

presentation of the past of Athens and Attica here and in the local histories.

As Hamilton notes, ‘in addition to formal histories, the works of the orators

are full of historical allusions and examples and provide an intriguing body of

material’.4 Furthermore, unless Athens was entirely unique in its treatment of

the past (and a comparison of local historiography across the Greek world

suggests that this was not the case), then an exploration of the orators’ view of

time past and its presentation to their immediate audience should enhance

our interpretation of the creation, reception, and underlying assumptions not

only of the Atthides, but also more generally of works across the range of local

historiography. It is precisely by reading the ‘past’ of the Attic orators against

the backdrop of ‘common knowledge’ oVered by the local historians, as

orateurs attiques (Paris, 1982), 37: ‘le niveau historique de ses exemples a des chances decorrespondre au niveau moyen de culture des spectateurs’, just as one assumes that wordsspoken and jokes made in the comic theatre meant something to their audiences in order forvictory in competition to ensue: ‘il est bien evident qu’il etait compris de tous, chacunconnaissant bien les realisations de Themistocle, comme les noms de Marathon et de Salamine,deux victoires qu’Aristophane evoque par ailleurs avec un certain recul’ (38).

3 J. H. D’Arms, ‘Pro Murena 16 and Cicero’s Use of Historical Exempla’, Phoenix 26 (1972),82–4, notes the importance of careful and appropriate use of exempla, citing Cicero, Topica 44 forthe theoretical stance witnessed in practice in his extant speeches: commemoratio exemplorumvaluit (borne out by Crassus’ defence of Curius, when many parallels were cited to good eVect).There is, of course, a huge literature on the subject of exempla in oratory, both Greek and Roman.

4 C. D. Hamilton, ‘Greek Rhetoric and History: the Case of Isocrates’, in G. W. Bowersockand W. Burkert (eds.), Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox (Berlin,1979), 290–8 at 290. Hamilton distinguishes helpfully between mere ‘interest in the past’ and‘historical sense’, which involves periodization, a sense of development and change, an interestin sources of knowledge and critical principles in approaching material, and uses theme orpurpose to give signiWcance to the past. It is this more rigorous ‘historical sense’ which heidentiWes in the Attic orators.

246 History and rhetoric in the polis

opposed to ‘great historians’, inscriptions, and the funeral oration, for ex-

ample, that I hope to contribute something to a Weld which has been so

excellently and comprehensively studied by Nouhaud in his work on L’Util-

isation de l’histoire par les orateurs attiques.5

Isocrates’ idea that the events of the past are ‘shared’ or ‘common to all’ is

itself an important, but complex, claim. In what sense are they ‘shared’

(Œ�Ø�Æ�)? Interpretation here is of obvious signiWcance for any wider discus-

sion of knowledge, perception, and use of the past in the Greek poleis. If

Isocrates means simply that the citizens of Athens, or at least many of them,

participated in the same or similar set of past events, that is hardly contest-

able. However, this kind of ‘shared experience’ has a stringent temporal

limit—events further back than those in recent decades can be known to

the present-day citizens only through report.6 Have they all heard the same

version? Do they all really know the same past? Is it meaningful to group

together the listeners as a single ‘audience’ and impute to them a uniform

level of historical knowledge? To what degree does Isocrates’ comment point

to the existence of a particular polis version of its past, taught to its citizens,

reinforced by the local historians, the playwrights, the artists, and the orators?

As Rosalind Thomas has convincingly shown, such a picture of an uncon-

tested, oYcial, version of the past is not supported by the evidence.7Her claim

that complexity was built into traditions concerning the Athenian past can be

supported for other poleis by looking at the historiographical material across

the Greek world. DiVerent versions of the past were told by diVerent local

historians, contradicting each other both within and between poleis, making it

far from clear to what extent the events could be described as ‘common’.8

However, the idea that the orator, no less than the historian, relied on his

public presentation of the past in order to support his authority with the

audience, suggests interesting parallels between these two Wgures in terms of

the parameters within which any of their versions must fall in order to win

approbation. The active nature of the orator’s interaction with the past, as

5 Nouhaud oVers a superb, thorough, and interesting survey of use and abuse of historicalthemes. There is also much here of more theoretical interest concerning the use of history,combined with an alertness to context and audience expectation.6 That Isocrates is referring to events in which the audience have not themselves participated

is, in any case, clearly suggested by the verb ŒÆ�º��Ł��Æ�.7 See R. Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989).8 This variation within parameters seems clearly distinguishable from the making of factual

errors or confusions which we occasionally see in the extant speeches. See, for example,Andocides, On the Mysteries 106, where he confuses the battle of Pallene and the battle ofSigeum. On the other hand, as Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 105, points out, without aclear picture of the likely level of historical knowledge of orators, we cannot assess ‘dans quellemesure leur deformation de la realite historique est consciente ou inconsciente.’

Parameters of plausibility 247

described by Isocrates, places him very Wrmly in the role of historian.9

Isocrates’ stress on the suitable nature of his use of the past, the fact that he

must make use of past events ‘at the right moment’ (K� ŒÆØæfiH) and conceive of

thoughts that are ‘Wtting’ (a �æ��Œ��Æ) echoes the inscriptions which

honour local historians for their ‘appropriate’ accounts of the past.10 It is

clear also from this that, while the orator, like the historian, selects and

fashions certain elements of the past, he does not have unlimited freedom

to shape it as he likes.11 Making correct use of the past in oratory, as in

historiography, involves a mixture of constriction and creativity, if credibility

is to be maintained. The past is shared in so far as certain events or at least

certain elements in its narration are commonly accepted as being ‘true’.

Claims to truth in history may be unfashionable for the modern reader, but

it is worth noting that Syriscus of Cheronnesus, whose account of the

epiphanies of the Parthenos and kindly deeds towards the cities was made

‘Wttingly’, was praised also for having related these events ‘truthfully’

(ƒ� æ�� IºÆŁØ�½H�).Isocrates’ claim that past events were ‘shared’ clearly did not preclude their

creative deployment and presentation. A good deal of attention has been

devoted in recent years to considering the complex power relations which

existed between orators and audiences in the Roman Republic, partly in

response to the reassertion of the democratic nature of that system and the

claim that speakers addressing the populus Romanus must necessarily tailor

their words to the audience’s demands.12 The idea of oratory as a form of

9 The tradition that Isocrates was the mentor to Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus ofChios further reinforces the view that the ideas on the past of at least this orator may be of somerelevance for enhancing our understanding of historiography. But see Nouhaud, L’Utilisation del’histoire, 56, for the view that the orator never fulWls the same role as the historian: ‘Memelorsqu’il s’agit de comparer le present au passe, l’orateur ne se transforme pas pour la circon-stance en historien.’

10 See SGDI 3086 (FGrH 807 t 1), an inscription celebrating Syriscus of Cherronesus, whowas honoured with a golden crown for ‘he recorded the kindly deeds performed towards thecities Wttingly for the demos’ (� ½Ł� ��æ�Æ�Æ �½Øjº��Łæø�Æ ��d a�� º�Ø� ƒ�½ jæ��K�Ø�ØŒ��ø� HØ ð�Þ��ø½Ø).

11 Demosthenes, On the Crown 225, gives some insight into the potentially misleading eVectsof the competitive recreation of the past. He attacks Aeschines for exploiting the time lapsebetween events and his speech to make a careful selection of old dates and decrees, some forslanderous purposes, and for transposing dates (��ªŒ �Æ �f� �æ ��ı�) and making upWctitious causes.

12 The importance of persuading the polis as a whole has, of course, been explored in detail byJ. Ober,Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (NewJersey, 1989). For the Roman counterpart, see F. G. B. Millar, ‘Politics, Persuasion and Peoplebefore the Social War (150–90 bc)’, Journal of Roman Studies 76 (1986), 1–11 and The Crowd inRome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor, 1998). But see R. Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory andPolitical Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2004), especially 14–18, arguingprimarily for a more theoretical approach to the exercise of political power, or rather the


discourse in which the speaker does not simply pick up on ‘public opinion’,

but actively shapes it at the same time, in other words, the notion that oratory,

like historiography, draws its persuasive force from a subtle combination of

description and prescription,13 and relates no less to the Greek than to the

Roman world, and no less to the past than to the present. Perhaps it would be

fair to say that the orator needed both to ‘buy in’ to recognizable elements of

the ‘shared past’ which his audience knew from their general education, their

attendance at public festivals, and theatrical performances and other rhet-

orical displays, and, having won their allegiance as fellow sharers in this past,

to manipulate their thoughts either about his client or, more relevantly here,

about the polis itself and its foreign relations, through careful deployment of

exempla and past experience.14 It is this latter process that Isocrates describes

as ‘thorough use’ (ŒÆÆ�æ��Æ�ŁÆØ)—no mere relation of an uncontested past,

but an active and ruthless exploitation and manipulation of history in the

service both of a particular argument or case and of the longer-term authority

of the orator.

An examination of some of the more prominent political speeches and

discourses should, therefore, oVer an opportunity to glimpse at least two

angles on the past. First, the ‘shared’ past of a polis, the ‘generally accepted’

stories about Athenian and Attic history, which we might expect to be

relatively uniform across the diVerent orators and closely correlated with

the ‘shared’ past revealed in the Atthides.15 Secondly, through the use by

diVerent orators of particular historical events and exempla, a more selective

and unique reading of the past, deployed in support of particular arguments.

process of political negotiation, than those which he sees oVered by Ober and Millar. Thecriticisms of Ober (43) for his oversimpliWcation of Aristotelean ideas of ethos (whereby theorator should accommodate himself to his audience’s way of thinking, character, and self-perception, as outlined in the Rhetorica) and again (44) for statements such as ‘the orator had toconform to his audience’s ideology or face the consequences’, seem entirely justiWed.

13 The precise proportions of each remain unclear. Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 111,clearly implies that orators were at the forefront of ‘teaching’ the audience their history(‘connaissant principalement l’histoire par les orateurs’), which would suggest that they tooka leading role in creating the ‘shared past’, into which they then bought, a rather circular andunsurprisingly successful tactic.14 L. Pearson, ‘Historical Allusions in the Attic Orators’, Classical Philology 36 (1941), 209–29

at 217–19, makes the important point that it would be a poor rhetorical strategy to alienate theaudience with displays of excessive erudition.15 See M. I. Finley, ‘Myth, Memory and History’, in The Use and Abuse of History (London,

1975), 11–33 at 29, for a view which is based on relatively tight parameters for the orator interms of both themes and freedom to elaborate or recast: ‘In Athens, the Solonian codiWcation,the tyrannicides, Marathon were the stock allusions of political orators and pamphleteers, andeveryone knew all that anyone needed to know about them.’ By contrast, see Nouhaud,L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 112, for the accepting nature by the audience of whatever ‘history’,however inconsistent or contradictory, the orator presented.


At the same time, it is worth asking to what degree the Attic orators were

concerned to construct a coherent and continuous version of Athenian

history, or whether they were simply ‘dipping in’ to a narrative or at least a

series of selected highlights, whose outline, or details, or dates, they could

assume to be known to the audience. Did they show any concern over dates,

and if so how were they expressed? To what extent did their arguments

depend on continuity between past and present, and to what extent on change

over time? One question to bear in mind is that of from where the orators

themselves ‘learned’ their history. As Nouhaud notes, not a single orator cites

the name of a historian, still less the title of a work,16 and, although one may

assume the same range of ‘non-historiographical’ sources of information—

decrees, oral tradition, the comic theatre, and so on—as would be available to

all citizens, it is not clear what privileged historical insight lends authority to

the orator’s view of the past.

The extant fragments of local historiography strongly suggest that, even in

ostensibly ‘historical’ accounts, not all periods received equal coverage. We

are, of course, severely hampered in taking this assertion too far by the limited

nature of the evidence and the idiosyncratic nature of the sources. It would be

rash, in the absence of complete works, to state that local historians showed

no interest in creating a complete and continuous account of the past,

preferring instead to focus on discrete and signiWcant moments in time.

Indeed, in cases where more than a handful of fragments have survived

from the work of individual authors, as for example with Philochorus, there

are clear indications that the account was arranged by annual magistracies (in

this case, the archonship), suggesting an attempt to achieve a relatively

comprehensive treatment across time.17 However, comprehensiveness does

not entail uniformity, and, unless we have been entirely misled by the

preoccupations of our sources, our extant fragments of local historiography

do suggest a predilection for the distant and mythical past.18 Even if it seemed

safe to say nothing more than that the distant past constituted a major

element in the story constructed by local historiography, this still oVers a

16 See Nouhaud, ibid. 121.17 Pace A. Momigliano, ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, in The Classical Foundations of

Modern Historiography (Berkeley, 1990), 54–79 at 61, who distinguishes local ‘antiquarianism’from serious historiography by its characteristic systematic, rather than chronological, treat-ment of the past. For Momigliano, any chronological ordering to be found in the local historianswas incidental, rather than essential to their organizing strategy. By contrast, we may recall theconWdent assertion of F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949), 87and 99, of the strongly annalistic nature of local historiography, mapped out by eponymousmagistrates wherever possible.

18 Of course, some of the major sources are clearly predisposed to preserve the mythicalelements of the original histories—Stephanus of Byzantium, for example, with his place-nameaetiologies, looms large in any study of foundation myths.


point of comparison against which to place the attitude of the Attic orators to

past time.

On reading the political speeches and discourses of some of the major

orators of fourth-century Athens against this background, one is immediately

struck by the emergence of a very diVerent range of Athenian pasts from those

constructed by the Atthidographers. The distant and mythical past which is so

important in the construction of local history in the extant historiographical

record is much less dominant in the past constructed by the orators,19 sitting

as it does alongside other more recent events in the service of the argument in

point. But simply to assert that the orators, just like the historians, construct a

selective picture, a deliberate and careful ediWce, is merely to state a com-

monplace. More proWtable is to consider which periods and events are

favoured, how and why these may diVer from those emphasized in other

media, and how these issues relate to the broader questions of audience,

reception, and the attitude of the polis as a whole to the passage of time and

the past. One obvious observation is to note that the extant ‘private’ speeches

given in the course of non-political trials are almost entirely devoid of

historical references, conWrming that the appeal to history was part of the

political discourse rather than simply a feature of any attempt to persuade an

audience. It would, however, clearly be erroneous to treat even Attic oratory

which concerns political themes as though it were a monochrome entity, or to

be insensitive to the variations between orators and between diVerent com-

positions and performances by the same speaker. Although the audiences of

diVerent types of speech must necessarily have overlapped, whether they were

sitting as jurors in the courts, as voters in the assembly, or as citizens at a

public occasion, such as a funeral oration,20 the diVerent needs of forensic,

symbouleutic, and epideictic oratory may have played a part in determining

which episodes in the past were presented, and in what ways.21

19 Except, as we shall see, in some forms of epideictic oratory, such as the funeral oration. SeeNouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 8–9, on the much greater recourse to the historical ratherthan mythic past in oratory, though he notes the diYculty of demarcation at both ends of the‘historical’ spectrum—where history and the present meet (9) and conversely where ‘pour lesorateurs, le mythe se distingue de l’histoire par une plus grande anciennete’, 8.20 The importance of the epitaphios in the presentation of particular versions of the past to

the community at large can scarcely be overemphasized. I shall, however, for precisely thisreason, treat it as a predominantly civic occasion and reserve most of my comments for the nextchapter.21 Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 37, may thus be blurring distinctions that mattered by

adducing funeral orations and the comic theatre in one sweep to establish ‘une Wxite qui sembletemoigner d’une tradition bien etablie’ in Wfth-century Athens concerning audience expectationand knowledge of the past.


2. ADDRESSING ATHENS: PRESENTING THE PAST

a) Demosthenes

Demosthenes regularly refers to, and takes his exempla from, the extremely

recent past.22 In On the Chersonese, he focuses heavily on the present, sup-

porting his arguments with examples from Philip’s behaviour in recent

campaigns. Oreus, Pherae, Olynthus, and Phocis are the recurrent themes

(for example at 59), and these are again cited as a group (Philippic 3.10–12), as

states which Philip has denied attacking, while being virtually at the gate.23

The expedition to Euboea in 357 bc in order to recover it from the Thebans is

another commonplace—as an opportunity on which Athens failed to capit-

alize (Olynthiac 1.8), as a warning to Philip that Athens was indeed capable of

striking out (Philippic 1.17), and as a positive example of persuasion backed

up by action (On the Chersonese 74–5).24 This case provides a neat illustration

of the way in which the same recent event could be used as both a positive and

a negative exemplar—the malleable nature of the shared past, appropriately

deployed as Isocrates demanded. This apparent inconsistency in presentation

is elsewhere explicitly depicted as a positive feature of Athenian behaviour

regarding the event itself. In For the People of Megalopolis (14), Demosthenes

makes the Athenian defence of Euboea against Thebes, where previously she

had supported Thebes against Sparta (in 378 bc), into a deliberate change of

allegiance made in the cause of victims of injustice, again reinforcing the way in

which the presentation of the past was continually evolving depending on context.

Most of Demosthenes’ relation of fourth-century events is naturally con-

nected to his arguments concerning Philip, and Athens’ appropriate response

to him. The failure to capitalize on the situation in Euboea (Olynthiac 1.8

above) is part of a list of fourth-century examples—Pydna (357), Potidaea

(356), Methone (354), and Pagasae (352)—designed to demonstrate that

quick action in the past might have averted trouble with Philip now. Similar

22 The same strategy is adopted by Deinarchus, Against Demosthenes 37, where he explicitlyrejects the heroes of even the Wfth century, such as Themistocles and Aristides as ‘those ancientWgures’ (�f� Iæ�Æ��ı� KŒ��ı�) for whom he has no time, before focusing attention on whatwas done ‘shortly before our time’ (�ØŒæe� �æe B� ��æÆ� �ºØŒ�Æ�: 38). The strategy is notprecisely borne out by the speech, since, although he adduces early fourth-century Wgures suchas Conon, Iphicrates, Chabrias, and Timotheus (75), he also refers to mythical tales such as thetrial by Poseidon of Ares for the murder of Halirrothius (87) and the tyrannicides, Harmodiusand Aristogeiton (102).

23 See also Philippics 3.56 Olynthus; 3.59 Oreus; 3.57 Eretria. Philippic 4 (if genuine) oVersmore instances of this theme, e.g. at §61; see also the repeated list of Athenian mistakes atSerrium and Doriscus in §§8 and 65.

24 The episode reappears as an example of Athenian benefaction at On the Crown 99.


lists of recent events are included to encourage Athens to follow its own

example in assisting other poleis against aggressors, and thereby to warn

Philip not to rely on their apathy—Haliartus (where in 395 they helped the

Thebans to defeat Lysander),25 Corinth (in 394 against Sparta),26 and Therm-

opylae (where in 352 Philip was stopped on his march from Thessaly

to Phocis).27 These are arguments based not so much on the past, but

on near-contemporary examples of Athenian behaviour, from which the

immediate future can be predicted. On the whole, Demosthenes’ allusion to

fourth-century events is exhortatory in tone. Athens is encouraged to par-

ticular courses of action through conWdence that its present capacity is more

than adequate, as illustrated by recent actions. In other words, the ‘decline

theory’, which we shall see deployed in other contexts, is not universally

applied. Demosthenes can Wnd fourth-century heroes, such as Chabrias, as

well as more distant ones, with whom to inspire the Athenians to action.28

The Wfth century receives a quite extensive coverage in Demosthenes’

public speeches, but it is focused on particular episodes and phases. The

later part of the century (including the very earliest part of the fourth century)

is represented partly through reference to the rule of the Thirty,29 and partly

through the exemplary events surrounding certain individuals, all adduced in

Against Leptines: Epicerdes of Cyrene, who was correctly granted immunity

from liturgy for his benefactions to the Athenians held prisoner in Sicily

during the ill-fated expedition of 415–413 bc (41–2); the Thasian supporters

of Ecphantus, who handed over Thasos to Athens by expelling the Spartan

guard and admitting Thrasybulus (59);30 and Conon, who restored the Long

Walls after destroying the Spartan Xeet oV Cnidus in 394 bc (68–72). The

period of the Persian wars and Athenian resistance at the head of Greece

receives more frequent mention for obvious exemplary reasons in the context

of Demosthenes’ orations and his stance against Philip.31 Some instances

oVer general contrasts between past and present Athenian mores, to which

25 Philippic 1.17; On the Crown 96. 26 On the Crown 96. 27 Philippic 1.17.28 See, for example,On Organization 22; Against Leptines 75–8, where the amazing exploits of

Chabrias are related at length.29 For the Liberty of the Rhodians 22; Against Leptines 11—both references are Xeeting.30 The date is disputed (between 408 and 407 bc) owing to discrepancies between the two

main sources, Xenophon and Diodorus.31 The dominance of the Persian War period in Greek oratory of the fourth century is well

attested also in the less commonly read and fragmentary texts. See, for example, Lycurgus,Against Leocrates 80 for the taking of the ephebic oath before Plataea, 104 for Marathon, 108 onthe Spartans at Thermopylae, 122 for the execution of Lycidas after Salamis; Hyperides, AgainstAthenogenes 31 on Athenian help to Troezen in return for Troezen’s safe haven for Athenianwomen and children in the run-up to Salamis. Even right at the start of the fourth century(399 bc), Athenian unity in the aftermath of the war against Persia is adduced by Andocides, Onthe Mysteries 107–9, as a model for civic harmony.

Addressing Athens: presenting the past 253

we shall return.32 The Wgure of Themistocles is presented on several occasions

as a model for emulation—described in Against Leptines (73) as the most

famous man of all his contemporaries (› H� ŒÆŁ� �Æıe� ±��ø� I��æH�

K�� Æ��); and the well-known battles of the Persian wars, a very clear part

of the audience’s ‘shared knowledge’, are regularly evoked.33Most memorably

inOn the Crown (208), where Demosthenes is defending decisions which have

turned out disastrously for Athens, he calls on his audience to be proud of

their bravery in staving oV Philip through what turned out to be an ill-fated

alliance with Thebes, and famously swears an oath to this by the Athenian

ancestors who fought at Marathon, Plataea, Artemisium, and Salamis.34

References to more distant periods of Athenian history are similarly focused

around signiWcant episodes and individuals, as we might expect. Solon and his

laws loom large in several speeches,35 but particularly in On the False Embassy,

where Demosthenes enters into polemic against Aeschines for his use of

precisely this Wgure. We shall come back to the competitive use of the past,

between opposing orators, but it is worth noting here that Solon’s signiWcance

was more than simply as a symbol of Athenian justice. In On the False Embassy

(251), Aeschines is attacked for having alluded to the statue of Solon, repre-

sented with his hands folded and robe drawn around himself as the epitome of

the self-restraint (�ø�æ�� Ææ��Øª�Æ) of the orators of a previous gener-

ation, by contrast with the present. According to Demosthenes, the statue is

said by the Salaminians to be less than Wfty years old, and is therefore no kind of

evidence for Aeschines’ point. But Demosthenes then goes on (at 255) to use

Solon himself, this time in his role as a poet. Substantial passages of Solon’s

elegiacs are adduced as enshrining timeless truths about the city. This particular

individual from the past, then, encapsulates both change and continuity, and is

multifaceted in his relevance as a Wgure in the polis, though strikingly not cast in

his role as agrarian and political reformer.36

32 See Philippic 3.36–7 on Athenian hatred of bribery; On the Crown 203–6, especially 203and 205, for lack of servility.

33 See On Organization 21, for the lack of ostentatious bronze statues set up to Themistoclesfor Salamis and to Miltiades for Marathon.

34 S. Usher, Greek Oratory : Tradition and Originality (Oxford, 1999), 271, notes the ‘quasi-religious solemnity’ of this speech, which is clearly reXected in the taking of this oath.

35 See Against Leptines 90; 93–4; 102–4 for appeals to his legislative procedures;On the Crown6 appealing to the spirit of justice demanded by Solon’s laws.

36 See Pearson, ‘Historical Allusions in the Attic Orators’, 221–4, for the convenient way inwhich Solon had already been packaged in the late Wfth century as the originator of democraticinstitutions and the embodiment of the patrios politeia. C. Mosse, ‘How a Political Myth TakesShape: Solon, ‘‘Founding Father’’ of the Athenian Democracy?’, in P. J. Rhodes (ed.), AthenianDemocracy (Edinburgh, 2004), 242–59, oVers more insights into the motivations for reading or‘creating’ Wgures from the past to meet particular political needs. M. I. Finley, ‘The AncestralConstitution’, in The Use and Abuse of History (London, 1975), 34–59, notes the importance ofshared Wgureheads from the past in creating a sense of community. See 50 for the point thatSolon gradually eclipsed his rival, Cleisthenes, for such a role.


The overthrow of the Pisistratid tyranny is a moment in Athenian history

to which Demosthenes refers on several occasions, although one might have

expected that the theme of tyrannicide would prove even more dominant

than is the case, given its exemplary force in the rhetoric of opposition to

Philip. However, the Philippics themselves are devoid of references to the

model tyrannicide, and it is the speech Against Leptines which exploits the

theme in two separate contexts:37 Wrstly, on the question of exemption from

liturgies, the point is made (at 18) that some liturgies were compulsory for

everyone, even the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The force of

this is clearly that it would be impossible to imagine a more distinguished

ancestry in the polis of Athens than that of the tyrannicides, but even so this

did not bring exemption from civic duty for their descendants. At this point

Demosthenes comments that Leptines had particularly named the tyranni-

cides in his own speech, presumably in support of an opposing point. As in

the case of Solon, Wgures and events from the past were notoriously malleable,

being used creatively to serve the needs of the present argument.

Later in Against Leptines, Harmodius and Aristogeiton return as doubly

removed exempla for the honouring of civic benefactors. Conon, himself

brought in as a model for the grant of immunity and of a bronze statue for

his actions against Sparta, was the Wrst to be so honoured since Harmodius

and Aristogeiton (68–70), since his stand against Spartan imperialism was

deemed a form of tyrannicide (�ª�F�� ªaæ �P �ØŒæa� ıæÆ��Æ ŒÆd

�F�� . . . ��ÆıŒ��ÆØ). It is interesting that the famous tyrannicides are

here being adduced as models for the highest civic honour, whereas a few

chapters earlier they are models for moderation in such rewards for benefac-

tion. The Xexibility of the past could be exploited not only by opposing

speakers, but even within a single speech, neatly illustrating the tension

revealed by Isocrates’ comments with which I opened. The ‘deeds from the

past which are common to all’ (�æ��Ø� Æƒ �æ�ª�ª��ÆØ Œ�Ø�Æd �A�Ø�) are

here the well-known ‘facts’ about Athens’ delivery from tyranny. But this

happens to be a case where we know from Rosalind Thomas’s close and

detailed study quite how complex were the traditions surrounding these

events in Athenian history.38 Even so, there were enough ‘shared elements’

in the story for the allusion to have some force for the audience as a whole.

The tale was not so hotly contested that Demosthenes’ reference would be

ambiguous; but at the same time it was not so Wxed that it could not be

manipulated and deployed to suit present needs.

37 See also On the Treaty with Alexander 3, on how resistant Athens would be to restoring thePisistratids.38 See Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens, 238–82.


The mythical past of foundations and heroes, which is so prominent in the

fragmentary remains of Greek local historiography, including the many

Atthides, is largely absent from Demosthenes’ public speeches, in spite of

the obvious value that constructing such a picture of the polismight have had

in the service of fostering opposition to the threat of Philip. In fact, the

mythical past of Athens, its heroic founders such as Theseus, and its claims

to autochthony, do not appear at all. Instead, the one reference to the distant

past which I can Wnd in the public orations relates more closely to Thebes

than to Athens. In On the Crown (186), Demosthenes’ decree proposing to

send help to Thebes against Philip relies heavily on appeals to the distant links

between Athens and Thebes, going right back to the time of the Heraclidae:

‘They remember the services of their own ancestors to the ancestors of the

Thebans, since, when the sons of Heracles were deprived by the Peloponnes-

ians of their ancestral rule, they restored them . . . and we sheltered Oedipus

and those who were banished with him’.

Demosthenes, then, clearly focuses his attention on the relatively recent

past, particularly when he is warning or advising about political or military

strategy for the present crisis. His exhortatory speeches require positive

models of behaviour which are suYciently recent to be plausibly imitable,

relying on continuity rather than change through time. His appeals to the

more distant Athenian past are focused on predictable and appropriate Wgures

for emulation, such as Themistocles and the tyrannicides; or on characters

such as Solon, who embody and epitomize qualities which might be claimed

as timelessly Athenian. It is not surprising that the picture of the more distant

past which one might draw from Demosthenes’ public speeches is far less

detailed than his picture of the fourth century. His use of the past in the

service of convincing an Athenian audience takes its eVectiveness from its

simplicity, picking up on the ‘shared’ knowledge of certain key Wgures and

events, and deploying them with considerable freedom and selectivity.39

b) Aeschines

Since Demosthenes and Aeschines were notorious adversaries, who have

conveniently left to us opposing speeches,40 containing Demosthenes’ explicit

39 The need for simplicity in historical allusion is stressed by R. D. Milns, ‘Historical Paradigmsin Demosthenes’ Public Speeches’, Electronic Antiquity: Communicating the Classics 2.5 (1995)<http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V2N5/milns.html>, although his comment that ‘prideand patriotism are the essence of historical examples, which are meant to be edifying and toprovoke emulation’ seems to miss some of the complexity and subtlety of the technique.

40 For Aeschines’ employment of rhetorical techniques such as explicit ordering of points inorder to discredit Demosthenes, see C. W. Wooten, ‘Clarity and Obscurity in the Speeches of


http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V2N5/milns.html

criticisms of Aeschines’ use of the past and Aeschines’ response, it is of

particular interest to compare Aeschines’ treatment of Athenian history

with that of Demosthenes. According to Demosthenes, Aeschines urged the

Athenians not to draw on the past, but to forget their ancestors (‰� �h� H�

�æ�ª �ø� ��A� ��B�ŁÆØ ��Ø).41 However, all three extant speeches of

Aeschines are heavily laden with references to Athenian history; and in

general, it is a much more distant past than the one evoked by Demosthenes.

Historical events of the fourth century, besides the ones which actually

form the subject of the speeches, are virtually absent. InOn the Embassy (164),

Aeschines’ list of examples of Athenian inconsistency in its dealings with

other states ranges across the Wfth and fourth centuries—Athens fought

Sparta, but then helped it after Leuctra; restored the Theban exiles, but then

fought them at Mantinea; fought Themison and Eretria, but then saved them

later. In Against Ctesiphon (243), where he is arguing in 330 bc for the last

time against Ctesiphon’s proposal to award Demosthenes the crown for his

services to the state, he compares Demosthenes unfavourably to Wgures from

recent history who more richly deserved the honours granted to them—

Chabrias, Iphicrates, and Timotheus—in a direct attempt to undermine the

positive associations which Demosthenes had claimed for himself and for

Athens with the great Wgures of the Wfth century.42

The Wfth century is rather better represented, especially, as in Demosthenes’

speeches, in relation to the Persian wars. In Against Ctesiphon, Aeschines

illustrates his point about the reversal of fortunes by reference to the fate of

the king of Persia, who went so far as to assault Athos and bridge the

Hellespont, but to no avail.43 The great Wgures of the polis at that time oVer

models for comparison with contemporary individuals, to the detriment of

the latter. Demosthenes is unfavourably set alongside Themistocles, Miltiades,

and Aristides the Just (181). But it is not only the prospective honorand who

is diminished by the comparison. The behaviour of the polis too is at stake.

Those who conquered the Medes at the river Strymon were honoured with

inscriptions not to individuals, but to the demos as a whole (183); the Stoa

Poikile in the Athenian agora was Wlled with memorials of Wne deeds, but the

Athenians resisted Miltiades’ request for individual commemoration for his

Aeschines’, American Journal of Philology 109 (1988), 40–3, especially 40–1; A. R. Dyck, ‘TheFunction and Persuasive Power of Demosthenes’ Portrait of Aeschines in the Speech On theCrown’, Greece & Rome 32 (1985), 42–8, focuses instead on the character assassination performedby Demosthenes on Aeschines.

41 On the False Embassy 16; cf. also the same allegation at 307: �� H� �æ�ª �ø� ��B�ŁÆØ;311: �c �æ�ª �ø� ��B�ŁÆØ.42 See Demosthenes, On Organization 22; Against Leptines 75–8, for Chabrias’ prominence in

fourth-century history.43 See 132; at 133, the later examples of Sparta and Thebes are introduced.


role at Marathon, instead preferring to celebrate the collective achievement.

Here, then, we Wnd an interesting twist on the use of the Wfth century as an

exemplary period. There is still an appeal to the audience’s shared knowledge

of great events and great Wgures. But the focus on the individual as exemplum

is subordinated to model behaviour on the part of the whole polis in its

treatment of individuals. This is of course no surprise given the purpose of the

speech to deny an individual a special honour for his actions and advice on

behalf of the polis as a whole, providing yet another example of the way in

which familiar elements from the Athenian past could be exploited in the

service of a particular cause.

As in Demosthenes’ public speeches, Solon is regularly evoked by Aeschines

too, and again it is as a lawgiver and a wise man, rather than an agrarian or

political reformer, that he appears. He is particularly prominent in Against

Timarchus, where he is adduced as having written ‘in an old-fashioned and

solemn manner’ (Iæ�Æ�ø� ŒÆd ��H�) on the subject of women (183). It is

Against Timarchus to which Demosthenes clearly refers in his criticism of

Aeschines’ use of the statue of Solon in the agora in Salamis as evidence for

the former restraint of orators. Aeschines does indeed (at 25) allude to the

pose of this statue in support of the view that orators such as Pericles,

Themistocles, and Aristeides were more decorous than the likes of Timarchus.

As we saw in the case of the tyrannicides in Demosthenes’ Against Leptines,

here is possibly another example of double layering of exempla, since a statue

of Solon cannot reasonably be adduced as proof for the behaviour of Wfth-

century orators unless either Aeschines is completely negligent over chron-

ology,44 or Solon is being assumed as an earlier model for later ones. But it is

interesting in any case to see Solon cast in the role of paradigmatic orator. It is,

however, no surprise to Wnd Solon evoked near the start of this speech as ‘the

ancient lawgiver’ (› �ÆºÆØe� ��Ł��) together with Draco and other

lawgivers from that time (6). Timarchus, argues Aeschines, has contravened

the laws which were handed over by these early lawgivers to the Athenian

people as their guardians (��ºÆŒÆ�: 7), presumably to be retained unchanged

over time. The power of Aeschines’ argument derives from his allusion to the

originator of the law in question, drawing on the shared vision of Solon as

crucial benefactor and paradigm of the Athenian self-image.

Aeschines directly addresses Demosthenes’ criticisms of his use, or rather

neglect, of the past in On the Embassy, Xatly denying that he pays no attention

‘to those who speak of the battles and trophies of their ancestors’ (�E� a�

44 It is noteworthy that the Wfth-century orators are here described as ‘those ancient orators’(�ƒ Iæ�ÆE�Ø KŒ�E��Ø Þ��æ��), perhaps in an attempt to blur the gap of over a century betweenthem and Solon.


��Æ� ŒÆd a H� �æ�ª �ø� º�ª�ı�Ø æ �ÆØÆ) (63). It is clear from the three

extant speeches of Aeschines that his rebuttal is to some extent justiWed. The

past, often the distant past, plays an important part in his oratory.45 Further-

more, Aeschines claims to have used the mythical past to good rhetorical

eVect not only when addressing Athenian audiences, but also when on the

embassy to Philip. He claims at On the Embassy 115 to have told the story of

the founding of the Delphic shrine (c� Œ��Ø� �F ƒ�æ�F) and of the Wrst

meeting of the Amphictyons, and also to have read oaths in which ‘men of

ancient times’ swore that they would not raze the cities of the Amphictyonic

states. Earlier he had oVered proof of the Athenian ownership of Amphipolis

through telling about the original acquisition of the land (��æd . . . B� K�Iæ�B� Œ��ø� B� ��æÆ�) and the story of the sons of Theseus, one of whom,

Acamas, is said to have received the district as a dowry for his wife (31). Here

we Wnd Aeschines speaking to the Athenians about the way in which he has

used allusions to the distant and mythical past to convince another audience

on Athens’ behalf, just as we shall see (in chapter 6) the diplomatic use made

of the past in inter-polis negotiations. It is part of his rhetorical strategy to

build up his authority with his current audience, that he was adept at doing

what Demosthenes accused him of neglecting, namely arguing on the basis of

past events. Aeschines goes still further here in claiming to have combined

proofs resting on ancient tales and those resting on contemporary events to

good eVect (31).

Perhaps goaded by Demosthenes’ taunts about his failure to make good use

of the past in the way that Isocrates says a wise man should, Aeschines seems

particularly keen to display his prowess in constructing diVerent frameworks

for persuasion. We have seen the way in which he claims to have combined

exempla from diVerent periods. In Against Timarchus (180–2), he sets up

another pair of comparative contexts: Wrst he contrasts Athenian behaviour

with Spartan condemnation of immorality, and notes the value of models

across space, claiming that ‘it is a Wne thing to imitate even foreign virtues’

(ŒÆºe� �� K�d ŒÆd a� ��ØŒa� Iæ�a� �Ø��E�ŁÆØ). But he then follows this with

45 A remote example comes in Against Ctesiphon, where Aeschines is discussing the allegedimpiety of Demosthenes at Delphi and makes extensive use of a story about the ancient oraclewhich required the land to be dedicated and not cultivated. The Amphictyons voted to put thisinto practice on the advice of Solon; the Locrians subsequently broke the agreement, but bribedDemosthenes to secure his silence on the matter (107–13). But see also Against Timarchus 132–3for references to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and even Patroclus and Achilles. These areadmittedly the allusions attributed to an imaginary interlocutor, but their presence is stillsigniWcant. I owe to Sarah Cottle, however, the point that, since Timarchus is being accusedon the understanding that his sexual behaviour is uncitizenly, the references become lesssurprising, and furthermore that, since Thucydides too mentions Harmodius and Aristogeiton(6.53), highlighting their pederastic relationship, the topos seems to have been widespread andnatural.


a model drawn across time from the Athenians’ own ancestors (ŒÆd H�

��æø� �æ�ª �ø� ��Ł��ÆØ), since he does not wish to Xatter the

Spartans unduly.

But returning to On the Embassy, it is here that we Wnd the most sustained

defence by Aeschines of his attitude to and use of the past. It may be

convenient for Demosthenes’ attack on him, he argues, to confuse the dates

(96),46 but it is best for Aeschines himself to get events in the right order

(��Æ��æ�Ø� �f� �æ ��ı�; K��d �� K��B� º�ª�Ø�). Aeschines does not urge

disregard of the past, as the prosecution claims; far from it. Although he

believes that the orator should oVer advice which suits the present situation

(165), this does not mean ignoring past experiences and exempla. Rather, as

Isocrates might have agreed, it entails a selective and discerning approach to

history. Those speakers who urge their audience simply to consider the

Propylaea and ‘to remember the sea battle at Salamis and the tombs and

trophies of their ancestors’ (B� K� #ÆºÆ�E�Ø �Æı�Æ��Æ� ��B�ŁÆØ; ŒÆd H��ø� H� �æ�ª �ø� ŒÆd H� æ��Æ�ø�) do not have the safety of the state at

heart (74). This sounds as though Aeschines is rejecting the ‘shared’ high-

lights of Wfth-century history, the famous events and Wgures to which the

orators, including himself, so regularly make appeal. However, he goes on to

reWne this apparent rejection of the past, encouraging the Athenians to

imitate the good models and beware the bad (75–8).47 And his point is

repeated towards the end of the speech, namely that he is not forbidding

the imitation of the ancestors, as Demosthenes alleges, but simply urging that

the Athenians should be discerning, and emulate only good policies (171).

Aeschines’ boldest attempt to turn the tables on his opponent comes

towards the end of his speech Against Ctesiphon. Here, he not only displays

his willingness to play with the most familiar Wgures from the Athenian past,

the ‘shared’ ancestors who were so important to the image of the polis,

trespassing on to rhetorical ground which Demosthenes has suggested is his

alone, but Aeschines does so inways which are designed speciWcally to backWre

on his opponent. Far from merely citing the great Wgures of Athens—Solon,

46 The reckoning of the precise chronology of events was a crucial part of Demosthenes’ caseagainst Aeschines, as On the False Embassy makes clear, with Demosthenes so conWdent that heoVered the defence part of his own time allocation in which to disprove his chronologicalcalculations (57–60).

47 ‘Good’ examples are Plataea, Salamis, and Artemisium or the generalship of Tolmides;‘bad’ examples are the Sicilian expedition sent to help Leontini when Athens’ own territory wasalready occupied by the enemy, or Athens’ actions on being oVered peace terms by Sparta, whichled to the rule of the Thirty. Plutarch, Precepts of Statescraft 814a–c, similarly makes the pointthat the exhortation by those in power of the general populace to emulate the past indiscrim-inately and without thought for whether a model is appropriate now, is of danger to the state. Heinterestingly rules out some of the standard classical topoi, such as Plataea and Marathon, asparadigms which please the mob but should be left to the sophists (814c).


Aristeides, Themistocles, the dead of Marathon and Plataea, the tombs of the

ancestors—as exemplary models from the past, Aeschines imaginatively

brings them back to life, transporting them from their own place in time

into the present and depicting their horror at Demosthenes’ proposed crown.

Demosthenes’ favourite characters from the past, whom he accuses Aeschines

of ignoring, are shown deriding their greatest admirer (257–9); and in so

doing they are made to embody the refutation of his allegations.48 Thus, the

appropriation and use of the ‘right’ elements of the past become tools in the

competition to persuade the polis.

c) Isocrates

Isocrates provides us with a slightly diVerent case study from those of the

long-standing and very public political opponents, Demosthenes and Aeschi-

nes. His long life started several decades before either of the others was born;

and he shunned the public performative context of the law courts and the

assemblies in favour of published political treatises. The lack of an immediate

purpose in terms of inXuencing particular military or political decisions leads

to a more discursive and digressive style. It is also, perhaps because of this,

responsible for the relative lack of focus on recent events. Instead, Isocrates’

discourses, just like other examples of epideictic oratory such as the funeral

oration, which we shall consider in more detail in the next chapter, reveal a

quite diVerent picture of the Athenian past, much more similar to that found

in the historiographical record. The stress is on a past which is strongly tied

into the mythical period, and relies for its rhetorical force on the assumption

of innate and timeless characteristics of the Athenians and their polis.49

Firstly, however, it is worth considering the instances where Isocrates does

refer to fourth- and Wfth-century events. The theme of the reversal of fortunes

involving spectacular achievements against the odds is illustrated in To Philip

by a long list of examples (KŒ ��ººH� �ÆæÆ��Øª��ø�) from the relatively

recent past—Alcibiades’ various periods of exile and return, Conon’s demise

and subsequent restoration, and Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, who rose to

power from nowhere (57–65); or if one wanted a non-Greek and earlier

example, there was always Cyrus himself, who was picked up as an abandoned

48 The image is particularly vivid: Aeschines imagines even the tombs of the ancestorsgroaning aloud when they see what honours are being proposed for Demosthenes: ŒÆd ÆP�f��f� ��ı� �f� H� �æ�ª �ø� �PŒ �Y��Ł� ��Ø� (259).49 We might recall the association of the universal historian, Ephorus, with Isocrates (as his

pupil) when considering the more extensive scope of Isocrates’ speeches than those of Demos-thenes and Aeschines.


child and came to rule all Asia. The rise and fall of cities, rather than that of

individuals, is taken up in the Areopagiticus,50 and again illustrated by ex-

amples from the Wfth and fourth centuries—Athens grew because of its

caution after the Persian wars, but then declined after the Peloponnesian

War; Sparta expanded and took over Greece after the Peloponnesian War, but

then declined (after Leuctra).51 The message is explicit: that no state should be

too conWdent, since its fortunes could change at any time, as Athens’ own

history showed.52 A related and recurrent theme, the apparent inconsistency

in interstate relations,53 is again illustrated by relatively recent examples.54

Another context in which Isocrates draws heavily on recent history is the

Archidamus, where he puts into the mouth of Archidamus arguments for why

Sparta should resist surrendering Messene. As Archidamus points out, he

cannot Wnd examples for resistance from Sparta’s own past since it does not

have a history of coming under attack. However, he can adduce parallels from

other states.55 The examples of resistance which Isocrates puts into Archida-

mus’ mouth are deliberately drawn from the recent past, since the speaker

claims that mentioning the repulsion of the Amazons or the Thracians or the

Peloponnesians under Eurystheus might lay him open to the charge of talking

about things which are ancient, and too far removed from the present

circumstances.56 This is a strange claim to Wnd in a speech written by

Isocrates, given his exceptionally extensive use of ancient examples, including

these very ones disclaimed here. We must, presumably, attribute the incon-

sistency to his characterization of the dramatic Wgure of Archidamus, whose

eponymous discourse is strikingly free of references to the distant past. Here,

instead, he adduces a string of relatively recent examples from various states:

the Athenian resistance during the Persian wars, Dionysius besieged by the

Carthaginians, Amyntas of Macedon’s repulsion of invaders in the early

fourth century, many examples of individual Spartans who have helped allied

50 Isocrates here explicitly addresses the interesting notion that cities, like people, could beanalysed in biographical terms, as we have already seen in chs 1 and 4. He could illustrate histheme with examples from individual instances, but whole cities oVered more signiWcantexamples. See Areopagiticus 14 for the biographical model repeated: ‘constitution’ (��ºØ��Æ)ruling ‘city’ (� ºØ�) as ‘the mind in the body’ (K� ��ÆØ �æ ��Ø�).

51 Areopagiticus 6 and 7. See Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 132–3, for the same theme.52 At 12, Isocrates reiterates the labile nature of power—Athens was strong after the victory of

Conon and the campaign of Timotheus, but soon lost its power in the Social War.53 For the same theme see Aeschines, On the Embassy 164.54 See To Philip 42 on enmity followed by cooperation between the Spartans and Xerxes. Or

43–4 for more recent examples: Athens was harmed by Sparta and Thebes during the Pelopon-nesian War, but later helped Thebes against Sparta and then Sparta against the rest of thePeloponnese.

55 Note Aeschines, Against Timarchus 180–2, where models across space and time aresimilarly juxtaposed.

56 42: Y�ø� Iæ�ÆEÆ ŒÆd � ææø H� �F� �Ææ �ø� º�ª�Ø� i� ��Œ��.


cities under siege—all in the service of the argument that the Spartans should

stand up for their own city now (43–53).57 As if this were not enough, even

more examples are stacked up later in the speech—the stand at Dipaea against

the Arcadians in 471, at Thyrea against Argos in 542, and Wnally at Therm-

opylae (99–100).

The logic that recent examples are more likely to prove persuasive than

ancient ones strongly echoes the arguments adduced by the Athenians when

they were disputing leadership of the troops with Tegea before the battle of

Plataea.58 After the Tegeans have made their claims on the basis of events at

the time of the Heraclidae, and the Athenians have retorted with precedents of

their own behaviour in the same period, as well as their exploits against the

Amazons, they dismiss ancient examples in favour of more recent ones. ‘There

is not much point in recalling all these things, since people who were brave in

the past might easily have deteriorated today, in the same way that people who

were nothing to speak of in the past might now have come up in the world.’

The shifting fortunes of states is a familiar topos, but oratory rests its appeal

to past exempla on the premise of continuity, which makes episodes from the

past rhetorically compelling in the present. Thus Archidamus’ words are

potentially undermining of the genre of oratory, especially Isocrates’ oratory

with its preference for the remote past.

The Wfth-century fortunes of Sparta and Athens are, however, also alluded

to in several of Isocrates’ speeches, predictably with Athens being the more

positively portrayed, although the degree to which this is the case varies

between speeches. In the Panegyricus, the argument that Athens should be

granted leadership of a united Greece against Persia is largely based on its past

success in this role during the Persian wars (66–7). However, Athens’ status as

leader of the Greek states was enhanced by the quality of the other poleis. As

Isocrates argues, it showed the level of Athens’ superiority that it could help

and give orders to the greatest states of the day—Argos, Thebes, and Lace-

daemon (Panegyricus 64). The Persian wars further aVected the standing of

both Athens and Sparta by encouraging rivalry between them over their

response to the external threat (85; 87).59 It is only later in the speech and

later in the history of Greece that Spartan brutality—at Mantinea (383),

Thebes (383), and more recently still Olynthus and Phlius—is contrasted

57 This is further subdivided into a list of examples: Pedaritus who helped Chios in 412;Brasidas who helped Amphipolis in 422; Gylippus who helped the Syracusans in 414.58 See Herodotus 9.27. The sentiment is strongly reminiscent of Herodotus 1.5 on the

changes of fortune which make it important to include small states as well as large ones inhistoriography.59 Of course, in To Philip 40, where Isocrates is urging Philip to take on the leadership of

Greece, these arguments concerning the past conduct of Athens and Sparta are directly over-turned. Their rivalry for valour now becomes a negative attribute and a hindrance to leadership.


with the more moderate behaviour of the Athenians when they were in power.

In To Philip also, the theme of the Persian wars is relatively prominent for its

obvious rhetorical value in convincing Philip to assume leadership of a united

Hellas against the new Persian threat. The enticement of glory is supported by

reference to the Wfth-century precedents of both Athens and Sparta, who won

their celebrated status for their exploits against Persia at Marathon and

Thermopylae respectively (146–8).

But in the Panathenaicus, where Athens is praised largely through contrast

with Sparta, the Wfth-century conduct of each polis is presented more starkly.

Now, in direct contradiction to Philip 146, the Persian wars appear not as a

glorious period for both cities, but as the moment when they distinguished

themselves one from the other, with Sparta contributing little and Athens a

great deal to the safety of Greece (49–50). Furthermore, the subsequent

imperial ambitions of the two states are brought into sharp contrast. Athens

strengthened the whole of Hellas, Sparta only itself (47); Sparta’s attempt at

thalassocracy was far more deleterious than that of Athens (54); Athens’

superiority in ruling Hellas was clearly attested by the far greater length of

its duration (56) and by its speedier recovery from collapse (58). Isocrates

fears that, in spite of Athens’ clear superiority, people might give a false

account of the past in painting a negative picture of that city as an imperial

power (63).60 But Sparta’s poor conduct towards other states could be attested

through the Wfth century and on into the fourth—mistreating Messene and

then the Plataeans in 427, in spite of their record against the Persians (91–3),

and Wnishing oV a string of misdeeds during and after the Peloponnesian War

with the shameful Peace of Antalcidas (102–5). Isocrates’ treatment of the

Wfth century, then, reveals very clearly how adaptable the ‘stock ingredients’

were. Given the way in which the presentation of the Wfth-century past here is,

as elsewhere, dictated by the rhetorical needs of the moment, Isocrates’

criticism of others’ manipulation of Athenian history must be either ironic

or hypocritical.

However, it is the earlier periods of Athenian history which are most

strikingly exploited by Isocrates, by contrast with the relative paucity of refer-

ences in Demosthenes and Aeschines.61 Solon, who appears in Demosthenes

and Aeschines as an orator and lawgiver, features in Isocrates’ Areopagiticus as a

60 This is interesting in the light of On the Peace 86, where Isocrates himself claims that therewere more disasters in the time of the empire than in the whole of the rest of Athenian history(H� K� –�Æ�Ø fiH �æ �fiø fi B � º�Ø ª�ª��ø�).61 See Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 20, for the claim that ‘Isocrate est . . . pratiquement

le seul qui s’interesse quelque peu a l’intervalle qui les [sc. myth and the Persian wars] separe, a laGrece archaıque’.


much more overtly political reformer. Isocrates’ purpose, to convince the

audience of the superiority of the early phase of Athenian democracy over its

Wfth-century form, is extensively supported by a description of the constitution

at that time (ŒÆ� KŒ�E�� e� �æ ��)—that is, the time of Solon and Cleisthe-

nes (20–8), and the whole topic is introduced with a warning that the only way

to avert future dangers is ‘to restore the democracy which Solon, the most

popular leader, established and which Cleisthenes restored’.62 The exposition of

Athenian mores, guided and guarded by the Areopagites, leads Isocrates to

discuss the relative merits of Athenian past generations, with a strong prefer-

ence for the age of Solon and Cleisthenes.63

Furthermore, it is the preponderance of references to the mythical past

which distinguishes Isocrates’ discourses even more starkly from the speeches

of Demosthenes and Aeschines.64 The theme of Athens’ repulsion of in-

vaders,65 which we have already seen in the other orators and indeed in

Isocrates himself exempliWed by its stance in the Persian wars, is illustrated

by Isocrates with much more ancient models. In spite of the rejection of

ancient exempla in Archidamus (42),66 Athens’ defence in the mythical period

is a topos of the Panegyricus. The Persian wars may provide the best example

of Athenian resistance, claims Isocrates, but there is no less evidence in

ancient achievements (�P �c� Kº�ø �Œ��æØÆ a �ÆºÆØa H� æªø�: 68);

and he goes on to cite the invasions of Attica by the Thracians led by

Eumolpus, son of Poseidon, and by the Scythians, led by the Amazons,

daughters of Ares. Their defeat represented the curtailment of a broader

threat to Greece, allowing Athens in the mythical period, as in the period of

the Persian wars, to style itself in the role of saviour of all Hellas.67 The same

theme is used again in the Panathenaicus in support of the point that Athens

was able and willing to stand as defender of Greece against the onslaught of

barbarians. Here, however, in a discourse whose praise of Athens is largely

62 16: KŒ�� c� ��ŒæÆ�Æ� I�ÆºÆ��E�; m� # ºø� �b� › ��ØŒ�Æ�� ª�� K��Ł��; ˚º�Ø�Ł�� b . . . ŒÆ��.63 The distinguishing between diVerent periods of the past for imitation or rejection is a

theme to which we shall return. But note here a counterexample to the point made by Finley thatSolon eclipsed other democratic reformers as the paradigmatic Wgure (see n. 36).64 See Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 19, for the extraordinary disparity between

Isocrates and every other fully or partially extant orator on this count, which Nouhaud putsdown primarily to the inXuence of sophistic teachers (Prodicus, Gorgias, and Teisias) onIsocrates.65 Of clear relevance in the fourth century, when the issue of eastern threats to Greece was

very much alive.66 This is something of a standard praeteritio in which Isocrates is able both to reject the

mythical examples and in so doing to mention them.67 See J. de Romilly, ‘Isocrates and Europe’, Greece & Rome 39 (1992), 2–13, at 8 for the view

that the Thracian and Scythian expeditions were seen clearly by Isocrates as attempts on thehegemony of Europe as a whole.


derived from comparisons with Sparta, the Thracians with Eumolpus and the

Scythians with the Amazons are joined by the Peloponnesian invaders led by

Eurystheus (188–98), nicely illustrating yet again the way in which the

construction of the past could be matched to the rhetorical needs of the

moment.68 The importance of the Eumolpus story in the wider Athenian

consciousness is brought out by Lycurgus’ introduction of the episode in his

speech against Leocrates (98–100), since here he cites a sizeable section (55

lines) of Euripides’ Erechtheus in support of his presentation of Eurystheus’

patriotic example whereby he sacriWced his daughter to save the state. Not only

does this act as an interesting instance of the use of poetic evidence in oratory,

but it also oVers a further insight into the ‘shared’ nature of the past deployed

by the orators, this time seen by the gathered polis in the tragic theatre.69

Another conXict which receives a certain amount of coverage in Isocrates,

but not in the other two orators considered, is the Trojan War.70 Rather oddly,

given the prominence of the Peloponnese among the Greek forces in the

Trojan expedition, this particular conXict is brought out in the two most

Athenocentric discourses, the Panegyricus and the Panathenaicus. In the latter,

the contribution of Peloponnesian states to the Greek expedition in the form of

some of the most renowned heroes—Nestor, Menelaus, and Agamemnon—is

adduced as an exacerbating factor in Sparta’s crushing of these states in the

more recent past (71–2). The notion that the conduct of states in the period of

the Trojan War might determine behaviour towards them in perpetuity relies

on a rather strained interpretation of historical continuity. Furthermore, it is

followed by an extensive digression on the services of Agamemnon to Greece

(74–87), which itself evokes an apology for Isocrates’ loss of the thread of

argument due to old age (88).71

68 Here, as at Areopagiticus 75, the three mythical examples are followed by mention of theWfth-century Persian invaders, revealing a seamless transition between spatium mythicum andspatium historicum. The use of mythical exempla in the service of historical arguments is barelynoticed. In fact at Panegyricus 30, Isocrates anticipates those who might disparage his stories‘because they are old’ (‰� Iæ�Æ�ø� Z�ø�) by claiming (it is not clear according to what logic)that their antiquity acts as proof of their truth.

69 Here the importance of education is also raised. The audience not only know the play fromtheir theatregoing in the polis, but, as Lycurgus says, ‘on these verses your fathers were broughtup (K�Æ��ı��)’ (101). For a later parallel, see Strabo, Geography 8.3.3, on the fundamentalimportance of Homer in one’s education and therefore perceptions through life.

70 Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 62, uses the Trojan War in a quite diVerent way, focusing noton the Greek eVort against an eastern foe, but rather on drawing a hypothetical parallel betweenthe destruction of that city and the enslavement of Athens under the Thirty. His point is thatdestruction and temporary loss of liberty are quite diVerent things, but it is interesting that theconceptual frame is one of comparison rather than contrast.

71 See W. H. Race, ‘Panathenaicus 74–90: The Rhetoric of Isocrates’ Digression on Agamem-non’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 108 (1978), 175–85, for the suggestionthat the self-presentation of the orator and the presentation of Agamemnon as saviour of Greece


The use of the Trojan War theme in the Panegyricus is more rationally

grounded. Rather than being a source of criticism of Sparta for its abuse of

‘heroic’ states, here it forms part of a comparative framework, also involving

the Persian wars, by which Athenian leadership of Greece against eastern foes

may be enhanced. Those who fought the Persians were even greater than the

Greeks who took ten years to capture the one city of Troy, argues Isocrates

(83). The fact that the Greeks of the Trojan period fought all that time for the

sake of one woman should inspire the Hellenes now to unite for the sake of all

Greece (181). The same kind of glory awaits those who now take on the new

Persian threat, with the praise that was accorded those who took a single city

becoming all the greater for those who would defeat the whole of Asia (186).

The set of moves which Isocrates makes is cleverly designed to link Athens to

the glory of the Trojan expedition, in spite of the fact that the Peloponnese

was far more prominent in the Homeric epics. The Trojan and Persian

conXicts are set alongside each other as two examples of East-West confron-

tation; Athens was a leading force against Persia; and through this route it

gains some of the reXected glory from the Trojan period. The use of the

generic East-West conXict for rhetorical purposes is reinforced (at 159) by the

comment that the Homeric epics were popular among the Athenians of

previous generations (that is, those of the Persian War period) because of

its theme of Greeks versus barbarians. And this linking of the two conXicts

recurs yet again where Isocrates claims that hostility to Persia is so ingrained

that the Athenians prefer to hear stories of the Trojan and Persian wars;72 wars

like these against barbarians inspired hymns for festivals, those against the

Hellenes inspired dirges for miserable occasions.

However, Isocrates’ interest in the past of Athens and other Greek poleis

goes further back even than the Trojan War. It is somewhat disingenuous of

him to claim in the Panathenaicus (1–3) that only now, when nearing his

centenary, is he turning to indulge his interest in myths (�f� �ıŁ��Ø�) and

marvels, and the ancient deeds (a� �ÆºÆØa� �æ��Ø�) and wars of the Hel-

lenes, as though ancient history and myth were not integral to his whole

rhetorical strategy. In the Panegyricus, he stresses the importance of exploring

the most remote phase of the past in order to support the notion that Athens

should lead Greece now. The further back into the past one goes, he claims,

the clearer it is that Athens should lead Greece (23), and it is generally agreed

are rhetorically and ideologically linked. Race sees the section as a showpiece designed to attestto the orator’s personal skill and character and to set forth a model for constructive politicalaction (185). Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 16, sees the correspondences as still morecomplicated, asking whether we should see Agamemnon as mapping on to Philip himself oronto his antithesis.

72 Panegyricus 158: u�� ŒÆd H� ��Łø� l�Ø�Æ �ı��ØÆæ�� E� æøØŒ�E� ŒÆd —�æ�ØŒ�E�.


that Athens is the oldest and greatest polis (Iæ�ÆØ�� r�ÆØ ŒÆd ��ª��).

In other words, the cumulative weight of history provides the legitimacy for

present policy. Anyone who wishes to compete for leadership ‘by recalling

their ancestral achievements on a regular basis’ (H� �Ææ�ø� ��ºº�ŒØ�

��ı�), would need to show that they have as impressive an origin

for their race as does Athens (25). The contest, then, is in a sense determined

by the foundation stories that can be told about each place. For Isocrates, at

least in this speech, the outcome is inevitable—who could oVer a leadership

‘more embedded in the past’ (�ÆæØø�æÆ�) than that of Athens, which started

its hegemonic trail before most cities in Greece were even founded (37)?73

The priority of Athens, its laws, culture, and constitution (��ºØ��Æ) is a

theme which Isocrates exploits throughout the Panegyricus. The notion of the

polis as the great inventor makes it worthy of celebration from the most

distant times to the present day.74 Athens’ responsibility for giving the

world all the most important aspects of civilized life involves a story which

Isocrates admits has become ‘mythical’ (�ıŁ��), but which is nevertheless

fundamental to his claim for its present leadership.75 He then proceeds to

relate the gifts granted to Athens by Demeter when wandering after the rape

of Kore (28). Thus, from the very beginning, Athenian actions were such as to

win from the gods rewards, which would beneWt all mankind. The importance

of the story continued to be reiterated through a ritual enacted ‘every year’

(ŒÆŁ� �ŒÆ�� e� K�ØÆıe�), and was also attested by the fact that most

Hellenic cities sent the Wrst fruits of their harvest to Athens ‘in memory of

the ancient benefaction’ (�� Æ B� �ÆºÆØA� �P�æª��Æ�) (31). So, the

myth of Demeter supported Athenian fourth-century claims to leadership;

but in turn current ritual practice legitimized the myth.

But Athens, in Isocrates’ picture, was also the Wrst to send out colonies (35),

and the Wrst polis to lay down laws and to establish a constitution (�æ�� ªaæ

ŒÆd � ��ı� Ł�� ŒÆd ��ºØ��Æ� ŒÆ��Æ�) (39). It was the inventor of arts

73 On the Peace 89 shows by counterexample the importance of honouring the originalfoundation through its direct descendants. Athens, Isocrates laments, has almost entirelychanged its composition. But the good state is not the one which draws people in, but theone which saves ‘the race of those who founded the polis in the Wrst place’ (e ª�� H� K� Iæ�B�c� � ºØ� �NŒØ��ø�).

74 It incidentally turns Athens as a polis into an honoriWc Wgure in its own right, just like theinventor Wgures such as Orpheus and Moses, who appear in local histories of the Hellenisticperiod. Thus the possibilities for analysing the city as a biographical entity are further enhanced.We have already seen (in chapters 1 and 4) the way in which the history of invention was acommon feature in local historiography.

75 For Hamilton, ‘Greek Rhetoric and History: the Case of Isocrates’, this passage, togetherwith Panegyricus 158, makes plain that Isocrates’ understanding of the distinction between�FŁ�� and º ª�� is not one of antithesis or of claims to veracity, but concerns the way in whichcertain stories have ‘come to have a special fame and function in the Greek tradition’ (293).


(40); it initiated the importance of the Piraeus as trade centre of Greece (42);

it oVered spectacles and festivals (44). The very earliest phase of Athenian

history is thus depicted as one which underpins its present claim to super-

iority over the other Greek poleis. In the Panathenaicus, the theme of the

‘inventor polis’ is given a neat twist in line with the strategy of that discourse,

namely to add to Athens’ prestige by comparison with Sparta. Here, Sparta’s

claims as competitor for the role as inventor city are challenged. Not only are

there chronological problems to overcome for those who say that the Spartans

invented the best way of life, since the heroic age of the Trojan War, Heracles,

Minos, Theseus, and Rhadamanthus was long before the Spartans came to the

Peloponnese (204–7), but Isocrates also counters the much-repeated claim for

innovation on the part of Lycurgus by saying that he simply imitated the best

inventions of the Athenians’ ancestors.76

Isocrates’ denigration of potential Spartan claims to be inventors of civil-

ization because of the chronology of their migration is not, in the Panathe-

naicus, brought into direct contrast with the claims to autochthony which

Athens could wield. We shall see later how this theme was manifested in other

media within the polis (in chapter 6). However, the autochthony of the

Athenians certainly does form an important theme in that discourse when

Isocrates turns, as promised, to the earliest times (119). The claim of the

Athenians to be sprung from the gods; their role as inventors of civilization in

the formof thepolisand its laws; their claimtobeunique in their autochthony—

all of these are part of Isocrates’ idealized picture of the origins of Athens

(124). It is striking to what degree Athens’ superiority is based on its unique-

ness, and the way in which not only its origins but also its subsequent history

diVer from those of other states. It was, according to Isocrates, the only polis

to enjoy the rule of several generations of kings in the same dynasty—from

Erichthonius, son of Hephaestus and Earth, who took over from Cecrops, and

then handed power down in succession towards Theseus (126).77 Telling the

early history of Athens was, in Isocrates’ rhetoric, a very diVerent story from

telling that of any other polis.78

76 Panathenaicus 153: ‰� �Ø��Æ��ı c� �Ø��Œ��Ø� ‰� �ı�Æe� ¼æØ�Æ c� H� �æ�ª �ø�H� ��æø�.77 The regal history of Athens is relatively absent from most of the extant speeches, but see

Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 84, for the Peloponnesian invasion of Attica ‘in the reign of Codrus’(K�d ˚ �æ�ı). Lycurgus goes on to provide an extensive account of Codrus’ self-sacriWce in orderto render impossible the oracle which promised the Peloponnesians success as long as they didnot kill Codrus. Lycurgus also in the same speech (98) refers to the invasion of Attica byEumolpus ‘when Erechtheus happened to be king’ (ı��E� . . . �Æ�Øº��Æ � ¯æ��Ł�Æ).78 This cuts quite a contrast with the historiographical evidence, in which Athens’ special

status may be seen to derive simply from the greater volume of extant material rather than insubstantial and qualitative diVerences from the works concerning other poleis.


The notion that the Athenians have always been there in the same place

aVords a whole range of interesting perspectives on the issue of time, con-

tinuity, change and so on, to which we shall return. However, for the moment

it is worth simply observing the importance of the autochthony myth for

Athens and Attica in Isocrates’ depiction of the past. The theme is predictably

present in the Panegyricus, since it is Athens’ proud boast that ‘throughout all

time we have possessed the same soil, since we are autochthonous’.79 The fact

that the failure of Athens to make the most of this uniquely privileged

position is lamented in On the Peace—‘we claim autochthony and Wrst

foundation and should be an example to others,80 but we are not’—is

indicative of the assumption that extreme antiquity and autochthony are

guarantors of excellence and paradigmatic status.

In spite of the importance of Athenian foundation myths in the political

discourses of Isocrates, there is also extensive coverage of ‘non-Athenian’

myths. Of course, to some degree this is predictable since, by contrast with

the extant political speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines, which were

delivered before an Athenian audience, Isocrates’ discourses seem designed

for a broader Hellenic context, and indeed several involve dramatic scenarios

which are speciWcally non-Athenian, such as the Archidamus. It is not sur-

prising that, where the Panegyricus moves into the mythical world beyond

Athens, it is nevertheless designed to enhance Athens’ own image. So, Athens’

power is exempliWed by the many appeals which have conWdently been made

to its help in the past,81 as when the sons of Heracles Xed from Eurystheus,

and shortly before them Adrastus, Talaus’ son, king of Argos sought refuge on

his return from the expedition against Thebes (54–5). Sparta is deemed

ungrateful ever to have harmed Athens, which started its long history of

assistance towards Sparta by helping the Heracleidae, who then became

‘ancestors’ (�æ ª��Ø) of the Spartans, having returned to the Peloponnese

and taken over Argos, Lacedaemon, and Messene (61–2). Similarly in the

Plataıcus, Athens’ exemplary dealings with suppliants in the distant past

79 Panegyricus 24: Æ�� –�Æ�Æ e� �æ �� ØÆ�º�F��; ÆP �Ł�� Z��. Otherexamples of the theme in a variety of genres reveal how widespread the ideology was. SeeEuripides, Ion 589–90: �r�Æ� �Æ�Ø a� ÆP �Ł��Æ� Œº�Ø�a� %Ł��Æ� �PŒ K��ÆŒ�� ª��; Aris-tophanes,Wasps 1076: %ØŒ�d � ��Ø �ØŒÆ�ø� Kªª��E� ÆP �Ł��. Thucydides 1.2.5 is regularlycited alongside these passages stating that in Attica ¼�Łæø��Ø fiþŒ�ı� �ƒ ÆP�d ÆN�� . Hornblower’scommentary naturally links this to claims to autochthony myths, although this is not preciselywhat Thucydides claims. There is, however, a logical connection between never having migrated(the anti-Dorian element) and being sprung from one’s native soil, provided that one mustcome from somewhere. Possibly Thucydides’ omission of the outright claim for the people ofAttica to be ‘earth-born’ is a reXection of a rationalizing tendency.

80 On the Peace 49: �¥ Ø�� ÆP �Ł�� b� �r�Æ� �Æ�� ŒÆd c� � ºØ� Æ�� æ��æÆ��NŒØ�ŁB�ÆØ H� ¼ººø�; �æ��BŒ�� A� –�Æ�Ø� �r�ÆØ �Ææ��Øª�Æ.

81 Isocrates here explicitly prefers the distant past over more recent examples.


are illustrated by the case of the Argives who wanted burial for the dead at the

foot of the Cadmea. Athens’ response won glory not only for the immediate

present, but for all time (�N� –�Æ�Æ e� �æ ��, 53).

However, it is predictably in To Philip and the Archidamus that we see more

sustained allusion to the mythical period outside Athens. The rhetorical

purpose of the Archidamus, to persuade the Corinthian delegation that Sparta

has the right to Messene as well as to Lacedaemon, is supported by recourse to

the mythical period and the story of how the third-generation (K�d �b æ��

ª��A�) descendants of the Heraclidae received an oracle from Delphi urging

them to seek their ancestral land. When the mythological claims were inves-

tigated, they revealed that the descendants of Heracles were owed Argos,

Lacedaemon, and Messene (17–21).82 It is as a descendant of Heracles himself

(ª�ª��g� �b� I�� ˙æÆŒº��ı�), as well as the king’s son, that Archidamus sees

it as his duty to strive to save the territory allotted by the oracle (8).

We have already seen (in chapter 4), the almost universal appeal of Heracles

as a Wgure for poleis to appropriate, and the myth of Heracles and his

descendants is of considerable importance in Isocrates’ attempts to argue in

To Philip for Panhellenic unity under the leadership of Macedon.83 Athens,

with its own unique myth of autochthony, was in a sense a special case, but it

was also crucially linked to other Greek poleis through the Heracles story, and

Isocrates cleverly uses inter-polis myths to defend his present recommenda-

tions. Philip is urged to reconcile the prime Greek states of Argos, Lacedae-

mon, Thebes, and Athens under his leadership on the basis of the mythical

past, in the case of the last three through shared association with Heracles.

‘Argos is for you an ancestral land (��Ø �Ææ��),84 the Thebans honour the

founder of your race (e� Iæ��ªe� �F ª��ı� ��H�) . . . the Spartans have

given his descendants the kingship and command for all time, and the

Athenians, according to those whom we believe in matters of ancient history

(��æd H� �ÆºÆØH�), helped Heracles win immortality and helped his children

save their lives’ (32–4).

82 The land of the Messenians was granted by Apollo to the ancestors of the Spartans aspunishment for their slaying of Cresphontes, founder of the race and descendant of Heracles (22).83 See S. Perlman, ‘Isocrates’ ‘‘Philippus’’ and Panhellenism’, Historia 18 (1969), 370–4, for an

examination of the Heracles and Heraclidae myths in the Panhellenic discourse of Isocrates. Heargues that the stories form a crucial plank in the argument for homonoia between the four leadingGreek states, but with a special place reserved for Athens, particularly in relation to Philip’sleadership. The idea that Athens might need special pleading, given Sparta’s prominence from thelate Wfth century onwards, is put forward by M. Flower, ‘From Simonides to Isocrates: The Fifth-Century Origins of Fourth-Century Panhellenism’, Classical Antiquity 19 (2000), 65–101, at 94.Flower’s article provides a helpful antidote to the view that Isocrates invented Panhellenism, byillustrating the long history of the idea from the time of the Persian wars onwards.84 Perdiccas I, who founded the Argive dynasty in Macedonia, was a descendant of the Argive

hero, Temenus. Thus Philip’s claim to lead Argos is as a result of heroic ancestry rather thanthrough an Argive connection to Heracles.


Later in the speech, Isocrates returns extensively to the Heracles story, this

time so that the demigod may emerge as an exemplum for Philip himself—

Philip is explicitly exhorted (at 113–15) to follow the example of the mythical

founder of his race. Heracles’ reconciliation of Greek states and the expedition

against Troy set the example for Panhellenic action against the East (111).85

Other descendants of Heracles may stick to their own states, but Philip, as

direct inheritor of his race, can follow his example and take all Hellas as his

fatherland (�Ææ��) (127). The contrast between the Panhellenic force envis-

aged for the present campaign and the eastern opponents is formulated in

terms of distant ancestors, and here again the mythic lineage of the Greeks is

brought into play, since it is seen by Isocrates as disgraceful that the descend-

ants of Cyrus, a mere mortal and an abandoned child at that, should be

known as ‘great king’ while the descendants of Heracles suVered lowlier status

(132). The glory of the mythic past should ensure the same for Greece in the

present. The blurring between past and present is vividly brought into force in

the form of imaginary advisers to Philip who span the generations right back

to the mythic founder of the race. Isocrates urges Philip that his advice is the

same as would be oVered by his father (Amyntas II) and the founder of the

kingdom (Perdiccas I) and the founder of the race (Heracles), were it lawful

for Heracles and possible for the others to appear (105).

The importance of these three major themes from the distant past in

Isocrates’ discourses—the Trojan War, the early history of Athens and its Wrst

dynasty descended from Erichthonius, and the myths surrounding Heracles—

is neatly encapsulated in one comment towards the end of To Philip. If we

were to speak of the distant past, claims Isocrates, no one would praise

Tantalus, Pelops, or Eurystheus, but everyone would praise, next to the

unrivalled excellence of Heracles and the goodness of Theseus, those who

marched against Troy (144). Theseus, Heracles, and the participants in the

Trojan expedition are clearly seen as the most exemplary characters in

the Greek past, and therefore the most relevant to be adduced in the service

of Isocrates’ exhortatory rhetoric.

In spite of a certain homogeneity in the selection of past events and Wgures

which are favoured for citation by these three orators, there is also consider-

able variation in their use and presentation of the past, neatly illustrating the

principle of Xexibility within parameters which are plausibly consistent with

the ‘shared knowledge’ of the audience. Certain elements in the story are

recurrent, but the contexts in which each orator performed clearly had a

85 Here the ‘false’ example of Jason of Pherae is interestingly introduced. He won renown forjust talking about making an expedition against the king of Persia, without actually putting itinto practice (119).


bearing on his persuasive purpose and his appropriate use of the past. Both

the diVerent generic requirements of epideictic as opposed to forensic or

symbouleutic oratory and the probable Panhellenic readership of Isocrates’

discourses provide a partial explanation for the nature of his exploitation and

presentation of the past—one in which the timeless continuities loom larger

than particular and recent models for action; one in which the stories told are

not so closely focused on Athens alone, but include also the more broadly

Hellenic myths of Heracles and the Trojan War.

There is, by contrast, a high level of reference to very recent events in

Demosthenes’ speeches, and to slightly less recent history in those of Aeschi-

nes. But here too, we may detect variation according to the needs of the

occasion. The highest density of recent and contemporary allusion and

exemplary models in Demosthenes falls in those speeches, such as the Phil-

ippics, the Olynthiacs, and On the Chersonese, which have a speciWc and very

immediate persuasive goal with regard to action. On Organization and

Against Leptines are much more Wrmly based on arguments of longer-term

continuity between the more distant past and the present, on national char-

acter and behaviour. As we have seen, the speeches of Aeschines, like those of

Demosthenes, tend to make slightly diVerent selections for each occasion

from the relatively coherent set of ‘stock examples’ which might be seen as the

‘shared past’ of the polis, rather than each time oVering an indiscriminate

melange which reXects a complete or continuous account of the past.86

The two extant sets of paired speeches between Demosthenes and Aeschi-

nes make an interesting case study for the degree to which the use of the past

was motivated not only by the needs of the present situation, but also by

direct interplay and competition with opposing speakers. Both pairs, of

course, make much of chronological disputes as part of their case. But

when it comes to dealing with past time, a few interesting patterns emerge.

In Demosthenes’ On the Crown, he makes a great deal of timeless virtues and

the character of the polis, but also alludes to the world of Themistocles and the

Persian War period as the exemplary stage in Athenian history, to which its

present citizens should aspire (204; 208). In Aeschines’ speech on the same

subject, Against Ctesiphon, besides making more explicit reference to particu-

lar Wgures (Phrynondas and Eurybatus as traitors worse than Demosthenes at

137; Chabrias, Iphicrates, and Timotheus as more deserving of reward than

Demosthenes at 243), he too brings the Persian War period into play. But for

Aeschines, here too it is Demosthenes who is brought into comparison with

the superior Wgures of the past—compared with Themistocles, Miltiades, and

Aristeides (181), and rebuked for his crown by Themistocles and the dead of

86 There are, in any case, some extremely striking omissions from the array of standard topics—we Wnd very little interest in, for example, the Wfth-century democracy and the Wgure of Pericles.


Marathon and Plataea (259). Thus, both orators use the same historical

exempla, but very diVerently to suit their opposing arguments. Similarly in

the speeches On the Embassy and On the False Embassy, Demosthenes and

Aeschines clash over their use of the same historical allusions to the Persian

War period, as I shall discuss in more detail below. It is clear that the ways in

which fourth-century orators exploited the past were dictated partly by the

expectations of the audience, partly by the rhetorical needs of the moment,

and partly by their opponents. They were by no means engaged in a crude

display of knowledge, but, as we might expect, tailored their use of the past to

the requirements of each occasion.

3 . ‘LEARNING FROM HISTORY’: MODELS

FROM THE PAST87

The considerable extent to which the fourth-century Attic orators include

references to the past in their speeches, which were primarily designed for an

immediate persuasive purpose,88 naturally elicits the question ‘why?’ In what

ways did historical allusions contribute to the persuasive power of the ora-

tion? or to the authority of the orator? What light do such references to the

past shed on the underlying temporal concepts of the speaker and the

audience? By what logic does past time inXuence the present and future?

The importance of learning, in general vicariously, from experience is

adduced by Demosthenes on several occasions in the context of historical

references.89 In Olynthiac 1, he urges the Athenians not to make the same

mistakes as in the past by failing to capitalize on opportunities (8); in the

third Olynthiac he explicitly exhorts the audience to recall these things

87 See R. B. Rutherford, ‘Learning from History: Categories and Case-Studies’, in R. G.Osborne and S. Hornblower (eds.), Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Democratic Accountspresented to David Lewis (Oxford, 1994), 53–68. Rutherford’s discussion of Thucydides helpfullydistinguishes between learning with a view to action and learning in terms of enhancedunderstanding. He includes some revealing discussion of parallels in the use of historicalparadigms between speakers in Thucydides and the Attic orators (59–60).

88 It is salutary to remember with Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 56, that rhetoric wasthe driving force here, rather than historical explanation: ‘c’est donc la rhetorique qui imposeses lois et ses choix.’

89 The topos is exceptionally common in historiography. Indeed, the didactic element isregularly adduced as the primary raison d’etre for the investigation and presentation of the past.The value of preserving good and bad exempla for imitation and avoidance respectively waspicked up and developed by the Roman historians. See, for example, Livy, Praefatio 9–10 andDiodorus Siculus 1.1–4. As has already been observed, the overlap in persona and persuasivestrategy between the historian and the orator is considerable.


(sc. from the past) so that they do not make the same mistake again (ŒÆd ��æd

��ø� K��Ł��; ¥ �Æ �c ÆPa ��Ł��: 6); in For the People of Megalopolis he

expresses surprise that the audience should have forgotten the practical lesson

learned from the past; namely, that the Thebans always use enemies of Sparta

as allies against Sparta, whereas Sparta uses such people against Athens (29).

In On the Crown he formulates the proposition that persuasive force is a tool

for the immediate moment drawn from past exempla.90 In discussing the way

in which powerful men mistreat those who gave them their power, he exhorts

the audience: ‘Look at these instances, because, even though the appropriate

time to act has gone by, it is always the right time for wise men to learn from

such things’.91 The implication is that, after learning, they will vote him the

crown or allow its granting to be legal. A similar idea can be projected forward

to encompass future time also. In On the False Embassy, Demosthenes warns

his jury of the importance of legal precedents in dictating future decisions:

‘Today, you are not only judging this case, but legislating for all future time’,92

making very clear the way in which models operate across time. That this

topos was familiar to those who frequented the courts is strongly suggested by

the fact that Lycurgus in his Against Leocrates similarly claims that the current

trial is itself paradigmatic and will transcend time through its verdict and

implications.93 For Lycurgus, the responsibility of the jury to make the right

decision is connected explicitly to their didactic role in discerning between

diVerent competing models for future emulation—he argues (at 110) that, if

the jury acquits Leocrates, their descendants will be encouraged to imitate

Leocrates in place of the virtuous ancestral models of the past.94

90 See Andocides, On the Peace with Sparta 29, for a similar principle: ‘it is only throughrecalling the past that we make good policies’ (�æc ªaæ I�Æ��Ł��Æ� a ª�ª��Æ ŒÆºH��ıº��Æ�ŁÆØ). He then proceeds to adduce earlier Wfth-century examples to illustrate Athens’propensity towards erroneously abandoning strong friends in favour of weak ones. It should,however, be noted, that the explosion of historical examples in oratory occurs in the fourth,rather than the Wfth, century. See Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire, 52: ‘le debut du IVe siecleest marque dans la rhetorique par une multiplication des allusions empruntees a l’histoire’.91 On the Crown 48: �Œ��E� ��: ŒÆd ªaæ �N �Ææ�º�ºıŁ � › H� �æÆª��ø� ŒÆØæ �; › �F ª�

�N��ÆØ a �ØÆFÆ ŒÆØæe� I�d ��æ��Ø �E� �s �æ��F�Ø.92 On the False Embassy 232: ŒÆd � �� Ł��Ł� �N� –�Æ�Æ e� ��a ÆFÆ �æ ��.93 Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 7: ‘This contest is not concerned with some small element of

political life, nor with a fragment of time (�P�� K�� Oº�ª�� æ ��), but with the whole city and,for those to come, it will leave a judgement to be remembered for the whole of time (ŒÆa�Æ�e� �F ÆNH��).’ See Cicero, In Verrem 1.46–9, for the parallel notion of a show trial, in thiscase a test of eYcacy of the equestrian courts, in which ‘just as you [sc. the jurors] will passverdict on the defendant, so too will the populus Romanus pass verdict on you’ (47).94 Deinarchus, Against Aristogeiton 16, extends the notion of ‘didactic listeners’ by setting the

audience in parallel to the early lawgivers. While the latter created laws in order to regulate thebehaviourof speakers in the assembly, the formermust do the sameby their reaction as an audience.

‘Learning from history’ 275

Learning from history thus not only requires a belief in continuity and

constancy of character, behaviour, and principles; it also entails some self-

awareness of one’s own place in the longue duree.95 Nowhere is the self-

conscious sense of history more explicitly formulated than by Aeschines in

Against Ctesiphon. In the context of outlining the strangeness of the times and

the unpredictability of fortune, Aeschines claims for himself and his audience

‘we have not lived the life of humans, but we were born to be a marvellous tale

for those after us’:96 not a paradigm in this case, since the whole point of the

paradoxology is precisely that it is unexpected, surprising, and determined by

the mutability rather than the stability of circumstance over time. But more

often it is the continuity between past, present, and future which underpins

the notion of a self-conscious sequence of models. Isocrates in the Archidamus

makes the character of that name encourage support by claiming that if the

Spartans succeed they will be more admired than their ancestors and unsur-

passed by their descendants. They, then, will be the most exemplary gener-

ation of all and held up as such in the future (105).97 And if Sparta could

produce a model which was exceptional across time, Athens, according to

Demosthenes, was exceptional in relation to other places. In its dealing with

traitors, it was the only nation which could Wnd examples to imitate in its own

history.98 Athens was, in other words, uniquely well equipped to use the past

to enhance the present, and through clever manipulation of its history to

bridge the temporal gap.

The way in which poleis used their own previous generations as models for

emulation or avoidance above those of other places, thereby creating a polis

consciousness across time, emerges very clearly from the orators. Alluding to

the past was not merely a matter of mentioning certain events above others or

of noting the most famous political and military Wgures in the past. It also

95 See, for example, Isocrates, To Philip 153, where he urges the reader to bear in mind theopinion of future generations.

96 Against Ctesiphon 132: �P ªaæ �� ª� ��E� I�Łæ��Ø�� Ø�ŒÆ��; Iºº� �N��ÆæÆ��º�ª�Æ� �E� ��Ł� ��A� �ı��. The locus classicus for this theme is Iliad 6.357–8,where Helen reveals to Hector her self-consciousness of the fact that she and Paris will be thepoetic subject for men in the future: ‘Zeus assigned us a bad fate, so that even in the future weshall be sung about by men’ (�x�Ø� K�d ˘�f� ŁBŒ� ŒÆŒe� � æ��; ‰� ŒÆd O��ø I�Łæ��Ø�Ø��º��Ł� I��Ø��Ø K��Ø�Ø).

97 The idea of producing a model, which will not be surpassed, was famously used to strongexhortatory eVect by Winston Churchill in a speech delivered to the House of Commons on18th June 1940. Having claimed the highest stakes for the outcome of the imminent Battle ofBritain, in which defeat would entail a return to a Dark Age, Churchill urged the people ofBritain to behave in such a way that their glory reached a pinnacle which even their owndescendants could not exceed: ‘if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousandyears, men will still say, ‘‘This was their Wnest hour’’.’

98 On the False Embassy 269: ‘the only ones of all men to use home-grown examples’ (��æd��ø� � ��Ø� H� ��ø� I�Łæ��ø� �NŒ��Ø� �æB�ŁÆØ �ÆæÆ��ª�Æ�Ø).


involved evoking a less speciWc ‘ancestral’ tradition, against which the polis

community could be encouraged to set its present behaviour. There are, of

course, many ways of exploiting this link between past and present, some of

which rely on continuity across time and others on change. Very commonly

previous generations are evoked as superior to their descendants. The rhet-

orical strategy is one based on a theory of decline; the purpose of the allusion

is to encourage a return to the superior standards of achievement, eVort, and

behaviour of former times. A brief glance through the three orators under

consideration will reveal how common this phenomenon is.

Demosthenes encourages a comparison between the present Athenians and

their ancestors in the third Olynthiac, particularly in the context of their

proneness to Xattery by orators.99 The Athenians of previous generations

were not only more outstanding in their achievements (23), but their command

over the Greeks for forty-Wve years, their accumulation of more than 10,000

talents in the Acropolis, and their subjugation of King Perdiccas of Macedon

were all connected to their refusal to be Xattered by public speakers (24).100 In

On the False Embassy he contrasts the importance of justice in Athens of the

past ( �) with the disregard shown for it now (�F�) and illustrates the point

with the example of the inscription set up to condemn Arthmius of Zelea, an

enemy of Athens, not just anywhere, but at the right hand of the statue of

Athene on the Acropolis; but, in adducing this example, he draws another

implied contrast with the fear of bribery shown by the Athenians of old, which

made them consider Arthmius an enemy (271–2). Or in On Organization

(21–2), he contrasts the modesty of past generations (K�d H� �æ�ª �ø�),

when great Wgures such as Themistocles and Miltiades failed to have bronze

statues set up to them, but saw their achievements as those of the whole polis,

with the individual glory won inmore recent times by Timotheus at Corcyra (376

bc), Iphicrates against the Spartans (390 bc), and Chabrias oVNaxos (376 bc).101

99 At On the Navy Boards 1, the point is made that no praise of later generations can reallydo justice to the achievements of the past. The greatest testimony is simply the length of timeduring which they have not been surpassed (‘I consider time to be the greatest praise’: �ÆØ��e� �æ �� ª�F�ÆØ ��ªØ��).100 Exactly the same points are made in On Organization 26, but with the added idea that the

ancestors deliberately created models for imitation, a point to which we shall return. Theauthenticity of this speech, which has been much disputed, is propounded by J. Trevett,‘Demosthenes’ Speech On Organization (Dem. 13)’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 35(1994), 179–93. Parallels with other speeches on the issue of use of the past, as with regard toother themes, strongly support Trevett’s conclusions.101 The theme of glory for the community as opposed to individuals is later reinforced by the

contrast between lavish public buildings and the modest private houses of Themistocles, Cimon,and Aristeides, a situation reversed at the present time (On Organization 28–9). See alsoDemosthenes, Olynthiac 3.25V. on the restraint of Miltiades’ and Aristeides’ homes; Isocrates,Areopagiticus 52 on the moderate lifestyle of former times.


It is interesting to Wnd Demosthenes’ great opponent, Aeschines, employing

exactly the same tactics in his Against Ctesiphon. He notes that the city of

Athens was more glorious in previous times, but fewer honours were given,

thereby increasing the symbolic value of each (178).

One complication in this apparently neat contrast between the superior

ancestors and their inferior descendants is that the past cannot always be seen

as a monochrome entity. The existence of many layers of the past, which are

all seen as being relevant to the present, is clear from our survey of the

occasions on which these three orators allude to historical events and Wgures.

Frequently, when it comes to mentioning the more nebulous ‘ancestors’, the

distinctions between these layers are blurred. However, there are speeches in

which we Wnd explicit and direct contrast between diVerent generations of

ancestors. The polis, at least in the depiction presented by the orators, is too

discerning simply to emulate its ancestors en bloc.102

The hierarchy among diVerent past generations is particularly strong in the

discourses of Isocrates. In the Panathenaicus he extols the system of govern-

ment, and methods for dealing with important matters, employed by the

ancestors (that is the distant ancestors) of the Athenians by contrast with

those after the Persian wars (161–2). The Areopagiticus takes as one of its

major themes the contrast not between past and present, but between the ‘old’

democracy (KŒ�� c� ��ŒæÆ�Æ�) which Solon established and Cleisthe-

nes restored (16) and the ‘new’ democracy, established not by the present

generation, but by those a little before (Oº�ªfiø �æe ��H�), that is Ephialtes and

the founders of the radical democracy (50). The more careful diVerentiation

between each stage in the history of democracy beneWts the present gener-

ation too. Their government may be inferior to that established by Solon, but

it comes out well from a comparison not with the old democracy but with the

rule of the Thirty (62).

However, it is in On the Peace that Isocrates most fully exploits the topos.

He does rely to some degree on straight comparison between the superior past

and the inferior present, contrasting the current use of mercenaries with the

ancestors’ customs of Wghting in person (47–8) and the previous coincidence

between soldiers and politicians with the present distinction in roles (54–5).

The democratic government, under which ‘the ancestors’ (�ƒ �æ ª��Ø) lived,

resulted in their being the happiest of the Hellenes (64). However, as in the

102 See, however, Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 14, for an undiVerentiated appeal to ‘the deedsof your ancestors’ (a H� �æ�ª �ø� H� ��æø�) which contrast favourably with thebehaviour of Leocrates. Leocrates’ disregard for the past is encapsulated in his extraction ofthe ancestral images (a ƒ�æa a �ÆæfiHÆ) from their native land and sending them to Megara(25). This not only shows disrespect to the ancestral images, but also to the ancestors themselveswhose practice was to revere their ‘custom, country, and sacred images’ (26).


Areopagiticus, here too Isocrates stresses that this ideal state for Athens was

destroyed by the imperial sea power, and that the generation of his audience’s

fathers brought degeneration and took over Greece with mercenaries (79). As

in the Panathenaicus, here in On the Peace Isocrates identiWes the Persian wars

as a watershed.103 The Athenians at the time of the Persian wars behaved well

as an imperial power, he argues, but those who came afterwards conducted

not an empire, but a tyranny (�PŒ ¼æ��Ø� Iººa ıæÆ��E�) (91).104 Thus, when

people urge the Athenians to emulate their ancestors, he claims, the question

arises which ancestors? Those at the time of the Persian wars or those who

governed the city before the Decelean war? (36–7). In voicing these questions,

Isocrates is challenging any crude theory of decline, while reWning, rather than

necessarily rejecting, the use of exempla.

Isocrates’ discernment between diVerent generations of ancestors, some

more worthy of emulation than others, echoes Aeschines’ rebuttals of De-

mosthenes’ frequent attacks on his apparent neglect of the past. I have already

noted Demosthenes’ claims that Aeschines miscalculates dates, thereby pro-

ducing a distorted view of Athenian history, and that he misuses evidence, as

in the case of the statue of Solon at Salamis. I have also mentioned the

ongoing dispute between these opposing orators concerning Aeschines’ atti-

tude to ancestral models. Demosthenes alleges in On the False Embassy that

Aeschines urges the Athenians to forget the achievements of their forefathers

(‰� �h� H� �æ�ª �ø� ��A� ��B�ŁÆØ ��Ø) (16).105 Demosthenes, by con-

trast, exhorts them to emulate their ancestors (�f� �æ�ª ��ı� �Ø��ı��ı�)

not just in one respect, but in every way (273). But for Aeschines, and perhaps

for Isocrates too, this blanket adulation and imitation of the past is Xawed. We

have already seen the way in which Aeschines in On the Embassy denies

Demosthenes’ accusations that he does not heed those who talk of their

ancestors’ battles and trophies, but nevertheless goes on to reject the bland

appeals to glorious moments of the past which are made by popular speakers,

who urge the Athenians to remember Salamis and tombs and trophies of

103 Of course this neatly echoes the importance of the Persian War period in more speciWcallusions to the past, its exemplary Wgures and events. This period was clearly not onlyimportant in providing models of Panhellenic unity which might prove helpful in a fourth-century context, but it was also seen as a pivotal moment in the good or bad government ofdemocratic Athens itself.104 A. N. Michelini, ‘Isocrates’ Civic Invective: Acharnians and On the Peace’, Transactions of

the American Philological Association 128 (1998), 115–33, interestingly discusses the revisionistversion of Athenian history oVered in this speech in parallel with Aristophanes’ Acharnians, andconsiders the implications for audience reception. Is Isocrates making a serious political point,and, if so, for whom? Or is he displaying his skill as an orator, able to manipulate his material toWt his theme?105 See On the False Embassy 307 for the recurrence of the allegation; also 311.


ancestors (63 and 74).106 Aeschines instead advocates a discerning use of the

past (75–8); and at the end of the speech he returns to Demosthenes’

allegation, again refuting it emphatically and stressing that he does not forbid

the imitation of the ancestors, but simply begs that the Athenians show

discernment and emulate only the good policies of the past (171).

This unfavourable comparison of the present generation with their prede-

cessors is made, as has already emerged, in the service of a wider persuasive

strategy. Reminding the audience of its inferiority would presumably soon

prove counterproductive if it were not accompanied by an exhortation to

emulate the better actions of the past. Careful and discerning emulation is

what Aeschines urges and Isocrates implies. Demosthenes is no less keen that

his audience, through hearing the great and exemplary behaviour of Wgures

from the past, should be inspired to great achievements.107 In On the False

Embassy he declares that Athens is uniquely well equipped to Wnd paradigms

in its own history (269). In On the Crown he appeals extensively to ancestral

precedent in urging the Athenians to send help to the Thebans against Philip.

The Athenians, he claims, perhaps more prescriptively than descriptively, see

themselves as linked to Thebans through ancestral ties: ‘They remember the

services rendered by their ancestors to the ancestors of Thebans, since, when

the sons of Heracles were dispossessed by the Peloponnesians of their paternal

dominion, they restored them . . . we harboured Oedipus and his family when

they were banished’ (186). What we observed earlier as an extraordinarily

distant allusion to the mythical past is not merely that, but also a good

example of an argument from ancestral links.108

The same kind of distant ancestral allusion is used by Isocrates in the

Archidamus. The speaker of that name is made to appeal to the example of

his mythical ancestor, Heracles (ª�ª��g� �b� I�� æÆŒº��ı�), as the reason

for his attempt to save his territory (8). But it is not only the mythical ancestry

here which counts. Archidamus also urges his audience to imitate their

ancestors (�Ø��Æ�ŁÆØ �f� �æ�ª ��ı�) who founded Sparta with a small

army by winning it back with force (82). This theme of not simply admiring

106 Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 68–9, oVers another example of how the Persian War pastcould be misused. Leocrates’ supporters adduced as a historical parallel for his abandonment ofthe city the fact that the Athenians crossed from the city to Salamis during the war againstXerxes. As Lycurgus comments, this was not desertion of Athens, but simply ‘changing thescene’ (e� �� ººÆ�Æ�). As he goes on to remind the audience, Salamis was one of theglorious moments in Athenian history, not one of its disgraces (70).

107 In On the Crown, some of the most famous models are listed. Athens is right to have goneto war for the sake of liberty, he says, as they swear by their ancestors at Marathon, Plataea,Salamis, and Artemisium, and by all brave men in public tombs (208).

108 See also Isocrates, To Philip 32–5, and the arguments that Philip should take heed ofArgos, Thebes, Sparta, and Athens on the grounds of distant and sometimes mythical ancestry.


one’s ancestors, but positively emulating their virtues is strongly embedded in

the public oratory of the period. Isocrates ends his Areopagiticus with an

exhortation to the Athenians to imitate their ancestors (j� �Ø��ŁÆ �f�

�æ�ª ��ı�) in order to save themselves and theHellenes (84). InOn the Peace he

voices through the Wgure of an imaginary visitor to the polis the idea that it

would be odd to be proud of one’s ancestors, but not to imitate them (41). The

past is not there merely for display by the orator, but is to serve a useful purpose.

The process of ancestral emulation is sometimes seen not simply as a

matter for the later generations, but a phenomenon self-consciously insti-

gated by the ancestors themselves. Demosthenes reminds his audience in For

the Liberty of the Rhodians that the trophies of their ancestors were set up ‘not

so that you could gaze at them and marvel, but so that you could imitate the

virtues of those who set them up’.109 The self-conscious production of models

for the future, indeed the deliberate fashioning of oneself as such, attributes to

the generations of the past, whether or not they would have subscribed to this

view of themselves, a positive and active role in the history and development

of the polis. In temporal terms, the projection of one’s present into the future

oVers a slightly diVerent vision of polis identity. This self-conscious sense of

one’s place in history is neatly expressed in the Archidamus, where the speaker

reminds his audience that if they succeed, they will be more admired than

their ancestors, and will be unsurpassed by their descendants,110 suggesting a

place for their achievements in the context of both past and future (105). Or

see To Philip, where the promise of immortality through reputation and

‘memory which keeps pace with time’ is held out, in spite of the mortality

of the body.111We can see the same deliberate claim of the past generations on

the consciousness of their descendants in On the Peace, where the ancestors

are depicted as having left to their descendants a most prosperous city, an

immortal memorial of their goodness—IŁ��Æ�� c� �� (94).

The notion that one’s ancestors might have been actively plotting to turn

themselves into models for emulation is given a further dimension and

intensity by the surprisingly common tactic of imaginatively bringing them

back to life and actually allowing them to cross the temporal gap and step into

the present. I have already noted the extraordinary image evoked by Aeschines

109 For the Liberty of the Rhodians 35: �P� ¥ �Æ ŁÆı�� ÆPa Ł�øæ�F��; Iºº� ¥ �Æ ŒÆd�Ø�B�Ł� a� H� I�ÆŁ��ø� Iæ��. Exactly the same sentiment is voiced in On Organization26, where Demosthenes again asserts that the trophies for victories were set up not for latergenerations to wonder at, but ‘so that we would imitate the virtues of those who erected them’(¥ �Æ ŒÆd �Ø��ŁÆ a� H� I�ÆŁ��ø� Iæ��).110 These two aspects are importantly not identical with each other, since one concerns

positive reception by comparison with Wgures from the past, whereas the other implies unsuc-cessful emulation by Wgures from the future.111 To Philip 134: c� �� c� fiH �æ �fiø �ı��ÆæÆŒ�º�ıŁ�F�Æ�.


in Against Ctesiphon, where he reawakens Themistocles and the dead of

Marathon and Plataea, and even makes the viviWed tombs of the ancestors

about to groan (��Ø�) at the present actions of the Athenians (259).

Immediately before this, he brings Solon on to the platform and imagines

Aristides’ indignation at Demosthenes’ receipt of the crown, in spite of his

propensity to take bribes (257–8). The eVect is to evoke the Athenians of the

past, not as passive models for emulation, the static embodiment of the city’s

best conduct, but, by mingling the generations, to allow the Wgures of the past

to return as active participants in the present-day polis.112 The strategy recurs

several times in the discourses of Isocrates. In To Philip he urges Philip that his

advice is the same as would be oVered by not only Philip’s father, but also the

founder of the kingdom (Perdiccas I) and the founder of the race (Heracles),

were they to appear. Here the theme of ancestral adviser from the past covers

family members, state ancestors, and mythical predecessors (105). In the

Plataıcus, Isocrates argues that the audience should show piety (�P��ØÆ)

to their ancestors and imagine that they might be watching their decisions

and actions (61).113

The idea of cross-generational advice through the live and active involve-

ment of ancestral Wgures in the present-day polis oVers a diVerent way of

conWguring the various temporal layers. Rather than being evoked as distant

and superior models, separated from the present by the passage of time and

contrasted with that present, here the ancestors are symbols of continuity; not

mere repositories of past virtues, but bridges between past achievement and

present improvement. Demosthenes’ exhortation to the Athenians in On the

Crown to see themselves as superior to Philip on the grounds that, by contrast

with his undistinguished origins, they are from Athens, and see, every day,

reminders of the virtue of their ancestors (B� H� �æ�ª �ø� Iæ�B�

��ÆŁ� ) (68), hints at an innate and unchanging polis virtue which

naturally spans the generations. The special status held by one’s own ancestors

as more persuasive models than random Wgures from the past derives from

the notion that they embody the particular identity and character of the polis.

112 The scene is reminiscent of the Roman practice of using imagines to collapse time and ‘toallow the ancestors to be represented as living and breathing Roman magistrates at the height oftheir careers, who had reappeared in the city to accompany their newly-dead descendant on hislast journey. On this occasion they welcomed and received him as one of their number.’ SeeH. I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1993), 91. Thecollapsing of time through the impersonation of Wgures from diVerent periods is memorablyexempliWed by Cicero in Pro Caelio 34–6, where he takes on the character of members of Clodia’sfamily in turn, beginning with Appius Claudius Caecus, censor of 312 bc and builder of theAppian Way, in order to castigate her for her behaviour.

113 See also Demosthenes, On the False Embassy 66, asking what the Athenians’ ancestorswould say about destroying the Phocians, who had helped Athens in the past. The revival of pastgenerations implies that obligations from the past can never be forgotten.


So, alongside the role of ancestors as representatives of a better past, from

which the city has now declined, we need to instate them as Wgures of

continuity. It is continuity of behaviour which entitles Philip to assume that

the Athenians are the only Greeks who will stand up to him, both from a

consideration of the present and from a reckoning of the past (�P � �� N� a

�Ææ �Ł� ›æH�; Iººa ŒÆd a �æe ��ø� º�ªØ� ��), judging from what the

Athenians’ ancestors said when they refused to become the greatest power in

Greece at the price of submission to the Great King (Phil. 2.10). Very many

such attempts to persuade on the grounds that ‘things have always been so’ or

perhaps ‘should always be so’ appear in the speeches under discussion. In On

Organization Demosthenes points out that the Athenians still put out grand

decrees in accordance with the tradition of the city, but run the risk of not

matching this continuity of intent with continuity of action (33). Again in

this speech, he appeals to the need for Athens to live up to its actions from the

past, in other words to maintain a continuity of behaviour across time, urging

them that they cannot simply opt out like a small state, but must live up to the

many exploits which have been achieved from the earliest times (��ººa ªaæ

��E� KŒ �Æ�e� �F �æ ��ı ��æÆŒÆØ) (35).

Isocrates too relies heavily on arguments from continuity. In the Panegyr-

icus he bases Athens’ just claims to current (�F�) hegemony on its previous

(ŒÆd �æ �æ��) thalassocracy (20). The further back into the past one looks, he

claims, the more clearly one can see that Athens should lead Greece now (23),

turning the cumulative weight of Athenian history and past behaviour into

the legitimator of present strategy.114 Hegemony in the present war against

Persia should go to those who have distinguished themselves in past conXict,

and who founded the most Hellenic cities in the past (99). The logic is, it

seems, not simply based on rewarding past services to Greece, but rather on

the presumption that those who have proved themselves in the past will retain

the same virtues in the present.115 Or again in the Plataıcus, Isocrates

makes the speaker deploy a similar form of argument in his plea for Athenian

assistance. Athens has helped people in the past (1), he claims, and therefore

might reasonably be expected to help in the present. The expectation of

continuity is made explicit later, where the speaker cites the case of the Argives

who wanted to bury their dead at the foot of the Cadmea as an example of

Athenian pity for suppliants (53). The action won glory at the time, but also

114 The point is formulated again at 54, where he asserts that Athens’ present power can bejudged by the appeals to its help which have been made in the past. This is reinforced later by theexplicit claim for the continuity of Athenian and Spartan power throughout the whole of history(e� –�Æ�Æ �æ ��), by contrast with the recent strength of Persia (178).115 Panegyricus 71 repeats the argument that one would expect the descendants of those who

fought Darius and Xerxes to behave in a similar way.


‘for the rest of time’ (�N� –�Æ�Æ e� �æ ��). The implication that Athens’

behaviour and consequent reputation in the past binds the city to the

same behaviour in perpetuity is made even more plain in the comment that

the Athenians should not show pride in their ancestors, but then act in the

opposite way. Again, the ancestors are seen as exerting a constraint on future

generations, providing models from which they will Wnd it hard to deviate.116

The Plataean appeal to Athenian ‘ancestral tradition’ (��æØ�� E� K�Ø�) to

fear not danger but dishonour (39) as the guiding principle in their present

policy provides yet further illustration of the way in which the persuasive

strategy of this speech is based on continuity and unchanging polis values.

Demosthenes’ Against Leptines makes much of the theme of the innate

Athenian character and its unchanging nature. Ratifying the law proposed

would, he argues, run completely counter to their national character (�P��

K�d� ‹ºø� . . . �F XŁ�ı� �F ��æ�ı), as he proceeds to illustrate from the

Athenians’ conduct in the past (11). The point is doubly determined: resting

both on the assumption that the Athenians will emulate their predecessors

and on the belief in a naturally occurring modus vivendi. Later in the speech

both exemplary and continuous modes of argument return. ‘If no one can cite

an instance in the whole of our history, then why should such a precedent be

set in our generation?’ asks Demosthenes.117 The usual topos of imitating the

ancestors is given a negative twist: if there are no examples from the past, then

why create them now? But alongside this exemplary gap we can set the

positive and ongoing qualities which have been responsible for Athens’

reputation throughout all time, its ‘national character’, which Demosthenes

urges the audience to preserve (142).

In the Areopagiticus Isocrates depicts continuity and the preservation of

custom as itself part of the ancestral exemplary model. The sole concern of

previous generations was not to destroy any institution of their fathers, and

to introduce nothing that was not approved by custom.118 This model of

conservatism is the one which present-day Athenians should follow. In this

discourse, continuity plays a major rhetorical role. Isocrates argues that in

matters relating to the Areopagus one can judge past practice from present

practice since it is an institution uniquely governed by tradition (38). But later

he alludes to the natural greatness of Athens (perhaps derived from the

116 Ancestral conduct aVects both sides. The Plataeans claim justice for their pleas on theexaggerated, though not entirely untruthful, grounds that their own ancestors were the onlyGreeks to help Athens in the Persian wars (57).

117 Against Leptines 117: �N �b �� i� �x� K� –�Æ�Ø fiH �æ �fiø �F� ��Ø ��E�ÆØ ª�ª�� ; ��¥ ��Œ� K�� H� �æH�� ŒÆÆ��Ø�Łfi B �Ø�F�� æª��;

118 Areopagiticus 30: ��b� �� H� �Ææ�ø� ŒÆÆº��ı�Ø �� ø H� ��Ø��ø��æ��Ł��ı�Ø�.


Athenians’ claims to autochthony), as the land which bears the most gifted

men (74). This seems to derive its force from a rather diVerent logical base:

the claim here is not for the continued greatness of the Athenians because

their custom is to preserve ancestral tradition, but rather because their innate

character is unchanging due to their autochthony.119 If the Athenians have

always come from the same land, then, unless one rejects environmental

determinism out of hand, they should remain broadly uniform in their

behaviour. Furthermore, Isocrates illustrates the unchanging nature of the

innate value of the Athenians by a series of examples spanning from mythical

times: their struggles against the Amazons, Thracians, Peloponnesians, and

Persians (75), again allowing individual paradigms to illuminate the under-

lying continuity.

The appeal to an unchanging national character is thus brought into play

alongside the discontinuous citation of exempla as a form of rhetorical

double-determination. Isocrates neatly juxtaposes the two modes of argu-

ment in the Panathenaicus, where he justiWes an exposition of the most

distant periods of Athenian history on the grounds both that distinguished

peoples should be so continuously right from the start and that he should

mention individuals who governed so excellently (120). Demosthenes sees it

as a part of the innate Athenian character to be concerned with, and proud of,

ancestral achievements and their active celebration in the present-day polis.

At the end of For the Liberty of the Rhodians he rebukes the audience—they

should act in a way which is worthy of the city (�æ��Ø� ¼�ØÆ B� � º�ø�),

remembering how delighted they are to hear a speaker praising their ances-

tors, describing their exploits and enumerating trophies.120 Maintaining the

characteristic and ingrained behaviour of the polis goes hand in hand with

ancestral praise and, as the Wnal words of the speech go on to stress, active

emulation. Similarly, in On the Crown, the Athenians’ refusal to submit to the

rule of others is seen as eternal (KŒ �Æ�e� �F �æ ��ı), constant (��Æ e�

ÆNH�Æ), and so innate to their character (�æ��Œ��Æ �E� ��æ�Ø� XŁ��Ø�),

that they still praise those of their ancestors who most vehemently put it into

practice (u�� ŒÆd H� �æ�ª �ø� �f� ÆFÆ �æ��Æ�Æ� ��ºØ�� K�ÆØ��E�,

203–4). Here the link between constant and innate qualities and the praise

119 It is interesting in the light of this that de Romilly, ‘Isocrates and Europe’, 6, sees Isocrates’view of European (that is Greek) superiority as being culturally and educationally based, ratherthan reliant on race or birth. A rather diVerent kind of continuity which stemmed fromautochthonous claims, could be posited to stretch not across time but across the citizen body,unifying it through a single myth of descent. As Hyperides, Epitaphios 4, notes, ‘from one whospeaks of Athenians, born of their own country and sharing a lineage (�x� � Œ�Ø�c ª��Ø�ÆP �Ł��Ø� �s�Ø�), praise of the descent of each must be superXuous.’120 For the Liberty of the Rhodians 35: ‹Æ� Ø� K�ÆØ�fi B �f� �æ�ª ��ı� ��H� ŒÆd a ��æÆª��

KŒ��Ø� �Ø��fi � ŒÆd a æ �ÆØÆ º�ªfi �.


and imitation of exemplary ancestral models is a causal one. In other words,

the exemplary periods of the Athenian past, the Wgures and events which held

the most prominent place in the survey with which I started, might be seen

simply as those which best exempliWed the underlying, innate, unchanging

strengths brought to the Athenians by their extraordinary and authochtho-

nous origins and preserved through their subsequent lineage.

The theme of stability within the polis and in its behaviour over time is

brought out perhaps most eVectively in the speeches of Aeschines. In Against

Timarchus he alludes to Solon, Draco, and other lawgivers, who made the

laws, inscribed them and handed them over as guardians (��ºÆŒÆ�) to the

Athenians (7). These are the unchanging laws of Athens, Wxed in stone, which

Timarchus has contravened. We shall return to the importance of inscriptions

as evidence, but here note simply one of the ways in which the rules for

behaviour prescribed in the past are made to transcend time, and remain

equally valid in the present. In Against Ctesiphon the theme of stability,

particularly in the form of legal continuity, is again prominent. For Demos-

thenes ‘the demos is the most unstable and capricious thing of all, like on the

sea a wave which is made restless by the breeze, moving at random’.121 But

against this we may set Aeschines’ image of a rock of stability provided by the

preservation of public acts—a Wne thing, he claims, since it stays unchanged

for the demos, even when the politicians change their views.122

4. ESCAPING THE RAVAGES OF TIME:

THE PRESERVATION OF HISTORY

The importance of continuity and stability through time, and the evocation of

the past, naturally raises the issue of the preservation of that past. We have

already seen both the way in which past and present generations might self-

consciously project themselves and their values into the future, as deliberate

models for imitation, or at least be presented in this way by later generations.

We have also seen the way in which certain aspects of polis identity are

adduced by the orators as unchanged and unchanging. Some qualities are

viewed as innate, attributed to autochthony in the case of Athens, and to

ancestral lineage in the case of both that and other poleis; others are secured

121 On the False Embassy 136: › �b� �B� � K�Ø� I�ÆŁ�� Æ�� æAª�Æ H� ��ø� ŒÆdI�ı�Ł��Æ��. . .‰� i� ��fi �; ŒØ��. Of course this is somewhat at odds with his view of thestability of Athens which Demosthenes regularly exploits for the sake of argument.

122 Against Ctesiphon 75: ŒÆºe�; t ¼��æ�� `Ł��ÆE�Ø; ŒÆºe� � H� ��ø� ªæÆ��ø��ıºÆŒ�· IŒ�� ª�æ K�Ø. Note the same language of ‘guardianship’ as in Against Timarchus.


more artiWcially, through tradition, memory, and the written record. It is

worth considering the appeal which the orators make to these media through

which the destructive forces of time are overcome.

The immortality which memory can confer on individuals and their

actions is celebrated by Aeschines in Against Ctesiphon, where he claims that

the great Wgures of the past such as Themistocles and Miltiades ‘did not think

that they should be recorded in written words, but in the memory of those

who have beneWted, since this has remained continuously in existence from

that time right up to this day’.123 This preference for immortality through

reputation and memory is echoed in Isocrates’ To Philip, where he contrasts

the fact that ‘we all have a body which is mortal’, with the fact that ‘through

goodwill, praise, reputation, and memory, which keeps pace with time, we

enjoy a share in immortality’.124

The preservation of ideas, events, and reputations opens upmany interesting

angles on the central theme of time. One possibility, on which I shall focus here,

is to investigate the relative merits and various problems, as perceived by the

orators, of the diVerent media through which they can escape the dictates of

time and bring the past into the present. The two citations oVered above,

illustrating the importance of memory in preserving the good reputations of

Wgures from the past, neatly complement the rhetorical strategy already dis-

cussed, whereby great names, such as Themistocles, are allowed to defy time, to

gain immortality, and step into the present as advisory Wgures. Clearly the

whole rhetorical process of evoking past events and individuals in speeches,

either as discrete exempla for imitation or as encapsulating the eternal charac-

teristics of the polis, is a way of commemorating and immortalizing the past.

One initially surprising medium which the orators use as a bridge between

past and present, and as a form of evidence, is poetry.125 Demosthenes in On

the False Embassy asks for Solon’s elegiacs to be read aloud at length on the

grounds that they embody eternal truths for the city (256). The poetry of

Solon is seen as epitomizing the kinds of innate and ongoing characteristics

which are glimpsed through the actions of particularly exemplary individuals.

It is clear from the passages which precede this and from the extant speeches

of Aeschines that the citation of poetry in the evocation of the past was a

major point of contention between him and Demosthenes. Demosthenes,

123 Ibid. 182: �P ªaæ fiþ�� E� K� �E� ªæ��Æ�Ø Ø�A�ŁÆØ; Iºº� K� fi B ��fi � H� �s��Ł ø�; m I�� KŒ��ı �F �æ ��ı ��æØ B�� B� ��æÆ� IŁ��Æ�� s�Æ �ØÆ��Ø.124 To Philip 134: e �b� �H�Æ Ł��e� –�Æ�� ; ŒÆa �b c� �h��ØÆ� ŒÆd �f� K�Æ��ı�

ŒÆd c� �� ŒÆd c� �� c� fiH �æ �fiø �ı��ÆæÆŒ�º�ıŁ�F�Æ� IŁÆ�Æ��Æ� ��ÆºÆ��.125 The practice was clearly widespread among the fourth-century speakers in Athens.

Lycurgus, Against Leocrates cites not only Euripides’ Eurystheus (at 100), but also Homer(103), Tyrtaeus (107), and Simonides (109), all at considerable length.

Escaping the ravages of time 287

prior to his own citation of Solon, oVers an extensive critique of Aeschines’

use of poetry in the support of his arguments. For lack of witnesses, according

to Demosthenes, Aeschines had quoted verses of Hesiod, followed by some

iambics,126 which Demosthenes cleverly turns against Aeschines himself. He

then turns his attack to the issue of Aeschines’ acting career, weaving his

criticisms of Aeschines’ citations of tragic dramas, especially Sophocles’ Anti-

gone, into a slight on his background.

As in the case of Demosthenes’ attacks on his use of historical exempla,

where Aeschines Wghts back within the context of the same trial and defends

his methodology, which he considers simply more carefully selective than the

allusions to the past made by opposing orators, so too in the use of poetic

citations does Aeschines explicitly address Demosthenes’ criticisms. In

Against Timarchus, Aeschines directly discusses the quotation of poetry.

One purpose is, he concedes, the simple display of knowledge. In this sense,

we might assume for poetic citation the same function as for historical

allusion, namely to enhance the authority of the orator. In the service of

this cause, Aeschines proceeds to outdo Demosthenes in his extensive show-

piece on the way in which Homer distinguishes honourable love from lustful

passion. The theme is, of course, designed to relate to the case in hand, but the

length and detail of the exposition, in the course of which the audience is

treated to an impressive array of passages cited from Homer and the tra-

gedians, are clearly intended to establish Aeschines as a highly educated and

knowledgeable authority (141V.). But there is also a more intricate mode of

argument in play. When Aeschines comes to the passage of Euripides’ Phoe-

nix, to which Demosthenes refers in On the False Embassy, he explicitly

justiWes the citation, not as a means of establishing his own credibility, but

as the source of a model for the jurors of the present case. For the passage

concerns the judgement of cases on the basis of character, not witness reports,

and, as Aeschines’ argues, that is exactly the position in which his audience

Wnds themselves. They should, then, follow Euripides’ reasoning in judging

Timarchus (152–3). Here the poetic, rather than the historical, past is made to

oVer an exemplum for the judicial present.

The same rationale for the citation of ancient poetry in attempts at

persuasion in the present is oVered by Aeschines in Against Ctesiphon. He

introduces his citation of poetry with an explicit explanation: ‘I will recite the

verses since this is why, I believe, when we are children, we commit to memory

the opinions of the poets, so that we may use them when we are men.’127 But

126 These were said by Demosthenes to be from Euripides’ Phoenix (246).127 Against Ctesiphon 135: �Øa �F� ªaæ �r�ÆØ �ÆE�Æ� Z�Æ� ��A� a� H� ��Ø�H� ª��Æ�

KŒ�Æ�Ł��Ø�; ¥ �� ¼��æ�� Z�� ÆPÆE� �æ��ŁÆ.


he then goes on to expand further on how the underlying concept of poetic

works can be allowed to bridge the temporal gap between past and present. If

one disregards the metre, he argues, and looks only at the thought, what he is

citing is not a poem of Hesiod, but an oracle against the politics of Demos-

thenes (136). Here, then, we have a very diVerent defence for the exploitation

of poetry from the past in the rhetoric of the present: not because the prestige

of the medium and of the learning it represents bolsters the Wgure of the

orator, but because the lessons and examples to be found in poetry are of

relevance in the same way as are those in historical events and individuals.

One of the issues under discussion is the nature of the audience, their

‘shared knowledge’ of the past, and the degree to which the orators could

exploit the notion that, as Isocrates claimed, the events of the past were

‘common’ (Œ�Ø�Æ�). The citation of poetry, by authors such as Homer and

Hesiod, and by those whose works were performed in the theatre, is of

considerable importance in addressing this question. The kind of past

which was constructed by or for the polis in the context of public dramatic

festivals or was learned from a knowledge of the epic poems, for example,

might seem to be far removed from the ‘historical’ past which the local or

universal historians might create. The evidence of Attic oratory supports the

instinctive sense that this was not the case.

We have already seen that the mythic period is by no means excluded from

the temporal span alluded to by the orators. It is reasonable to hold up

Heracles as an exemplary Wgure, just as one might do Themistocles; and it

is defensible to cite Euripides or Hesiod as relevant to the decisions being

made in the present. As argued above, in temporal terms, just as the past can

provide both discrete models and the origin of characteristics which have a

continuous life through to the present, so too does the poetic material cited

by the orators oVer both discrete exempla and eternal truths. It would, of

course, be misleading to equate ‘poetic’ with ‘mythic’, but there is clearly

considerable overlap between the two categories, in so far as many of the

stories of the most distant past were related and known through tragedy, epic,

and lyric poetry.

Isocrates claims to put some limit on the degree to which he can indulge in

mythical material in the Archidamus, ‘since the time available does not allow

me to tell myths’ (› ªaæ �Ææg� ŒÆØæe� �PŒ Kfi A �ıŁ�º�ª�E�: 24), but this comes

after an extremely discursive treatment of the myth of Heracles and the

Peloponnesian states, designed to show that Sparta rightly rules over Lace-

daemon and Messene by virtue of the oracle. In the context, then, the

recusatio seem very much a rhetorical topos at odds with Isocrates’ practice

elsewhere. He prefaces his extensive description of the gifts of civilization

bestowed on Athens in the mythic period with the comment that, even


though his speech has taken a mythical turn, it deserves telling.128 And in the

Panathenaicus, Isocrates takes his evidence for the nature of Athens and other

poleis directly from the mythic context of the tragic stage. Other states may be

full of incest and infanticide, as seen on the stage, he claims, but Athens is not

in the least like this (121–2). This seems an extraordinary way to argue. He

not only allows the most distant past, as depicted on the contemporary stage,

to stand as representative of present-day Athens, in a complicated example of

temporal continuity. He also allows the world of the tragic stage to stand as a

paradigm for ‘real life’, as though the mores of the polis can be read from the

evidence of the theatre. The implications for the relationship between the

‘shared knowledge’ of the polis about the past, assumed and manipulated by

the historians and orators, and the occasions on which that polis gathered at

the theatre, are further heightened by Isocrates’ comments later in the same

discourse on Athenian benefactions to the other Greeks. Examples of these

are, he claims, known from the tragedies performed at the Great Dionysia,

such as the story of Adrastus of Thebes, who had not been allowed to bury his

troops, but came as a suppliant to Athens at the time of Theseus, who

intervened to assist Adrastus (168–71). Again, we have a mythical example

used to illustrate Athens’ current standing in Greece; again, it is the tragic

stage and the context of polis festivals which provides the example as part of

the city’s collective understanding of the past.

It is perhaps not surprising to Wnd that Isocrates, in whose discourses we

have already noted the far greater prominence of references to the distant and

mythic past than in Demosthenes or Aeschines, makes correspondingly little

use of public records and epigraphic evidence in the form of decrees. Rather,

for example in the Panegyricus, he relies on the evidence of ritual and memory

as bridges across time. As we have seen, his story of the gift of civilization to

Athens is veriWed by the fact that the Athenians still carry out a particular

ritual ‘every year’ (ŒÆŁ� �ŒÆ�� e� K�ØÆı �) to reveal the benefaction to the

initiates (29). Ritual, as a form of re-enactment, recreates the past in the

present. And the other Greeks in turn authenticate this version of the past by

sending the Wrst fruits of their harvest to Athens ‘in memory of the ancient

benefaction’ (�� Æ B� �ÆºÆØA� �P�æª��Æ�) (31). Again, present practice,

assuming that the ritual has remained unchanging over time, may be allowed

to exemplify the past.

The practice of adducing poetic, dramatic, or ritual evidence in order to

verify argumentative points, or to provide exempla from the past, is mirrored

by the citing of oYcial, often inscribed, documents. In Philippic 3 Demos-

thenes proves the diVerence between past and present (freedom as opposed to

128 Panegyricus 28: ŒÆd ªaæ �N �ıŁ�� › º ª�� ª�ª��.


slavery; and the way in which the Greeks of the past stood up against the

wealth of Persia, being free from bribery and corruption) by reference to an

inscription on a bronze pillar which the Athenian ancestors had set up on the

Acropolis (41). This oVers quite an interesting example of how the past-

present contrast, which we have already considered in relation to the com-

parison of diVerent generations of ancestors and their descendants, might be

enhanced by the authentication of the ancient side of the comparison through

its being physically Wxed to remain constant through time.129

In Against Leptines, Demosthenes cites decree after decree as proof that he

is justiWed in listing so many examples of people honoured in the past by

Athens for services rendered.130 The deeds may be temporally separated from

the present, but they are doubly linked to the present: through the public

record, which remains as an immortal embodiment of the act, and through

the continuity of practice which that record allows Demosthenes to verify.131

After such a lengthy display of public documentation cited in support of his

case, Demosthenes makes explicit his claim for the value of epigraphic

evidence in the discovery of the past. Some of the people concerned, he

says, are now dead, but their deeds survive. ‘It is right to allow the inscriptions

to hold good for all time (a� ��ºÆ� Æ�Æ� Œıæ�Æ� KA� e� ��Æ �æ ��) so

that the men, while alive, suVer no wrong, and when they die the inscriptions

be a memorial of our national character (KŒ�E�ÆØ �F B� � º�ø� XŁ�ı�

��E�� t�Ø) and proofs (�ÆæÆ��ª�ÆŁ � ) to those who wish to do service

that we reward this’ (64). Inscriptions, seen in this way, are a crucial support

to the technique of persuasion through exemplary reference to the past. They

immortalize both the underlying continuities in the character of the polis, and

also the exemplary deeds of individual Wgures.132 They back up the orator

perfectly in providing an indelible proof that the version of the past which he

129 An interesting variation is oVered by Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 117–19, where he notesthat the ancient Athenians punished the wrongdoer, Hipparchus, by obliterating his memory inmelting down his statue and turning it into a pillar on which the names of traitors wereinscribed. Thus, one indestructible monument was paradoxically reformed into another, asjudgements on good and bad behaviour were reassessed. The speech is punctuated in its latterstages with the citation of inscribed decrees—in 118 the list of traitors, in 122 the decree relatingto those executed at Salamis, in 125 the list of those believed to be contemplating tyranny—allmemorials (��ÆÆ ŒÆd �ÆæÆ��ª�ÆÆ) of the ancestral treatment of criminals (127). Thecommemoration of punishment (the bronze pillar on the Acropolis concerning Arthmius, sonof Pithonax) is referred to also by Deinarchus, Against Aristogeiton 24.130 He sums up the strategy at 11; namely, that he appeals to both decrees and arguments to

show that the Athenians’ ancestors honoured benefactors just as in the present day.131 It is worth remembering that constancy of the Athenian character and behaviour is one of

the major underpinnings for Demosthenes’ argument in this speech.132 Against Ctesiphon 183 oVers an example where it is explicitly the achievements of the

demos as a whole which are commemorated (for their victory over the Medes at the RiverStrymon), as opposed to those of individuals.


alludes to for rhetorical purposes in his speech is indeed the authentic one,

approved by the exemplary polis of the past itself.133

However, For the People of Megalopolis provides an interesting counter-

example to the notion that inscribed monuments can perfectly defy the

ravages of time. Here the suggestion is made that the Megalopolitans should

destroy the pillars recording their treaty with Thebans if they are to be the

Athenians’ trusted allies, revealing that even the past which has been inscribed

on stone or bronze is not immune from obliteration or change. Isocrates too

in the Panegyricus describes the treaties which guaranteed the independence

of the islands and the cities of Europe as long destroyed. Thus, he claims, the

letters on the stelae were in vain (��) (176). The permanence of even the

epigraphic record and its ability to confer immortality on past events and

individuals and bring them into the present was by no means guaranteed.

And, although this does not in itself cast doubt on the authenticity of the

documents which do survive, it calls into question the completeness of

the picture derived from this type of evidence.

Nevertheless, Demosthenes and Aeschines in particular make extensive use

of documentary evidence in support of their cases. In contradiction to the

uncertainty over such evidence discussed above, in On the Embassy Aeschines

praises the fact that the deWance of time by the polis through the process of

state record-keeping aVords a guarantee of justice for all. ‘It is helpful to

victims of slander that you preserve for all time in the public archives your

decrees, with the dates and the names of the oYcials.’134He uses various types

of documentary evidence, not only decrees of the polis, but citing, for

example, the ancient oaths containing promises that the cities of the Am-

phictyonic states would not be razed (115).

But it is primarily the public records of Athens, cited by both Aeschines and

Demosthenes in defence of their arguments, which are mostly about the

recent past. In both extant sets of paired speeches (On the False Embassy

and On the Embassy; On the Crown and Against Ctesiphon) there is extensive

use of these records.135 In temporal terms, these are of little interest for the

133 As elsewhere, some interesting insights may be drawn from work on Roman Republicanoratory. See Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power, 92–107, for the mutuallyreinforcing nature of oratory and the monumental display of the past around the city, which,like coinage, theatre, and so on, provided yet more opportunities which were not dependent onliteracy for the people at large to absorb particular versions of the past (and present).

134 On the Embassy 89: ŒÆd ªaæ �f� �æ ��ı� ŒÆd a ł��ÆÆ ŒÆd �f� K�Øł��Æ�Æ� K� �E��Ø� ªæ��Æ�Ø e� –�Æ�Æ �æ �� ıº��. We may recall in the light of this hint atdemocratic equality Aeschines’ comment at Against Ctesiphon 75 on the democratic nature ofpublic record-keeping (� H� ��ø� ªæÆ��ø� �ıºÆŒ�), since it remains the same whilepoliticians change their minds and therefore is independent of their caprices.

135 See, for example, On the Embassy 32, where Aeschines takes his proof that Amyntas votedto help Athens to recover Amphipolis ‘from the public records’ (KŒ H� ��ø� ªæÆ��ø�).


preservation and immortalization of the past, since the bridge between past

and present here is minimal. However, they raise a rather diVerent kind of

temporal issue, since the documents are largely cited in support of chrono-

logical arguments. In other words, they oVer an insight into the awareness and

formulation of the reckoning of time in the present rather than the past. In

Against Ctesiphon, for example, Aeschines’ proof that Demosthenes was

subject to audit at the time when Ctesiphon brought the motion for the

crown to be awarded is taken from the public records. Aeschines can ask to

have read out in court ‘under what archon and in what month and even on

what day’ (K�d �� ¼æ�� ŒÆd ��ı ��e� ŒÆd K� ��Ø ��æfi Æ) Demosthenes

was elected in charge of the theoric funds (24). Or in On the Embassy, he uses

public records to prove his case on the grounds of dates, since by using the

dates when ambassadors were chosen, he can prove who was where when the

peace was being negotiated (58). But Demosthenes is a more than adequate

opponent in his use of public records to back his arguments concerning dates

and chronology. InOn the False Embassy, he devotes a considerable amount of

time to reckoning crucial dates to prove his case that the defendants had

cooperated with Philip (57–60).136 In On the Crown he refers to many decrees

in support of his chronological case. He asks, for example, for the dates of

various transactions to be read out—all when Aeschines was spokesman of

the congress of Thermopylae (155).

These oYcial documents oVer, then, a diVerent kind of shared knowledge

about the past, which is agreed by the members of the polis. And they move us

also in the direction of a more obviously practical angle to this consideration

of time in the Attic orators, namely the way in which the polis conceived,

calibrated, and formulated the time not of its past, but of its present.

5. MARKING TIME

I have explored some of the ways in which the polis may have enjoyed a

‘shared knowledge’ of the past, reinforced through dramatic productions,

historical accounts, and rhetorical performances. Anyone wishing to persuade

an audience with recourse to historical exempla and appeals to continuous

character traits of the polis had certain parameters within which to work, but a

certain degree of room for creativity in constructing the past. But when it

came to indicating time in the present, precision was fundamental to the

authority of the speaker.

136 The dates are carefully calculated in terms of Athenian months.

Marking time 293

The care and precision with which Athenian decrees were dated has already

been mentioned (in chapter 1) and this is reXected in the decrees which

Demosthenes cites in On the Crown, consistently denoting date in terms of

Athenian archonships and Athenian months. A few examples will reveal the

pattern: the decree proposing the embassy to Philip is dated to ‘the archon-

ship of Mnesiphilus and on the 30th of Hecatombaion’ (K�d ¼æ��

!��Ø��º�ı; �ŒÆ��ÆØH�� fi � ŒÆd ��fi Æ, 29); the decree of Callisthenes to

‘the archonship of Mnesiphilus and on the 21st day of Maimacterion’ (37);137

the indictment is described as being read out ‘in the archonship of Chaer-

ondas, on the sixth day of Elaphebolion . . .’ (54); the XPONOI which

Demosthenes asks to have read out are dated to ‘the archonship of Mne-

sithides, on the 16th day of Anthesterion’ (155).

Aeschines’ heavy reliance on chronological arguments in his opposing

speech, Against Ctesiphon, means that, like Demosthenes, part of his authority

derives from his precise command of the dates. His proof that Demosthenes

was indeed in oYce at the crucial time is very speciWc in its use of dates,

pointing out as it does that ‘in the archonship of Chaerondas, on the last day

but one of Thargelion’ (K�d ªaæ �ÆØæ��ı ¼æ��; ¨Ææª�ºØH�� e��ı�æfi Æ �Ł�� . . .), Demosthenes proposed that on the second and third

days of Scirophorion the assemblies of the tribes should be held (27).138

Aeschines’ speciWc formulations of what happened when, make Demosthenes’

accusations of deliberate manipulation of important chronologies seem all

the more personally motivated.139 In On the Crown, Demosthenes claims that

Aeschines exploits the time-lapse between events and his speech in order to

select from a large number of old dates and decrees some for slanderous

purposes, transposes dates (��ªŒ �Æ �f� �æ ��ı�), and makes up Wcti-

tious causes (225). Aeschines’ response to such accusations comes in On the

Embassy: it may be helpful for Demosthenes to attack him over the confusion

of dates, but it is very much to Aeschines’ advantage to get them right, since

his arguments are largely reliant on establishing correct and precise chron-

ologies (96). This is explicitly a battle over who is more in command of time.

But there are also implicit questions of authority at stake. The issue of

deliberate distortion or straightforward inaccuracy, in so far as it relates to the

137 For more examples, see On the Crown 73, 75, 84, 105, 115 (with a slightly diVerentformula—no K�d, but simply ¼æ�ø� ˜�� ØŒ��), 118, 137, 164, 165, 181.

138 See also Against Ctesiphon 67 for Demosthenes’ Wxing of the assembly for 8th Elaphebolion,the day of sacriWce to Asclepius, and 68 for his Wxing of the assembly concerning the alliance toimmediately after the City Dionysia on the 18th and 19th of the month.

139 See Against Timarchus 109: Timarchus became a member of the boule in the archonship ofNicophemus (K�d ¼æ�� ˝ØŒ��ı); and On the Embassy 90: Philip took Hieron Oros on24th Elaphebolion (� ¯ºÆ��ºØH�� e� �� fi � �Ł��) and Demosthenes was presidingin the assembly on 25th.


more distant past, is related to the degree to which the past was open to

retelling, and to what extent the story was already Wxed.140 That is, whether or

not Aeschines could have ‘mistold’ the story without alienating the audience

whom he was trying to persuade brings us back to the question of how

‘common’ (Œ�Ø�Æ�) the events of the past really were. The large number of

precise dates, together with the accusations of manipulation, does suggest

that the question of ‘common knowledge’ might be worth asking also with

regard to the calibration of time in the present. In On Halonessus, Demos-

thenes claims that Philip has violated the treaties, as one can tell from the

calendar (IæØŁ�e� ��æH�). ‘For we all know in what month and on what day

the peace was made, and we also know in what month and on what day Fort

Serreum and Ergisce and the Sacred Mount were captured’.141 This striking

statement forces us to ask to what degree Demosthenes is simply engaging in

rhetorical hyperbole, and whether the Athenians at large did indeed know the

precise dating of recent events.

One interesting complication in the dating systems referred to by the Attic

orators is the introduction of non-Athenian systems. In On the Crown,

Demosthenes cites a decree of the Byzantines, honouring Athens because of

Demosthenes’ policy to help them against Philip. The decree is dated, not to

archonships and Attic months, but to ‘the recordership of Bosporichus’ (K�d

ƒ�æ�� ´��æ��ø), naturally using a local dating-system (90). In the

same speech he cites a decree of the Amphictyons, dated to ‘the priesthood of

Cleinagoras, at the spring session . . .’ (K�d ƒ�æ�ø� ˚º�Ø�Æª æ�ı; KÆæØ�B��ıºÆ�Æ�, 154).142 Of course, the use of non-Athenian dating devices in non-

Athenian decrees is hardly a surprise, but we might still ask what meaning

dates formulated in this way held for the Athenian audience. How local was

their sense of time and its expression? Hand in hand with that issue we are

drawn back to the relationship between the reference to and formulation of

time, past and present, and the social functioning of the polis as a community,

where the past is a partly Wxed, partly contested story, which is presented for

validation and authentication by the polis by historians, by orators, by artists,

and at the dramatic festivals; and where those very festivals form one element

140 As C. Pelling, Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (London, 2000), 28–9, notes, thetopos of the ‘truth universally acknowledged’ was a compelling (and potentially dangerous) onefor orators to employ, since their audiences were unlikely to claim not to know or to haveforgotten any element of the ‘shared past’, however remote.141 On Halonessus 36: –�Æ�� ªaæ Y�� Ø ��d ŒÆd ��Ø ��æfi Æ � �Næ�� Kª��.142 Aeschines provides an interesting combination of Athenian archonal and religious dating

in Against Ctesiphon 115: ‘In the archonship of Theophrastus (K�d ªaæ ¨��æ��ı ¼æ��),with Diognetus as hieromnemon, and as Pylagori were elected Midias of Anagyrus, Thrasyclesof Oeum, and myself.’

Marking time 295

in the relatively local set of structures within which time present is consciously

acted out.

We have already seen that political opponents competed in their correct

and appropriate treatment of time past. In addition to contesting each other’s

chronological calculations of time present, they also seem to have exploited

the measurement and allocation of present time in court to assert their

oratorical superiority. The throwing away of ‘judicial time’, measured out by

the clepsydra, by those who did not need their full allocation, so certain were

they of victory, was something of a rhetorical topos.143 Aeschines discusses the

apportioning of the day into sections: the Wrst water was for the accuser,

the laws, and the democracy; the second for the defendant; and the third for

the discussion of penalty, after the judgement had been given (Against

Ctesiphon 197). He claims in On the Embassy (126) that there was plenty of

time for slaves to be tortured, since he had been allocated eleven hours for his

defence in the apportionment of the day (K� �ØÆ��æ��fi � fi B ��æfi Æ).

But Demosthenes can go one better. He is so conWdent of the rightness of

his cause that he can aVord to throw away the judicial time allocated to him

and hand it to the other side.144 In his speech opposing Aeschines, On the

False Embassy, he calls upon the defendants to challenge his reckoning of the

crucial dates of the case, using the time allocated to the prosecution: ‘let him

stand up and speak in my time’ (I�Æ�a� K� fiH K�fiH o�ÆØ �N��ø, 57).

Aeschines may feel that he has suYcient time for his slaves to be cross-

examined, but Demosthenes has enough to give away. The same sentiment

is expressed by Demosthenes in On the Crown, so conWdent that no one will

be able to think of proWtable acts carried out by Aeschines for the city that he

will oVer them his judicial time in which to list them (139). The fact that both

the pair of speeches on the embassy and the pair on the award of the golden

crown to Demosthenes contain allusions to the apportionment of judicial

time on the part of both speakers suggests that this formed a useful rhetorical

trope in the competitive world of judicial speaking.145

143 See D. Allen, ‘A Schedule of Boundaries: An Exploration, Launched from the Water-clock,of Athenian Time’, Greece & Rome 43 (1996), 157–68. Her stress on the element of compulsionand necessity associated with time pressure in court (citing Hesychius’ gloss on I��ªŒ� as ��ØŒÆ�c Œº�ł��æÆ) further reinforces the rhetorical eVect of donating one’s own time in court tothe opposing side.

144 Allen, ‘A Schedule of Boundaries’, 159, argues that the restricted time available ledAthenians to confess to an imperfect and fallible legal system. However, Demosthenes’ implicitclaim here seems to be that good orators with just causes do not need much time in which toprove themselves right. Therefore, justice is not compromised by the clepsydra.

145 That the topos reached beyond Demosthenes and Aeschines is conWrmed by Deinarchus,Against Aristogeiton 6–7, who raises the issue of whether there is a positive correlation betweenusing one’s full time in court and the justice of the outcome.


6. PAST, PRESENT, AND PERSUASION IN THE POLIS

The pivotal character in the conWguration of the past and the present is the

orator himself. We have already observed some of the similarities in the

methods of the historian and the orator in formulating a version of the past

which both accords with some kind of shared expectations on the part of the

audience and oVers its own nuances, in the case of the public oratory in order

to inXuence particular political or judicial actions. The freedom and creativity

of the orator, granted the existence of some parameters in the form of

audience expectation, is neatly expressed by Isocrates. It might, he claims,

seem rather boring to be dealing with the same themes as one’s predecessors,

but oratory makes it possible to say the same thing in diVerent ways and ‘to

recount old things in a new way’ (� � �ÆºÆØa ŒÆØ�H� �Ø�ºŁ�E�) or ‘to speak

about things that have happened more recently in an old-fashioned way’ (��æd

H� ��ø�d ª�ª��ø� Iæ�Æ�ø� �N��E�). So, one should not shun old topics,

but speak about them better than one’s predecessors have (Panegyricus 8).

The element of rhetorical competition extends both to contemporary

opponents and to previous generations of speakers, making the history of

oratory itself a self-referential theme for the orators. We have already seen

ways in which opposing speakers might oVer diVerent versions of the past,

and also how their calculations of contemporary chronology could be the

subject of competition. Furthermore, just as certain periods of the Athenian

past were superior to the present and provided exempla which were worth

adducing for emulation now, so too was the decline in oratory something of a

topos. Aeschines contrasts Timarchus’ indecorous behaviour with the mod-

esty of the orators of old, such as Pericles, Themistocles, and Aristeides, who

did not speak making lavish gestures with their arm outside their cloak

(Against Timarchus 25). His proof, namely the decorous statue of Solon in

the agora in Salamis, does, as we have seen, come under attack from Demos-

thenes, who points out that the statue was far more recent than the time of

Solon himself and therefore constituted poor evidence.146 But Demosthenes

146 On the False Embassy 251. See N. Worman, ‘Insults and Oral Excess in the Disputesbetween Aeschines and Demosthenes’, American Journal of Philology 125 (2004), 1–25, for anexcellent discussion of oratorical performance styles as a rhetorical weapon in the clashesbetween Demosthenes and Aeschines. Demosthenes’ argument against adducing the statue ofSolon is that the orator should focus on content rather than physical disposition. But we mayrecall the comments made about the Wfth-century demagogue Cleon and his noisy and over-dramatic performances (Ath. Pol. 28.3; Plutarch, Nicias 8; Aristophanes, Knights, passim) togauge the sensitivity over style and presentation. For Cleon’s notoriety as a showy speaker, seeJ. Hall, ‘Cicero and Quintilian on the Oratorical Use of Hand Gestures’, Classical Quarterly 54(2004), 143–60 at 149, noting the claim (Quintilian, Institutio 11.3.123) that Cleon was the Wrst

Past, present, and persuasion in the polis 297

too alludes to the decline in rhetorical standards and integrity in the third

Olynthiac, where he claims only to be speaking at all because the welfare of the

state is more important than that of the orator. Speakers of the past, such as

Aristeides, Nicias, Demosthenes, and Pericles, adopted this view, but since

then there has been a descent into Xattery.147 Demosthenes sees himself, then,

as embodying a return to the golden age of Attic oratory, the rhetorical

equivalent to following the Athenian political models of the Persian War

period, such as Themistocles, and recreating the great days of the past in

the present. There appears to be something of a contradiction when Demos-

thenes urges his audience inOn the Crown to compare himwith the orators of

his own day and not of the past, just as athletes compete only against their

contemporaries (318–19).148 But it is clear from other comments in the same

speech that Demosthenes does consider himself the worthy heir of the great

oratorical legacy of Athens. There were, he says, many distinguished orators in

the city in the past—Callistratus, Aristophon, Cephalus, Thrasybulus—but

none was more unremittingly devoted to public service than Demosthenes

himself (219). By contrast, his long-standing opponent Aeschines held a quite

diVerent distinction in the history of oratory, namely having produced the

most disgraceful speech of all time.149

The Wgure of the teller of the past is evoked at the end of Isocrates’

Panegyricus in a way which neatly encapsulates some of the themes embraced

by this discussion. Isocrates urges Athens to lead Greece against the Persian

threat by referring to the Trojan War as paradigm, reinforcing the exemplary

importance of that particular event in the mythic past. Great praise was

accorded, he says, to those who captured a single city; all the greater praise

awaits those who will defeat the whole of Asia. Thus the Athenians are to see

their actions as competitive with those of the distant past, reversing the

to institute the gesture of slapping the thigh at moments of intense emotion. Aeschines clearlywishes to be seen as a restrained Solonic rather than a melodramatic Cleonic Wgure, butDemosthenes claims some of the same intellectual ground by professing to prefer content toform. The associations are further complicated by Thucydides 3.38 and Cleon’s own descriptionof himself as straight-talking as opposed to his over-elaborate opponents.

147 The idea that Demosthenes can right the wrongs of other orators is made explicit inPhilippic 1, where he claims to be speaking because other speakers have given bad advice in thepast, leading to Athens’ present trouble (1). But I owe to Sarah Cottle the further point thatDemosthenes says he dares to open the debate because the topic is so hackneyed that no one elsehas useful ideas to add. Description of the old style of Athenian leadership, immune to Xatteryand willing to put the state’s interests above the popularity of the leader, is put into Pericles’ ownmouth by Thucydides (2.64.2).

148 Aeschines picks up the past-present context for comparison in Against Ctesiphon 189, butargues that the plea there is to be rejected, since the crown under discussion is an absolutestandard, not a straight competition. One wonders how appropriate this comment would bealso to the competitive oratory referred to by Demosthenes.

149 On the False Embassy 312.


general trend of decline. And the deeds will be such as to attract the skills of the

historian or the orator, whowill want to ‘leave behind amemorial for all time of

his own genius and of their valour’.150 The relater of the past thus immortalizes

not only his subjects, but also himself, defying the destructive forces of time

and inserting himself and his theme into the exemplary catalogue.

The quotation from Isocrates’ Panegyricus, with which I started, raised the

issue of reception and audience expectation with its reference to shared

knowledge about the past. It is now time to return to this issue, and to

formulate some concluding thoughts on what the intervening exploration

has revealed about the relationship between past and present, the role of the

orator as historian, and the place of his construction of and allusion to the

past in the present identity and functioning of the polis.

Demosthenes, in On the Navy Boards, forcefully expresses the view that the

essence of the polis lies in its past. ‘The war against the barbarian is about

nothing other than our country, our life, our habits, our freedom, and all such

things . . .Who, then, is so desperate that he will sacriWce himself, his ancestors,

his sepulchres, and his native land for sake of a meagre proWt?’151 The Wgures

and events of the past and their memorials lie at the heart of the polis, neatly

echoing the view that ‘city is history incarnate’, and there are many occasions

and many media through which they are negotiated and reinforced. One

important such occasion was the moment when a citizen became part of the

past himself, and a Wgure for public commemoration and emulation, namely

at the public funerals of those outstanding Wgures of the polis who became its

exempla.152 Here the polis could gather, reiterate the essential features of its

present,153 and express its hope for the future through reference to its past. It is,

for Isocrates, symptomatic of themalfunctioning of Athens during its imperial

phase that the ritual of the epitaphios became a laughing stock at which

150 Panegyricus 186: ��ıº �� –�Æ B� Ł � Æ��F �ØÆ��Æ� ŒÆd B� KŒ��ø� Iæ�B� ��E�� N�–�Æ�Æ e� �æ �� ŒÆÆºØ��E�.151 On the Navy Boards 32: �� s� �oø� �ı�ı�� K�Ø� ‹�Ø� �Æı �; ª��Æ�; ��ı�;

�Ææ�� ŒÆ Œ�æ��ı� �æÆ�� æ��ŁÆØ ��ıº��ÆØ;152 N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans.

A. Sheridan (Cambridge, MA and London, 1986), oVers the most extensive and sophisticatedtreatment of this subject.153 See Hyperides, Epitaphios 35–9, for the key highlights of the past brought together—the

Trojan expedition, the Persian wars, and the tyrannicides oVer a roll call of the elements whichmost deserved celebration, but here they are interestingly imagined in their current setting ofthe underworld, ready to greet Athens’ newest hero, Leosthenes. Nouhaud, L’Utilisation del’histoire, 22, notes the striking way in which Hyperides, alone of the orators, risks denigratingthe heroes of the past through comparison with his hero, Leosthenes: ‘Hyperide se risque ales [sc. the tyrannicides] faire descendre de leur piedestal’; see also 65: ‘Cette surenchere resteexceptionnelle’.


foreigners would rejoice at the misfortune of the polis, rather than marvelling

at the polis’s best display of itself to its own members and to outsiders.154

The orator, like the historian or the dramatist, played a vital role in helping

the polis to formulate a past which was relevant to the present through its

presentation both of exemplary Wgures and events and of characteristics,

which remained constant across time. The epitaphios provided one forum

for the expression of such sentiments; the civic festivals, with their dramatic

productions, provided yet another opportunity for the gathered polis to

reassert and renegotiate its collective history.155 As for the orator, we have

seen that making speeches, both those delivered in the law courts and those

delivered in the assemblies in order to inXuence political decisions, placed

him, like the historian, in the position of needing to manipulate the past and

its links to the present for his current persuasive purpose, but within the

parameters of plausibility which would enable him to retain his authority.156

The self-consciousness of the orator and his place in the polis is manifested

in various ways, and particularly through his control and manipulation of

time: his self-referential comments about the time available for making his

case using the clepsydra reXect his role in the playing out of justice appropri-

ately for the democratic city;157 the ostensible accuracy and transparency of

154 On the Peace 87: It was routine at that time ‘to hold public funerals on an annual basis, atwhich many of our neighbours and of the other Greeks would appear not to join us in grievingfor the dead, but to rejoice together at our misfortunes’. As Michelini, ‘Isocrates’ Civic Invective:Acharnians and On the Peace’, points out, the strategy of this speech itself involves demolishingthe basic theme of Athenian patriotism—the celebration of its autochthonous origins andancestral solidarity, as celebrated in the epitaphios.

155 These two forms of civic self-expression are brought together in Against Ctesiphon 154,where Aeschines alludes to the practice whereby orphans of the war dead would be brought in tothe theatre, as tragedies were about to be performed. But S. Goldhill, ‘The Great Dionysia andCivic Ideology’, in J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to do with Dionysus? AthenianDrama in its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 97–129, examines the Great Dionysia as ashowcase of Athens to the world, but also notes (124) that ‘tragedy seems deliberately tomake diYcult the assumption of the values of the civic discourse.’ Thus, in spite of the presenceof war orphans, there is a fundamental diVerence between the disturbing performances of theGreat Dionysia and the uplifting civic rhetoric of the epitaphios. For a more straightforwardform of civic commemoration of particular episodes from the past, see R. Osborne, ‘Competi-tive Festivals and the Polis: A Context for Dramatic Festivals at Athens’, in P. J. Rhodes (ed.),Athenian Democracy (Edinburgh, 2004), 207–24 at 208, for the celebration, by the addition ofgames to the Theseia, of Cimon’s return of the bones of Theseus from Scyros in the 470s and 212for the introduction of games at the Aianteia festival after the victory at Salamis.

156 For a very stimulating discussion of how the construction of the mythical past in the Atticorators might be read in the context of not only other civic occasions, such as the public funeral,but also the philosophical works of the period, as manifestations of a fourth-century need toreformulate and relegitimate the past, see K. A. Morgan, ‘Designer History: Plato’s Atlantis Storyand Fourth-Century Ideology’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998), 101–18.

157 It is perhaps signiWcant here that lawgivers are prominent in the exemplary past of thepolis. Justice is an important area through which the city deWnes its past and present, as


his calculation of chronology, using the city’s own calendars for the calibra-

tion of time present, together with his careful and selective presentation of the

highlights of its past supported by oYcial records, implicitly makes the claim

that he reXects the city’s own sense of itself and its place in history; the fact

that there is considerable overlap between the three orators in their selective

depiction of the past, suggests that they might indeed fairly claim to be

chiming in with a relatively coherent and broadly consensual version of

which parts of the past best serve the present identity of the polis;158 and the

orator’s own position in the history of public speaking, including competition

with his predecessors and contemporaries, may be seen as paradigmatic for

the broader patterns of decline, continuity, and emulation which constitute

such a large part of his exposition and which underpin his attempts to

persuade the polis about matters of current policy.

It seems, then, that we are justiWed in Wnding some version of the polis’s

own construction of its past and manipulation of time in the speeches of its

orators, particularly given their need to gain persuasive authority with their

audience. Isocrates, however, forces us to consider a rather more complicated

scenario, both in terms of written as opposed to performed speeches, and in

terms of composition of the audience. Although his pieces are presented as

orations, it is fairly clear that they were not necessarily delivered, and func-

tioned more as political pamphlets. This is particularly striking given that

Isocrates himself in To Philip acknowledges the diVerence in persuasive power

between speeches read and speeches delivered.159 Whether this is actually

problematic for our understanding of the relationship between these com-

positions and the sense of a common past and present identity held by the

polis is debatable.160 The case has been made for other authors in other

contexts that the fact of whether or not a speech was delivered does not

prevent its form and contents from indicating to us what was considered

plausible and persuasive for a delivered version of the speech.161 To Philip

witnessed most dramatically in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, in which the mythical aetiology for theAreopagus homicide court is presented on stage in the trial of Orestes.

158 See above, though, for the way in which diVerent orators selected diVerently from thesame basic set of historical highlights in order to meet their immediate rhetorical needs.159 To Philip 25: ŒÆ��Ø �� P º�º�Ł�� ‹�� ØÆ��æ�ı�Ø H� º ªø� �N� e ��Ł�Ø� �ƒ º�ª ��Ø

H� I�ÆªØª�ø�Œ��ø�.160 Similar debates have, of course, been articulated in greater number regarding the speeches

of Cicero and the controversies surrounding delivered and published versions. Morstein-Marx,Mass Oratory and Political Power, 25–30, oVers a very sane and balanced account of theprinciples involved in this Weld of study.161 The issue has notoriously run through Ciceronian scholarship. But one might question

whether the parallel is absolutely precise. Whereas the published versions of, say, Cicero’s secondPhilippic or secondVerrine oration are full of references to the actual delivery of the speech, althoughwe know that they were not in fact delivered, Isocrates’ ‘speeches’ are more like disquisitions.


oVers many interesting insights into the process of composition. Isocrates

writes of how, in the face of criticism at the project to address his discourse

to Philip, he responded by oVering to show the result to the group of critics

for prior approval. They were, he claims, entirely convinced on reading the

speech (22–3). This rather odd form of peer pressure suggests that there were

alternative fora, besides public performance within the polis, where the views

expressed by an orator might be tested for compatibility alongside those of

others citizens.

But the rather more serious threat to the close relationship between the

construction of the past oVered by the orator and that shared by the collective

polis derives from the Panhellenic breadth of some of Isocrates’ discourses,

and the possibility that, rather than not being delivered at all, they might have

been designed for and delivered in the supra-polis context and audience of the

Panhellenic festivals, as epideictic showpieces.162 This clearly raises some of

the same issues as does the production of local historiography and the

question of its audiences and performance contexts. To whom the world

and the past evoked by the orator made sense and were signiWcant may

prove to produce no less interesting and variegated an answer than when

the same questions are asked of the historian.

Isocrates opened this exploration with an optimistic expression of how the

past might be skilfully and eVectively exploited by men of good sense, no

doubt including himself, the orator. In To Philip, he oVers a considerably

gloomier picture of the orator’s role in the polis. He claims to be addressing

the discourse to Philip himself to show that ‘to burden our assemblies with

oratory and to speak to all the people who gather there is really to address no

one at all’ (‹Ø e �b� ÆE� �Æ��ª�æ��Ø� K��º�E� ŒÆd �æe� –�Æ�Æ� º�ª�Ø� �f�

�ı�æ��Æ� K� ÆPÆE� �æe� �P��Æ º�ª�Ø� K��); that such speeches are just

as ineVective as the laws and constitutions drawn up by the sophists (Iºº�

›��ø� �ƒ �Ø�F�Ø H� º ªø� ¼Œıæ�Ø ıª��ı�Ø� Z�� E� � ��Ø� ŒÆd ÆE�

��ºØ��ÆØ� ÆE� ��e H� ��Ø�H� ª�ªæÆ��ÆØ�); and that anyone who

actually wants not to chatter in vain, but to serve some practical purpose

(Iººa �æ�hæª�ı Ø ��Ø�E�) must allow others to speak at public gatherings and

themselves Wnd someone with power to champion the cause (12–13). It

would be hard to imagine a much more downbeat vision of the possibilities

for rhetorical persuasion within the fourth-century polis. However, Isocrates’

view expressed here is so clearly at odds with the vibrant and sophisticated

attempts at persuasion which we have seen made by all three orators under

162 G. Norlin’s introduction to the Loeb translation discusses at some length the broadlyPanhellenic perspective oVered by Isocrates, seeing him as a loyal Athenian but with a sympathyfor all Greece and its freedom. He was thus able to transport the reader from the parochial viewof the poleis to the wider world (p. xxxii).


discussion that it cannot be allowed too much weight. It is, in any case,

perhaps to be dismissed as an array of the arguments one would make before

a tyrant rather than a democratic polis. The relationship between oratory and

the polis was clearly very much alive; the orators acted as crucial bridges

through time, selecting, manipulating, and presenting a past that would

accord with shared expectations, and bolster whatever collective identity the

polis enjoyed, at the same time as supporting particular courses of action for

the present and future. It is to the value which the polis itself placed on the

appropriate telling of its past that I now turn.


VI

Time for the polis: audiences and contexts

1. THE CITY OF THE SUNDIAL

�½æe� �b ��æ�Æ� ‰æ�º ªØ�� :½ � . . . : : ½. . . . . . :ŒÆ� Ł� uæÆ� K�Ø��ºº�Ø��Œ��½�� c� �ŒØa�� e� lºØ½�� . . . �ƒ ��½Æ�f �b ��ı � ��Ææ�Œ��Æ��Ø�½Ø ŒÆd �F ¼�� æØ��ÆØ ��½��Ø ��æ��øØ � ŒÆd� ��øØ· ½��Œ�º�� ÆP½a �ÆŒæa ŒÆº�F�Ø�� PŒ Iº ½ª�ø� Kºº�½ªØ��ÆÆ Z�Æ �Øa ð?Þ� B�¯Pæ�� . . . ¨��<ø>� æª�� ºØ½� . . .

To the south is a sundial . . . and the sun indicates each hour by its

shadow . . . The forty stades between here [sc. the Piraeus] and the town are

surrounded by walls to north and south. These ‘limbs’ are called long, not

without reason, since they are the most renowned throughout Europe . . . the

city is the achievement of Theseus . . . 1

The author of this partially preserved periegetic work found in Athens a

remarkable city. Even its long walls linking the city with the harbour were

exceptional. The notion of Athens as a ‘European capital’ is hinted at here alone

to my knowledge, and is in itself remarkable given the relative lack of interest

shown in continental divisions in antiquity, except by the scientiWc geograph-

ers.2 In the light of the importance of foundations and mythical Wgures in the

formulation of a city’s past (as considered in chapter 4), the appearance of

Theseus as creator of this magniWcent city seems particularly apposite. Athens is

splendidly contextualized by the anonymous periegete in both time and space.

It is given a supreme status vis-a-vis other European cities—its superiority

places it at centre stage. Furthermore, it has a history which goes right back to

the mythical hero, Theseus. Its signiWcance spreads out along several axes.

1 P.Haw. 80/1 (FGrH 369 f 1). This Greek literary papyrus dates from the Wrst or secondcentury ad and was Wrst published by Wilcken in 1910.

2 There are, however, notable exceptions, such as Polybius, who on several occasions adducesa continental model in his work, most extensively at 3.37.2–8, where he maps the threecontinents against four celestial quadrants. Strabo at 2.2.1–3.8 discusses various divisions ofthe earth attributed to important predecessors, such as Eratosthenes and Posidonius, includingcontinental divisions. While Strabo himself prefers divisions according to natural boundaries,he does adopt the continental strategy to some extent, using it to deWne which parts of the worldRome rules in the penultimate chapter of his work (17.3.24). For glimpses of continentalmentality in periplus texts, see K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Construc-tions of the Roman World (Oxford, 1999), 205.

But of course the prime point of interest here in the context of this book is

that Athens, this polis par excellence, should be seen to take time seriously.

Athens, with its walls which surpass all those in Europe, and with a history

which incorporates one of the greatest heroes, is also the city of the sundial, a

suYciently prominent feature to be remarked upon by the traveller. Although

the competitive analysis of formal time systems may be the preserve of the

chronographer, we have seen that an understanding of, and interest in, time is

inherent in any society’s attempt to formulate a past. Whether or not the time

concerned was coherent and continuous or patchy and confused, we are led

back to considering the conWguration of time as being of more public

concern, a social phenomenon in its own right, which might give us import-

ant insights into a community, its preoccupations, and its interaction with the

world outside. I turn Wrst here to a range of extant mentions of publicly

displayed time pieces and evidence for an explicit public consciousness of the

passing and measurement of time in order to explore further the interface

between the conWguration of time and the social conduct of the polis.

The mention of the Athenian sundial by the Hellenistic traveller is by no

means unique. It is interesting that Athens should feature so dominantly

among Greek poleis in the sources as the home of public timepieces, but the

evidence is so slight as to render the statistics meaningless. We have already

seen (in chapter 1) multiple explorations before the Athenian audience in the

plays of Aristophanes of the comic potential inherent in diVerent types of

‘time management’, be it the manipulation of the lunar cycle to avoid the

arrival of debt repayment day, or the diVerent uses to which the water clock,

symbol of the fair allocation of judicial time in the democratic polis, could be

put. The scholia to Aristophanes’ plays provide an unexpectedly rich pool of

references to timepieces being part of the everyday Athenian landscape. But it

is also interesting that the sources which the scholiasts use to support their

interpretation of the Aristophanic texts are often the local historians whom

we have considered in some detail in their own right. This evidence from

fragmentary historians thus incidentally brings together time as a subject for

historiography and the everyday organization of time for the citizens—the

former being used by later scholars to elucidate the latter.

When the chorus in Aristophanes’ Birds sings of a place ‘near the water

clock’ which is the home of the ‘Tongue-bellied’ tribe,3 it elicits from modern

commentators such as Dunbar, the observation that the name, literally ‘water-

concealer’, was given to springs across Greece which experienced seasonal

variation in their water supply, and that in Athens the so-called spring was at

3 See Aristophanes, Birds 1694–6: �Ø �� K� *Æ�ÆE�Ø �æe� fi B jŒº�ł��æfi Æ �Æ��Fæª�� Kª�jªºø�ªÆ� æø� ª��.

The city of the sundial 305

the foot of the cliV at the north-west angle of the Acropolis.4 Furthermore, she

notes the double associations for the audience, since the name would also, of

course, evoke the measurement of time in the law courts, setting the tone for a

legal interpretation of the whole scene. But it is interesting that ancient

commentators elucidate the passage by reference to Istrus the Callimachean,

who drew on the historians (�E� �ıªªæÆ��F�Ø�). He relates a description of

how the spring gained its name from its function as a natural water clock,

Wlling up when the Etesian winds began and abating when they stopped, just

like the Nile.5 Thus even the landscape of Athens was predisposed to the

calibration of time, and able with its own naturally occurring water clock to

compete with the miraculous Nile.

In connection with the same Aristophanic play, another Athenian historian

is brought in by the scholiasts to illuminate a disputed claim concerning

Athens’ publicly displayed time. Philochorus is cited by a scholiast in con-

nection with the claim that Meton, ‘the best astronomer and geometer’ in

Greece (¼æØ�� I�æ�� ŒÆd ª�ø��æ��), set up an astrological instrument

(I��Ł�� Ø . . . I�æ�º�ªØŒ �) in Colonus.6 In what appears to be a piece of

local rivalry, Philochorus makes the additional claim that Meton also set up a

sundial (�ºØ�æ �Ø��) in Athens in what was now the assembly in front of the

wall on the Pnyx. We have another example of a public timepiece, this time set

up in one of the prime locations of democratic Athens—the place where the

assembly met; and we may recall the debates surrounding references in the

Attic orators to the use of the clepsydra in the law courts and its possibly

democratic associations. Is this sundial another instance of ‘time for all’, the

democratization of time itself, the ostentatious revelation to the people at

large of how time could be conWgured and manipulated?

Of course, here we are talking about the time of a single day rather than

that of the city’s history. A clock is a rather diVerent proposition from a

calendar, let alone that of a whole historiographical scheme. But Philochorus’

expression for the date at which Meton set up his Athenian sundial provides a

neat link for us, if not for the original audience, between the measurement of

and interest in short-term, everyday time and long-term, historiographical

time. He dates this important event for the timekeeping of Athens to ‘the

archonship of Apseudes, who came before Pythodorus’.7 Thus, a development

4 See N. Dunbar, Aristophanes Birds (Oxford, 1995), ad loc.5 FGrH 334 f 6.6 FGrH 328 f 122. See Aristophanes, Birds 997–8. Dunbar’s commentary ad loc. interestingly

makes the suggestion that Meton and his technical expertise might have been in the public eyethat year (433/2), since he is also mentioned in a fragment of Phrynichus’ Monotropos (f 22),produced at the same festival as the Birds, this time as › a� Œæ��Æ� ¼ªø� (‘the one drawing thesprings’), suggesting some improvement to the city’s water supply.

7 K�d � `ł��ı� �b <�F>�æe —ıŁ��æ�ı.

306 Time for the polis

in the public concern with diurnal time in Athens is given a place in its long-

term history, denoted in just the same way as other major political events. We

may note that the traYc between diVerent scales of time went in both

directions—not only highlights from the past telescoped into the annually

recurring cycle of the calendar, but also innovations in small-scale time being

recorded as events which take their place in large-scale history. Furthermore,

we shall see the way in which the public monument of the Parian Marble

created a history of invention mapped out against the magisterial oYce of

the kings and archons. Here, the keeping of time itself becomes one of the

inventions, and, as we saw with the anonymous periegete, Athens is outstand-

ing in this respect as in others—the inventor of the sundial, placed at the heart

of the democratic polis in the heyday of the city’s intellectual life, is none other

than the best in Greece.

We have already seen the way in which the Wgure of the orator straddled the

reality of the present and the construction of time past in his use of history in

the pursuit of persuasion. In some respects, the orator’s focus on particular

moments in the relatively recent history of the city contrasts quite markedly

with the dominance of the mythical past and the world of heroic foundations

in the fragments of local history. Although it is hazardous to argue from

silence about the fragmentary historical works, which may well have com-

prised a continuous history of the city from its foundation to the recent past,

the complete works of the Attic orators allow us to observe a thinning of

interest at the remote end of the temporal spectrum. We have, however,

already observed variation between authors on this point, since Isocrates’

interest in the mythological origins of the city contrasts dramatically with the

more recent focus of Demosthenes and Aeschines. But the playing up by all of

them of relatively recent, or at least historical, moments of glory for the polis,

particularly those of the Persian wars, and the recurrent topos of the decline

theory, with a stress on the good old days of former generations by contrast

with the degenerate present (as we saw in chapter 5), creates a strong link

between the works which the orators delivered to the polis of Athens and the

plays presented to the same audience by poets such as Aristophanes.8

Sometimes the comic dynamics demand that the standard topoi of recent

history—liberation from tyranny and the victory over Persia—are presented

by Aristophanes in ways which seem to undermine the glory of the Athenian

8 See M. Nouhaud, L’Utilisation de l’histoire par les orateurs attiques (Paris, 1982), 40, for theclose foreshadowing of the dominant themes of Attic oratory in the comic theatre ofthe preceding century: ‘Aristophane, par les allusions au passe qu’il introduit dans son theatre,preWgure les orateurs du IVe siecle.’ Nouhaud identiWes these themes as patriotic episodes,the contrast between past virtue and vice, and the evocation of benefactions performed by theancestors.


audience. In Lysistrata, we Wnd references to the Spartan intervention in the

tyrannicide (1150–6), and to Spartan victories in the Persian wars, at Arte-

misium and Thermopylae (1250–3). But presumably the audience all took for

granted that Aristophanes was presenting the truer and more important

version of the past in the Knights with references to Marathon and Salamis,

Aristeides and Miltiades, and Harmodius the Liberator.9 In the Wasps, the

theme of Athenian performance in the Persian wars is linked explicitly to that

of generational decline, since the superiority and greater utility of the older

generation, represented by the old wasps in the play, is directly attested by

their role in Wghting back the Persians.10 And Clouds throughout exploits the

comic potential of the contrast between the ‘good old days’ and the degener-

ate present.11 The same play makes much also of the temporal conWguration

of a single life, describing old age as a second childhood (�d� �ÆE�� ƒ

ª�æ��), to suggest interesting possibilities for a person’s lifetime to be

reversible, or a mirror image of itself, or cyclical.12 But Birds reinforces the

truth that human life is transient and unidirectional, and that the generations

therefore follow naturally one after the other.13 The comic contrast is with the

superior status of the chorus of birds, which transcend the impact of time by

being immortal, eternal, and ageless.14 Here the chorus oVers a bird-oriented

construction of natural time, insisting on their importance for telling the

seasons. Furthermore, they provide a parallel account of the creation myth, in

which the birds predate the gods and are the ancient rulers of Persia (cock),

Greece (kite), Egypt and Phoenicia (cuckoo).15 Thus, the mythical period, for

which the historians would produce genealogical structures, could be mapped

out in terms of the races of birds.

Both the orators and the comic theatre seem to suggest that presenting the

past to the polis, in Athens at any rate, meant focusing on a fairly restricted

range of glorious topics from recent history and using them, through com-

parison with the present more degenerate state of the polis, as an exhortation

to action or as a form of didacticism. When set alongside the extensive

temporal range of the fragments of local historiography, with their blurring

9 See Knights 781, 785, 1325, and 786, respectively.10 Wasps 1071–90. It is interesting that the autochthony theme appears strongly here to back

the wasps’ claim to true Athenian behaviour. They describe themselves as ‘the only truly nativeand autochthonous Athenians’: %ØŒ�d � ��Ø �ØŒÆ�ø� Kªª��E� ÆP �Ł�� (1076).

11 See Clouds 961–83; cf. Peace 571–80, on the peaceful and plentiful nature of the ancient life.12 Clouds 1417. As Sommerstein notes, the proverb was commonly cited by a range of

tragedians and by Plato. See A. H. Sommerstein (ed.), Clouds (Warminster, 1982), ad loc.13 See Birds 685: ¼ª� ��; ��Ø� ¼��æ�� I�Æıæ �Ø�Ø; ��ººø� ª��fi A �æ�� Ø�Ø, recalling Homer,

Il. 6.146.14 See Birds 693–702, with Dunbar, Aristophanes Birds, ad loc.15 See Birds 471–536.


between mythical and historical periods, and their concern to combine local

frameworks with more Panhellenic ones, they have the eVect of making

historiography stand out as a diVerently formulated and diVerently expressed

form, with a distinctive set of preoccupations.

The kind of past which was set before the citizens of Athens, in particular,

is, to some degree, but only to some degree, supported by the particular form

of speech delivered at state funerals, the epitaphios.16 This has already been

given a great deal of scholarly attention for its presentation of the polis in an

idealized form incorporating both the recent exploits of the city, which

provide the context for the speech itself, and the more distant past, which

oVers the foundational qualities from which the city has been built. The

imaginative recreation in the epitaphios of the role played by the polis in key

Panhellenic ventures, particularly during the Persian wars, has naturally

attracted analysis.17

As Waters argues, the genre of the epitaphios was characterized by a

historical analysis which was ‘universally lop-sided and chauvinistic’, but

even so the opportunities for this view to be challenged were strangely

manifold in the case of Marathon, since not only some historiographical

sources but also, much more publicly and visibly, the paintings on the Stoa

Poikile presented Plataea as Wghting alongside Athens.18 ‘Both versions were

known and both versions were oYcial’, Waters concludes.19 We will come

back to the issue of complicity on the part of the citizens in particular ‘oYcial’

versions of the past, but for now simply observe the focus on the same

historical themes and periods as we saw dominating the oratory.

But I should like to argue for the integration of historiography into this

picture, for its value to the polis, and for a reduction of the gap between the

preoccupations and scope of works of local history, which took the whole

life of the city as their theme, and those which were of more immediate

concern to the polis in other contexts and through other media. In spite of the

focus on the more recent past revealed through some Attic oratory and

through Aristophanes’ glimpses into the Athenian historical imagination,

16 The contrast between Athens, which used a collective funeral as the forum for expressingthe past, present, and future of the city, and Rome, where such presentation of the past is carriedout by individual aristocratic families in their own terms, emerges from H. I. Flower, AncestorMasks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford, 1993), 117 and 126. It is, however, anambiguous contrast, if Flower (127) is correct to see the eVect of individual aristocratic funeralsbeing to create a sense of community and a shared past.17 See K. R. Waters, ‘ ‘‘We Fought Alone at Marathon’’: Historical FalsiWcation in the Attic

Funeral Oration’, Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie 124 (1981), 204–11, for the contentious wayin which Athens wrote Plataea’s role at Marathon out of the story.18 Waters, ibid. 205 and 207.19 Waters, ibid. 211.


other evidence makes very plain the importance of the remote and heroic past

in the city’s sense of itself. The tragic theatre provides a prime example of the

way in which the legendary past could be used to oVer malleable aetiologies

for the civic institutions and practices of the present.20 In sculptural relief, the

Parthenon friezes oVered a backdrop of mythical scenes for the enactment of

contemporary ritual, thereby suggesting thematic or conceptual connections

across the intervening time. In another medium still, the paintings at the Stoa

Poikile may have included a presentation of relatively recent moments in

Athenian history, or rather of Athenian participation on the Panhellenic stage,

but they also included scenes of the Amazonomachy and of the TrojanWar. As

Boedeker points out, this promotion of the mythical and heroic past of

Athens was prevalent in the visual arts, which juxtaposed scenes from the

distant past with those of recent history.21 Her point that ‘Athens was not

unique, just more proliWc, in using the heroic past to represent, and even to

shape, its civic identity,’ may be somewhat determined by the survival of

evidence, but nevertheless the observation that Athens did combine the

remote with the recent past in its visual arts must surely be right.22

But Boedeker nevertheless draws a strong distinction between the visual

and historiographic evidence on this point, arguing that ‘the city uses its

‘‘past’’ in public art in ways directly at odds with practices of Wfth-century

narrative historiography’.23 She sees the convenient and resonant juxtapos-

ition of remote and recent events as being antithetical to the development of

explanatory narrative of a Thucydidean type; the creation of a continuous,

connected, logically coherent history as less congenial to the city’s self-

promotion than the discontinuous, timeless, analogous forms of art and

poetry; the public nature of the latter, Wnanced by and accountable to the

democracy as more prone to produce an ‘acceptable’ view of the past than the

great prose histories written for a more private audience.24

20 S. Said, ‘Le mythe de l’Areopage avant la Constitution d’Athenes’, in M. Pierart (ed.), Aristoteet Athenes (Fribourg, 1993), 155–81, has examined the way in which the myth of the Areopagus,famously turned into a political aetiology in 458 bc in Aeschylus’ Eumenides in ways which wouldlegitimate current reforms, could be entirely recast a century later by Isocrates in the Areopagiticus.But see also S. Goldhill, ‘The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology’, in J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin(eds.), Nothing to do with Dionysus? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton, NJ, 1990),97–129, examining the tension between the festival of drama as a civic institution and themessages of tragic texts, which ‘seems deliberately to make diYcult the assumption of the valuesof the civic discourse’ (124).

21 See D. Boedeker, ‘Presenting the Past in Fifth-Century Athens’, in D. Boedeker andK. A. RaaXaub (eds.), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens (Cambridge, MAand London, 1998), 185–202.

22 Boedeker, ibid. 190.23 Boedeker, ibid. 185–6.24 Boedeker, ibid. 199–200. There were, however, some clearly overlapping elements between

public and private visions of the Athenian past. H. A. Shapiro, ‘Autochthony and the Visual Arts


But if Thucydides and others sought to challenge the ‘hegemony of civic

ideology’,25 which was formulated primarily through public speech, and

undermined key foundations of civic ideology such as the tale of Harmodius

and Aristogeiton, this should not be taken as a basis for claiming that

historiography tout court was alien to the prevalent traditions of the polis.

Rosalind Thomas has taught us all to think in much more sophisticated ways

about the notion of ‘tradition’, and particularly of ‘oYcial’ or ‘civic trad-

ition’.26 But, while resisting the tendency to oversimplify the notion of

‘collective memory’, a notoriously overused and ill-deWned term, she does

nevertheless identify ways in which the polis could crystallize and propagate

certain views of itself, which were intimately connected to a particular reading

of selected highlights of its past.27 Likemany other scholars, she sees this as being

most extremely and strictly formulated and expressed in the epitaphios, which

oVered an idealized vision of Athenian history: ‘the epitaphios forms a coherent

expression of Athenian oYcial ‘‘ideology’’.’28 The ‘history’ oVered by the epita-

phios was designed to answer the question ‘what made Athens great?’, which

entailed mention of the Amazonomachy, the Heraclids, Marathon, Salamis,

in Fifth-Century Athens’, in Boedeker and RaaXaub (eds.), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts inFifth-Century Athens, 127–51, discusses the way in which the civic theme of autochthony,alluded to on the Parthenon friezes, was already a popular topic for the more private genre ofvase painting in the Archaic period. For the same kind of overlap, see Flower, Ancestor Masks, 65and 69, discussing the display of the aristocratic past to the non-history-reading Romanelectorate in public memorials, as well as in the more enclosed setting of the atria of theirhomes.

25 J. Ober, ‘Civic Ideology and Counterhegemonic Discourse: Thucydides on the SicilianDebate’, in A. L. Boegehold and A. C. Scafuro (eds.), Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology(Baltimore, 1994), 102–26 at 105.26 R. Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989).

M. Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past: Colonial Traditions and the Writing of History. The Caseof Cyrene’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford, 2001),116–37 at 137 makes a similar point about the diYculty of deWning ‘local traditions’ in relationto Herodotus’ practice of collecting up stories. As he points out, ‘the Cyrenaeans say’ does notimply an oYcial version, nor one shared by the whole community, since Herodotus doesnot distinguish between what he is told by individuals and what by the community—how thelatter actually could impart a view is not clear. The same point that Herodotus presents logoi asbelonging to whole communities rather than individuals within them is stressed by N. Luraghi,‘Local Knowledge in Herodotus’ Histories’, in Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft, 138–60.27 I. Malkin, ‘ ‘‘Tradition’’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene’, in P. Derow and

R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest(Oxford, 2003), 153–70 at 156, notes that ‘the major historical outline becomes part of thecollective memory, applicable to various genres of social and religious behaviour. Its framework-elements are not Xexible and Xuid.’ See E. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Tradition’, inE. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 1–14 at 12,for the idea that ‘all invented traditions, so far as possible, use history as a legitimator of actionand cement of group cohesion’.28 Thomas, Oral Tradition, 200.


and the claim to autochthony.29 It thus spanned both mythical and historical

periods, and was, within that scope, highly selective in the episodes it treated,

rendering ‘much of Athens’ history irrelevant’, concentrating on the legendary

origins of Athens, and presenting ‘a fragmentary and timeless catalogue of

achievements, despite the roughly chronological structure.’30

For Thomas, this fragmentary and timeless presentation of the past in the

epitaphios, the ‘oYcial’ tradition, is not to be set in direct contrast with the

historiographic version. As she says, the fragmented vision of the epitaphios

was not wholly ahistorical; indeed, for some it may have oVered the prime

opportunity to hear Athenian history set out in rough chronological order.

Furthermore, she importantly raises the question over the relationship be-

tween the telescoped, selective past embodied in the epitaphios and that set

out by the Atthidographers, which may have bought into the same range of

polis ideals.31 Still further, she brings oratory more generally into the same

frame as the local historians. Oratory naturally enjoyed a symbiotic relation-

ship with the ‘oYcial tradition’ of the demos, both inXuencing and being

determined by it, as we have seen (in chapter 5), with the result that ‘the

vision of Athenian history presented in oratory must express what orators

and demos know’.32 But it also stood closely alongside the Atthides, and it is

this relationship between local historiography and the ‘oYcial’ tradition, on

which I should like to focus now.

While Boedeker might be correct to insist upon a certain dissonance

between the past which pleased the polis and that which the ‘great’ analytical

historians such as Thucydides oVered, she fails to bring the local historians

into the frame. This is a form of historiography which seems to Wt much more

neatly, for obvious reasons, within the polis context, and naturally fulWls many

of the same functions as oratory and works of art in both forming and playing

to the self-image of the polis. It is important to acknowledge the methodo-

logical problems inherent in the attempt to characterize local historical works

29 The combination of the legendary past and the present political world was very visibly ondisplay in the agora through the monument of the eponymous heroes, which provided a strikingillustration of the foundation myth for the tribal system. See T. L. Shear, ‘The Monument of theEponymous Heroes in the Athenian Agora’, Hesperia 39 (1970), 145–222 at 145: ‘In theirpersons, they linked historical present with immemorial past, the realities of government withthe legends of remote antiquity. In their cults, they perpetuated that ancient marriage ofancestral religion and practical politics which formed so characteristic a feature of the Greekpolis.’

30 Thomas, Oral Tradition, 197 and 231. See also N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens: TheFuneral Oration in the Classical City, trans. A. Sheridan (Cambridge, MA and London, 1986),134, for the chronologically discontinuous nature of the epitaphios, by contrast with historiog-raphy, and in spite of the language of temporal succession which it adopts.

31 Thomas, Oral Tradition, 235–6.32 Thomas, ibid. 202.


as conforming to some of the patterns which we have just noted as being

associated with ‘oYcial’ polis tradition. The most glaring weakness concerns

the tension between the selective, discrete, unconnected highlights which

characterize the past of this polis tradition and what Boedeker identiWes as

the ‘development of a more abstract sense of history in early-Wfth-century

Athens and elsewhere’,33 which manifested itself in the creation of continuous

counting systems, such as victor lists, priestesses, and so on, thereby Wlling in

Thomas’ Xoating gap in the hour-glass structure of collective memory. It is an

inescapable problem of studying local historiography that its extremely frag-

mentary nature naturally tends to give the impression that these works were

focused on selective highlights. In fact, in this respect, the supposition that

local historiography, regardless of its connection or otherwise to chronicles

and oYcial records, nevertheless followed an annalistic structure, might be

seen rather to bring it closely into line with the continuous sense of time

which has been seen as antithetical to the episodic way in which the polis

tended to present its past in oratory, particularly the epitaphios, and art.

2 . VALUING THE PAST: PROMOTING THE POLIS

But if local historiography may have failed to adhere to certain aspects of the

polis tradition and its version of the past, in other respects it was clearly

aligned with, rather than hostile to and critical of, the dominant self-image of

the city. The charge of patriotism, in the form of parochialism, which has

been imputed to writers of local history, is to a degree belied by their sporadic

use of broader frameworks, both temporal and otherwise. However, as I have

already noted, the concentration of Olympiads, extensive synchronisms, and

Panhellenic conceptual frames in the works of authors on or from Sicily is

very striking and, just as this practice may say something about their aspir-

ations to Hellenic identity, so too may its relative absence in the majority of

local historiographical fragments, if not simply a function of their more

exiguous state, say something about their lack of aspiration to play on the

wider stage. It may equally say nothing more than that they already knew they

were counted as Greek and had nothing further to prove on the subject,

neither through the way in which they articulated their past nor in any other

mode. However, whatever precise deWnition we wish to assign to ‘parochialism’

33 Boedeker, ‘Presenting the Past in Fifth-Century Athens’, 198. Boedeker points, in parti-cular, to Pherecydes’ genealogies (c.460s bc) which, while not a historiographical work, never-theless helped to stabilize and promulgate ancestral catalogues, to systematize Athenianmythology (197).

Valuing the past: promoting the polis 313

or ‘patriotism’, we can surely still join Schepens in observing that, ‘in a culture

as agonistic as Greek society, it is evident that the author of a city history

presented the best side of the polis, whether he was a citizen himself or a

travelling professional historian, working on commission’.34 Furthermore, it is

important to note that, where we do Wnd the history of individual poleis

brought within a wider network, this can be seen as simultaneously a form of

promotion for that polis on the Panhellenic stage and a playing to its own

inward-looking concerns. Local histories which reach their antennae out into

the world beyondmay nevertheless be ‘for the polis’, since breadth of conceptual

framework need imply nothing about breadth of audience.35

We have already alluded to the political and diplomatic capital that could

be drawn from the appropriation of heroes. Both the huge number of city

histories and their geographical and temporal dispersal ‘point to the individ-

ual polis as a fertile and omnipresent breeding ground holding a great

attraction for historical writing’.36 The connection between historiography

and the polis has been summarized even more forcefully by Orsi: ‘Per quel che

riguarda le citta greche, va detto che non esiste forse localita per la quale non

sia attestata l’esistenza di un’opera che ne descrivesse la storia.’37 The values of

the past to the polis were clearly not conWned to diplomatic encounters,

although these oVer some striking instances. The territorial conXict between

Samos and Priene at the beginning of the second century bc was adjudicated

by Rhodes on the basis of no fewer than seven city histories, submitted by

each party.38 Having scrutinized passages of these concerning the history of

34 G. Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories: Self-DeWnition through History Writing’, inK. Demoen (ed.), The Greek City from Antiquity to the Present: Historical Reality, IdeologicalConstruction, Literary Representation (Leuven, Paris, Sterling, Virginia, 2001), 3–25 at 23.

35 We are familiar with the notion in our own times that local historiography, say the historyof a small village, routinely presents its subject in a more glorious light by highlighting itsachievements in and connections to the outside world, as well as tying the key events in its ownpast to those of world history, such as the experiences of or honours won by its citizens duringthe world wars. But none of this ‘buying in’ to the world outside makes the story of interest tothat world; rather, the primary audience will always be the inhabitants of the village.

36 Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 10.37 ‘As far as the Greek cities are concerned, it should be said that there is perhaps not one

lacking evidence for the existence of a work describing its history’, D. P. Orsi, ‘La storiograWalocale’, in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, D. Lanza (eds.), Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica iii 1(Rome, 1994), 149–79 at 162.

38 See O. Curty, ‘L’historiographie hellenistique et l’inscription no. 37 des Inschriften vonPriene’, in M. Pierart and O. Curty (eds.), Historia testis Melanges d’epigraphie, d’histoireancienne et de philologie oVerts a Tadeusz Zawadzki (Fribourg, 1989), 21–35. See also OGIS 13for further evidence of this dispute, a letter from King Lysimachus, to whom the issue wasbrought in 283/2 bc. Here too Priene used ‘histories and other testimonials and documents’ thatthe land belonged to them. See R. S. Bagnall and P. Derow (eds.), The Hellenistic Period:Historical Sources in Translation (Oxford, 2003; new edition), 26–7, for discussion of theinscription from Priene.


the territory (ll. 118–19: Ł�øæ�F�� f� ªæ�łÆ�Æ� . . . c� �ØÆ�æ��Ø� A��æÆ�), and checked the evidence, the jurors voted in favour of Priene. We

shall see more examples of the use of the past in order to promote the claims

of the polis within the context of diplomacy, when considering the Wgure of

the historian as inter-polis negotiator.

Even when not deployed in disputational contexts, city histories provided

for their respective poleis a heightened sense of identity by recollecting the

shared past and particularly by recounting myths of origin. As Zeitlin elo-

quently states, myths of origin ‘authorize a version of cultural history that

justiWes retrospectively the identity of a given society, and, more importantly,

expresses what its members want or imagine themselves to be’.39 We shall

consider shortly the value that diVerent poleis derived, in an ever more

competitive environment, from claiming either autochthony or migration

as their point of departure. But sometimes it might be enough simply to have

something distinctive to characterize one’s polis. Ephorus, in his local history

of his own hometown, Cyme, relates that the Athenians took pride in

maritime power, the Thessalians in equestrian skill, the Boeotians in the

care they took over their physical condition, the Cyrenaeans in skill at racing,

and the Cymaeans in their well organized laws.40

And, of course, it is worth remembering that the malleable past could be

used not only in inter-polis contexts, but also in intra-polis disagreements and

rivalries. Jacoby, in particular, notes the way in which Atthidography, as ‘the

local history of an important city with political aspirations, was political by its

very nature, arising as a weapon in party strife’.41 The idea that the past could

be appropriated, moulded, and used by diVerent interest groups within a

polis, competing for the assent of the citizens to a particular reading, was of

course notably illustrated in the late Wfth century in the constantly shifting

claims made to the patrios politeia, the ‘ancestral constitution’.42 Finley ob-

served that the appropriation of a particular version of the patrios politeiawas

a way of strengthening the unity of the group: ‘in a variety of groups, bonds

within the group are reinforced by a sense of continuity that comes from a

shared knowledge (or pretended knowledge) of key Wgures and incidents in its

past. And so too with the political unit.’43

39 F. Zeitlin, ‘Foreword’ in N. Loraux, The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizen-ship and the Division between the Sexes, trans. C. Levine (Princeton, 1993), p. xii.40 FGrH 70 f 97.41 F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford, 1949), 79.42 See M. I. Finley, ‘The Ancestral Constitution’, in The Use and Abuse of History (London,

1975), 34–59, for the way in which appeals to the ancestral constitution were made throughouthistory, but particularly at times of crisis when the past might provide guidance or legitimacy. Theclaims to a shared ancestry are implicitly transferred to whole sub-communities or interest groupsto replace or supplement the cult of ancestors which belonged to individual families (48).43 Finley, ibid. 49.


But, unlike Jacoby, Finley saw the Atthidographers as extremely slow to

engage in such competition over ownership of the past, with Hellanicus’

Atthis remaining unchallenged for Wfty years. Harding too has challenged

Jacoby’s view that the Atthides were used as weapons in the political strife of

the mid-fourth century, noting that the theory rests on the evidence of only

two Atthidographers—Cleidemus and Androtion, neither of whom can be

shown to be ideologically motivated, and that the outburst of Atthidography

at this time is better explained by rivalry than by political strife.44 Harding

valuably draws attention to the fact that the political angle was only one of

many strands of interest in the Atthis as a form of local history; it was not a

description of a politeia. It seems that Jacoby’s proposition confuses the

intention and the reception of these works—Atthides which could be used

in order to assist in the propagation of particular political views, need not be

designed with that purpose in mind. Furthermore, Jacoby’s extremely helpful,

indeed fundamental, notion that local history demanded an explanation and

an aetiology that placed it at the heart of the functioning polis, rather than in

the world of priestly records, does not entail that it be reduced to the level of a

political pamphlet.

But the value of the malleable past to the polis at large was undeniable.

Higbie has taken as a test case Athens’ attempt to win Salamis fromMegara in

the sixth century through appeal to a Xexibly constructed history. As she

concludes: ‘Greeks of the Wfth century and later accepted, as they applied the

power of literacy to their investigation of the past, that the recovery of precise

details of events, Wgures, and chronology of the distant past was impossible, so

diVerent cities retained diVerent reconstructions of the past and argued for

their validity.’45 So, while the local historians of Megara promoted their local

claims,46 Athens Wnally won the struggle through Solon’s policy of ‘submitting

the question to arbitration and arguing the case persuasively on the grounds

of Athenian history, burial customs, and genealogy, or by using military force,

backed by an oracle from Delphi’.47 The former method, that is persuasion

through manipulation of the past, is suggested by Plutarch’s Life of Solon, in

which the protagonist secures Athens’ claims by inventing Homeric lines at

his convenience, asserting etymological and genealogical links, and claiming

shared burial customs, besides appropriating the support of Delphi.

44 See P. Harding, ‘Atthis and Politeia’, Historia 26 (1977), 148–60 at 149, 158, and 151.45 C. Higbie, ‘The Bones of a Hero, The Ashes of a Politician: Athens, Salamis, and the Usable

Past’, Classical Antiquity 16 (1997), 279–308 at 306.46 On these, see D. W. Prakken, ‘On the date of Hereas, the Megarian Historian’, Classical

Weekly 37 (1943–4), 1–2, and the claim that ‘Hereas was undoubtedly the historical voice ofMegara at the end of the fourth century and carried on the literary and historical polemic ofMegara against Athens’. (2).

47 Higbie, ‘The Bones of a Hero’, 281.


As Higbie rightly notes, there was nothing exceptional about this struggle

between Athens and Megara being formulated in terms of claims based on

mythical ancestry and the appropriation of heroes. The mysterious Attic genos

of the Salaminii, attested only in epigraphic evidence, certainly provided a

useful link between Athens and the island, but it is possible that it also stepped

up its activities at the time of the struggle for Salamis. The responsibilities of

the Salaminii, as reXected in an early-to-mid fourth-century inscription, are a

mixture of duties to the genos and its own heroes and gods, and of duties to

the city of Athens, notably the Oschophoria, which was one of the major

festivals in the Attic calendar. Thus the current behaviour of the polis was both

bolstered by and reciprocally supportive of the cult activity, which was

predicated on and reXective of a particular claim to ancestral kinship. Higbie

sees the gaps in mythical geography as the perfect opportunity for poleis to

make their own claims to wandering heroes according to present need, and to

interpret and present the past and its genealogical networks in whatever way

would be most advantageous. It is, indeed, in this context that she adduces the

eponymous heroes of Attica, whose monumental commemoration in the

Athenian agora we have already noted.48

But Athens did have a distinctive foundation myth, not linked to the

wanderings of heroes, but to a more self-contained claim of autochthony,49

disconnected from the wider Panhellenic framework. We have already seen

with the Attic orators how the self-image of this particular polis and its

construction of the past made this isolating myth into a strong element of

its claim to uniqueness and superiority, rather than emphasizing its integral

place in the world of interconnected heroes. The myth of Attic autochthony

has been discussed fully by others,50 but it is worth noting here, in the context

of examining the stake that the polis held in the construction of its history,

and the mileage that it could thereby gain, that Athens seems to have chosen

such a diVerent route.51 Perhaps its former glory meant that, at the time when

small states were insistently claiming their place in the larger narrative of

48 Higbie, ibid. 296.49 As N. Loraux, ‘Autochthony: An Athenian Topic’, in The Children of Athena, 37–71 at 37,

notes, the Athenian claim to autochthony was in fact twofold, since it included both directautochthony and the derived autochthony claimed from Erichthonius, whose birth from theearth on the Acropolis was celebrated on pots.50 See, for example, V. J. Rosivach, ‘Autochthony and the Athenians’, Classical Quarterly 37

(1987), 294–306, and N. Loraux, ‘Autochthony and the Athenian imaginary’ and ‘Autochthony:An Athenian Topic’, in The Children of Athena, 3–22 and 37–71.51 One explanation might lie in the problem of having a virgin goddess as one’s tutelary deity.

In this case, it would not be possible to express the city’s legitimation through a straightforwardtale of divine progeny.


Mediterranean history, alongside the pride they expressed in more local (and

locally formulated) traditions, Athens resisted this imperative.52

I have, however, argued (in chapter 4) that Athenian historiography is in

certain respects remarkably similar to that of other poleis and, in fact, on this

very point it cuts a striking contrast with the vision of the Athenian past

drawn by the orators and the epitaphios. Other than Antiochus-Pherecydes’

Autochthonous Histories,53 which seem to have told an account of Athenian

autochthony, we have only a Spartan claim to the autochthonous hero, Lelex,

in the extant fragments of city histories.54 It is worth keeping in mind the

possibility that the dominance of excerptors such as Stephanus of Byzantium,

with their interest in place names, explains this dominance in the fragments,

even of Atthides, of stories which relate to the wider world over those which

stress isolation. The pattern is nevertheless striking.

Furthermore, Gotteland has analysed the use made by Athenian sources of

myths of origin for other poleis, with interesting results.55 She notes the way in

which autochthony and migration could both be deployed as myths of origin

to good eVect, depending on context. When Athens was deWning itself against

other poleis it tended to do so by focusing on its unique status as an

autochthonous polis, and presenting a uniform myth of migration and con-

sequent lack of homogeneity to characterize all the other poleis.56 There were,

however, also contexts and audiences for whom the myths of origin of other

cities could be used beneWcially to connect Athens into the wider Panhellenic

world and legitimize its expansion. When other cities were treated in their

own right, rather than as foils to Athens, the melange became a positive

feature, especially in Athenian colonies: ‘C’est justement pour leurs origines

immigrees que ces nouvelles cites sont celebrees.’57 The positive slant that

could be brought to myths of migration does not, of course, amount to the

claim that Athens itself wished to appropriate such a myth in preference to its

own particular story. But the suggestion that it was prepared to use the

52 And see Schepens, ‘Ancient Greek City Histories’, 22, for the idea that local historiographywas particularly crucial in states which did not have a continuous history, but a more patchy setof origins in diVerent phases and starting from diVerent locations, which needed to beembedded in other narratives. For the dominance of such local stories of the life cycle of citiesin Strabo’s Geography, see Clarke, Between Geography and History, 250.53 For which, see FGrH 333 t 1.54 FGrH 596 f 9.55 See S. Gotteland, ‘L’Origine des cites grecques dans les discours atheniens’, in V. Fromentin

and S. Gotteland (eds.), Origines Gentium (Bordeaux, 2001), 79–93.56 Gotteland, ibid. 80. The lack of homogeneity had further consequences which set Athens

apart—its claim to equality among all citizens was clearly related to the myth of shared andidentical origin, while, according to Plato, Menexenus 238e: ‘other cities are made up of menwho are from all over the place and unequal’ (83).57 Gotteland, ibid. 86: ‘It is precisely for their immigrant origins that these new cities are

famous.’


migration myths of other poleis as part of its portfolio is very much in line

with the picture which the historiographical fragments present, of an Athens

which was not only concerned with its own story but also with its place in the

Panhellenic world.

The ‘political’ value of local historiography, not in terms of the appropri-

ation of the past by diVerent competing groups within the city, as Jacoby

suggested, but in the sense of its use in creating an identity for the polis as a

whole, can be amply demonstrated in epigraphy. When Apollonia on the

Rhyndakos sent an embassy in the second century bc to Miletus concerning

the renewal of the kinship which existed between their demos and Miletus, the

natural response on the part of the Milesians was to examine the relevant

histories (K�Ø�Œ�ł��Ø a� ��æd ��ø� ƒ��æ�Æ�) which revealed that the

claim to metropolis-colony relations was genuine.58 The whole episode was

publicly inscribed for the polis to see. Sometimes, history itself formed the

subject of the inscription. Magnesia on the Maeander, for example, went to

enormous lengths to display its dossier of documents which stressed the

status of the place through reference to the past.59 As BoVo points out, in

her fundamental article on local historiography in the epigraphy of Greek

cities, its claims, like that of Apollonia, were based on syngeneia or oikeiotes,

relying on the historical or mythical past, as when Magnesia helped the

Panhellenic sanctuary of Delphi against the Gauls in 279/8 bc.60 The decree

for Callias of Sphettus (270/69 bc) was set up in the Athenian agora to

immortalize a particular historical episode of importance to the polis, namely

the Athenian revolt against Demetrius Poliorcetes in 287/6 bc, a piece of civic

history seen through one man’s life.61 But, as BoVo points out, ‘historical

epigraphy’ was clearly not the sole preserve of the ‘big cities’, but is also

attested for much smaller poleis, such as Aigiale on the island of Amorgos,

which set up an inscription in the late third century bc to honour Hegesippus

and Antipappus for their help against the pirates.62 The marble chronicle

from Pergamum oVers further evidence that local history might Wnd its way

into the public epigraphic record of the town.63 It presents a potted and

58 See Milet 6 (1) 155 (cf. McCabe, Miletos 27.9–10).59 See Syll.3 560, a decree of the boule and demos of Epidamnus in response to the request of

the Magnesians for recognition of the festival of Artemis Leukophryene.60 L. BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta greche: un espressione di storiograWa locale’, in E. Gabba (ed.),

Studi di storia e storiograWa antiche (Como, 1988), 9–48 at 28.61 T. L. Shear, ‘Kallias von Sphettos and the Revolt of Athens in 286 b.c.’, Hesperia Supple-

ment 17 (Princeton, NJ, 1978) (with Bulletin epigraphique 94 (1981)), 230.62 BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta greche’, 15, discussing IG 12 (7) 386 (Syll.3 521). See A. Bielman,

Retour a la liberte: Liberation et sauvetage des prisonniers en Grece ancienne. Recueil d’inscriptionshonorant des sauveteurs et analyse critique (Lausanne, 1994), 141–4.63 OGIS 264 (FGrH 506 f 1). See ch. 4 p. 209 for discussion of the use of dating by local

magistracies in this inscription.


fragmentary city history, telling of the way in which Orontes, son of Artasurus,

a Bactrian by descent, revolted from Artaxerxes, king of Persia [362/1?], ruled

over the Pergamenes, and moved them back to their old city. Orontes then

handed the city over to Artaxerxes before dying. The story continues with an

episode concerning Euippus and Dascylus, Paphlagonians by race . . . and after

that (ŒÆ�d ½��a ÆF½Æ) progresses to Eumenes, who shared power in life with

his brother Attalus, and left it when he died to his son, also called Attalus.

This public display of history in the epigraphy of the polis oVers yet another

manifestation of the general historical awareness alluded to by Isocrates when

he referred to the ‘deeds carried out in the past and handed down as shared

possessions for us all’.64 It was this general awareness of the past which

dictated the parameters for those who would ‘create’ history for the citizens,

whether they were orators, artists, or historians. BoVo has furthermore

claimed that ‘linguaggio letterario e linguaggio epigraWco erano identiWcabili’,

wishing to stress the close relationship between history told by historians and

history told in inscriptions.65 It is interesting that the list, which she draws

from Robert, of historians whose works are echoed in epigraphic narratives

are the ‘great’ historians of Panhellenic narrative—Polybius, Diodorus Sicu-

lus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon—whereas the link that she proceeds

to make for these epigraphic narratives is actually with local historiography.

She considers that their public nature is evidence for the importance of city

deWnition, and that the epigraphic narratives, just as those of local historiog-

raphy, manifest an awareness of the relationship between local and Panhelle-

nic events in an attempt to link the individual, the polis, and the wider Greek

world.66 BoVo’s mention here of the individual is of some interest. We shall

return in this chapter to the commemoration of a particular kind of individual,

who might be publicly celebrated in the epigraphy of the polis, namely the local

historian himself; but the propensity of inscriptions to tell the story of indi-

vidual citizens oVers a neat link between private memory and collective mem-

ory, the prosperity of the polis deriving from the benefactions of its citizens, the

creation of an ‘oYcial’ civic history, publicly celebrated but based on the

achievements of individuals and their families in the service of the polis.67

64 Panegyricus 9.65 BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta greche’, 21: ‘literary language and epigraphic language were the same’.66 BoVo, ibid. We could observe in addition the similar patterning of commemoration in

epigraphy and in the extant fragments of local historiography, namely the focus on particularhighlights in the lives of individuals.

67 BoVo, ibid. 24. Thomas, Oral Tradition, discusses a similar, but perhaps more extreme,phenomenon in her chapter on ‘The Nobility of the Demos’, where she notes the subordinationof individual aristocratic ancestries and achievements to the ‘noble’ democratic polis. As she says(220), there was no need for individual ancestries since each success was simply anothermanifestation of Athenian arete.


One community which intertwined culture and politics in using its past to

bolster its prestige and status within the wider Greek world was Lindos on the

island of Rhodes. We have already noted (in chapter 4) the way in which so-

called Lindian temple chronicle uses local oYcials, in this case priests, to

structure the island’s heroic past, but here it is relevant also to view it as the

product of a particular community, which had a real stake in its construction

and publication. The date of the inscription (99 bc) places it somewhat later

than much of the evidence which I have been considering,68 but the motiv-

ation of the polis to assert itself and its role in the wider world by publicly

claiming the prestige and heritage of its famous sanctuary from the mythic

period onwards is clearly recognizable.69 As Dillery comments, ‘as a brand of

historiography, it [sc. the chronicle] puts Lindos and its cult at the center of

the oikoumene’.70

The document takes the form of a list of votives to the goddess and

epiphanies of that goddess,71 a form of reconstructed history for the sanctu-

ary, ostensibly decreed to recapture and reassert some of the glory accruing to

the place through time, but whose record had been diminished precisely

through the passage of that time. ‘Since the temple of Lindian Athene,

being most ancient (Iæ�ÆØ Æ��) and most honoured, has been decorated

with many beautiful dedications from the most ancient times (½KŒ�ÆºÆØ��ø� �æ �ø�) because of the epiphany of the goddess, but most of

the dedications with their inscriptions have been destroyed by time (�Øa e�

�æ �� K�Ł�æŁÆØ), they decided to replace . . . using letters and public records

and other evidence relating to the dedications and the epiphanies of the

goddess.’72 BoVo is in no doubt that the intended eVect was motivated by

68 See C. Higbie, ‘Homeric Athena in the Chronicle of Lindos’, in S. Deacy and A. Willing(eds.), Athena in the Classical World (Leiden, 2001), 105–125 at 107, for the Wxing of the date bythe list of priests of Athene.69 The importance of the temple of Athene as the prime location for the polis to showcase itself

to visitors is brought out by another inscription, IG 12 (1) 761.45–7: Ł��Ø� K� e ƒ�æe� A�%Ł��Æ½��; ‹�ø� �A�Ø� �E� K�ØªØ��Ø� �Æ��æe� qØ; ‹Ø ¸��Ø�Ø H� IªÆŁH� I��æH� ��Æ��Ø�F�ÆØ K� e� –�Æ�Æ �æ �� (‘place it in the sanctuary of Athena, so that it may be visible to allwho come after, that the Lindians preserve the memory of the noble men for all time to come’).70 J. Dillery, ‘Greek Sacred History’, American Journal of Philology 126 (2005), 505–26 at 519.71 For the text, see Blinkenberg, Lindos 2 (cf. FGrH 532; Syll:3 725). The combination of

epiphanies with oVerings to the goddess may seem exceptional, but a partial parallel can befound in the honoriWc inscription for the local historian, Syriscus of Chersonesus, SGDI 3086(FGrH 807 t 1), who wrote of the epiphanies and benefactions of the goddess to his localcommunities—this time not a reciprocal arrangement, but two types of gift from a divinity tohumans.72 Blinkenberg, Lindos 2 ll. 2–8. The problem of reconstruction must have been acute, since

the temple was destroyed by Wre in the late fourth century and the whole Acropolis rebuilt in theHellenistic period. But the loss of the early votives which proved the antiquity and prestige ofthe sanctuary clearly needed some kind of substitution as the community claimed its placeon the rapidly changing Mediterranean stage.


patriotism: ‘Nel pubblico recupero delle memorie le ragioni della politica—

volte alla riaVermazione dell’importanza del centro di culto lindio nel mondo

greco-romano—convenivano cogli interessi degli studiosi locali: l’ideale ul-

timo era pur sempre la maggior gloria patria.’73

The inscription has already been extensively analysed by Higbie, but it is

still worth noting some of the ways in which it illustrates the value to the

community of constructing (or creating, in Higbie’s terminology) the past in

particular ways to which all can adhere.74 The catalogue of votives oVers a

striking framework through which not only to cement the goodwill of the

patron deity to the polis through a reminder of past gifts, but also to construct

a past for the polis which is distinguished, heroic, and reveals far-reaching

connections with the Panhellenic world. This ‘city history’, then, is expressed

through the gifts brought predominantly by the outside world in honour of

its patron goddess, and temporally articulated by the donors and their place

in time past.75 As in so many city histories, the sequence starts with the

eponymous hero of the place, Lindos himself, before launching into a roll

call of famous names, both local ones and those of wider appeal. There is an

exceptionally high level of source citation, ranging from local historians to

priestly letters, and illustrating what Higbie describes as the unusually strong

‘document-mindedness’ of the chronicle.76 It may, of course, have been

conventional to authenticate one’s claims when the past, and its visible

remains, were such hotly contested commodities,77 and yet even a single

entry gives a Xavour of the extreme degree of citation:78

73 ‘Public memorialization united political motives, which were intended to reaYrm theimportance of the centre of Lindian cult in the Greco-Roman world, with the interests of localscholars: the goal was always the greater glory of the homeland.’ BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta greche’,40–1. As she points out at 27, the Wre had destroyed the material evidence of Athene’s pronoia,which needed to be re-established.

74 C. Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle and the Greek Creation of their Past (Oxford, 2003).75 A neat parallel is oVered by the temple of Apollo at Sicyon, which was adorned with the

weapons of Agamemnon, Teucer, and other heroes, and the oars used by the Argonauts; inanother account, the spear with which Meleager slew the boar and the pipes of Marsyas arementioned (FGrH 551 f 3a and b). All the dedications were, in this case also, convenientlydestroyed when the temple burned down, rendering veriWcation impossible.

76 Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 188.77 See ch. 4 for the competitive appropriation by diVerent poleis of heroes. Higbie, The Lindian

Chronicle, 193, comments on the high premium placed on Trojan relics—both the Argive Heraionand the temple of Apollo at Didyma claimed Euphorbus’ shield from Menelaus—although noneof the Lindian dedications seem to have been claimed elsewhere. For the relic mentality we needlook no further than the history of the early Christian church. The remains of the third-centurymartyr, Polycarp, were venerated (Martyrdom of Polycarp 18.2); and Acts of the Apostles 19.11–12claims that Paul’s handkerchiefs were imbued with God’s healing power.

78 Blinkenberg, Lindos 2, Col. B, lines 18–22. Or see the following entry, Col. B, lines 23–36,where the two wicker shields dedicated by Heracles are attested both by epigraphic evidence andby a whole panoply of authors: Xenagoras in Book 1 of the Chronica syntaxis; Gorgon in Book 1of On Rhodes; Nicasylus in Book 3 of Chronica syntaxis, Hegesias in Encomium of Rhodes,


!��ø� Iæª�æ�� æØ��; K�� y K��ª�ªæÆ��· !��ø� � Ł��ÆØ —�ºØ��Ø ŒÆd ˜Ød —�ºØ�E; u� �ÆØ˛��Æª æÆ� K� AØ Æ�A� �æ��ØŒA� �ı��Ø��ˆ æªø� K� AØ Æ�A� ��æd � . ��ı; �æª��Ł��

K� AØ K�Ø��ºAØ; � (�æ ��ıº�� K� AØ K�Ø��ºAØ.

Minos: a silver drinking cup, on which was written: ‘Minos to Athena Polias

and Zeus Polieus’, as Xenagoras writes in the Wrst book of his Chronogra-

phical Work and Gorgon in the Wrst book of hisOn Rhodes and Gorgosthenes

in his letter and Hierobulus in his letter.

Although the list of donors is given in predominantly chronological order,

forming a seamless sequence from the mythical to the historical periods, our

investigation into the value of a constructed past, displayed in a public place

to the polis, is perhaps better appreciated by considering the donors according

to type. Among the mythical donors, some are clearly of local importance,79

while others, such as Heracles (two wicker shields), Cadmus (a bronze

cauldron inscribed with Phoenician letters), Minos (a silver drinking

cup),80 and Wgures from the Trojan War,81 bring the world of Lindian Athene

into the Panhellenic network. Similarly, the historical donors include a range

of local Wgures—some oVering spoils from campaigns,82 others who had

acted as colonists and built up connections for Lindos in the wider world,83

and a whole range of Wgures of stature from the Panhellenic context and

beyond.84 The connections of Lindos extended as far as Egypt, with the

dedication of a breastplate by Amasis,85 many gifts from Artaphernes, the

Aeelurus in On War against the Exagiades, Phaennus in About Lindos, Gorgosthenes andHierobulus in their letters. Complexity is indicated by the explicit mention of conXictingaccounts, as over Menelaus’ dedication—a helmet, but also a dagger according to Theotimusin Book 1 of Against Aeelurus.

79 See, for example, the Telchines and the eponymous hero, Lindos.80 His connections around the Mediterranean were legendary—see Thucydides 1.4 for Minos

as the Wrst thalassocrat.81 Included are the oVerings from Tlapolemus and independently from his army (who gave

nine each of shields, spears, helmets, pairs of greaves), Telephus, Rhesus, Menelaus, Helen,Canopus (the helmsman of Menelaus), Teucer, and Meriones, for whom the inscription is cited‘spoils of those from Troy’: IŒæ�Ł��ØÆ H� KŒ æ��½Æ�.82 For example, those who sailed with the Lindian tyrant Cleobulus against Lycia dedicated

their spoils, as did the Lindians who dedicated a tithe of the spoils from Crete, and a thank-oVering for victory; the demos itself oVered many gifts from Artaxerxes, king of Persia, and ashield in anticipation of victory in the current war against Ptolemy Philadelphus.83 For example, the Lindians who with the children of Pancis founded Cyrene with Battus or

Deinomenes, father of Gelon, Hieron, Thrasybulus, and Polyzalus, who were originally Lin-dians, but joined in synoecizing Gela with Antiphamus.84 The people of Phaselis led by their founder Lacius, the people of Gela, visitors from

Sybaris, Phalaris of Acragas, and separately his people, all made dedications.85 The dedication is veriWed by a range of sources, including Herodotus and an inscription

stating that ‘the king of Egypt renowned far and wide, Amasis, made a ceremonial presentation’


general of Darius I, a phiale from the people of Soli, even a thank-oVering

from Alexander for the defeat of Darius III.86 And the reXection of Lindian

success in the wider world through diplomatic, military, or commercial

channels continues with dedications from king Ptolemy, king Pyrrhus,87

Hieron, and Philip V. As Higbie notes, the dedications suggest ‘a Panhellenic

nature to the sanctuary of this era and claim[ing] an importance in the world

of politics and commerce’.88

The way in which the polis of Lindos is built into broader frameworks

through the inscribed record of the dedications made at its sanctuary, a record

which was recreated afresh at the turn of the second and Wrst centuries bc, is

interestingly devoid of any mention of Roman visitors and donors. Of course,

the incomplete nature of the document may be enough to account for this

omission. Higbie’s suggestion that this represents an early foreshadowing of

‘Second Sophistic’ mentality—‘If the past was important to the Greek im-

agination as a time of freedom and power, then the presence of Romans in the

list of votives would simply emphasize what the Lindians felt had been lost or

curtailed’—is rightly tentative.89 She does, however, seem at times in danger

of assuming the correctness of this depiction, positing that the stele was

erected to direct attention at a carefully focused version of the past in order

to deXect the gaze from the present.90 I shall discuss later the context of

Roman expansionism, within which many of the local histories of Greek poleis

were composed.

Furthermore, Higbie’s concluding focus on the document as being of

interest to visitors, antiquarians, and intellectuals seems to me to play down

unduly its value to the Lindians themselves in terms of propagating a par-

ticular identity through the presentation of the past. We need to consider

(`Nª��ı �Æ�Øº½�f�� º�Œºı�� þ�Æ�� @�Æ�Ø�), accompanied by a version in hieratic script.Higbie posits a tentative link with Cleobulus, the tyrant of Lindos. The fact that the dedicationby Amasis is of a corselet with 360 threads, representing the days of the pre-intercalary year,epitomizes Egyptian supremacy in the calibration of time.

86 The source for this dedication is, unusually, the public records of the Lindians (�½d�¸Ø��½ø�� æ��ÆØ��).

87 The dedication of king Pyrrhus is described as being made in accordance with an oracle atDodona, providing yet another means of building Lindos into a broader context, this timethrough the network of major sanctuaries.

88 Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 186. M. Heltzer, ‘The Persepolis Documents, the LindosChronicle and the Book of Judith’, La Parola del Passato 44 (1989), 81–101, further stresses theinterconnected world revealed by the Lindos chronicle. He notes close parallels between thisdocument, the Persepolis inscriptions, the Book of Judith (in the epiphany about the drought),and concludes that there were both diplomatic and literary contacts between Greeks, Persians,and Jews at the time of the Xourishing of the sanctuary.

89 Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 168 and 204.90 Higbie, ibid. 242.


again for what constituency such local history was designed. Clearly, the polis

had a good deal to gain from a record of its past which was populated by not

only local but also Panhellenic dignitaries making dedications to its patron

goddess. But it is true that it could derive maximum beneWt only if the

audience for the record included visitors from outside. The stress on docu-

mentation and proof suggests that this was a demanding audience who would

not accept unsubstantiated claims. We shall again encounter this world of

scholarly research and heavily documented claims in the creation of the past

when we consider the honoriWc inscriptions set up by poleis to itinerant

historians. With all the visible proof of the sanctuary’s distinguished past

destroyed by Wre, the evidence of literary sources and inscriptions would be

vital. At the same time, the Xourishing of the Greek East, and not least Rhodes

itself, as a centre for scholarship in the Hellenistic period provided the

necessary fuel. In particular, as Higbie discusses, the scholarly veriWcation of

epic works, and the patchy nature of the heroic adventures of their protag-

onists, seems to have oVered a perfect opportunity to those who would put

their own town ‘on the map’. It must surely be right that ‘opportunities for

antiquarians and local historians were provided by the narrative patterns,

gaps, and contradictory versions of the epic stories’,91 although similar

parameters of credibility presumably applied no less to the composers of

the Lindian chronicle than to the fourth-century orators. Again in Higbie’s

words, ‘This scholarly tradition of interest in the past coexisted and developed

along with the desire of communities to preserve their history: sometimes the

two traditions complemented each other and at other times researchers

pointed out the lack of evidence or even the foolishness of certain cherished

beliefs which a community held about its past.’92

A far more complicated example of the public display of the past is oVered

by the Parian Marble, in particular in terms of its audience and geographical

scope. We have already observed various aspects of this inscription and its

presentation of the past: its strongly linear framework, which is structured

and calibrated by the progression of Athenian kings and archons, and which

notes as an entry in its own right the transition from regal to magisterial

time;93 its use of Parian as well as Athenian time, at least in its framing of the

whole scope of its remit; its focus on intellectual history and the history of

91 Higbie, ibid. 210. Strabo 1.2.31–5 notes that the journey taken by Menelaus was hotlydebated from the second century bc onwards. As Higbie says (217): ‘If Menelaos’ itineraryattracted this amount of scholarly attention, it is no surprise to discover antiquarians makinguse of the ambiguities and holes in the epics to develop versions which were suitable to theirtowns and sanctuaries.’92 Higbie, ibid. 259.93 FGrH 239 f 32.


invention, which so strongly echoes the preoccupations of many local histor-

ians. It is with this last point that we shall start.

The Parian Marble oVers the most stunning demonstration of how the

inscribed past, measured out primarily in terms of political power—Wrst

kings and then archons—could be heavily punctuated also by the history of

invention and that of intellectual or literary prowess. The prevalence of this

phenomenon throughout the inscription can best be conveyed by summar-

izing all the instances:

The Oxford fragment

f 9: The Wrst penteconter sails from Egypt to Greece.

f 10: The Wrst Panathenaea; Erichthonius invents chariot racing; Hyagnis the

Phrygian invents the Phrygian Xute and Wrst plays themusic called ‘Phrygian’.

f 11: Iron is discovered in Ida, by Celmis [and Damnameneus] of the Idaean

Dactyls.

f 12: Demeter, coming to Athens, [invents] the seed corn, and the [Wrst

festival of ploughing time is celebrated, under the instruction of T]riptole-

mus, son of Celeus and Neaira.

f 15: Eumolpus institutes the mysteries in Eleusis and makes known the

works of the [father of M]usaeus.

f 20: Theseus synoecizes Athens and institutes government and democracy;

establishes Isthmian games.

f 22: Establishment of Nemean games by Argives.

f 28: Appearance of Hesiod.

f 29: Appearance of Homer.

f 30: Invention of weights and measures, and silver coinage in Aegina by

Pheidon of Argos.

f 34: Innovations by Terpander the Lesbian, son of Derdenes, in conventions

of [lyre playing].

f 36: Sappho sails from Mytilene to Sicily.

f 37: Gymnastic contest set up with money prize from spoils after Am[phic-

t]yons defeat Cyrrha.

f 38: Contest [for the wr]eath established [at Delphi] again.

f 39: In Ath[en]s [chorus of] comic [actors] instituted, which the Icarians

[Wrst set up] and Susarion invented, and a prize was Wrst set of a basket of

Wgs and a measure of wine.

f 42: Hipponax the iambic poet [lived] about this time.

f 43: Thespis the poet, who brought out a play in the city, was Wrst to [speak

in dialogue], and [the prize] of a goat was established.

f 46: Choruses of men Wrst compete, which contest Hypo[di]cus the Chal-

cidian won as trainer.

f 47: Me[lan]ippid[es] of M[elos won] at Athens.

f 48: Athenians Wght at Marathon against Persians . . . Aeschylus the poet

Wghts in this battle, aged 35.


f 49: Simonides the grandfather of Simonides the poet, himself a poet too,

takes prize at Athens.

f 50: Aeschylus the poet Wrst wins with a tragedy, and Euripides the poet

born, and Stesichorus the poet [arrives] in Greece.

f 54: Simonides of Cos, son of Leoprepes, and who invented a system of

mnemonics, trains actors and wins a prize at Athens.

f 55: Epicharmus the poet was about this time.

f 56: Sophocles ofColonus, sonof Sophilus,winswith a tragedy at the age of 28.

f 57: Simonides the poet dies at the age of 90.

f 59: Aeschylus the poet, having lived for 69 years, dies in [Gel]a in Sicily.

f 60: Euripides Wrst wins with a tragedy at the age of 44. Socrates and

Anaxagoras live about the time of Euripides.

f 63: Euripides dies [having lived for 7- years].

f 64: Sophocles the poet dies, having lived 92 years.

f 65: Telestes of Selinus wins at Athens.

f 66: Socrates the philosopher dies at 70 years of age.

f 67: Ar[i]sto[nous_____ wins] at Athens.

f 68: Polyidus of Selymbria wins with a dithyramb at Athens, 1[__] years.

f 69: Philoxenus the dithyrambist dies, aged 55.

f 70: Anaxandrides the comic [playwright wins at Athens.

f 71: Astydamas wins at Athens.

f 73: Stesichorus the second, of Himera, wins at Athens.

The Paros fragment

f 6: From when Callippus demonstrates astrology.

f 7: Philemon the comic dramatist wins.

f 11: Aristotle the sophist aged 50.

f 14: Menander the comic dramatist Wrst wins the prize at Athens then.

f 15: Sosiphanes poet dies [aged] 45, 49 years, when Theophrastus was

archon at Athens.

f 22: Sosiphanes the poet is [born and _____ ]

It is worth noting Wrst of all the part played by political and religious

institutions in patterning the past of the polis. The moments at which certain

forms of government, oYces, and festivals became part of the way in which

the city conducted itself provide markers in its history and development.

Theseus’ synoecism of Athens and his establishment of government and

democracy are noted;94 the entry (f 30) which spans the so-called ‘lost

fragment’ and the Oxford fragment concerns the introduction of public

measures and weights by Pheidon of Argos and his minting of silver coinage

94 f 20: a� ��ŒÆ � º�Ø� �N� e ÆPe �ı��ØŒØ�� ŒÆd ��ºØ��Æ� ŒÆd c� ��ŒæÆ�Æ��Ææ��ø½Œ�. The sense in which Theseus was a myth-historical prototype for the political reformsof Solon may have been quite deeply embedded in the Athenian self-perception. The attributionof measures to Theseus as given here in the Parian marble text matches that in Plutarch 24.1 andthe assumed lost beginning of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia.


in Aegina; Demetrius of Phaleron’s legislative programme in Athens in 317/6

bc was clearly not an innovation for the city—there had been Athenian

nomothetai before—but it was nevertheless suYciently radical and extensive

to be considered formative (Paros f 13).95 Besides these more overtly political

institutions and developments, the establishment of festivals and religious

institutions was still more prominent. Here, of course, there is a further layer

of signiWcance, since the religious festival calendar would prove so crucial in

patterning annual time both for individual poleis, and for the whole of the

Greek world in the case of Olympiads.96 But the longer sweep of history could

itself be structured by the institution of those very festivals. It is perhaps no

coincidence that Theseus, whose political measures were noted above, appears

in the same fragment in his role as the institutor of the Isthmian games.

Some of these moments of discovery concern Athens directly—Erichthonius’

invention of chariot racing took place on the occasion of the Wrst Panathenaea

and, just as signiWcantly for the identity of the emergent polis, at the time when

he gave the Athenians their name.97Athens was also the cradle for the invention

of seed corn by Demeter, and again this was tied in to the Wrst celebration of a

festival that would become part of the temporal structuring of the city.98 But

some institutions mentioned in the inscription were either altogether external

to Athens or at least held a far wider signiWcance than for that polis alone.

Eumolpus’ institution of the mysteries at Eleusis (f 15) or the rather vague

reference to when ‘the puriWcation (ŒÆŁÆæ� �) Wrst happened’ (f 16) are events

which stretched only marginally beyond Athens. But the establishment of

the gymnastic contest at Delphi with prize money taken from the spoils of the

defeat of Cyrrha (f 37) and the founding of the Nemean games by the Argives

after their march against Thebes with Adrastus (f 22) oVer strong examples.

The relationship between Athens as reXected in this document, its past

(including its innovations), its institutions, its festivals, and those elsewhere is

of clear interest in terms of audience and universal or local relevance. Higbie

draws a clear distinction between the Lindian chronicle, which records the

past of a particular sanctuary in a way which enhances the prestige of a

particular polis, and the Parian Marble, which is not devoted to the past of

a single place, but oVers a compilation of past events across the Greek world,

arranged chronologically.99 Chaniotis classiWed the marble as a form of

95 Demetrius had been made absolute governor at Athens for ten years by Cassander. Hisreforms included limiting military and other service, anti-luxury measures, tightening up oncontracts and property regulations, and the establishment of nomophylakes.

96 Note also the celebration of another Panhellenic sanctuary site and its festival in f 38,where the contest for the wreath is re-established at Delphi.

97 f 10: ŒÆd %Ł��Æ��ı� ½T�� ½Æ��.98 f 12: ˜��æ I�ØŒ�� N� %Ł��Æ� ŒÆæ�e� K�½�Fæ��; ŒÆd �æ½��æ��Æ K��æ�½�Ł� �æ��.99 Higbie, The Lindian Chronicle, 271.


‘Universalgeschichte’,100 and it is noticeable that the history of invention and

intellectual achievement which the Parian Marble tells is by no means a story

of exclusively Athenian heroes, although they do feature increasingly heavily.

The very Wrst invention mentioned in the document emanates from Egypt;

namely, the Wrst penteconter, which sailed from Egypt to Greece with Danaus

and his daughters.101 I have already noted the introduction of weights and

measures, and of silver coinage for Aegina by Pheidon of Argos (f 30). We

might add the Phrygian inventions of various musical styles at the same time

as the initiation of the Panathenaea in Athens (f 10) or the innovations in lyre

playing made by Terpander the Lesbian (f 34). The history of invention was

clearly not solely an Athenian aVair.

It is nevertheless striking that the non-Athenian achievements are clustered

at the start of the document. As time moves on, Athens quickly becomes the

inventive polis par excellence; that city and its festival cycle provide the context

in which all achievements take place, with the result that Athens is enhanced

by association, even if it does not always produce native talent. The complex

relationship between Athens and the outside world, as constructed in this

account of the past, is neatly encapsulated in the entry concerning the

discovery of iron in Ida by Celmis and Damnameneus of the Ictaean Dac-

tyls.102 The incongruity of other foreign inventions being placed in the

chronological framework of Athenian regal and archonal time is here both

heightened and explicable. The entry is framed by two diVerent forms of

dating—Wrstly by the reign of Minos in Crete and his settlement of Apollonia,

and secondly by the reign of Pandion in Athens. The important discovery of

iron on Crete provides the obvious context for chronology involving the

Cretan king. But the whole document uses Athenian time as its backbone,

thereby creating a synchronism between Cretan and Athenian regal time.

BoVo’s interesting discussion oVers a further angle to the question of

audience and the value of the document to a particular polis.103 She sets the

100 A. Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften (Stuttgart, 1988), 87–9.101 f 9. The formula is interesting for its distinction between the action involving the

new invention—the voyage from Egypt—and the naming of the object (ŒÆd T��Ł��Œ ��æ��). See Erichthonius’ naming of the Athenians in f 10. The building up of avocabulary for the newly discovered trappings of civilization itself makes up an importantstrand of the chronological structure.Note the mention here of the foundation of the temple of Athene on Lindos bringing this

document and the Lindian chronicle temporarily and subconsciously into contact.102 This is an unusual entry among the primarily institutional and artistic inventions. The

IdaeanDactyls clearly featured importantly in the local stories surrounding Crete (FGrH 468 f 1)and in the epic cycle (M. Davies, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Gottingen, 1988), f 2). Theirappearance here in a document of primarily Athenian history for an audience on Paros doesraise some intriguing questions concerning sources, intelligibility, and relevance.103 BoVo, ‘EpigraW di citta greche’, 39.


Parian Marble in partial contrast with the self-promotion of individual poleis

through their part in the shared history of Greece, and characterizes it instead

as a broad ‘epigraphic history’ of political and cultural moments of the

ancient world from Cecrops to 263 bc. The chronicle, she argues, reXected

the interests of a private circle who met in the Archilocheion of the family of

Mnesiepes on Paros, and the text was inscribed on its wall together with

chronicle of the foundation of the building, a history of the poetic calling of

Archilochus, and a long citation of a poem about the war with Naxos. We

shall return to the poetic associations of this context, but here it is the setting

which is at issue.

The original location of both the Parian Marble and the various inscrip-

tions relating to Archilochus on Paros is diYcult to gauge, owing to the

dispersal and reuse of the stones. The so-called Sosthenes inscription,104 set

up in the Wrst century bc, but referring to Demeas’ third-century account of

Archilochus, his times, and the historical content of his poetry, is of unknown

provenance and does not directly refer to a cult of the poet, although one of

the two blocks was described in the original publication as belonging to a wall

which formed part of an ‘Archilocheion’.105 Pieces of the so-called Mnesiepes

inscription, concerning the poetic inspiration of Archilochus and the estab-

lishment of his cult, were found near to the river Elitas close to the modern

town of Paros, and talk directly of an Archilocheion, a building dedicated to

the cult of the poet. It is presumably the similarity between the letter forms

on the Mnesiepes inscription and those of the Parian Marble,106 which leads

to the assumption that the Parian Marble might also have been located within

this context. Certainly the third-century date of the Mnesiepes inscriptions,

suggested by the letter forms, suits the dating of the Parian Marble, and adds

weight to the proposition that the Archilocheion was indeed the location of

the latter inscription. The implications of this proposition in terms of the

relationship between poetry and historiography will be discussed later.

104 See IG 12 (5) 445 (FGrH 502 f 1) for the account by Demeas of the literary career ofArchilochus, ‘archon by archon’ (ŒÆ� ½¼æ��Æ� �ŒÆ��), beginning from the Wrst archonshipof Eur[ . . . ] up to when a Milesian penteconter bringing ambassadors to Paros fromMiletus wasdestroyed in the Naxian strait and one survived who was called Coeranus and was saved by adolphin and put in at a cave, which still bears his name. There were also snippets concerningThracians and Pisistratus . . . Glaucus and Thasus. Demeas, however, combined a history of thepoet with an account of the events treated in his poems. See A. P. Burnett, Three Archaic Poets:Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho (London, 1983), 16 n. 3, on this inscription.

105 H. von Gaertringen in IG 12 (5). E. Bowie, ‘Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance ofNarrative’, in A. Cavarzere, A. Aloni, and A. Barchiesi (eds.), Iambic Ideas: Essays on a PoeticTradition from Archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire (Oxford, 2002), 1–27 at 2 n. 3, adds hisvoice to this view of the placing of the Sosthenes inscription ‘probably also in the Archilocheion’.

106 As noted by D. Clay, Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis (Cambridge,MA and London, 2004), 11.


But this location would also have implications for the supposed audience.

The possibility that the history presented by the Parian Marble was not for the

polis as a whole, but for an elite group, may tell against Jacoby’s model of local

historiography as the product of a need for poleis to assert themselves. But this

might in turn support the notion that the history of the Parian Marble is not

really ‘local’ history at all. BoVo focuses on the neglect of the local history of

the island and, like Higbie, on the great variety of events reported for each

period. Maybe, then, what we have here is not an example of a polis creating a

past which would show it in its best possible light, but simply the whims and

fancies of an elite family and its circle of friends and visitors.107 The complex

range of contexts within which history might be told, particularly in poetry,

covering both aristocratic gatherings and performances for the polis as a

whole, is an issue to which we shall return.

It is interesting that the two major extant fragments are rather diVerently

focused. In terms of political and military history, there is little to distinguish

between them. The Paros fragment, dealing with the period 336–298 bc,

naturally has entries concerning the accession of Alexander and his career

(f 1–7), and the trials and tribulations of the successors (f 8–end). It is by no

means devoid of either intellectual Wgures—Callippus the astrologer (f 6),

Philemon the comic dramatist (f 7), the Wrst success at Athens of Menander

the comic dramatist (f 14), and the death of Sosiphanes the poet (f 15)108—

or natural phenomena—an eclipse of the sun (f 16), earthquakes in Ionia

(f 24), and the appearance of a comet (f 25). However, the emphasis is

strongly on political history and particularly that of the wider Hellenistic

world. The Oxford fragment too stretches broadly across the Mediterranean

world in its coverage of political history. It shows some interest in founda-

tions;109 it mentions both the expedition against and the capture of Troy (f 23

and f 24), the reign of Alyattes over Lydia (f 35), Croesus (f 41), Cyrus (f 42),

the accession of Darius (f 44); the Persian wars feature several times, linking

the East with the history of the Greek mainland,110 a link which is reinforced

107 A further possibility is that the family chose to put up a private copy of a publicdocument, which would complicate our reading of the relationship between content andaudience. Burnett, Three Archaic Poets, 17, describes the cult as ‘public’. This cannot be morethan a guess, but, if well founded, it raises fresh questions over the nature of the audience for thecontents of the Archilocheion.108 And the birth of another poet of the same name (F22).109 See f 26 for Teucer’s foundation in Cyprus, f 27 for Neleus’ colonization of Miletus and

the rest of Ionia, and the establishment of the Panionian games, f 31 for Archias’ foundation ofSyracuse from Corinth.110 See f 48 for the battle of Marathon, fought in by Aeschylus; f 51 for Xerxes’ bridge over

the Hellespont, the digging of the Athos canal, and the battle of Salamis; f 52 for the battle ofPlataea, resulting in Athenian success.


with the growing power of Macedonia;111 and non-Athenian Greek history

recurs throughout, but especially in the earlier part.112 The western Mediter-

ranean is not ignored, with a whole sequence of Syracusan tyrants men-

tioned—Gelon (f 53), Hieron (f 55), and the elder and younger Dionysius

(f 62 and 74). Its presentation of Athenian history, it could be argued, is no

more prominent than that of other poleis and other powers; indeed much of it

focuses on the early period—the famine under Aegeus (f 19), the reign of

Theseus (f 20) under whom the Amazons invaded Attica (f 21), the begin-

ning of Pisistratus’ tyranny (f 40).

But the larger Oxford fragment becomes increasingly dominated by Athen-

ian cultural achievements. Whereas the Paros fragment lacks an Athenocentric

perspective to the point where Athens needs to be speciWed, rather than

assumed, as the location for Menander’s comic success (f 14), no such

qualiWcations are needed in the Oxford fragment with its relentless presenta-

tion of Athenian intellectual and cultural success. It seems to me perfectly

possible that this is a document for the polis of Athens no less than for a

rareWed and aristocratic family on Paros. We have already noted the way in

which Athenian regal and magisterial time is used to structure the whole

scope of world history from Cecrops to the mid-third century bc. The crucial

date of the fall of Troy is dated still more speciWcally and locally to the second

year of Menestheus’ reign in Athens and the seventh day before the end of the

month Thargelion (f 24). Furthermore, the document bears extraordinarily

close resemblances not only to the chronological frameworks established by

chronographers and used by the Atthidographers, but also to their contents.

In particular, the earliest period treated by the document, with its tales of the

dispute between Ares and Poseidon because of the latter’s son, Halirrhothius

(f 3), the Xood at the time of Deucalion (f 4), the establishment of the

eponymous Amphictyony by one of the sons of Deucalion and the naming

of the Hellenes after another of his sons, Hellen (f 5 and 6) could all be taken

directly from the fragments of the Atthides.113 All of this points to the

possibility that this document belonged to the world of the polis of Athens,

presenting its historywithin the context of thewiderMediterraneanworld, and

particularly stressing its supremacy in intellectual and civic innovation, the

111 See f 58 for the accession of Perdiccas, f 61 for the succession to Archelaus, and f 77 forthat of Philip, son of Amyntas. The role of Macedonia as bridge between East and West isstrengthened at this point by the coincidence of the accession of Ochus, son of Artaxerxes inPersia.

112 f 7 notes the arrival of Cadmus in Thebes and the establishment of the Cadmea, f 22 isconcerned with the Argive march against Thebes with Adrastus and the founding of the Nemeangames, f 72 records the battle of Leuctra between Thebes and Sparta.

113 See Philochorus, FGrH 328 f 3 for Halirrhothius, Hellanicus of Lesbos, FGrH 323a f 23for Deucalion and his descendants.


features for which it enjoyed a lasting reputation and which had become in

some sense its deWning characteristics.114

The trend within the Oxford fragment towards Athens itself in a more

exclusive sense, having absorbed the inventions from outside to join its own

innovations, is matched by a trend away from invention and towards artistic

achievement, largely within precisely the context of the emergent institutions.

But there is an intermediate position occupied by the various stages of

development within the Welds of literature and music themselves. Just as

there is a chronology of political and religious institutions, so too is there a

temporal structure provided by the introduction of diVerent forms, genres,

and styles. The invention of the Phrygian Xute and ‘other styles of the Mother

of Dionysus, of Pan and . . .’ (f 10) has already been commented on. But we

may also note the institution of the chorus of comic actors at Athens, a

phenomenon which the Icarians Wrst set up (½��½ø� �æ��ø�� (ŒÆæØ�ø�) and which Susarion invented (��æ �� #�ı�Ææ�ø��) (f 39).

This particular episode not only hints at a distinction between the conception

of an idea by an inventor Wgure, its realization by a group, and its practice in

another location. The Wrst occurrence in Athens was attended by the estab-

lishment of a prize of Wgs and wine—another innovation to match the new

chorus. Then the catalogue of artistic discoveries and accompanying prizes

continues. Thespis the poet, who brought out a play in the city, was the Wrst to

introduce dialogue (½��Œæ��Æ�� æH��);115 the competition between chor-

uses of men was Wrst won by Hypodicus the Chalcidian as trainer (f 46);

Simonides of Cos invented a system of mnemonics, trained actors, and won a

prize at Athens (f 54).

But, just as with the history of invention of institutions, that of artistic

forms soon gives way to the chronological frame oVered by the biographical

record of prominent artistic Wgures, and the list of achievements within the

new styles and genres. Hesiod (f 28) and Homer (f 29) oVer early chrono-

logical markers, shortly followed by Sappho (f 36) and Hipponax, the iambic

poet (› NÆ��Ø �) (f 42). But by far the majority of literary references are to

poets successful in the great Athenian festival competitions, composing for

public events, which were enjoyed by the whole polis. The biographical

mentions of the early poets are followed by the appearances and particularly

the deaths of major poets, intellectuals, and tragedians—the deaths of Si-

monides aged 90 (f 57), of Aeschylus in Sicily aged 69 (f 59), of Euripides

114 For the way in which poleis could be broadly characterized, see Thucydides 1.67–88, andthe debate at Sparta in which representatives from Corinth, Athens, and Sparta speak accordingto type.115 f 43. The implication is that the prize of a goat, which was introduced at the same time,

was indeed associated with this style.


(f 63) and Sophocles aged 92 (f 64), of Socrates aged 70 (f 66) and Philox-

enus, the dithyrambist, aged 55 (f 69).

Of course, it is not only the lives and deaths of these Wgures which structure

the shared past of the city, but more so their dramatic successes and contri-

butions to the cultural Xourishing of the polis, which were no less important

to its identity than the political and religious institutions themselves. Aes-

chylus’ Wrst win in a tragic contest (f 50), Sophocles’ success with tragedy in

470/69 bc (f 56), and Euripides’ Wrst similar triumph (f 60) are joined by

those of many literary Wgures more obscure to us—Melanippides of Melos

(f 47), Telestes of Selinus (f 65), Aristonous (f 67), Polyidus of Selymbria

with the dithyramb (f 68), Anaxandrides the comic dramatist (f 70), Asty-

damas (f 71), Stesichorus the second of Himera (f 73), Philemon the comic

dramatist (Paros f 7). They form a chain of literary Wgures whose successes in

the dramatic festivals, which punctuated the calendar and marked out time

for the polis both through and across the years, stretch alongside the political

magistracies. And just as there was an interest in chronological coincidences

concerning political and military events, so here in the Parian Marble do we

Wnd certain ‘golden years’ in which intellectual Wgures clustered. The year

when Aeschylus Wrst won with tragedy coincided with the birth of Euripides

and the arrival in Greece of Stesichorus (f 50); Euripides, Socrates, and

Anaxagoras are noted as rough contemporaries.116

The political and military chronological schemes are brought together with

the literary and intellectual framework at certain junctures. Some are quite

straightforward juxtapositions of information. The dramatic success of Phi-

lemon the comic occurred in the same year as the foundation of the city of

Hellenis near the Tanais (Paros f 7); Simonides (grandfather of Simonides the

poet) won at Athens in the year of Darius’ death and the accession of Xerxes

(f 49); Simonides of Cos won at Athens in the year when the statues of the

tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton were set up (f 54); Hieron became

tyrant of Syracuse at the time of Epicharmus the poet.117 The return to the

coast of the Greeks who accompanied Cyrus on his anabasis coincided with

the death of Socrates (f 66); the acme of Callippus the astrologer fell in the

same year as Alexander’s defeat of Darius and the hanging of Bessus (Paros

f 6); and the complex manoeuvrings of the Hellenistic kings in their various

116 f 60: q��Æ� �b ŒÆ� ¯PæØ�� #øŒæ�� ŒÆd �`�Æ�Æª æÆ�. This entry is noteworthy forits level of detail. Euripides’ age at the time of his Wrst victory is given as 44 years.

117 f 55. I�� y � (�æø� #ıæÆŒ�ı��H� Kıæ��ı��; � ˙˙—(((; ¼æ�� %Ł��Ø��æ��· q� �b ŒÆd � ¯��Ææ�� › ��Ø�c� ŒÆa �F��. The similarity with Timaeus (FGrH566) is striking. See f 133 on the Eleatic contest which took place ‘during Hieron’s rule in Sicilyand at the time of Epicharmus the poet’ (ŒÆa � (�æø�Æ e� #ØŒ�º�Æ� �ı�� ŒÆd � ¯��Ææ��e� ��Ø��).


locations could still be brought into synchronism with the cultural life of

Athens—Antigonus’ crossing into Asia, Alexander’s burial in Memphis, and

Ptolemy’s journey into Cyrene coincided with the deaths of not only Perdiccas

and Craterus, but also Aristotle (Paros f 11); the year that saw Cassander’s

return to Macedonia, the building of Thebes, the death of Olympias,

the founding of Cassandrea and the tyranny of Agathocles in Syracuse,

also witnessed the Wrst win at Athens by Menander the comic dramatist

(Paros f 14).

Occasionally, the relationship between literary and political time was more

intricately wrought. The trial of Orestes on the Areopagus is noted in some

detail—the complainants are named, Erigone the daughter of Aegisthus is

added as co-defendant, and the outcome is given as acquittal for Orestes (no

verdict is recorded on Erigone) because the votes were equal (f 25). This

could naturally be seen as a key moment in the judicial functioning of

the polis. But it is also, of course, the subject of a trilogy presented by one

of the major dramatists mentioned in the document.118 And the pivotal place

occupied by Aeschylus, as linking diVerent types of time, is further enhanced

by a later entry in the document, since his military role at Marathon is also

given prominence there (f 48). Thus the Wgure of the tragedian runs like a

thread through the document, drawing together various structures—the

judicial and mythical subject matter of one of his trilogies (f 25), the military

world of the Persian wars (f 48), his Wrst success in the context of dramatic

festival competition at Athens (f 50), and his death (f 59). It seems appro-

priate that the life of the polis over the long span of history may be mirrored in

microcosm by the life of one of those literary Wgures and intellectuals, whose

task it was to present the polis and its past to itself and its visitors at one of its

great festivals.

Athens may have claimed to hold a special status for its autochthony myth

and for its intellectual life, both of which formed important elements in its

identity—one its foundation story, the other a Weld of pre-eminence—and

both of which provided a way of articulating the past and oVered a subject

matter for history in its own right. It was, however, willing to ‘buy into’ the

migration myths of other poleis, as we have seen. Furthermore, its strategy of

claiming both autochthony and intellectual supremacy would later be imi-

tated by another polis, Halicarnassus. This city claimed autochthony along-

side a wish to maintain a presence and a history within a wider framework,119

118 Although the mention of Erigone excludes the possibility that the version mentioned herewas actually that of Aeschylus.119 H. Lloyd-Jones, ‘The Pride of Halicarnassus’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik

124 (1999), 1–14 at 4, observes that claims to autochthony were by no means an Athenianmonopoly, Thebes with its myth of the dragon’s teeth being an obvious counterexample.


as shown in a relatively recent inscription relating to this polis, found in situ

on the remains of an ancient wall at the promontory Kaplan Kalesi, or

Salmacis.120 Some sixty lines of elegiac verse celebrate the merits of Halicar-

nassus, starting with its mythical past and moving on to famous oVspring,

including Herodotus, described as ‘the Homer of history in prose’.121 Just as

Athens might ask and answer the question ‘What makes Athens great?’ on

occasions such as the delivery of the epitaphios, Halicarnassus asks itself the

question ‘Why is Halicarnassus beloved by the gods?’, to which the answer

comes in the form of an outpouring of civic pride. Halicarnassus was loved by

Zeus because he had been born there,122 and because he was subsequently

saved by the autochthonous Halicarnassians. But the Halicarnassians are

also celebrated in the poem for the various inXuxes of newcomers through

colonization—that of the Wrst colonist, led by Athena riding on Pegasus, that

of Endymion, and that of Anthes.123 Thus, alongside the high status enjoyed

by the autochthonous curators of the temple, we Wnd the assertion that

Halicarnassus was anchored in the world of Panhellenic migration and heroic

wanderings.124

Furthermore, Halicarnassus is special not only because of its foundation

myths, but also because of the literary Wgures whom the city has produced.

The inscription functions both as a very compressed city history and as a

celebration of the role of intellectual achievement in that illustrious history,

striking a clear parallel with the Parian Marble, and beautifully illustrating the

mileage in terms of civic pride which poleis could derive from their associated

literary and cultural Wgures. Thus, the inscription honours all its intellectual

alumni and their products—the art of Andron, the epic of Panyassis,125

Cyprias who composed the Iliaca, Menestheus loved by the Muses, the divine

120 The details of publication, text, translation, and commentary are to be found in S. Isager,‘The Pride of Halikarnassos: Editio Princeps of an Inscription from Salmakis’, Zeitschrift furPapyrologie und Epigraphik 123 (1998), 1–23. The date of the inscription is a source ofcontention. Isager suggests that either the third or the second centuries bc would be plausible.Lloyd-Jones, ‘The Pride of Halicarnassus’, 13, however, is conWdent that both content and stylemilitate against a date before the second century.

121 Line 43: � æ �� e� ��e� K� ƒ��æ�ÆØ�Ø� � …��æ��.122 The claim was very commonly made, just like those concerning the appropriation of

Panhellenic heroes (see ch. 4). According to Pausanias 4.33.1: ‘it is impossible to enumerate allwho claim that Zeus was born and raised by them’.

123 The Anthes story is told in detail by Strabo 8.6.14.124 See Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past’, 116–37, for the way in which colonial narratives

could prove particularly eVective tools for communities to use in constructing a signiWcant pastand shaping their collective identity.

125 On Panyassis, see E. L. Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography in Early Greek Elegiac andIambic Poetry’, in Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft, 44–66 at 49, where he notes thatPanyassis’ Ionica, at around seven thousand lines, probably covered the history of more than asingle city, taking him above the status of a local historian.


inspiration of Theaetetus, writer of comedy, Dionysus, Zenodotus, expert

writer of tragedies . . . Nossus, a leading chronologist in history,126 and Her-

odotus himself. Isager’s suggestion that the Pinakes of Callimachus may have

been the direct source of this catalogue of authors, just as Callimachus may

have written a ktisis of Halicarnassus used by the author, would embed the

epigraphic display of civic pride in literary achievement in the world of

Hellenistic scholarship.127

Furthermore, this elevated level of professionalism might Wnd interesting

echoes in the world of the itinerant historians who were, like the literary

honorands in this inscription, celebrated by cities whose pride was boosted by

their activities. We might, indeed, be dealing with a world in which the

practice of local historiography, like that of literary production, was special-

ized and scholarly; and the practice of local epigraphy, in its commemoration

of these works, itself displayed elements of the same scholarly approach, and

may even have drawn on the great centres of Hellenistic learning for its

information.128 For Lloyd-Jones, the inscription oVers an excellent example

of the way in which ‘Greeks of the Hellenistic and imperial periods used

history and tradition to deWne and assert their Greek and civic identity’.129He

is surely right, and this use of the past in the service of the polis is one of the

major themes of this book. But the scholarly aspirations of the works and of

their commemorative inscriptions would add a further angle in presenting us

with a fascinating network of interconnections between past and present,

scholarship and polis, elite and broad audiences.130 We therefore need to turn

our attention now to the Wgure through whom these dichotomies were

Wltered, that of the historian. We have considered (in chapter 4) some aspects

of the tale which such Wgures told, but now I shall focus on the historian

himself as teller of the past in the same context as the orator, the comic poet,

and the calendar maker.131 The practice of commemorating the literary

126 Line 53: ˝ �� K� ƒ��æ�ÆØ�Ø �æ �ø� ��æÆ �F��.127 Isager, ‘The Pride of Halikarnassos,’ 20.128 Such a view might tell against the inclination of Lloyd-Jones, ‘The Pride of Halicarnassus’,

13–14, to see this inscription as no earlier than the second century bc and to set it in the contextof late Republican depradations in Asia Minor: ‘one hopes that the inscription did something tokeep up the people’s spirits.’129 Lloyd-Jones, ibid. 13.130 Here we may recall the use of historiographical texts by the scholiasts to elucidate the

construction and keeping of time in the reality of Athenian society, as reXected in Aristophanes’comedies. These plays, presented to the Athenian public, thus brought together the temporalworld of the historian with that of the temporal experience of the community in the present.131 This approach may run the risk of denying nuance and variation in the audiences and

moments of reception of these diVerent formulations of the past, but I do nevertheless wish tosee them all as expressions which are designed to appeal to the polis in the broad sense, and to itssense of local identity.


achievements of the polis as signiWcant moments in its history becomes even

more resonant when the celebration is not just of literary works in general, but

of works which themselves explicitly set out to tell the history of the polis, those

of the local historians, thereby creating a double layer of civic signiWcance.

3 . LOCAL HEROES: PLACING THE

HISTORIAN IN THE POLIS132

How are we to assess the Wgure of the historian in the polis? The orator, as we

have seen (in chapter 5), has a much more clearly deWned role in relation to

the people at large. He draws his persuasive power partly from his adoption

and subsequent manipulation of the shared past of the polis. He tells a past of

the city which its citizens wish to hear, but also one which reinforces his

argument. But, as has already been mentioned, this process is contingent on

some pre-existing and relatively coherent public consciousness of what stories

could plausibly be told about the past, and within what frameworks. It seems

as though the local historian must also be a crucial Wgure in the creation of

this ‘shared past’. We have established that the understanding and arrange-

ment of time was part of the life of the polis, as well as being made explicitly

into a part of its history worthy of commemoration. Furthermore, we have

seen the various uses that the polis might make of its past in competitive,

disputative, or aspirational contexts. But epigraphic evidence attests directly

to the high value and status accorded not only to history but also to the local

historians themselves.

This seems an appropriate moment to recall the debate, both ancient and

modern, about the relative merits and values of diVerent forms of historiog-

raphy, particularly that surrounding the notion of ‘great’ history. As we have

seen (in chapter 4), historians in the ancient world were often scathing about

those who undertook to write about not the grand sweep of Panhellenic

history, but the aVairs of a single polis or area. The association of scale with

signiWcance is a natural one to adduce, and it is implicit in the claims of many

ancient historians to have taken magniWcent and far-reaching themes as the

132 Many of the ideas in this and the subsequent section were Wrst formulated for a paperdelivered at a conference in Milan in June 2004 held in honour of Fergus Millar, and laterpublished as ‘Parochial Tales in a Global Empire: Creating and Recreating the World of theItinerant Historian’, in L. Troiani and G. Zecchini (eds.), La Cultura storica nei primi due secolidell’impero romano (Rome, 2005), 111–28. I should like to thank Prof. Giuseppe Zecchini for hiskind invitation, and all the participants for their helpful and productive comments, in particularProf. Adalberto Giovannini.


subjects for their works.133 I have, however, argued that the horizons and

conceptual frameworks evident in works of local historiography were often

much broader than one might suppose. Furthermore, if we look to the more

immediate reception of local historians, as it was publicly expressed on stone

inscriptions scattered through the poleis of Greece, a rather diVerent picture

emerges. The local historians were seen not as inferior writers, but as Wgures

of great stature, heroes within the polis.

› �B�� ˛��H�Æ %æ��ı; �ÆE�Æ ƒ��æØH� �ı�ªæÆ��Æ �º�Ø�� „æ�Ø.

The demos dedicated Xenophon, son of Aristus, even though still a child, an

accomplished composer of histories, to Hera.134

The second-century ad honoriWc stele of Xenophon of Samos, an accom-

plished historian in spite of his youth, might seem unpromisingly out of

chronological place in a discussion which has thus far focused primarily on

fourth-century and Hellenistic material. This inscription oVers clear proof

that the world of small-scale historiography and its appreciation by the

community whose story it told persisted into the Roman imperial period,

even when universal historiography seemed the natural form to adopt.135

Although the primary focus of this book is not the period of Roman imperi-

alism, as we shall see the world of Rome does impinge on the world of Greek

local historiography, without inevitably subsuming it into the universal

narratives which would become the lasting legacy of this period. One of the

issues which I shall address here is diVerent forms of connectivity which are

manifested through historiography, including that brought by Rome. But for

133 See Herodotus’ ‘great and wonderful deeds’ (1.1.1): æªÆ ��ª�ºÆ � ŒÆd Łø�Æ��;Thucydides’ ‘greatest upheaval’ (1.1.2): Œ��Ø� ��ª�� of the Peloponnesian War; Polybius’theme of the growth of Roman dominion, which outdid all previous empires, great though theywere (1.2.1–8). This claim to ‘great’ historiography would be continued by Roman writersin Sallust’s ‘great war’ (Bellum Jugurthinum 5.1) (bellum . . . magnum) between Rome andNumidia. We have already seen the claims made by universal historians (ch. 3) and whenTacitus claimed that historiography under the Principate had become a pale imitation of itsRepublican ancestors, he did so by complaining, albeit ironically, about the signiWcance of itstheme—now small (parva) and lightweight to recall (levia memoratu), Ann. 4.32.134 IG 12 (6) 308 (cf. SEG 1.400; FGrH 540a t 1). See L. Robert,Hellenica 13 (1965), 50–1, for

the important point that �ÆE� indicates not ‘son’, but ‘child’: ‘�ÆE�Æ n’indique pas la Wliation, a laplace de �Ø �, mais l’age’ (pace Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften,317, who describes Xenophon clearly as ‘Sohn des Aristos’). Thus Robert places this inscriptionin the category of those celebrating child prodigies, argues that �º�Ø�� means ‘accomplished’(surprisingly, given the youth of Xenophon) rather than ‘famous’ (as suggested in SEG on thebasis that other poets and orators in the Roman period are described in this way), andpunctuates with a comma after � `æ��ı rather than after �ÆE�Æ as in SEG.135 See K. Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits

of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden, 1999), 249–79. Forthe continued importance of local historiography we may recall the sixth-century history ofByzantium with which chapter 4 opened.

Placing the historian in the polis 339

now it is suYcient to note that Xenophon of Samos oVers a relatively late

example of a long-standing phenomenon whereby historians are publicly

honoured by a community. The striking notion of dedicating a person must

clearly refer to the erection of a statue of the honorand (as we know was the

case for his compatriot, Leon, discussed below). It is important to acknow-

ledge that Xenophon is not explicitly named as a local historian, simply as a

composer of histories, and to repeat that he is a relatively isolated Wgure in

terms of contemporary parallels. However, he and his honoriWc inscription Wt

closely into a pattern, which is well attested in the preceding centuries, and

makes it possible to Wnd a context in which to interpret this individual.

In the second century bc, the people of Samos had had occasion to honour

another historian:

The people of Samos dedicated [this statue of] Leon son of Ariston to Hera.

Rock gets old over time and holy bronze, worn down by an early-morning

snowstorm, and the might of iron grows tired. But the indestructible

reputation that comes from being held in high esteem lasts throughout

life. This is what Leon enjoyed throughout the city, since he brought the

deeds concerning his fatherland into sound histories,136 celebrating Hera,

born of the land, and the number of their naval exploits which enabled them

to adorn the temple with their spoils.137

Like Xenophon, Leon was to be dedicated as a statue to Hera.138 But it is

made explicit in this longer inscription that the demos went to this great

136 Dillery, ‘Greek Sacred History’, 513, notes the unusual use of �Ø�ı��, which is normallyapplied to people. He suggests that here we see a transferred epithet, and that the dutifulness ofthe historian is applied to his work.

137 See IG 12 (6) 285 (FGrH 540 t 1):

› �B�� › #Æ��ø�¸��Æ � `æ��ø��

� „æ�Ø.

ˆ�æ��Œ�Ø ŒÆd ºAÆ� ��e �æ ��ı M�b �b� ±ª� �

�ÆºŒe� I�� M�æ�Æ� �æı� �� Ø��;ŒÆd e �Ø��æ�Ø�� Œ��Ø �Ł��· ± �� I�e � �Æ�

¼ŁæÆı�� Æ ��Æ ��Ø ��.

A� �b ¸�ø� KŒ�æ�� ŒÆa � ºØ�; n� ��æd ��æÆ��æ��ØÆ� �N� �Ø�ıa� ¼ªÆª�� ƒ��æ�Æ�;��Æ� � „æÆ� ÆP �Ł��Æ ŒÆd � �Æ �Æı�d�

Þ��Æ�� Œ�º�Ø� ƒ�æe� Iªº�Ø�Æ�.

The inscription, like that for his compatriot and namesake, was set up in the Heraeum.138 The certitude that the language indicates the presence of an accompanying statue is

conWrmed by the fact that this inscription was found on a statue base (see Bulletin epigraphique(1941) 110a; also W. Peek, ‘Eine neuer samische Historiker’, Klio 33 (1940), 164–70 at 164.).Thus we Wnd a neat illustration of the topos of the monumentalization of the writer, summedup both by his image and his work.


trouble and expense because of services which Leon had performed in stress-

ing the close relationship of the city to the goddess, Hera, and writing up local

history, drawing the ‘actions concerning his own land (��æd ��æÆ�) into

sound histories’.

The inscription is fascinating for many reasons. The question of what

precisely Leon had composed is unclear. Dillery suggests that it should be

seen as a history of Samos, with a focus on the patron goddess, Hera, and the

dedications at her temple, which would naturally give the work a more

‘international’ dimension and might have ‘formed the backbone of the nar-

rative’, as in the Lindian chronicle.139 Of further interest is the fact that the

demos of Samos chose to honour Leon in verse. We have many times touched

on the relationship between poetry and historiography, questioning the

revolutionary nature of the ‘prose revolution’, noting the closeness in content

and theme between some of the lyric poets and the local historians, and

considering contexts and audiences. The likely location of the Parian Marble

in the context of a cult, established by an aristocratic family to an archaic poet,

further clouds the question of where, by whom, for whom, and in what form

the past, whether local or universal, was to be remembered. It might at Wrst

appear that, like the mythical contents of some of the local histories, a poetic

form could be responsible for diminishing the claims to signiWcance and

‘greatness’ in history, especially in the context of Herodotus’ great intellectual

breakthrough, establishing the appropriateness of prose writing for histori-

ography, and aligning the serious study and analysis of the past with the

serious study and analysis of the universe carried out by the Presocratic

philosophers. But it was also possible that the poetic framework might

enhance the status of the historiographic enterprise, elevating the theme

and the historian. We have already noted the potential aptness of poetry as

a medium for the relation of local history.140 We may now add to this debate

the evidence of the honoriWc inscriptions that many local historians, as we

shall see in this section,141 composed in poetry, not in prose, making the

poetic dedication for Leon of Samos all the more appropriate.

139 Dillery, ‘Greek Sacred History’, 513.140 Many poets of the mid-seventh century until the late Wfth century took the distant or

recent past of the poleis as their theme: Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, Simonides of Amorgos in theseventh century; Xenophanes at the end of the sixth; Panyassis and Ion of Chios in the Wfth.C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Ion’s Epidemiai and Plutarch’s Ion’, in A. Katsaros and V. Jennings (eds.), TheWorld of Ion of Chios (Leiden, forthcoming) 75–109, stresses the generic Xexibility of suchauthors, particularly from one poetic form to another, but insists that the prose-poetrydistinction did still matter. ‘To decide that The Foundation of Chios should be in prose—assuming it was in prose—was to make a statement that his treatment aligned it with onerange of material rather than another, an investigative, fact-based cousin to Hecataeus orHippias or Xanthus of Lydia rather than to Hesiod or Xenophanes or Panyassis,’ (80).

141 See below Demoteles of Andros, Menecles of Teos, Dioscurides of Tarsus, Politas ofHypata, and Aristodama of Smyrna.


But it worth noting that the Samian demos employed in their inscription

not only a poetic, but a strongly Pindaric topos, familiar from Pythian 6, of

immortality through the image of the indestructible literary monument:142

A Pythian victor’s treasure house of hymns has been built in Apollo’s valley

rich in gold; one which neither winter rain, coming from abroad as a

relentless army from a rumbling cloud, nor the wind shall buVet and with

deluge of silt carry into the depths of the sea.143

The topos of the indestructible literary monument would be picked up in

poetry and historiography of the Roman imperial period.144 But here the

Samian demos have celebrated the theme not of their history, but of their

historian and his reputation;145 and even more strikingly, perhaps with some

irony, they have done so on precisely the kind of monument which, unlike

Leon’s reputation, will be ravaged by time. Further irony lies in the fact that the

time-weathered epigraphic monument should actually have survived for pos-

terity, and not the work of history itself. Clearly, it was not only the past which

a polis needed to nurture, but also the Wgure who eVectively formulated it.

It may also be relevant in the light of the Pindaric allusion to recall the

placing of local historiography in the form of the so-called Parian Marble in

142 It is possible that the poetic form was partly or wholly due to the temple context of thededication, but the allusion to Pindar suggests a much more deliberate and self-consciousdecision on the part of the polis in its claims to the elevated status of their city’s historian.

143 Pindar, Pythian 6.5–14:

—ıŁØ �ØŒ�� . . .��E�� o��ø�Ł��Æıæe� K� ��ºı�æ��fiø� `��ººø��fi Æ ��Ø�ÆØ ��fi Æ·

e� �h� ��Ø��æØ�� Z��æ�� K�ÆŒe� KºŁ��,KæØ�æ ��ı ��ºÆ��æÆe� I��ºØ��; �h� ¼�� K� �ı��±ºe� ¼��Ø�Ø �Æ�� æfiø ��æ��Øı� �� . . .

144 See, for example, Livy, Praefatio 10 (lessons set forth in inlustri monumento); StraboGeography 1.1.23 and the work as a Œ�º��ıæª�Æ; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.1.1–2 (historyas a ��E��, which will outlast the body); and Diodorus Siculus 1.2.5: ‘whereas all othermemorials last but a brief time, being continually destroyed by many changes in fortune, thepower of history . . . possesses in time, which brings destruction on everything else, a custodianwhich ensures its perpetual transmission to posterity’: a �b� ªaæ ¼ººÆ ��EÆ �ØÆ��Ø �æ ��Oº�ª��; ��e ��ººH� I�ÆØæ��Æ ��æØ��ø�; � �b B� ƒ��æ�Æ� ��Æ�Ø� . . . e� ��Æ ¼ººÆºı�ÆØ� �� æ �� Ø ��ºÆŒÆ B� ÆNø��ı �ÆæÆ� ��ø� �E� K�ØªØ��Ø� . . .

145 Peek, ‘Eine neuer samlischer Historiker’, 165–6, collects some interesting parallels for thisimagery concerning an intellectual and his eternal reputation. See, for example, Antiphilus ofByzantium and his epigram for Diogenes (Anthologia Planudea 334): ª�æ��Œ�Ø ŒÆd �ÆºŒe� ��e�æ ��ı· Iººa �� hØ j ŒF�� › �A� ÆN��; ˜Ø ª��; ŒÆŁ�º�E. The poetic locus classicus is Horace,Odes 3.30: monumentum aere perennius.


the context of lyric poetry in the Archilocheion of the family of Mnesiepes on

Paros (discussed above), alongside a long citation of one of Archilochus’

‘historical’ poems about the war against Naxos.146 The poetic calling of

Archilochus, the poet-historian, which formed one of the subjects commem-

orated there, provides an interesting backdrop against which to read this

highly poetic inscription celebrating Leon’s local historiography. Again we

may be seeing some points of overlap between the construction of the past

carried out for the entertainment of, and under the patronage of, aristocratic

families, and that which was designed for the polis as a whole. As Pelling has

observed, the exclusive sympotic milieu inhabited by archaic poets did not

preclude the possibility that the values encapsulated in their works might be

those shared by the community at large.147 This blurred boundary recalls

Aloni’s discussion of the Plataea narrative of Simonides, and the possibility

that, although large-scale elegy on historical events was performed in public

competition, above all at civic or Panhellenic celebrations, ‘single episodes

abstracted from a longer poem might be freely recomposed and presented by

an individual singer at a symposium’.148 In terms of local historiography this

would imply that the location and audience for performance or display might

not totally determine the narrative, its preoccupations, and its mode of

presentation. This helpfully softens, while not eradicating, the distinctions

between, say, Pindar or Simonides, Herodotus, the Atthidographers, and the

orators, and allows them all to be engaged in the presentation of ‘the deeds of

the past handed on as shared possessions of us all’.149

The fact that the polis at large had a stake in the telling of its history, and an

interest in honouring those who did it well, is attested by a range of honoriWc

inscriptions to historians and other intellectuals stretching across several

centuries. We have already seen in this chapter the array of local talent

celebrated by the city of Halicarnassus. The city of Smyrna celebrated one

of its famous oVspring in the form of Hermogenes, who is attested in a Wrst-

or second-century ad inscription (partly in hexameters) as the author of not

only seventy-two medical books, but also a work on the wisdom of Homer,

146 It is also worth recalling Sosthenes, the local historian of the Wrst century, who cited thelocal history of the third-century Demeas concerning the life and works of Archilochus, andnoting that Mnesiepes himself, patron of the sanctuary of Archilochus, is described by Clay,Archilochos Heros, 9, as ‘local historian and man of letters’.147 See Pelling, ‘Ion’s Epidemiai’, 108.148 See A. Aloni, ‘The Proem of Simonides’ Plataean Elegy and the Circumstances of its

Performance’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise andDesire (Oxford, 2001), 86–105 at 91.149 Isocrates, Panegyricus 9: Æƒ �b� ªaæ �æ��Ø� Æƒ �æ�ª�ª��ÆØ Œ�Ø�Æd �A�Ø� ��E�

ŒÆ�º��Ł��Æ�.


and one on generalship (two volumes), works on the foundations of Asia (two

volumes) and of Europe (four volumes), and on the staging posts of Asia and

those of Europe (one volume each).150 Of particular relevance here are his

two-volume history of his native Smyrna (� (��æØŒa ��æd ˘��æ��) and a

‘Table of the Romans and Smyrnans’ (—��Æ� � .ø�Æ�ø� ŒÆd ˘�ıæ�Æ�ø�). As

Chaniotis suggests, this was probably a work synchronizing the eponymous

magistrates of both places, and we shall return to the signiWcance of that

particular synchronism.151

It was, of course, particularly natural for poleis to honour their own literary

products when they wrote histories which were not only local, but native. One

such historian was Syriscus of Chersonesus. His third-century bc account of

the epiphanies of the Parthenos, and the kindly deeds performed towards the

cities and the Bosporan kings, won him an inscription, set up in his home

town, and a golden crown:152

Heracleidas, son of Parmenon, made the proposal. Since Syriscus son of

Heracleidas having carefully written up the epiphanies of the Parthenos,

read them out, and related the oVerings to the kings of the Bosporus, and

recorded Wttingly for the demos the privileges accorded to the [sc. other]

cities, so that he might win worthy honours, the boule and the demos have

decided to praise him for these things and for the fellow magistrates to

garland him with a golden crown on the 21st . . . and that the proclamation

should be made: ‘The demos garlands Syriscus son of Heracleidas because he

wrote up the epiphanies of the Parthenos and he recorded the kindly deeds

performed towards the cities and the kings, truthfully and Wttingly for the

city. They decided that the fellow magistrates should write up on a stone

stele the decree and place it in the pronaos of the Parthenos . . .

All the major constituencies in the city are involved in negotiating the

honoriWc process—the boule, the demos, and the magistrates. Once Syriscus

has been garlanded by the demos, the magistrates are charged with recording

the whole event by writing up the decree on a stone stele and placing it in the

pronaos of the Parthenos. It is worth noting, in the context of such an

150 CIG 3311 (cf. Kaibel, Epigr. Gr. 305; FGrH 579 t 1).151 Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 327.152 See SGDI 3086 (cf. FGrH 807 t 1): ½ � ˙æÆŒº��Æ� —Ææ�� r ½��· j K��Ø�c� #ıæ��Œ��

� ˙æÆŒº��Æ a½� j K�Ø�Æ��Æ� A� —ÆæŁ��ı �Øº½�j� �ø�� ªæ�łÆ� I½��ª�ø ŒÆd ½a j ��d ��f�´��½�� æ�ı ½��Æ�Øº�E½� j �Ø�ª��Æ��; � ½Ł� ��æ�Æ�Æ �½Øjº��Łæø�Æ ��d a�� º�Ø�ƒ�½ jæ�� K�Ø�ØŒ��ø� HØ ð�Þ��ø½Ø; ¥ �Æ º��Ø Ø�a�� I��Æ�; �� ½ŁÆØ j AØ ��ıºAØ ŒÆd HØ��øØ K��ÆØ��Æ½Ø � ÆPe� K�d ��Ø� ŒÆd ��Æ�½Hj�ÆØ �f� �ı��Æ� ½�æı��øØ��j��øØ H� . . . . . . : : ��ø� �ØAØ K�� ƒŒ½��Ø; ŒÆd e I��ªª��º�Æ ª��ŁÆØ: � ˇ �½Aj�� Æ��E#ıæ��Œ�� ˙æÆŒº�½�j�Æ; ‹Ø a�� K�Ø�Æ��Æ� A� —½ÆæjŁ��ı ªæÆ�ł� ŒÆd a ��d a� ½� jº�Ø� ŒÆd�f�� Æ�Øº�E� ��æ�½Æ�jÆ �Øº��Łæø�Æ� ƒ� æ�� IºÆŁØ�½H� jŒÆd K�Ø�ØŒ�ø�� AØ � º�Ø·I�Æ½ªæ�jłÆØ �b �f� �ı��Æ� �Nð�Þ �½�ºÆ�jºØŁ��Æ� e ł��Ø��Æ ŒÆd Ł��½� K�je� �F�æ��ı A� —ÆæŁ��½�ı Œº.


intricate set of intra-polis negotiations, that the signiWcance of Syriscus’ work

reaches beyond his home city.153 He relates the goddess’ epiphanies to the

Bosporan kings,154 and the honours and privileges which his town granted to

the other cities, in a clear piece of interstate diplomacy. Although it is his

home town which honours him, his work seems to have related to and been of

importance to a wider audience. As Dillery notes, he was ‘an advocate of his

city and its patron deity in the Black Sea region . . . Syriscos is really quite like

the familiar elite representative of his polis in the Hellenistic period.’155

However, there are hints that his work had particular implications for his

native city, beyond those brought simply by having a successful historian

among its citizens. Syriscus related the benefactions to the cities ‘Wttingly for

the demos’; in the proclamation, this link to the well-being of the native polis is

slightly more elaborately formulated, since we are told that Syriscus related

deeds not only Wttingly for the demos, but also ‘truthfully’.156 Here, then, we

begin to see the re-emergence of a theme which has recurred through this

book; namely, the tension between local and more universal concerns. The

question ‘To whom is local historiography of interest?’ extends not only to

diVerent interest groups within the polis, the aristocratic elite or the demos at

large, but also beyond the polis. The scenario of a historian composing the

past of his own polis for his own polis is one possibility. But there are others to

consider, and at this point some of Jacoby’s ideas (discussed in chapter 4)

should come back into play.

The question of what stimulated local historiography, the whole debate

over priority between this and universal or ‘great’ historiography, and the

issue of local pride asserted in a wider world, all acquire a new set of insights

when we shift the focus from the history itself to the historian and his

appreciative audience. The need to express local pride in the context of

dominant Panhellenic narratives, or simply against alternative or rival local

histories, might explain the phenomenon of the ‘native local historian’. But

the boundaries of the strictly ‘local’ are already blurred by the use by some of

wider conceptual frameworks in the articulation of the historical narrative.

We know, furthermore, that many historians wrote about the past of several

153 I use the term ‘work’ loosely, since it is, as Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in dengriechischen Inschriften, 300, notes, unclear whether we are dealing only with a work of history orwith several diVerent works.154 The parallel with the Lindian chronicle is striking. As Chaniotis, ibid. 300, observes ‘die

Beschaftigung mit der Geschichte des lokalen Heiligtums und mit den OVenbarungen derGottheit ist ein typisches Merkmal des Lokalhistoriographie’.155 Dillery, ‘Greek Sacred History’, 521.156 An interesting claim in the context of criticism that local historiography lacked Thucy-

didean style accuracy (IŒæØ��Æ) and objectivity, although we have no guarantee that ‘the truth’is not simply tantamount to ‘what the audience wants to hear’.


diVerent places,157 and this variety hints at a diVerent picture from that of the

local historian writing only about his native land and heroized as a local

celebrity. The honoriWc inscriptions enable us to add Xesh to this skeletal

picture of a diVerent form of universality, brought not by undertaking ‘great

history’ or the ‘Panhellenic narrative’, but by accumulating a range of discrete

local histories.

4 . FROM LOCAL HERO TO

SUPRA-POLITICAL AMBASSADOR

Alongside the local historian who wrote about his native land, we can set a

signiWcant group of historians who were honoured for composing local, though

not native, history, and who were, to some degree or another, itinerant.158

Demoteles of Andros was honoured in the early third century bc by the boule

and the demos of Delos, since ‘being a poet, he has composed a work about the

temple and city of the Delians and has written the native stories’.159 We might

note this immediately as yet another example, alongside the Lindian chronicle

and the inscription to Syriscus of Chersonesus, in which local historiography is

associated with a religious narrative.160 The point that Demoteles is a poet also

157 See, for example, the late third-century bc author, Semos of Delos (FGrH 396 t 1), whoseworks spannedDelos itself, Paros, and Pergamum, as well as including an explicitly itinerant work,Periodos. In the Roman imperial period Criton was attributed a Palleniaca, Sicelica, Foundation ofSyracuse, Journey around Syracuse, and a Persica. See also Proxenus (FGrH 703), author ofEpirotica, Sicilian events concerning Pyrrhus, and a Constitution of the Laconians and Pausaniasthe Laconian (FGrH 592), who wrote works on the Hellespont, Laconia, and the Amphictyons.

158 The notion of itinerant historians has, of course, a long history, involving Hecataeus(��ºı�ºÆ��), Herodotus, Theopompus, and notably the sophist Hippias, who lectured inSparta on the remote legendary history of that city. See Plato, Hippias Major 285d; HippiasMinor 363c–d notes Hippias’ visits to Olympia to give public readings.

159 IG 11 (4) 544 (cf. Syll:3 382; FGrH 400 t 1): ¨��: �� E ��ıº�E ŒÆd HØ ��ø½Ø�·�`æØ� º�� ˝ØŒ��æ ��ı �r�½��· K��Ø�c ˜��º�� `N��½º�ı� @��æØ�� Ø�c� J��æÆª½��ıÆØ ��æ� � e ƒ�æe� ŒÆd ½c�� ½�� ºØ� c� ˜�º�ø� ŒÆd �f� ��Ł�ı½�� f�K½��Ø�øæ��ı� ª�ªæÆ��· �� ŁÆØ HØ ��øØ· K�ÆØ��ÆØ ˜��º�� `N��º�ı @��æØ�� Iæ�B��ŒÆ ŒÆd �P��Æ� B� ��æd e ƒ�æe� ŒÆd e� �B�� e� ˜�º�ø½�� ŒÆd ��Æ�H�ÆØ ÆPe� ��½��½��øØ ŒÆ�d I�Æª�æ�F�ÆØ e� ƒ�½æ�Œ�æıŒÆ . . .�The gods. It seemed good to the council and the people [sc. of the Delians]. Aristolochus son ofNicodromus spoke. Since Demoteles of Andros, son of Aeschylus, being a poet, has composed awork about the temple and city of the Delians and has written the native stories, it seemed goodto the people to praise Demoteles of Andros, son of Aeschylus for his virtue and his goodwillconcerning the temple and the people of Delos, and to garland him with a crown of laurel andfor the sacred herald to make a public proclamation . . .

160 Although see Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 334–5, forthe suggestion that ‘er war kein Mythograph, sondern nur poetischer Bearbeiter der delischenSagen’; that is, stressing his role as a poet rather than as an expert on the gods.


deserves note. As we might expect, the boule seems to take a probouleutic role

with regard to a proposal made by an individual, Aristolochus, son of Nico-

dromus, before the demos takes its decision. The people of Delos are honouring

a man from Andros—writing local history does not necessarily mean writing

native history. The implications are far-reaching in terms of the relationship

between historian and community, and also the question of the local or

universal applicability of conceptual frameworks.

Or take the more extensive and detailed inscription set up by second-

century bc Cretan cities in honour of Herodotus and Menecles of Teos:161

The Priansians

It seemed good to the magistrates of the Priansians and to the city: Since

Herodotus son of Menodotus andMenecles son of Dionysius, who were sent

to us as ambassadors by the Teans, not only dwelt in the city appropriately

and spoke about our [close relationship],162 but also Menecles put on a

display with a kithara of the works of Timotheus and Polyidus and our other

ancient poets Wnely and Wttingly, and he oVered the historical cycle about Crete

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

—æØÆ��ø�

�� —æØÆ��ø� �E� Œ ��Ø� ŒÆd AØ � º�Ø.K��Ø�c � ˙æ �� !<�>�� ı ŒÆd !��ŒºB� ˜Ø��ı��ø K�Æ��Æº�� æ�ªª�ıÆd ��æd ±�b �Æ�æa ��ø� �P � �� I��æ�½�� <�æ>��< >�ø<�> K� AØ� º�Ø ŒÆd ½�Ø�º�ª�� æd A½�� ±�H� : :�: :Æ�; IººaŒÆd K��Æ� !��ŒºB� ��a ŒØŁ�æÆ� � � Ø��Ł��ı ŒÆd —�ºı��ı ŒÆd H� ±�H� �ÆºÆØH� ��Ø��A� ŒÆºH� ŒÆd �æ�� ø�; �N�<�>��ªŒ� �b Œ�Œº��ƒ��æ��Æ� ��bæ ˚æ�Æ� ŒÆ½d �H� K� ½˚æ��ÆØ ª��ª�� ø� Ł�H� � ŒÆd �æ�ø�; ½��Ø��½� �a��ı�Æªøªa� KŒ ��ººH� ��Ø�A½�� ŒÆd ƒ��æØ�ªæ��ø�· ˜Øe �� ŁÆØ AØ � º�Ø K�ÆØ��ÆØ �� ‹Ø�º�E�� º ª�� ØH�ÆØ ��æd �ÆØ��Æ�; K�ÆØ��ÆØ �b ŒÆd � ˙æ �� ŒÆd !��ŒºB� ‹Ø ŒÆºa�ŒÆd �æ��ı�Æ� ��ÆØ a� �Ææ��Ø��Æ�K� AØ � º�Ø ±�H�· �ØÆ�Æ�B�Æ� � ÆFÆ ŒÆd ��Ø� ‹<Œ>ø� K�ØªØ��Œø�Ø.

ææø�Ł�.

162 The text here is problematic. �Ø�º�ª�� as a dialectal form of �ØÆº�ª��Æ� does not presentdiYculty, but the restoration of the later part of line 5 is fraught with problems.W. H.Waddingtonand P. Le Bas, Inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en Grece et en Asie Mineure (Paris, 1853–70)iii no. 82, restore the text as A� ½±�H� ƒ��½æ��Æ�, butM. Guarducci, Inscriptiones Creticae (Rome,1935) i, 281, favours Blass’s view that nomentionwasmade of historiography at this point, and thatveri simile est hoc loco aliquid de legatorum negotiis scriptum fuisse. The photograph of theinscription is by no means conclusive either way. I have adopted in my translation the suggestionof JohnMa that this part of the inscriptionmust be routine (before Iººa ŒÆd changes the tone), andmust therefore refer to something like the kinship and other links between Teos and Crete.

From local hero to ambassador 347

and the gods andheroeswhowere born inCrete, creating his compilation from

many poets and historiographers. Because of this the city decided to praise the

Teans, since they place such importance on education, and to praise both

Herodotus and Menecles since they had a Wne and Wtting sojourn in our city.

They decided to make these things clear to the Teans so that they might be

aware of them.

Farewell

The decree is one made by the magistrates of the Priansians and the city, in

support of a decision by the demos.163 The scenario is a complex one, in which

Menecles and his colleague, Herodotus, are sent by Teos on a mission, during

which Menecles puts on a performance of Cretan poetry, weaving in stories

about the place and its past and thereby earning himself great respect among

the locals.

Some of the elements are by now familiar. It is important that Menecles

comes from outside the polis, and interesting that poetry again oVers the

appropriate form in which to tell the city its past. Furthermore, as Erskine

points out,164 the visitors from Teos carefully wove together the better-known

works of Timotheus of Miletus and Polyidus of Selymbria with the local

stories told by the Cretan poets, thereby cementing Crete’s place in the

wider Greek cultural world and constituting a major element in the Tean

embassy. Erskine’s stress on the diplomatic nature of the historiographical

display is of considerable interest.165 It is tempting to place this inscription

from Teos in the context of the large group of inscriptions which concern the

attempt of Teos (and, indeed, other cities)166 to establish recognition of its

inviolability around the Greek world, and not least among the poleis of Crete.

Inscriptions celebrating the recognition of the Greek world, city by city, of this

163 I should like to thank the participants in the Oxford Greek Epigraphy Workshop, towhom I presented this (and other related) inscriptions in February 2007. Both their helpfulemendations and their extremely insightful and engaged comments have contributed enor-mously to my work on this body of evidence.

164 A. Erskine, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou? Tales of Kinship and Diplomacy’, in D. Ogden(ed.), The Hellenistic World: New Perspectives (London, 2002), 97–115 at 106.

165 Erskine, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, sees this episode in the context of other forms ofinterstate diplomacy, in which the links between cities were established and reinforced throughreference to the past, both historical and mythical (97). He notes the way in which diVerentforms of diplomacy were mutually supportive, and included appeals to shared mythologicaltraditions as told by poets such as Menecles. S. Hornblower, ‘Epic and Epiphanies: Herodotusand the ‘‘New Simonides’’ ’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts ofPraise and Desire (Oxford, 2001), 135–47 at 137, goes further, saying that it was ‘precisely thepervasiveness of syngeneia concepts which made it possible for Greeks to bridge the mythicaland historical worlds in so apparently eVortless a way’.

166 See L. Robert, Hellenica: Receuil d’epigraphie, de numismatique et d’antiquites grecques I(1940), 113–15, for an inscription from Aptera concerning claims to asylum for the temple ofApollo Didymaeus at Miletus. The sending of deputations to cement the recognition of asylumclaims at various temples seems to have been a common phenomenon.


change in status were set up in Teos,167 no doubt as readily visible proof to

anyone who might question the city’s position. However, Rigsby is surely

right to distinguish between the original embassies sent by Teos to secure its

status, and a later embassy which served as a ‘reminder’ to the cities of Crete,

and requested the inscription of the old decrees.168 It is this later phase which

involved Menecles and Herodotus, and Rigsby posits that the inscription

under consideration here, together with a similar one from Knossos,169 are

rather unusual cases in which the cities felt that nothing new was needed in

terms of their relations with Teos, and ‘simply praised the Tean envoys for

their culture without mentioning asylia’.170 Their ‘culture’ involved giving

‘recitals about the traditional relations of Crete and Teos’.

This is, then, a rather unusual version of how interstate diplomacy and

poetic historiography might be combined. In a sense, the historiographical

performances are incidental to the whole diplomatic expedition, and form the

subject of two out of a large dossier of inscriptions only in the absence of any

more formal interstate relations concerning asylum. However, the fact that

these Tean envoys were so accomplished in the art of historiographical

entertainment as well as being top-grade ambassadors, clearly did no harm

to the standing of Teos in Crete. It is clear why the people of Crete might wish

to honour Menecles and Herodotus, who had brought their local traditions

into the larger context and given their home a place on the map. But it was

Teos which gained most through its enhanced standing in the eastern Medi-

terranean and set up the inscription celebrating the event.171 The deliberate

choice by Teos of particularly skilled poet-historians to send to Crete on a

diplomatic mission hints at a theme to which we shall return, namely the

culture of professional poetic performances of local history.

167 See K. J. Rigsby, Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World (Berkeley, LA andLondon, 1996), 291, for the note that the asylia decrees were inscribed on blocks of the blue-greymarble quarried to the east of the city, and used to build Hermongenes’ temple of Dionysus. Theprocess of recognition was a slow one—Teos was granted inviolability by Antiochus III and theGreek world in 203/2 bc, but this was not recognized by Rome until 193 bc.168 For epigraphic evidence for this extensive, second-phase embassy undertaken by Herod-

otus and Menecles, see IC 2.3.2 (cf. SGDI 5181) (Aptera), SGDI 5182 (Eranna), IC 1.6.2 (cf.SGDI 5183) (Biannus), IC1.19.2 (cf. SGDI 5184) (Malla), IC 1.5.53 (cf. SGDI 5185) (Arcades),IC 2.15.2 (Hyrtacina); I. E. Stephanes, ˜Ø��ı�ØÆŒ�d ��EÆØ: #ı��ºb� �c� �æ��ø��ªæÆ��Æ�F Ł��æ�ı ŒÆd B� ��ı�ØŒB� H� Iæ�Æ�ø� � ¯ºº��ø� (Herakleion, 1988), 299 (entry 50 forMenecles, son of Dionysos), for a date of around 170 bc when the two ambassadors went ‘todiVerent cities in Crete’ (�b �Ø��æ�� º�Ø� B� ˚æ��).169 IC 1.8.2.170 See Rigsby, Asylia, 289.171 See G. Schepens, ‘Travelling Greek Historians’, inM. Gabriella, A. Bertinelli, and A. Donati

(eds.), Le vie della storia: migrazioni di popoli, viaggi di individui, circolazione di idee nelMediterraneo antico (Rome, 2006) for the point that itinerant historians had a double audienceto please—both the sending and the receiving city. I am grateful to the author for sharing thisarticle with me in advance of publication.


We have already caught glimpses into how poleis such as Apollonia on the

Rhyndakos and Miletus used the past as a currency in which to conduct or

enhance interstate diplomacy. But here too it is possible through the honoriWc

inscriptions to shift the focus now away from the historical claims and content,

and on to the equally historical phenomenon of the local historian himself,

playing his role in inter-polis relations. If we are scratching the surface of a

world in which itinerant historians were engaged in inter-polis diplomacy, but

were in some sense professional and independent, hired and commemorated

for their skill on behalf of the polis or poleis, then the value of history and the

relationship of the historian to the poleis become even more intriguing.

Another Cretan inscription, from Knossos, again in the second century bc,

oVers a variation on the theme. Dioscurides of Tarsus was lauded by the

people of Knossos for his encomium of Crete:172

It seemed a good idea to the magistrates of the Knossians and to the city.

Since Dioscurides, son of Dioscurides and adoptive son of Asclepiodorus,

a grammatikos from Tarsus, on account of the goodwill which he holds

towards our city, put together an encomium in accordance with the poet [sc.

Homer] about our people, he sent oV Myrinus, son of Dionysius, from

Amisus, a composer of epic and lyric poems, his very own pupil, to recite his

works . . . the city decided to praise Dioscurides . . .

Here the Cretans decide to lavish their praise on Dioscurides rather than on

his itinerant pupil. It is worth focusing for a moment on the Wgures involved

here. Dioscurides is described as a grammatikos, traditionally considered to be

a teacher of grammar and literature,173 from Tarsus. He puts together an

encomium of Crete, through goodwill towards the inhabitants of that island,

but then yet another party, Dioscurides’ pupil, Myrinus from a diVerent town,

Amisus, is sent on the mission to Crete to perform the works. The inscription

gives a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual world of the second century,

both in terms of relations between teachers, pupils, and patrons, and in terms

of interstate relations. Myrinus, the performer, is himself a composer of epic

and lyric poems. But his teacher clearly enjoys a higher reputation in the

world of eastern Mediterranean politics. It may seem surprising that a teacher

172 See IC 1.8.12 (cf. SGDI 5150; FGrH 594 T3): �� ˚�ø��ø� �E� Œ ��Ø� ŒÆd AØ � ºØ·K��Ø�c ˜Ø��Œ�ıæ�� ˜Ø��Œ�ıæ��ı; ŒÆŁ � ��Ł��Æ� �b � `�Œº��Ø��æ�ı; Ææ��f� ªæÆ��ÆØŒ �;�Øa a� �h��ØÆ� L� ��Ø ��æd a� ±�a� � ºØ� �ı�Æ�� KªŒ��Ø�� ŒÆa e� ��Ø�a� ��bæ H±�H Ł�Ø��; I��ºŒ� !ıæE�� ˜Ø��ı��ø � `�Ø�� ; ��Ø�a� K�H� ŒÆd ��ºH�; e� ÆP��ÆıH�ÆŁ��; �ØÆŁ��Ø �� a ��æÆª�Æ�ı��Æ �� ÆPH . . . �� ŁÆØ AØ � ºØ K�ÆØ��ÆØ˜Ø��Œ�ıæ�� Œº.

173 But see T. J. Morgan, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge,1998), 18 and, especially, 28, for the diYculty in making clear distinctions between the functionof teachers with diVerent titles beyond the tidy world of the jurists and theorists.


of whatever kind should carry such international weight and prestige, but

a late fourth-century decree of the demos of Lampsacus records political

privileges, including freedom from taxes, accorded to its students and teachers,

suggesting a certain status to the educational enterprise.174 Furthermore, while

the encomium of Crete celebrated in this inscription does not survive, a few

fragments of Dioscurides’ other works are extant—on the Spartan constitu-

tion, on customs, heroes, and Homer’s life. When Dioscurides composed

his encomium ‘in accordance with the poet’ (ŒÆa e� ��Ø��), he was no

doubt using his specialized knowledge. The involvement of a Homeric expert

in constructing the past of Knossos and Crete, and the mythic associations,

did nothing to diminish or compromise the status of the history produced.

It seems, then, that Dioscurides was not just an elementary teacher, but

a famous name, perhaps one could go so far as to say a professional with a

widespread reputation, and that we should not be surprised that the Knossians

chose to commemorate his interest in their local history.175

This, it seems, was something of a coup for the Knossians, and also a

feather in the cap of the city which had produced such a star composer. The

people of Tarsus were no doubt glad to see an inscription set up in their own

polis to commemorate the Cretans’ satisfaction with Dioscurides’ encomium.

Again, there are interesting similarities and diVerences with the Menecles

inscription, since the inscription to Dioscurides was set up in his home

town of Tarsus, as for Menecles on Teos, but a copy of the inscription was

also erected in the most public of places, Delos,176 at the heart of the Eastern

Mediterranean network of communications, to give this long-distance and

complex operation the widest possible advertisement on a Panhellenic

stage.177We shall return to the place of poet-historians in the wider networks

of the Mediterranean, as a neglected manifestation of the kinds of connect-

ivity which have been explored by others in terms of trade, culture, travel, and

so on. But this inscription clearly has something to oVer that picture, with its

174 See IK 6 (Lampsacus) 8: ‘Tax-free status is to be accorded to pupils and teachers (I�º�E��r�ÆØ ½�f� �ÆŁ�a� ŒÆd� ½�Ø�Æ�Œ�º�<ı>�) who are staying in the city or are going to stay there,teaching or being taught’. The date is not certain, and could be later than the posited end of thefourth century. I should like to thank Christopher Walton for drawing this inscription to myattention.175 See M. Guarducci, Poeti vaganti e conferenzieri dell’eta ellenistica; ricerche di epigraWa greca

nel campo della letteratura e del costume (Rome, 1929), 629, for the suggestion that itineranthistorians were motivated primarily by personal glory and gain: ‘i quali per amore di gloria espesso anche di lucro, vagavano di citta in citta’.176 See Inscr. Delos 1512 (cf. Syll.3 721). Stephanes,˜Ø��ı�ØÆŒ�d ��EÆØ, 149, notes also a copy

at the other great Panhellenic sanctuary site, Delphi, although he provides no evidence for this.177 As Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 342, observes, the copy

at Delos oVered an opportunity ‘ihre literarische Leistungen einem moglichst breiten Publikumbekannt zu machen’. There is no implication that Dioscurides visited Delos as part of his tour.


interstate education on display, its itinerant performer, its composer with

a reputation which stretches across the Aegean, and a commemorative in-

scription set up at one of the key religious and cultural meeting places in the

Eastern Mediterranean.

Dioscurides was able to secure a lasting record of his already evident fame

without leaving his hometown. In general, though, the inscriptions present a

picture of historians themselves travelling around and reciting their works of

local history. We have already seen in Menecles and Herodotus, sent by Teos to

Crete, the traces of a network of historiographical connections, there in the

context of a diplomatic deputation, from one polis to another. Local historians,

far from being conWned to small towns, writing parochial history, seem to have

enjoyed far higher status than this, and far greater political importance. They

act as ambassadors for their own cities, and as benefactors of the cities whose

past they tell. Even the transitory presence of such an inXuential Wgure, singing

the right kind of songs, could be enough to evoke a costly inscription.

A pair of inscriptions from Central Greece adds to the picture of itinerant

historians, poets again, who turn up, present their version of the city’s past,

and are honoured with not only an inscription, but also the titles of proxenos

and benefactor.178 Politas of Hypata was honoured with an inscription and

political privileges in the third century bc for his poetic performance:179

Good fortune. It seemed good to the city. Since Politas, son of Politas, of

Hypata an epic poet, being present in the city, put on performances, in which

he made worthy mention of the city, it seemed good that he should be a

proxenos of the city and a benefactor. . .

Aristodama of Smyrna oVers an even more striking third-century bc illustra-

tion of the same phenomenon:180

When Hagetas of Callipolis was strategos of the Aetolians. Good fortune. It

seemed good to the polis of the Lamians, since Aristodama, daughter of

178 I owe to Lisa Kallet the important observation with regard to this pair of inscriptions thatthe notion of delegations from city to city oVers only a partial picture, since here we Wnd nomention of a ‘sending’ city and the performers seem to be travelling on their own account. Wecannot, therefore, explain the entire phenomenon of itinerant historians under the widerumbrella of ‘interstate diplomacy’.

179 IG 9 (2) 63 (cf. FGrH 483 f 2): ½%ªÆŁAØ ��Æ�Ø· �� AØ � º�Ø· ½K��Ø�c —�º��Æ� —�º�Æ� 0�ÆÆE�½� ��Ø�c� K��H� �ÆæÆª�� ½� K� a�� ºØ� ��Ø� K��Ø��Æ½�; K� Æx�� A� � ºØ��I��ø� K��½Ł�; �r��ÆØ ÆPe� �æ �� A� � ºØ�� ŒÆd �P�æª�Æ� Œº.

180 See IG 9 (2) 62 (cf. Syll:3 532; FGrH 483 f 1): H� `NøºH� �æÆÆª�� `ª�Æ˚ÆººØ��º�Æ· IªÆŁAØ ��ÆØ: �� ½AØ � º�Ø� H� ¸Æ�Ø�ø�· K��Ø�c � `æØ��½��Æ � `��Æ˘�ıæ�Æ�Æ I�� (ø½��Æ�� Ø�æØÆ K�½��ø½�� Æ½æÆ�ª½��½��Æ K� a� � ºØ� �º��Æ� K½�Ø��Ø��K��Ø��Æ� H� N��ø� ��Ø��ø�; K� �x� ��æ� � �F Ł��ı� H� `NøºH½� ŒÆd �H� �æ�ª �ø� �F��ı I��ø� K��Ł�; ��½a� ��Æ� �æ�Łı½��Æ�� a� I� ��Ø� ��Ø�ı��Æ; �r�� ÆPa��æ ½�� A� � ºØ�� ŒÆd �P�æª�Ø� Œº.


Amyntas, from Smyrna in Ionia, an epic poetess (��Ø�æØÆ) being present in

the city put on many performances of her own poems, in which she made

worthy mention of the ethnos of the Aetolians and the ancestors of the

demos, putting on her performance with every enthusiasm, that she should

be a proxenos of the city and a benefactress . . .

Here we Wnd a female poet joining the ranks of other itinerant historians and

apparently putting on a star performance. It is interesting that she receives the

same civic honours as Politas of Hypata, namely proxeny and oYcial recogni-

tion as a benefactor.181 But certain elements are of particular interest. First, that

the inscription ends with a list of eponymous local magistrates—the archons at

the time, the strategos, and the hipparchon. Second, of course, there is the

striking fact that this historian-poet is a woman,182 although no special atten-

tion is drawn to the issue of gender, and Aristodama is apparently received and

treated by the polis in exactly the same terms as her male counterparts, receiving

‘everything that is given to other proxenoi and benefactors’ (‹�Æ �E� ¼ºº�Ø�

�æ��Ø� ŒÆd �P�æª�ÆØ� ��ÆØ ��Æ).183 She is clearly a highly rated local

historian, oVering spirited performances of her own compositions, and these

are, more explicitly than the performances by Politas of Hypata, a form of local

history, dealing with the wider ethnos of the Aetolians, but also with the

ancestors of the Lamian demos.184

The itinerant credentials of Aristodama are conWrmed by a similar but

slightly diVerently worded inscription from Delphi, set up by the people of

181 To the dossier we should add the decree from Larissa honouring Bombus from Alexandriain the Troad, who turned up in Larissa and made epideixeis in the gymnasium concerning thekinship and goodwill between the cities, on which see B. Helly, ‘Quinze annees d’epigraphiethessalienne (1990–2005)’, in G. A. Pikoulas (ed.), Inscriptions and History of Thessaly: NewEvidence (Volos, 2006), 21–6 at 25.182 See S. B. Pomeroy, Spartan Women (Oxford, 2002), 3, for the assertion that ‘Poets were the

most revered teachers in archaic Greece. There were no travelling women poets.’ It is not clearwhether the second part also of this assertion is temporally bound to the archaic period. If not, it isclearly false. However, it is surely true that Aristodama must have been an exceptional case.183 This high-proWle role for a woman in the important political task of constructing and

relating the past of the community is in line with the picture presented by R. van Bremen, ‘FamilyStructures’, in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Oxford, Blackwell, 2003),313–30 at 322–3. Van Bremen is reacting to the common assumption that women were denied apublic role, except in particular contexts such as festivals, and argues that ‘It was inherent inGreek society from early on that there existed a public role for women and for the young.’ Herfocus is on the similar regulation of women’s behaviour to that of men, through the institution ofthe gynaikonomoi, rather than on opportunity and free performance. However, the model of apolis society, whichwas less concerned with gender distinction than has sometimes been asserted,still stands and accommodates the Lamian inscriptions very eVectively.184 Pace Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 339, who follows

Jacoby in worrying over whether Aristodama dealt with ancient myths or more modernAetolian history. The general tendency of local historiography to incorporate a huge timespan should make such distinctions relatively unimportant.


Chaleion,185 to the same historian-poetess, neatly illustrating the way in

which she travelled around diVerent cities performing local histories for

each. The notion of a single tour seems most likely, leading Chaniotis to

conclude that the two inscriptions should probably be dated to the same year

of 218/7 bc.186 On the other hand, as Stephanes notes, Aristodama seems to

have been accompanied by a diVerent brother on each occasion, to whom

civic honours were also granted—Dionysius at Chaleion and O[-]nes at

Lamia, suggesting the possibility of two separate journeys.187 With greater

certainty we may note that, as in the case of Dioscurides and Myrinus, whose

activities on Crete were celebrated not only in Tarsus, Dioscurides’ home

town, but also on the island of Delos, a major hub of cross-Mediterranean

activity, here too we Wnd the wandering, inter-polis Wgure epigraphically

honoured in two locations—at a town where she performed and at a major

Panhellenic site, Delphi, where both her skills and the honour paid to the

recipient city could be most widely advertised.

5 . ITINERANT INTELLECTUALS, MEDITERRANEAN

MOBILITY: NEGOTIATING THE WORLD OF ROME

Before we return to the relationship between the historian and the polis, and

to the proposition that constructing the past was an activity in which the polis

had a direct interest, it is worth reXecting on some later parallels, or perhaps

simply continuations, of this phenomenon of itinerant intellectuals, who

seem to have played a key role in inter-polis relations of the third and

especially second centuries bc.188 The cue for the most obvious and striking

parallel is the inscription with which section 3 started, namely that in honour

of Xenophon of Samos from the second century ad.

We have already observed that the near-global empire of Rome inspired

certain types of ‘great’ historiography, and turned the Panhellenic into the

185 See IG 9 (2) 740 (cf. SEG 25.590; Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.145): K��Ø�c ½%æØ��½Æ%��Æ ˘�ıæ�Æ�½Æ� I�� (ø��Æ� ½K��ø�� Ø�æØ½Æ� �ÆæÆ½ª��½��Æ �º��½��Æ� . . .ŒÆd H��æ�ª �ø� H� A½�� ½� ºØ�� ±�H�� ½��Æ� K��Ø��Æ� . . .

Since Aristodama daughter of Amyntas, from Smyrna, coming here from Ionia as a poetessbeing present . . . many . . . and commemorated the ancestors of our polis . . .

186 See Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften, 339.187 Stephanes, ˜Ø��ı�ØÆŒ�d ��EÆØ, no. 326. There can be no mistaking the relationship in

each case—O[-]nes is ‘her brother’ (HØ I��º��HØ ÆPA�) and Dionysius is ‘her brother’ (ŒÆd˜Ø��½ı��øØ HØ� I��º��HØ ÆPA�).

188 For the link between wisdom and travel, see the interesting comments of C. Dougherty,The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey (Oxford, 2001), 3–4, inrelation to Solon and his meeting with Croesus, with which this book started.


Pan-Mediterranean. Although we see more named local historians honoured

in the epigraphy of the Hellenistic period, we know from the names of lost

authors and of their works that local historiography continued to thrive in the

Greek poleis in the Roman imperial period too. The phenomenon of itinerant

local historiography, one of whose functions seems to have been to facilitate

and enhance interstate diplomacy through reference to past contact and long-

standing ties of kinship, may have remained no less relevant in the new world

of Roman rule. The repeated mention of the political importance of these

Wgures, as itinerant, suprapolitical ambassadors, forging crucial links between

the disparate communities of the empire, securing goodwill, and gaining

lasting memorials of the interaction between poleis, begins to hint at an

important binding force in the empire, on which diplomacy could continue

to be built.

Millar, in his work on the Emperor in the Roman World,189 put forward a

model of a Romanocentric, emperor-focused unity, by which the empire and

especially the Principate with its central imperial Wgure fostered, or at least

provided the fertile breeding ground for, such magnetic uniWers as the

citizenship and the imperial cult.190 But alongside this unity, we might posit

the utility of itinerant local historians in enhancing inter-polis relations,

lending a sense of a commonly understood past and of shared conceptual

frameworks, rather than merely a common interest in Rome and Romanitas.

The parochial world of local historiography, which seems at Wrst glance to be

far removed from global empires, must in fact have been more attuned to the

wider stage than it seems. When Menecles of Teos turned up in Crete with

Herodotus and wove local tales into his other songs, the dynamics of inte-

gration between the local and the global might not have been so very diVerent

from when the people of Volubilis far oV in the Atlas mountains asked for

Roman citizenship;191 knowing the common language and using it to tie the

small place into the larger network is as much a part of historiography as of

more conventional political exchange. The role of itinerant historians in

the smooth running of interstate relations, which seems to have been so

189 F. G. B. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977).190 On the unifying eVects of the imperial Wgurehead, see P. Zanker, The Power of Images in

the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1988), 297–333, F. G. B. Millar, ‘State and Subject: The Impactof Monarchy’, in F. G. B. Millar and E. Segal (eds.), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects, (Oxford,1984), 37–60; on the importance of imperial cult in particular, see K. Hopkins, ‘DivineEmperors or the Symbolic Unity of the Roman Empire’, in K. Hopkins (ed.), Conquerors andSlaves (Cambridge, 1978), ch. 5. C. Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the RomanEmpire (Berkeley and London, 2000) oVers a detailed study of various aspects of this uniWed,though heterogeneous, world.191 For the successful embassy from Volubilis, asking for citizenship and rights of conubium,

see E. M. Smallwood, Documents of the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (Bristol, 1984),no. 407b (cf. CRAI (1915) 394–7).

Negotiating the world of Rome 355

important in the Hellenistic period, was developing during the expansion of

Rome’s world dominion and could clearly be adapted to the increasingly

uniWed world of Roman power, although the historians of the Greek poleis

retained their own mythological and historiographical currency.192 This was a

form of interstate activity, which could form its own networks marked out by

the travels of the historian, and not always Wltered through the prism of

Roman power and the Wgure of the emperor.

I have argued elsewhere that it is possible to detect a parallel but reverse form

of itinerant historiography in the period of the Second Sophistic;193 that while

Xenophon was being lauded in the Samian Heraion, Wgures like Pausanias went

around in their footsteps ‘gathering up’ the local histories which had been

deposited by centuries of travelling historians. Pretzler has examined the work

methods which emerge from Pausanias’ text, whereby he extracted local history

from informants on site, as he travelled around, often using monuments as the

cue for the story,194 as well as backing up his on-site research with later library

work.195 Jones too notes Pausanias’ use of exegetai, respectable if not highly

learned antiquarians, whom Jones calls ‘the gens moyen cultives’, sometimes

designated explicitly as relaters of local matters (› H� K�Ø�øæ�ø� K��ª��),

who could pass on to Pausanias the kinds of local tales that our itinerant

historians had told on their travels.196 Although these local experts are not to

be confused with the often itinerant local historians, nevertheless they seem to

have been the guardians of those stories relating to particular poleis and sites.

It is particularly interesting that one of Pausanias’ few named exegetes

was a poet, Lyceas of Argos (1.13.8), oVering a fascinating insight into the

moment of transition from verse to prose for one set of local tales. Lyceas

perhaps also, in contrast to the caveat just issued, hints at a greater degree of

continuity between the poetic composers of local historiography and the

world of Pausanias, than might be supposed. This continuity is further

reinforced if we join Alcock in seeing Pausanias as not merely gathering up

tales, but actively participating in their evolution at a local level. It is clear

that he gives some insight into the existence of competing versions of

192 That the power of kinship ties and allusion to the distant past continued to carry politicalpower under the Principate is well illustrated by the debate in the senate under Claudiusconcerning the adlection of the Aedui. See D. C. Braund, ‘The Aedui, Troy, and the Apocolo-cyntosis’, Classical Quarterly 30 (1980), 420–5. A Tiberian example concerns the cities of AsiaMinor who had to make their claims to asylum afresh before the senate in a competition inwhich they adduced kinship ties as well as benefaction to Rome (Tacitus, Annals 3.60–3).

193 See Clarke, ‘Parochial Tales in a Global Empire’, 111–28.194 For the historical landscape through which Pausanias leads the reader, see K. Arafat,

‘Pausanias’ Attitude to Antiquities’, Annals of the British School at Athens 87 (1992), 387–409.195 M.Pretzler, ‘TurningTravel intoText: Pausanias atWork’,Greece andRome 51 (2004), 199–216.196 See C. P. Jones, ‘Pausanias and his Guides’, in S. E. Alcock, J. F. Cherry, J. Elsner (eds.),

Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece (Oxford, 2001), 33–9.


local tales;197 furthermore, that one of Pausanias’ tasks is to decide between

these alternatives, ‘deciding local ‘‘truths’’, dictating local history’ (p. 265),

rendering him both the collector and the creator of local historiography.

It would be fascinating to speculate on the relationship between the exegetai

consulted by Pausanias and the ones dismissed by Jacoby as the source of the

tradition of local historiography in the Wfth century bc. Is what we see in

Pausanias essentially a composition of antiquarian material, and not of the

same analytical or interpretative quality as a work of historiography? In the

absence of complete works of local historiography, that remains a diYcult

distinction to articulate and support. There is a further and related issue

which continues to elude precise analysis, namely the place of the polis in all of

this, and the interest of the polis community in the construction of its past.

One of Jacoby’s main theses in Atthis was that local historiography was the

result of an impulse towards the celebration of civic pride, rather than the

oVspring of a college of priests. The possibility that Pausanias’ project in-

volved gathering up past stories of the Greek poleis and turning them into

Roman possessions, with Greece now a theme park for wealthy Romans,198

would represent a dramatic shift in the relationship between historiography

and the self-assertion of the polis. Although Pausanias might be helping to

form local traditions as he interrogates his sources, the impetus for the

account would no longer be found inside the polis, nor even among itinerant

historians who were engaged in some form of inter-polis diplomacy, but in a

dispassionate outsider, drawing information from scholarly experts.

The combination of the Pausanias who forms traditions as he goes and the

one who simply compiles exegetical information may oVer a diVerent way of

formulating Habicht’s idea of two levels in Pausanias’ text—what he has seen

on his travels (Ł�øæ��ÆÆ) and the stories he tells from others (º ª�Ø), making

him into both autoptic guide and transmitter of tales.199 In this sense, we

might come back to Herodotus, and indeed the combination of local

traditions and larger narratives would add force to that parallel.200 Pausanias,

like Herodotus, saw it as his task to construct a connected, if not comprehen-

sive, narrative which would reXect the underlying vision of Greece.201

197 S. Alcock, ‘Landscapes of Memory and the Authority of Pausanias’, in J. Bingen (ed.),Pausanias Historien. Fondation Hardt 41 (Geneva, 1996), 241–67 at 262.198 For Greece as a location for the celebration of Roman otium, see S. Alcock, Graecia Capta:

The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge, 1993), especially 224–6.199 C. Habicht, Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece (Berkeley, 1998 [1985]), 21, for the

combination of Ł�øæ��ÆÆ and º ª�Ø.200 This is indeed the view put forward by E. Bowie, ‘Inspiration and Aspiration: Date, Genre,

and Readership’, in Alcock, Cherry, Elsner (eds.), Pausanias, 21–32 at 25. Bowie sees theassociation of tales with monuments as a strongly Herodotean inXuence on Pausanias.201 For Pausanias as deliberate creator of a coherent vision of a notional Greece, see J. Elsner,

‘Structuring ‘‘Greece’’: Pausanias’ Periegesis as a Literary Construct’, in Alcock, Cherry, Elsner


Just as the activities and products of itinerant historians could be seen to

reXect the needs of the poleis for which they worked, so too is Pausanias’

version of the connectivity brought by travelling around and gathering local

tales into a single work Wrmly embedded in the political reality of his age, and

it shares its ambiguities. The cohesion brought to Greece by the development

of the Panhellenion has been seen as a reXection of, or contributor to, the same

type of network, linking the Greek poleis into a cultural and political unity.202

Rather than focusing only on the way in which Pausanias appears to gather up

and neatly ‘package’ the past of the Greek poleis for their Roman masters, one

might also reintroduce the idea of the assertion of an independent Greek

identity. Whitmarsh has argued that writers on the subject of exile in this

period ‘create and explore a tension between polis and cosmos, between the

traditional parochiality of Greek identity and its new role as the integrative

language of the eastern Roman Empire’,203 and this view may be applicable

also to the work of Pausanias. If Whitmarsh is correct, then we might wish to

draw a less sharp dichotomy between the world of the itinerant historian, who

creates through his or her travels a conceptually independent network

of historiographical allusions between the Greek poleis, and the world of

Pausanias, who also blurs the boundary between the local and the Panhellenic.

While the blurring of these boundaries may be appealing, it is important

not to lose sight of diVerences over time and the exigencies of changing

political realities. The parallel with the world of the Second Sophistic is

appropriate, but only to a degree. There is a tension between the ability of

intellectuals to circulate around the cities, as Philostratus’ sophists do, and

their role as benefactors of individual cities, able to act as ambassadors and

advocates for the poleis in wider contexts, often through their facility for

telling the past in particular ways. This might seem to mirror quite accurately

some aspects of the Hellenistic world of itinerant historians acting as bene-

factors of cities which were not necessarily their own, and embodying the link

between intra-polis historiography and inter-polis networks. But the con-

nected world put together by the periegete, using the stories performed by

the itinerant historians before him and transmitted in turn to the travelling

Roman reader, who could use it to guide him in the footsteps of all his

predecessors on the journey, was a form of reminiscence rather than one of

(eds.), Pausanias, 3–20. Unity was not incompatible with the gathering up of disparate tales, butrather achieved by that process.

202 See K. W. Arafat, Pausanias’ Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers (Cambridge, 1996),12–14, 35.

203 T. Whitmarsh, ‘ ‘‘Greece is the World’’: Exile and Identity in the Second Sophistic’, inS. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and theDevelopment of Empire (Cambridge, 2001), 269–305 at 273.


novelty, a re-evocation of the local tales, which the travelling historian had

Wrst set down. As is often observed in the case of oratory, one might suggest

that in local historiography too, the early centuries of the Principate oVered a

pale and derivative imitation of a phenomenon that had truly Xourished in

the fourth-century poleis, and continued as a form of polis self-assertion

during the Hellenistic period as the power of Rome loomed.204

But Bowie notes, in his discussion of the ‘gatherer-historian’, Pausanias,

that itinerant historians were still at work generating local historiography in

his lifetime, actively participating in the world of inter-polis relations, perhaps

politically more important than the itinerant sophists, and honoured in

inscriptions accordingly.205 P. Anteius Antiochus of Cilician Aegeae, a close

contemporary of Pausanias whose honoriWc inscription was set up for his

work on early Argive history, is a good example of the continuation of this

phenomenon.206 He was celebrated by the people of Argos for having spent

time in their city, ‘establishing the ancient kinship with the Aegeaeans’

(�Æ��æa� ±�E� ��Ø��Æ� a� KŒ �ÆºÆØ�F ��æ��ı�Æ� �� `Nª�Æ��ı� ±�H�

�ıªª��Æ�, 20–1). As Price has commented in connection with this Wgure,

he reminds us that the Panhellenion was not the whole answer to the question

of how to conduct Greek diplomacy in the second century ad.207 ‘Many

preferred to forge their own mythological ties with individual cities. The

pattern of networking remained Xuid and varied.’208

One striking aspect of the world in which the writers of the Second

Sophistic were working is, of course, the existence of a nearly global empire

with a strong sense of a centre of power at an imperial capital. The political

eVectiveness of the intellectuals of this period was manifested largely through

their ability to intercede on behalf of the poleis of the Greek East with the

power structure of Rome. Our earlier itinerant intellectuals at Wrst glance

appear to have been operating in a very diVerent context, one in which

the tensions lie not between the Panhellenic unity, posited by Whitmarsh,

204 E. L. Bowie, ‘The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic’; Past and Present 46(1970), 3–41, stresses on the whole the depressed nature of political life in the cities of the GreekEast, and the escapist element in the oratory it produced. G. W. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in theRoman Empire (Oxford, 1969) also focuses on the links to Rome of the prominent intellectualsof this age. Cultural life is thus vibrant and the intellectuals high-proWle and politically eVective,but not entirely independent.205 Bowie, ‘Inspiration and Aspiration’, 25.206 For this inscription see L. Robert, ‘Documents d’Asie Mineure’, Bulletin de Correspon-

dance Hellenique 101 (1977), 120–9.207 Although Robert, ibid. 128, sees this ‘orator-historian’ (rheteur historien) as symptomatic

of the literary Wgures whose work Xourished under the Panhellenion.208 S. Price, ‘Local Mythologies in the Greek East’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and A. Burnett

(eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford, 2005), 115–24 at 122.


and the superpower of Rome, but between the individual polis and a sense of

shared Panhellenic traditions and history.

It would, however, be misleading to dismiss Rome from the earlier picture.

We have already noted the point made by Lloyd-Jones in connection with the

inscription from Halicarnassus that it was to be read in the context of second-

century Roman intervention in the area as a form of self-assertion through

intellectual supremacy, not so very diVerent a view from that often made

about the dynamics of the Second Sophistic. Although most of the inscrip-

tions honouring itinerant historians make no reference to the power of Rome,

and can be read entirely within the framework of inter-polis relations being

conducted in the currency of intra-polis history, there is a notable exception in

the Wgure of Aristotheus of Troezen:209

It seemed good to the people of Delphi . . . since Aristotheus son of Nicotheus

from Troezen, a historian coming to the city . . . held recitations for several

days of his works, and he set forth encomia210 of the Romans, the common

benefactors of the Greeks, that he and his descendants should be given by the

city proxeny, the right to consult the oracle Wrst, priority in judicial hearings,

inviolability, exemption from all taxes, the right to sit in the front row at all the

competitive occasions which the polis stages, and the other civic privileges

which are accorded to other proxenoi and benefactors.

Here another itinerant historian, Aristotheus, was honoured by the people of

Delphi in the early or mid-second century bc.211 The polis of Delphi resolved

to grant proxeny and all the other rights and privileges customarily granted to

benefactors of the polis, to Aristotheus and to his descendants, but not

because he composed and performed a Xattering account of Delphi’s early

history; rather his Xattery was directed at Rome.212

We might wonder why the people of Delphi should go to the considerable

expense of setting up an honoriWc inscription to commemorate this historian’s

209 SGDI 2724 (cf. Syll:3 702; Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.124; FGrH 835 t 1): �� AØ � º�Ø H�˜�º�H� . . . K��Ø�� %æØ� Ł�� ˝ØŒ�Ł��ı ½ æ��Ø�� ƒ��æØ�ªæ�� ÆæÆª�� ½K�� a�� ºØ� . . . K��Ø��Æ� �b ŒÆd IŒæ��Ø� K�½d ��º��Æ� ±��æÆ� H� ��æÆª�Æ�ı��ø� ÆPHØ;�ÆæÆ��ª�ø ½�b ŒÆd� K�½Œ��ØÆ �N� � .ø�Æ��ı� �f� Œ�Ø��f� H� � ¯ºº��ø� �P�æª�Æ�; �� ŁÆØ�Ææa A½�� ºØ�� æ��Æ� ÆPHØ ŒÆd KŒª ��Ø�; �æ��Æ��½Æ��; �æ��ØŒ�Æ�; I�ıº�Æ�; I�º�ØÆ�½��ø�; �æ��æ�Æ� K� �A�Ø �E� Iª��Ø� �x ½�� ± � ºØ½� ��Ł�Ø ŒÆd pººÆ ��ØÆ ‹�Æ ŒÆd ½¼�ºº�Ø��æ��Ø� ŒÆd �P�æª�ÆØ� ½��æ½��Ø A� � ºØ��.

210 The restoration to the crucialword, K�½Œ��ØÆ, is based on a combination of sense and length.211 The date is uncertain and will be discussed below.212 Indeed, this fragment is placed by Jacoby in his section on Rome and Italy, since its content

concerns that region. It does, however, also contribute to our understanding of the historiographyand cultural history of Greece, in so far as it enriches our picture of the phenomenon of itinerantlocal historians. See A. Erskine, ‘The Romans as Common Benefactors’, Historia 43 (1994), 70–87at 79–80, for the possibility that Aristotheus’ encomium constituted cult worship of the Romansin this role.


performance, as well as granting him extensive civic rights. Perhaps they were

simply appreciative of the entertainment, which Aristotheus provided for sev-

eral days. Or, more probably, we should see this as a good illustration of the

political importance of historiography, whether local or not. History written in

support of the ruling power was seen as carrying considerable beneWts for all

concerned. Even though Aristotheus came from outside, the fact that he per-

formed at Delphi was valuable for the people of that polis, and they were only

too keen to set up amemorial linking themselves with the pro-Roman perform-

ance, especially given the well-attested wish of the Delphians to be associated

with the new ruling power after their ‘liberation’ in 191–188 bc.213

The inscription honouring Aristotheus has traditionally been dated to

c.158/7 bc,214 but the arguments for that date are purely circumstantial and

it seems that there are compelling reasons for a reconsideration. Aristaenus,

on whose statue base the inscription appears, was seen by Polybius (22.10) as

already ingratiating himself to Rome in the 180s, and Erskine has traced the

use of the phrase ‘common benefactors’ in Greek inscriptions referring to the

Romans back to 182 bc.215 It would seem that a date for this inscription, say,

at least a couple of decades earlier than the context suggests would not be

inconceivable in historical terms.216 It would, indeed be entirely in keeping

with Delphi’s eagerness to position itself carefully vis-a-vis Rome that a pro-

Roman performance, richly rewarded with honours and privileges, should

follow quickly on the heels of the liberation. Aristotheus clearly knew what

213 In fact, the Delphic location of this whole episode is by no means accidental. P. S. Derowand W. G. Forrest, ‘An Inscription from Chios’, Annual of the British School at Athens 77 (1982),79–92, argue that Delphi and Chios, from where comes an inscription which mentions thededication of a depiction of the foundation of Rome by Romulus and Remus, enjoyed anexceptionally close bond, which they both turned in the direction of ‘making manifest theirgoodwill to the victors’ (90). For the importance of the restored Delphic Amphictyony inrelations between Greek cities and Rome, see A. Giovannini, ‘Philipp V, Perseus und dieDelphische Amphiktyony’, in B. Laourdas and C. Makaronas (eds.), Ancient Macedonia (Thes-saloniki, 1970), 147–54.214 See Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.124, and H. Pomtow, ‘Delphica II’, Berliner Philologische

Wochenschrift (1909) for the context of the inscription. It is its place on the base of the statueof Aristaenus which leads to the supposition of a date c.158/7 bc, since the palaeography links itclosely to the following inscription (explicitly dated to the archonship of Patreas in 157 bc).215 Erskine, ‘The Romans as Common Benefactors’, 70–87. The phrase appears until the late

Wrst century bc.216 See P. S. Derow, ‘Rome, the Fall of Macedon and the Sack of Corinth’, in Cambridge

Ancient History VIII2 (Cambridge, 1989), 290–323, for the increasing tendency of some Greekpoleis to style themselves pro-Roman during these decades. It is worth noting that H. B.Siedentopf, Das hellenistische Reiterdenkmal (Waldsassen, 1968), 114, dates the statue basewith its dedication to Aristaenus to 186/5 bc and, were it not for the palaeographical link ofthe Aristotheus inscription to the one which follows it, it would be tempting to connectAristotheus’ honoriWc inscription chronologically to this preceding one. For helpful discussionof the inscription and of its historical context, I owe thanks to Peter Derow.


would make an irresistible theme for the polis in question, especially at this

point in its history, and also knew the precise terminology of the Romans as

‘common benefactors’ in which to express his theme. Just as it had made sense

for Sicilian historians to display their aYliations and aspirations to Greek

identity through their use of speciWcally Hellenic ways of articulating the past

(as discussed in chapters 3 and 4), so do we see reXected here, perhaps,

historiography as a vehicle for expressing adherence to a new world order

that was emerging with increasing force and clarity.

It is hard to tell to what degree a story uniWed by the presence of a single

phenomenon or set of circumstances, namely the scenario whereby an itin-

erant intellectual turns up at a Greek polis and relates history, usually that of

the host polis and usually in poetic form, for which he or she is rewarded by

the polis with honoriWc inscriptions and political privileges, runs the risk of

distorting or simply ignoring the contextual reality surrounding each indi-

vidual case. The notion of interaction between poleis is clearly not unique to

any period. We have already noted the circulation of intellectuals, including

some historians, in the settled, stable world of the Principate in what would be

termed the Second Sophistic. At the other end of a chronological spectrum,

the worlds of theOdyssey and the Iliad are adequate testimony to the mobility

of aristocrats and the importance of guest-friendship. Pelling has noted the

importance of such inter-polis links for intellectual life, ‘with poets and

celebrands alike revelling in their cross-community connections’, in the

world of Pindar and Bacchylides.217 Somewhere in between, a fragment of

Hyperides oVers a glimpse of fourth-century tourism, whereby rich Aeolians

came to Delos with lots of gold, ‘being away from home on a tour of

Greece’.218

But it would be a missed opportunity if we were simply to allow the

itinerant tellers of local history in the period under consideration to dissolve

into a bland phenomenon of continuous mobility around the Mediterranean

world, involving intellectual Wgures of various kinds. There is a sense in which

one can Wnd a convincing context for the particular phenomenon of itinerant

historians in the ancient Mediterranean koine of interaction and connectivity,

which has been so eloquently explored in diVerent ways by scholars such as

Purcell and Malkin.219 The Panhellenic range of the historians, who travel

widely and seem to know what to say wherever they go, might be seen to

217 Pelling, ‘Ion’s Epidemiai’, 108.218 FGrH 401 f 5: ŒÆa Ł�øæ�Æ� B� � ¯ºº�� I��F��.219 See P. Horden and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History

(Oxford, 2000) for a superb account of the intricacies of Mediterranean activity on a range ofscales. Also I. Malkin, ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, in I. Malkin (ed.),Mediterranean Paradigms and Classical Antiquity (London, 2005), 56–74.


mirror rather neatly the observation already made (in chapter 4) that the

parochiality of local historiography, for which it would be criticized from

antiquity onwards, was more apparent, or rather assumed, than real, and that

one of the crucial features of local accounts was precisely to embed themselves

in larger narratives, which carried more weight in the world beyond. Local

historiography, as carried out by itinerant historians, might be seen, then, as

another, rather neglected, manifestation of the wider theme of Mediterranean

connectivity. This context has the advantage of simultaneously oVering a new

and more rigorously developed framework of intra- and inter-polis relations

within which to read the fragments of local historiography, which are notori-

ously diYcult to interpret. It enables us to bring Jacoby’s model of local

historiography, as a form which was necessarily constructed against a bigger

picture as an expression of local pride, within the context of placing one’s own

city on the world map, in a more up-to-date scholarly framework. Conversely,

it allows the fragments of local historiography to contribute another angle on

the increasingly complex picture of Mediterranean interaction which has built

up over recent decades.

But this model alone will not suYce. The complementarity between intra-

polis individuality and inter-polis connectivity, which can be partially ex-

pressed in terms of coexisting local and Panhellenic frameworks in historiog-

raphy, appears to map easily on to the world of the travelling historian,

serving each polis as he or she goes, and forming a network of journeys

which might be re-enacted by later periegetes, such as Pausanias, or by even

later tourists. However, it sits less happily with the notion of the historian who

carries authority within his own community, and of local historiography as

the natural home-grown product of the polis in its quest for recognition in the

wider world.

6 . RETURNING TO THE POLIS

The status of the often itinerant performers of local history is undoubtedly

elevated. They were clearly sometimes high-level ambassadors sent on im-

portant inter-polis missions, and it is important to return to the questions on

what grounds they won acclaim in the poleis, and what their precise relation-

ship to those poleis really was. I have argued throughout that each polis had a

strong interest in the construction and presentation of its past, and a high

level of awareness of the ways in which time could be manipulated. Although

we may gain a relatively strong sense of the orator as a presence in the polis

and one who has a particular stake in presenting to the polis certain aspects of

Returning to the polis 363

its past, both buying into and moulding the ‘oYcial tradition’, the historian

tends to be a more elusive Wgure. The statesman-historian of the Thucydidean

type may have been less dominant in the Greek world than is often assumed,

and indeed the story of the ‘historiography of exile’ is an important episode in

its own right. If we take Lucian seriously, then the ideal writer of history is not

‘of the polis’ in any case, but an outsider: ‘an impartial judge, well disposed to

all men up to the point of not giving one side more than its due, in his

writings a stranger (��) and a man without a polis (¼��ºØ�), independent

(ÆP ��), subject to no sovereign (I�Æ��º�ı��)’.220 It is true that local

historians such as Androtion were heavily involved in the political Realien of

fourth-century Athens, but we have no evidence that this was the case for the

majority of local historians.221 Furthermore, the existence of itinerant histor-

ians suggests that the local historian as prominent citizen, and proponent of

the interests of his own polis through his relation of its past, is a picture which

oVers us only a partial description. The ‘pride of Halicarnassus’ phenomenon

needs to be complemented by other possibilities for the construction of the

community’s past.

Amodelwhichwould accommodate at least someof the evidence, andwhich

emerges not from the fragments of local historiography themselves,

which seem to have been largely native productions, but from the inscriptions

which honoured the performers and composers of historical works, is to

consider the local historian as a professional or semi-professional Wgure, at

least from the Hellenistic period onwards. The context for Wgures such as the

ones we have seen honoured in the epigraphy, historians who simply turned

up and performed, or who came under a more intricate and formal arrange-

ment instigated by either the historian’s home town or the host city, would

then be similar to that of the technitai Dionysou, the ‘artists of Dionysus’, to

whom a good deal more scholarly attention has been devoted.222

Lightfoot has set out the way in which large corporations of musicians,

poets, and dramatists, the so-called technitai, evolved from the early third

century bc, and spread throughout the Mediterranean,223 and some of the

220 Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 41: Y�� ØŒÆ��; �h��ı� –�Æ�Ø� ¼�æØ �F �c ŁÆ�æø Ø I��E�ÆØ�º�E�� F ��; �� K� �E� �Ø�º��Ø� ŒÆd ¼��ºØ�; ÆP ��; I�Æ��º�ı��.

221 See also P. Funke, ‘�æ��ØŒÆd �ı��Ø� ŒÆd ƒ��æ�ÆØ: Die rhodische Historiographie inhellenistischer Zeit’, Klio 76 (1994), 255–62 at 259, for the statesman status of Antisthenes andZeno of Rhodes, in spite of which Polybius applies the same critique (in Book 16) as to otherlocal historians.

222 I owe to Professor Adalberto Giovannini the initial suggestion that this professional,‘rhapsodic’ world might oVer the most satisfactory context for interpreting the itineranthistorians.

223 J. L. Lightfoot, ‘Nothing to do with the technitai of Dionysus?’, in P. Easterling and E. Hall(eds.), Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession (Cambridge, 2002), 209–24.


aspects of this phenomenon which she identiWes are of particular interest and

relevance to a consideration of itinerant historians and their relationship to

the polis. We have already noted the interestingly blurred boundary between

historiography and poetry, and it is striking that both Guarducci, in her study

of ‘wandering poets’, and Stephanes, in his book on ‘Artists of Dionysus’,

include our itinerant historians in their respective pictures.224 As Schepens

appreciates, Guarducci’s work ‘places our wandering historians squarely in

context: considered alongside poets, artists, grammarians, philosophers, doc-

tors, and musicians, they are seen as participating in a large diversiWed

movement, typical of the vibrant dynamic of Hellenistic culture’.225 It is not

clear that one can speak of ‘cults of historians’, of the kinds associated with

poets, such as Archilochus, but the awards of proxeny, which are celebrated in

the honoriWc inscriptions for historians, Wnd precise parallels in the awards of

such civic honours to members of the poetic and acting guilds as rewards for

civic benefaction, suggesting that both groups, although outsiders, were

publicly acknowledged as beneWcial to the city.226 On the other hand, per-

forming historians Wnd no place in the list of prizes, which are neatly graded

in value according to a hierarchy of types of performance,227 and the com-

parison between lyric poets of the archaic period and itinerant historians of

the Hellenistic period may be too disparate to be meaningful.

The assertion that, ‘they [sc. the Artists of Dionysus] constituted themselves

as cities and appointed oYcials and issued decrees, while managing to live in

the cities where they took up residence as privileged outsiders—in the city but

not of it’ might suggest that the signiWcance of the performers to the polis and

of the polis to the performers was minimal.228 The problem over the shift from

224 See Guarducci, Poeti vaganti e conferenzieri dell’eta ellenistica and Stephanes, ˜Ø��ı�ØÆŒ�d ��EÆØ.225 Schepens, ‘Travelling Greek Historians’.226 See, for example, Fouilles de Delphes iii.3.125, the next inscription on the Aristaenus

statue base after that which celebrates the award of proxeny and other civic honours toAristotheus. FdD iii.3.125 celebrates Aristys, a musician/poet who was honoured with exactlythe same, clearly standard, list of privileges as Aristotheus.227 See Lightfoot, ‘Nothing to do with the technitai of Dionysus?’, 214. The inscription con-

cerning detailed regulations for the new festival of the Demostheneia, set up at Oenoanda in ad

124, also lists categories of artists who could compete for prizes, but no historians are mentionedamong the tragic and comic poets, trumpeters, and heralds. The only categories which mightconceivably accommodate any of the historical performers discussed in this chapter are those ofcitharodes and writers of encomia in prose. See G. M. Rogers, ‘Demosthenes of Oenoanda andModels of Euergetism’, Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991), 91–100. For a text of the inscription, seeM. Worrle, Stadt und Fest in Kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien: Studien zu einer Agonistischen Stiftung ausOenoanda (Munich, 1988) and for English translation, S.Mitchell, ‘Festivals, Games, andCivic Lifein Roman Asia Minor’, Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990), 183–93 at 183–7.228 See Lightfoot, ‘Nothing to do with the technitai of Dionysus?’, 210. See also 223 for the

guild in Ptolemais-Hermiou, which called itself a techniteuma in a way which was clearlymodelled on the politeuma.


actors who were citizen amateurs to professional guildsmen with formal

contracts neatly mirrors the disquieting sense in which itinerant historians

seem disjointed from the poleis whose pasts they tell rather than embedded in

them. Furthermore, although Lightfoot goes so far as to incorporate histor-

ians and grammatici (perhaps Wgures such as Dioscurides) into her picture of

those who might perform at venues such as Delos and Delphi, without

necessarily being a member of a guild or part of the festival proper, there

are two elements here which might warn us that we have not yet found the

perfect context or explanation for our itinerant historians. First, the ‘lecturers

who included historians and grammatici’ (p. 218) sound rather distanced

from the spirited performers of poetic accounts of the past, sung to the lyre,

by stars like Menecles or Aristodama, though this may simply be a matter of

style rather than of substance. Second, the congregation of performers at

festivals in Delos and Delphi echoes a theme which we have already identiWed

in connection with the historians’ inscriptions, namely advertisement of the

inter-polis transaction at one of the great neutral Panhellenic sites—import-

ant in the quest to gain recognition for all parties on a larger stage—but these

locations are, by deWnition, detached from the world of individual poleis.

Perhaps we need to diVerentiate more carefully between these Panhellenic

performances and the more polis-based world evoked by Gentili, who sees our

itinerant intellectuals—be they rhapsodes, actors, or historians—as bringing

‘court’ culture and knowledge in the Hellenistic period to a mass audience at

the city festivals, and, in a sense, making public the learning concerning both

Panhellenic and local myths, which ‘provided the traditional beginnings of

the history of individual cities’.229

The possibility that professional or semi-professional historians travelled

around performing specially composed and tailored works might go some

way to answering the ongoing problem of historiographical authority. Figures

with a pre-existing reputation presumably claimed an audience without much

diYculty, and indeed might be considered a real coup for a polis. The question

of why, for example, the people of Crete trusted two men from Teos to

examine their local history, and tell them about their own past, may not be

as perplexing as it Wrst seems, if there were well-known historians around

who would make it, quite literally, their business to know the story and know

how to tell it.230 For Rigsby, the designation of the Tean ambassadors is

229 B. Gentili, Poetry and its Public in Ancient Greece (Baltimore, 1988), 175.230 See Rigsby, Asylia, 280, for the fact that Teos was the oYcial residence of the Ionian-

Hellespontine Artists of Dionysus during the third century. Thus, the provision of authoritativepoet-historians from that city becomes even less surprising. Furthermore, the personal inviol-ability accorded to Artists of Dionysus seems to have assisted in the claim to inviolability of thepolis as a whole.


straightforward: ‘obviously Dionysiac Artists’.231 Another angle would be to

recall that the parochialism of the local historians is questionable; their ability

to tell authoritative and accepted, even laudable, versions of the past of other

poleis, reinforces this idea. Many historians wrote several works concerning

diVerent places. This suggests either that the local nature of key historio-

graphic frameworks, such as the relevant mythic past and appropriate tem-

poral systems, was less pronounced than we might have imagined; that is,

that composing the history of Samos was not such a very diVerent task from

composing that of Tegea or Argos or Delphi. Or it may be that a truly top-

class historian could overcome any local variations. It is, in any case, worth

asking what gave a historian the authority to turn up in a strange town and

start telling the people their past; and what it was that made them listen.

The epigraphic evidence oVers a rare insight into the context of immediate

reception of this form of historiography, telling the past of the Greek poleis, and

provides unusually direct evidence for the relationship between the local

historian and his or her audience, to a degree which is lost to us for more

famous Wgures. Here, for once, the original audiences have left permanent and

explicit expressions of their reception of the historians and their works.232 The

idea of the local historian as inextricably linked to his own home polis, and

spokesperson for the oYcial tradition of that place, is clearly not the only

possible model, pace Prakken on the role of Hereas as ‘undoubtedly [my italics]

the historical voice of Megara at the end of the fourth century’ who ‘carried on

the literary and historical polemic of Megara against Athens’.233 Patriotism for

one’s own polismight well have played a part, or indeed been in some cases the

primary motivation, but it cannot be the whole or only answer. On the other

hand, if we assign local historiography to the world of festivals, competitions,

and rivalry for reputation among well-known professionals, then where does

that leave the polis, and what is the status and truth claim of the history?

It remains unclear precisely what the context might be for such perform-

ances of local historiography. Where did the historian perform and for

whom?234 Fowler has interestingly discussed the relevance of orality and

231 See Rigsby, Asylia, 289.232 Though see J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge,

1997), 53, on the issue of dedicatees and the possibility that immediacy of reception may detractfrom the eternal, unspeciWed audience of ‘great historians’.233 D. W. Prakken, ‘On the date of Hereas, the Megarian Historian’, Classical Weekly 37

(1943–4), 1–2 at 2.234 Some glimpses drawn from inscriptions honouring itinerants may, however, be helpful.

See Inscr. Delos 1506, a mid-second-century bc inscription celebrating Ariston, son of Acrisiusfrom Phocaea, who, in spite of his youth like Xenophon of Samos (K� �E �F �ÆØ�e� �ºØŒ�ÆØ)turned up on Delos and made many performances ‘in the assembly place and the theatre’ (� �HØ KŒŒº��ØÆ��æ�øØ ŒÆd K� HØ Ł��æøØ).


literacy for the question of historiographical authority, particularly in Her-

odotus, and has observed the tendency of ‘great’ history to abandon the

Muses’ inspiration, and pare down the poetry of a festive occasion, baldly

speaking, into the bare facts told in prose.235 The disjunction between the

occasion-bound performance and an occasion-free literate version, with a

middle ground in the world of competitive contexts,236 requires the compos-

ition to be appealing and comprehensible to more than its original, restricted

audience. Mythography was from the start ‘occasion-free, panhellenic, and in

these respects literate’, and, in Fowler’s view, the extant fragments of local

historiography tell the same story, with multiple implied audiences built in,

no distinction between the telling of local and Panhellenic subjects, and the

widespread use of Ionic dialect suggesting that these works were designed

from the outset to be consumed by more than a single, local audience.237

On the other hand, I would not wish to go so far as to detach local

historiography from its immediate contexts and audiences, some of which

we are in the rare position of being able to identify. The stake in its success for

both the city which produced the historian, and that whose history was told,

is shown by the epigraphic evidence concerning the moment of creation and

reception to be too high for such a conclusion to be allowed. In any case, we

know from the epigraphy that at least some local historiography was very

much oral in nature, and was performed for a particular occasion in the Wrst

instance, whatever then happened in terms of producing a more self-con-

tained text. Whether for a private or a public audience, or both in the case of

the Parian Marble, and whether in poetry or prose, it seems that local

historiography stuck close to its roots in the world of lyric poetry and the

telling of the mythical and historical past combined.238

The point of contact between Jacoby’s world of fragments surviving from

the vast wealth of local historiography written in prose and largely by native

235 See R. Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, in Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft, 95–115at 102–3. Of course, the example of Herodotus is highly complex, since it has been stronglyargued that he gave public performances at Athens and Olympia. Theopompus also travelledaround the Greek world as epideictic performer. Marincola, Authority and Tradition, 8, makes asimilar point about the move in historiography from the inspiration of the muses to thehistorian’s own authority. But his almost complete failure to accommodate the fragments oflocal historiography means that he is not required to place them on this spectrum.

236 It is worth recalling at this point Thucydides’ explicit rejection of such contexts for theproduction of his ‘great’, eternal work of history (1.22.4), perhaps written with a hint of irony.

237 Fowler, ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, 114 for mythography; 111–13 on the widespreadaudience implied for local historiography.

238 On the complex and poetic interaction between mythic narratives and present rituals,through which the polis and groups within it expressed their identities, see B. Kowalzig, Singingfor the Gods: Performances of Myth and Ritual in Archaic and Classical Greece (Oxford, forth-coming 2007).


historians and, on the other hand, that which the epigraphic evidence allows

us tentatively to reconstruct, a world of local historiography which was

performed, often in lyric form, on particular occasions and often by artists

from outside the polis, may be glimpsed by considering a pair of inscriptions.

We have already seen Syriscus of Chersonesus who was celebrated by his own

town for a dual benefaction—both writing and performing (ªæ�łÆ� I½��ª�ø)the epiphanies of the goddess.239 But this double treatment, both written and

oral, was also celebrated around the same time for another historian in

another town. The polis of Amphipolis set up an inscription to honour an

individual who had presented his historical researches on the town and

its patron goddess in oral performances (½K��Ø��j�Æ� IŒæ��Ø�) and in a

written publication (�ı��½��Æ� �b �Ø�º��j ŒÆd ��æd B� Æıæ�� º�ı).240This time the composer of the history, both oral and written, is not a local, but

a visitor (�Ææ��Ø��H½��) of the type we have seen in many honoriWc inscrip-

tions. Local historiography could be produced by both natives and visitors, in

both oral and written form.

The ‘occasion-free’, literate, prose histories on a grand scale for an unspe-

ciWed readership throughout all subsequent time, which were written by

historians of the Wfth century, set the agenda for most of western historiog-

raphy thenceforth, but may in fact be seen as something of an aberration.

Historiography continued to be created for particular audiences on particular

occasions. On the other hand, I do not agree with Gabba’s view that the

decline of the polis in the fourth century reduced historiography from being

political to simply oVering Herodotean-style entertainment: ‘In the Hellen-

istic period, changing cultural interests and the responses thereto of historians

meant that historical research lost much of its political element and returned

to traditional narrative forms.’ The mainstream of historiography, that is local

historiography, had never, in my view, forgotten these traditional narrative

forms, and indeed remained highly political, although the focus of its political

role may have shifted from the contents of the narrative to the diplomatic use

to which a more distant past could be put. But it is still right to move with

Fowler away from the notion of partisan and parochial local historiography,

which was of no interest to anyone but the home polis. The constituencies to

whom local historiography mattered were deWned, not anonymous and

amorphous, but they were certainly multiple, not unique.

239 See SGDI 3086.240 Bulletin epigraphique 92 (1979), no. 271. I should like to thank John Ma for drawing my

attention to this inscription.


Epilogue

A time scale is never merely a scale. Time does not present itself as empty,

homogeneous, morally neutral duration, except perhaps to philosophers

and theoretical physicists, and among them perhaps only to those of an

older, Kantian or Newtonian persuasion. For normal human beings time is

always Wlled, clotted with events, and signiWcant.1

This has been a book about the eventfulness and signiWcance of time for

normal human beings. I have argued throughout that the making of time was

of concern not only to professional chronographers and historians, but also to

a wider audience. Walbank’s assertion of the all-pervasive importance of time

past in the life of the Greek city underlines why articulating and expressing

time eVectively and plausibly, particularly in the context of local history,

mattered: ‘In both classical and Hellenistic Greece the past was important

not simply as the subject-matter of historians, but also as an element in public

life and sentiment. Consciousness of the past penetrated political activity to

an extent which would seem strange today.’2 In a sense the historian, the

orator, or the artist used the same frameworks as the chronographers but in

the service of the polis, thus acting as a link between the formal manipulation

of time and the life of the city. I have argued that members of the polis laughed

in the comic theatre at jokes which relied on a sophisticated awareness of the

constructed nature of time, were familiar with calendars which telescoped the

signiWcant events of the past into an annual cycle, listened to orators making

speeches which oVered particular contested views of the past, and, according

to the epigraphic evidence, heard and appreciated the performances of his-

torians who elaborated the shared past both for the internal consumption of

the polis and as a form of interstate diplomacy. The answer to the question

‘who had the right to tell the polis its past?’ must be manifold: tragic and

comic dramatists, orators, native and visiting historians, rhapsodes, exegetae,

and statesmen all oVered versions for the polis to reject or to accept through

acclamation.

1 T. R. Trautmann, ‘The Revolution in Ethnological Time’,Man ns 27 (1992), 379–97 at 384.2 F. W. Walbank, ‘Polybius and the Past’, in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays

and ReXections (Cambridge, 2002), 178–92 at 179.

ReXections on the constructed nature of time and the relationship between

time and narrative run like leitmotivs through Thomas Mann’s The Magic

Mountain, which opened the preface of this book. It thus seems appropriate

to allow Mann also the last word, with his thoughts on the embeddedness

both of life itself and of its narration in the medium of time. My opening

quote from Mann’s work and indeed the underlying argument of this book

might seem to Xy in the face of Poussin’s vision shown on the cover, depicting

A Dance to the Music of Time. Whether the dancers represent the annual cycle

in the personiWed forms of the seasons,3 or the life cycle of the individual,

evoking the biographical metaphor for the longue duree of history, Poussin’s

Wgures perform their dance to the music produced by the rhythm of time

himself, who has, almost uniquely here, exchanged his scythe for a lyre. But,

as Janus looks on, evoking the whole span of history with his forward- and

backward-looking gaze, we should note that Apollo’s chariot is drawn by not

only the naturally recurring dawn, but also the humanly articulated hours,

reminding us that humans construct even the small, recurring times of daily

life, just as they do the expansive, linear time of history. And alongside

Poussin’s dancers it is time to recall another type of performance, that of

our lyre-wielding historians whose playing delighted the citizens of the Greek

poleis, and to follow Mann’s cue in introducing some music to enhance the

telling of the tale. If time cannot after all be allowed to dictate the rhythm of

the music and the performance of the dance, then let a lyrical narrative dictate

the rhythms of time and of history.

For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are

inextricably bound up with it, as are bodies in space. Similarly time is the

medium of music; music divides, measures, articulates time, and can

shorten it, yet enhance its value, both at once.4

3 The echoes of other seventeenth-century paintings, such as Claude Gellee’s Apollo and theSeasons Dancing to the Music of Time, and the reading of Poussin’s painting implied by AntonyPowell’s novel sequence of the same name, point towards the Wgures representing seasons, butthe characterizations are hardly compelling, and one might just as easily adopt the view that thedancers are Poverty, Labour, Wealth, and Pleasure, encapsulating the cycle of the humancondition. On various interpretations of the painting, see R. Beresford, A Dance to the Musicof Time by Nicolas Poussin (London, 1995).4 T. Mann, The Magic Mountain (trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter; 1924) ch. 7 §1: ‘Die Zeit ist das

Element der Erzahlung, wie sie das Element des Lebens ist—unlosbar damit verbunden, wie mitden Korpern im Raum. Sie ist auch das Element der Musik, als welche die Zeit mißt undgliedert, sie kurzweilig und kostbar auf einmal macht.’

Epilogue 371

References

Adler, W. and TuYn, P. (trans. and eds.), The Chronography of George Synkellos:

A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation (Oxford University

Press, Oxford, 2002).

Alcock, S., Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, 1993).

—— ‘Landscapes of Memory and the Authority of Pausanias’, in J. Bingen (ed.),

Pausanias Historien. Fondation Hardt 41 (Vandoeuvres, Geneva, 1996), 241–67.

Allen, D., ‘A Schedule of Boundaries: an Exploration, Launched from the Water-clock,

of Athenian Time’, Greece & Rome 43 (1996), 157–68.

Aloni, A., ‘The Proem of Simonides’ Plataean Elegy and the Circumstances of its

Performance’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts of

Praise and Desire (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001), 86–105.

Ambaglio, D., ‘Per il reperimento di materiali di storia locale greca: Diodoro, Strabone

e Pausania’, in D. Ambaglio (ed.), #ıªªæÆ��: Materiali e appunti per lo studio della

storia e della letteratura antica (Edizioni New Press, Como, 1998), 93–109.

Ando, C., Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (University of

California Press, Berkeley and London, 2000).

Arafat, K., ‘Pausanias’ Attitude to Antiquities’, Annals of the British School at Athens 87

(1992), 387–409.

—— Pausanias’ Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers (Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, 1996).

Aveni, A. F., Empires of Time: Calendars, Clocks and Cultures (Tauris Parke, London

and New York, 2000).

Bagnall, R. S. and Derow, P. (eds.), The Hellenistic Period: Historical Sources in

Translation (Blackwell, Oxford, 2003; new edition).

Ball, R., ‘Generation Dating in Herodotos’, Classical Quarterly 29 (1979), 276–81.

Barber, G. L., The Historian Ephorus (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

1935).

Barrett, J. C., ‘Chronologies of Remembrance: the Interpretation of Some Roman

Inscriptions’, in R. Bradley (ed.), Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society. World

Archaeology 25.2 (Routledge, London, 1993), 236–47.

Beresford, R., A Dance to the Music of Time by Nicolas Poussin (Trustees of the Wallace

Collection, London, 1995).

Bertelli, L., ‘Hecataeus: From Genealogy to Historiography’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The

Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001),

67–94.

Bickerman, E. J., Chronology of the Ancient World2 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca,

1980).

Bielman, A., Retour a la liberte: Liberation et sauvetage des prisonniers en Grece

ancienne. Recueil d’inscriptions honorant des sauveteurs et analyse critique (Ecole

Francaise d’Athenes, Lausanne, 1994).

Biraschi, M., ‘Strabo and Homer: a Chapter in Cultural History’, in D. Dueck,

H. Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a

Kolossourgia (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005), 73–85.

Blair, J., Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Sutton Publishing, Oxfordshire Books, 1998/1994).

Bloch, M., ‘The Past and the Present in the Present’, Man ns 12 (1977), 278–92.

Blosel, W., ‘The Herodotean Picture of Themistocles: A Mirror of Fifth-century

Athens’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford

University Press, Oxford, 2001), 179–97.

Boedeker, D., ‘Hero Cult and Politics in Herodotus: The Bones of Orestes’, in

C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.), Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Perform-

ance, Politics (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998), 164–77.

—— ‘Presenting the Past in Fifth-Century Athens’, in D. Boedeker and K. A. RaaXaub

(eds.),Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens (Harvard University

Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 1998), 185–202.

—— ‘Heroic Historiography: Simonides and Herodotus on Plataea’, in D. Boedeker

and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire (Oxford


—— ‘Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus’, in P. Derow and

R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of

George Forrest (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003), 17–36.

Borker, C., ‘Der rhodische Kalender’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 31

(1978), 193–218.

BoVo, L., ‘EpigraW di citta greche: un espressione di storiograWa locale’, in E. Gabba

(ed.), Studi di storia e storiograWa antiche (Edizioni New Press, Como, 1988), 9–48.

Bonnechere, P., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker: Indexes of Parts I, II, and III.

Indexes of Ancient Authors (Brill, Leiden, 1999).

Bouvier, D., ‘Temps chronique et temps meteorologique chez les premiers historiens

grecs’, in C. Darbo-Peschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps dans le monde grec

ancien (CNRS Editions, Paris, 2000), 115–41.

Bowersock, G. W., Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Clarendon Press, Oxford,

1969).

Bowie, E. L., ‘The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic’, Past and Present 46

(1970), 3–41.

—— ‘Past and Present in Pausanias’, in Pausanias historien. Entretiens Hardt 41

(Vandoeuvres, Geneva, 1996), 207–30.

—— ‘Ancestors of Historiography in Early Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry’, in

N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford University

Press, Oxford, 2001), 44–66.

—— ‘Inspiration and Aspiration: Date, Genre, and Readership’, in S. E. Alcock,

J. F. Cherry, J. Elsner (eds.), Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece

(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001), 21–32.

References 373

Bowie, E. L.,‘Early Greek Iambic Poetry: The Importance of Narrative’, in A. Cavar-

zere, A. Aloni, and A. Barchiesi (eds.), Iambic Ideas: Essays on a Poetic Tradition

from Archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire (Rowman and LittleWeld, Oxford,

2002), 1–27.

Braund, D. C., ‘The Aedui, Troy, and the Apocolocyntosis’, Classical Quarterly 30

(1980), 420–5.

Bremen, R. van, ‘Family Structures’, in A. Erskine (ed.), ACompanion to the Hellenistic

World (Blackwell, Oxford, 2003), 313–30.

Brow, J., ‘Notes on Community, Hegemony, and the Uses of the Past’, Anthropological

Quarterly 63 (1990), 1–6.

Brown, T. S., ‘The Greek Sense of Time in History as Suggested by their Accounts of

Egypt’, Historia 11 (1962), 257–70.

Brunt, P. A., ‘On Historical Fragments and Epitomes’, Classical Quarterly 30 (1980),

477–94.

Burkert, W., Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. J. RaVan (Blackwell, Oxford,

1985; Wrst published 1977).

—— ‘Lydia between East and West or How to Date the Trojan War: A Study in

Herodotus,’ in J. B. Carter and S. P. Morris (eds.), The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to

Emily Townsend Vermeule (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1995), 139–48.

Burnett, A. P., Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho (Duckworth, London,

1983).

Burstein, S. M., The Babyloniaka of Berossus [Sources from the Ancient Near East,

Vol. 1, fasc. 5] (Undena Press, Malibu, 1978).

Calame, C., Myth and History in Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony,

trans. D. W. Berman (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2003; Wrst published

1996).

Callender, C. and Edley, R., Introducing Time (Icon Books, Royston, 2004).

Chambers, M., ‘The Genesis of Jacoby’s Atthis’, in E. Craik (ed.),Owls to Athens: Essays

on Classical Culture Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover (Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 1990), 381–90.

—— ‘La vita e carriera di Felix Jacoby’, in C. Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti dell’opera di Felix

Jacoby (Edizioni della Normale, Pisa, 2006), 5–29.

Chaniotis, A., Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften: Epigraphische

Beitrage zu griechischen Historiographie (Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1988).

Clarke, K., Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman

World (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999).

—— ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, in C. S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits of

Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Brill, Leiden, 1999),

249–79.

—— ‘Polybius and the Nature of Late Hellenistic Historiography’, in J. Santos Yan-

guas and E. Torregaray Pagola (eds.), Polibio y la Penınsula Iberica: Revisiones de

Historia Antigua IV (Universidad del Paıs Vasco, Vitoria Gasteiz, 2003), 69–87.

374 References

—— ‘Parochial Tales in a Global Empire: Creating and Recreating the World of the

Itinerant Historian’, in L. Troiani and G. Zecchini (eds.) La Cultura storica nei primi

due secoli dell’impero romano (L’Erma di Bretschneider, Rome, 2005), 111–28.

Clay, D., Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis (Harvard University

Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 2004).

CorWeld, P. J., ‘Naming the Age: History, Historians and Time’, An Inaugural Lecture

Dec. 1995, (London, Royal Holloway, 1996).

Cornell, T., The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic

Wars (c.1000–264 bc) (Routledge, London and New York, 1995).

Croix, G. E. M. de Ste., Athenian Democratic Origins and other Essays (Oxford

University Press, Oxford, 2004).

Crosby, H. Lamar, ‘Athenian History and the Athenian Public’, in Classical Studies

Presented to Edward Capps on his Seventieth Birthday (Princeton, 1936), 72–85.

Csapo, E. and Miller, M., ‘Democracy, Empire, and Art: Toward a Politics of Time and

Narrative’, in D. Boedeker and K. A. RaaXaub (eds.), Democracy, Empire, and the

Arts in Fifth-Century Athens (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and

London, 1998), 87–125.

Curty, O., ‘L’historiographie hellenistique et l’inscription no. 37 des Inschriften von

Priene’, in M. Pierart and O. Curty (eds.), Historia testis: Melanges d’epigraphie,

d’histoire ancienne et de philologie oVerts a Tadeusz Zawadzki (Fribourg University

Press, Fribourg, 1989), 21–35.

D’Alessio, G. B., ‘Ordered from the Catalogue: Pindar, Bacchylides, and Hesiodic

genealogical poetry’, in R. Hunter (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Con-

structions and Reconstructions (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005),

217–38.

Darbo-Peschanski C., ‘Introduction. Temporalisations: fondements, descriptions,

usages’, in C. Darbo-Peschanski, Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien

(CNRS Editions, Paris, 2000), 11–27.

—— ‘Historia et historiographie grecque: ‘‘le temps des hommes’’ ’, in Constructions

du temps dans le monde grec ancien (CNRS Editions, Paris, 2000), 89–114.

D’Arms, J. H., ‘Pro Murena 16 and Cicero’s Use of Historical Exempla’, Phoenix 26

(1972), 82–4.

Daux, G., ‘Le Calendrier de Thorikos’, L’Antiquite classique 52 (1983), 150–74.

—— and Salac, A. (eds.), Fouilles de Delphes iii 3 (Boccard, Paris, 1932).

Davies, M., Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, Gottingen,

1988).

Dench, E., From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and Modern Perceptions of

Peoples from the Central Apennines (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995).

—— Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of

Hadrian (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005).

Derow, P. S., ‘Rome, the Fall of Macedon and the Sack of Corinth’, in Cambridge

Ancient History VIII2 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989), 290–323.

—— and Forrest, W. G., ‘An Inscription from Chios’, Annual of the British School at

Athens 77 (1982), 79–92.

References 375

Dewald, C., Thucydides’ War Narrative: A Structural Study (University of California

Press, Berkeley and London, 2005).

Dicks, D. R., ‘Solstices, Equinoxes and the Presocratics’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 86

(1966), 26–40.

Dillery, J., ‘ReconWguring the Past: Thyrea, Thermopylae and Narrative Patterns in

Herodotus’, American Journal of Philology 117 (1996), 217–54.

—— ‘Greek Sacred History’, American Journal of Philology 126 (2005), 505–26.

Dougherty, C., ‘It’s Murder to Found a Colony’, in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.),

Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics (Oxford University

Press, Oxford, 1998), 178–98.

—— The Raft of Odysseus: The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’sOdyssey (Oxford


Dover, K. J. (ed.), Aristophanes Clouds (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1968).

Drews, R., ‘Ephorus and History Written KATA GENOS’, American Journal of Phil-

ology 84 (1963), 244–55.

Dueck, D., Strabo of Amasia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome (London,

Routledge, 2000).

—— ‘Strabo’s Use of Poetry’, in D. Dueck, H. Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s

Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia (Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, 2005), 86–107.

Dunbar, N., Aristophanes Birds (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995).

Dunn, F. M., ‘The Uses of Time in Fifth-century Athens’, The Ancient World 29.1

(1998), 37–52.

—— ‘Tampering with the Calendar’, Zeitschfrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 123

(1999), 213–31.

—— ‘The Council’s Solar Calendar’, American Journal of Philology 120 (1999), 369–80.

Dyck, A. R., ‘The Function and Persuasive Power of Demosthenes’ Portrait of Aes-

chines in the Speech On the Crown’, Greece & Rome 32 (1985), 42–8.

Elsner, J., ‘Structuring ‘‘Greece’’: Pausanias’ Periegesis as a Literary Construct’, in

S. E. Alcock, J. F. Cherry, J. Elsner (eds.), Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman

Greece (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001), 3–20.

Erskine, A., ‘The Romans as Common Benefactors’, Historia 43 (1994), 70–87.

—— ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou? Tales of Kinship and Diplomacy’, in D. Ogden

(ed.), The Hellenistic World: New Perspectives (The Classical Press of Wales and

Duckworth, London, 2002), 97–115.

Fehling, D., Herodotus and His ‘Sources’: Citation, Invention, and Narrative Art, trans.

J. G. Howie (Francis Cairns, Leeds, 1989).

Finkelberg, M., Greeks and Pre-Greeks: Aegean Prehistory and Greek Heroic Tradition

(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005).

Finley, M. I., ‘The Ancestral Constitution’, in The Use and Abuse of History (Penguin

Books, London, 1975), 34–59.

—— ‘Myth, Memory and History’, in The Use and Abuse of History (Penguin Books,

London, 1975), 11–33.

376 References

Flower, H. I., Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford


—— The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture (Univer-

sity of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2006).

Flower, M. A., ‘Simonides, Ephorus, and Herodotus on the Battle of Thermopylae’,

Classical Quarterly 48 (1998), 365–79.

—— ‘From Simonides to Isocrates: The Fifth-Century Origins of Fourth-Century

Panhellenism’, Classical Antiquity 19 (2000), 65–101.

Fornara, C. W., The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (University of


Fowler, R. L., ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 116

(1996), 62–87.

—— ‘Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation of the Hellenes’,

Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44 (1998), 1–19.

—— Early Greek Mythography. Volume I: Text and Introduction (Oxford University


—— ‘Early Historie and Literacy’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age

of Herodotus (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001), 95–115.

—— ‘Herodotus and his Prose Predecessors’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.),

The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

2006), 29–45.

Fraser, P. M., ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’, Proceedings of the British Academy 56 (1970),

175–207.

Friedman R., ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola

(eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, 2006), 165–77.

Frier, B. W., Libri Annales PontiWcum Maximorum: The Origins of the Annalistic

Tradition (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1999; Wrst published 1979).

Fritz, K. von, ‘Atthidographers and Exegetae’, Transactions of the American Philological

Association 71 (1940), 91–126.

Funke, P., ‘�æ��ØŒÆd �ı��Ø� ŒÆd ƒ��æ�ÆØ: Die rhodische Historiographie in helle-

nistischer Zeit’, Klio 76 (1994), 255–62.

Gabba, E., ‘True and False History in Classical Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies 71

(1981), 50–62.

Gell, A., The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and

Images (Berg, Oxford, 1992).

Gentili, B., Poetry and its Public in Ancient Greece: From Homer to the Fifth Century,

trans. A. Thomas Cole (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1988; Wrst

published 1985).

Giangiulio, M., ‘Constructing the Past: Colonial Traditions and the Writing of His-

tory. The case of Cyrene’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of

Herodotus (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001), 116–37.

Giovannini, A., ‘Philipp V, Perseus und die Delphische Amphiktyony’, in B. Laourdas

and C. Makaronas (eds.), Ancient Macedonia: Papers Read at the First International

References 377

Symposium held at Thessaloniki 26–29 August 1968 (Institute for Balkan Studies,

Thessaloniki, 1970), 147–54.

Goldhill, S., ‘The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology’, in J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin

(eds.), Nothing to do with Dionysus? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Prince-

ton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1990) 97–129.

—— The Invention of Prose [Greece & Rome New Surveys in the Classics 32] (Oxford


Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides Vol. III (Oxford University


—— Andrewes, A., and Dover, K. J., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides Vol. IV

(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1970).

Gotteland, S., ‘L’Origine des cites grecques dans les discours atheniens’, in V. Fromen-

tin and S. Gotteland (ed.), Origines Gentium (Editions Ausonius, Bordeaux, 2001),

79–93.

Gould J., Herodotus (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1989).

Grafton, A. T., ‘Tradition and Technique in Historical Chronology’, in M. H. Crawford

and C. R. Ligota (eds.), Ancient History and the Antiquarian: Essays in Memory of

Arnaldo Momigliano (London, Warburg Institute, 1995), 15–31.

—— and Swerdlow, N., ‘Calendar Dates and Ominous Days in Ancient Historiog-

raphy’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988) 14–42.

Gray, V. J., ‘Continuous History and Xenophon, Hellenica 1–2.3.10’, American Journal

of Philology 112 (1991), 201–28.

—— ‘Isocrates’ manipulation of myth and the image of Athens’, Prudentia 26 (1994),

83–104.

Greenwood, E., Thucydides and the Shaping of History (Duckworth, London, 2006).

GriYths, A., ‘Kissing Cousins: Some Curious Cases of Adjacent Material in Herod-

otus’, in N. Luraghi, (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford


Gruen, E. S., Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (University

of California Press, Berkeley and London, 1998).

Guarducci, M., Poeti vaganti e conferenzieri dell’eta ellenistica; ricerche di epigraWa greca

nel campo della letteratura e del costume (Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, Rome,

1929).

Habicht, C., Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece (University of California Press,

Berkeley, 1998 [1985]).

Hall, J., ‘Cicero and Quintilian on the Oratorical Use of Hand Gestures’, Classical

Quarterly 54 (2004), 143–60.

Hamilton, C. D., ‘Greek Rhetoric andHistory: the Case of Isocrates’, in G.W. Bowersock

andW. Burkert (eds.),Arktouros: Hellenic Studies Presented to BernardM.W. Knox (de

Gruyter, Berlin, 1979), 290–8.

Hannah, R., Greek and Roman Calendars: Constructions of Time in the Classical World

(Duckworth, London, 2005).

Harding, P., ‘Atthis and Politeia’, Historia 26 (1977), 148–60.

—— ‘Rhetoric and Politics in Fourth-Century Athens’, Phoenix 41 (1987), 25–39.

378 References

—— Androtion and the Atthis: The Fragments Translated with Introduction and

Commentary (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994).

Harris, W. V., Ancient Literacy (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and

London, 1989).

Helly, B., ‘Quinze annees d’epigraphie thessalienne (1990–2005)’, in G. A. Pikoulas

(ed.), Inscriptions and History of Thessaly: New Evidence. Proceedings of the Inter-

national Symposium in honor of Professor Christian Habicht (Thessalian Archae-

ologial Institute, Volos, 2006), 21–6.

Heltzer, M., ‘The Persepolis Documents, the Lindos Chronicle and the Book of Judith’,

La Parola del Passato 44 (1989), 81–101.

Herrmann, P., Inschriften von Milet 6.1 (de Gruyter, Berlin, 1997).

Higbie, C., ‘The Bones of a Hero, The Ashes of a Politician: Athens, Salamis, and the

Usable Past’, Classical Antiquity 16 (1997), 279–308.

—— ‘Craterus and the Use of Inscriptions in Ancient Scholarship’, Transactions of the

American Philological Association 129 (1999), 43–83.

—— ‘Homeric Athena in the Chronicle of Lindos’, in S. Deacy and A. Willing (eds.),

Athena in the Classical World (Brill, Leiden, Boston, and Cologne, 2001), 105–125.

—— The Lindian Chronicle and the Greek Creation of their Past (Oxford University


Hobsbawm, E., ‘Introduction: Inventing Tradition’, in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger

(eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983),

1–14.

Holladay, C. R., Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. Volume I Historians

(Scholars Press, Chico, California, 1983).

Hopkins, K., ‘Divine Emperors or the Symbolic Unity of the Roman Empire’, in

K. Hopkins (ed.), Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

1978).

Horden, P. and Purcell, N., The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History

(Blackwell, Oxford, 2000).

Hornblower, S., Thucydides (London, Duckworth, 1987).

—— A Commentary on Thucydides. Vol. I: Books I–III (Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 1991).

—— ‘Epic and Epiphanies: Herodotus and the ‘‘New Simonides’’ ’, in D. Boedeker

and D. Sider (eds.), The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire (Oxford


Huxley, G., ‘Aristotle as Antiquary’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 14 (1973),

271–86.

Isager, S., ‘The Pride of Halikarnassos: Editio Princeps of an Inscription from Salma-

kis’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 123 (1998), 1–23.

Jacoby, F., Apollodors Chronik: Eine Sammlung der Fragmente (Arno Press, New York,

1973; Wrst published as Philologische Untersuchungen, Heft 16, 1902).

—— Das Marmor Parium (Weidmann, Berlin, 1904).

—— ‘Uber die Entwicklung der griechischen Historiographie und den Plan einer

neuen Sammlung der griechischen Historikerfragmente’, Klio 9 (1909), 80–123.

References 379

Jacoby, F., Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 1949).

Jameson, M., ‘SacriWce and Animal Husbandry in Classical Greece’, in C. R. Whittaker

(ed.), Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity [Proceedings of the Cambridge

Philological Society Supplement 14] (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

1988).

JeVreys, E., ‘The Labours of the Twelve Months in Twelfth-century Byzantium’, in

E. StaVord and J. Herrin (eds.), PersoniWcation in the Greek World (Ashgate,

Aldershot, 2005), 309–23.

Jones, C. P., ‘Graia Pandetur ab Urbe’,Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 97 (1995),

233–41.

—— ‘Pausanias and his Guides’, in S. E. Alcock, J. F. Cherry, J. Elsner (eds.),

Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece (Oxford University Press, Oxford,

2001), 33–9.

Kerkhecker, A., Studien zu Herkunft und Bedeutung des ‘eines Tages’ im griechischen

Drama (MA thesis, Tubingen, 1989).

Koselleck, R., ‘History, Histories, and Formal Time Structures’, in Futures Past: On the

Semantics of Historical Time, trans. with introduction by K. Tribe (Columbia

University Press, New York, 1985; Wrst published 1979), 92–104.

Kowalzig, B., Singing for the Gods: Performances of Myth and Ritual in Archaic and

Classical Greece (Oxford University Press, Oxford, forthcoming 2007).

Kushnir-Stein, A., ‘City Eras on Palestinian Coinage’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and

A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford University

Press, Oxford, 2005), 157–61.

Lambert, S. D., ‘The SacriWcial Calendar of Athens’, Annual of the British School at

Athens 97 (2002), 353–99.

Leach, E. R., ‘Primitive Time-Reckoning’, in C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall

(eds.), A History of Technology. Vol. I From Early Times to Fall of Ancient Empires


Lenfant, D., Ctesias de Cnide: La Perse. L’Inde. Autres fragments (Les Belles Lettres,

Paris, 2004).

Levy, E., ‘Sosibios le Laconien’, in D. Lenfant (ed.), Athenee et les fragments d’historiens.

Actes du colloque de Strasbourg 16–18 juin 2005 (De Boccard, Paris, forthcoming

2007).

Lewis, D. M., ‘A New Athenian Decree’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 60

(1985), 108.

Lightfoot, J. L., ‘Nothing to do with the technitai of Dionysus?’, in P. Easterling and

E. Hall (eds.), Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession (Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 2002), 209–24.

Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘The Pride of Halicarnassus’, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigra-

phik 124 (1999), 1–14.

Loraux, N., The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans.

A. Sheridan (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 1986; Wrst

published 1981).

380 References

—— The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division

between the Sexes, trans. C. Levine (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ,

1993; Wrst published 1981).

—— ‘On a Day Banned from the Athenian Calendar’, in The Divided City: On

Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens, trans. C. Pache, with J. Fort (Zone

Books, New York, 2006; Wrst published 1997), 171–90.

Lupu, E., Greek Sacred Laws: A Collection of New Documents (NGSL) (Brill, Leiden,

2005).

Luraghi, N., ‘Local Knowledge in Herodotus’ Histories’, in N. Luraghi, (ed.), The

Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001),

138–60.

—— (ed.) The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 2001).

MacDowell, D. M. (ed.), Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1971).

McLean, B. H., An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman

Periods from Alexander the Great down to the Reign of Constantine (323 B.C.–A.D.

337) (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2002).

Macleod, C., ‘Thucydides and Tragedy’, in The Collected Essays of Colin Macleod


McTaggart, J. M. E., ‘The Unreality of Time’, in R. le Poidevin andM.MacBeath (eds.),

The Philosophy of Time (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993; article Wrst pub-

lished 1908), 23–34.

Makdisi, G., ‘The Diary in Islamic Historiography: Some Notes’, History and Theory

25 (1986), 173–85.

Malkin, I., The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (University of Califor-

nia Press, Berkeley and London, 1998).

—— ‘ ‘‘Tradition’’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene’, in P. Derow and

R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of

George Forrest (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003), 153–70.

—— ‘Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity’, in I. Malkin (ed.), Mediterra-

nean Paradigms and Classical Antiquity (Routledge, London, 2005), 56–74.

—— (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Harvard University Press, Cam-

bridge, MA and London, 2001).

Manganaro, G., ‘Una biblioteca storica nel ginnasio di Tauromenion e il P. Oxy. 1241’,

Past and Present 29 (1974), 389–409.

Marincola, J., Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, Cambridge, 1997).

—— rev. P. Bonnechere, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Indexes of Parts I,

II, and III. Indexes of Ancient Authors (Brill, Leiden, 1999) in Bryn Mawr Classical

Review 2000.01.09

—— ‘Herodotus and the Poetry of the Past’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.),

The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

2006), 13–28.

References 381

Marrou, H. I., Histoire de l’education dans l’Antiquite (6th edn., Editions de Seuil,

Paris, 1965).

Matthaiou, A. P., ‘%ØŒe ł��Ø��Æ �F 304/3 �:�:’, Horos 4 (1986), 19–23.

Meritt, B. D., The Athenian Year (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1961).

Michelini, A. N., ‘Isocrates’ Civic Invective: Acharnians andOn the Peace’, Transactions

of the American Philological Association 128 (1998), 115–33.

Mikalson, J. D., The Sacred and Civilian Calendar of the Athenian Year (Princeton

University Press, New Jersey, 1975).

Millar, F. G. B., The Emperor in the Roman World (Duckworth, London, 1977).

—— ‘State and Subject: The Impact of Monarchy’, in F. G. B. Millar and E. Segal (eds.),

Caesar Augustus. Seven Aspects (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984), 37–60.

—— ‘Politics, Persuasion and People before the Social War (150–90 bc)’, Journal of

Roman Studies 76 (1986), 1–11.

—— ‘Polybius between Greece and Rome’, in J. T. A. Koumoulides (ed.), Greek

Connections: Essays on Culture and Diplomacy (University of Notre Dame Press,

Notre Dame, Indiana, 1987), 1–18.

—— ‘Porphyry: Ethnicity, Language, and Alien Wisdom’, in J. Barnes and M. T. GriYn

(eds.), Philosophia Togata II: Plato and Aristotle at Rome (Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 1997), 241–62.

—— The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (University of Michigan Press, Ann

Arbor, 1998).

Milns, R. D., ‘Historical Paradigms in Demosthenes’ Public Speeches’, Electronic

Antiquity: Communicating the Classics 2.5 (1995) (no pagination).

Mitchell, S., ‘Festivals, Games, and Civic Life in Roman Asia Minor’, Journal of Roman

Studies 80 (1990), 183–93 at 183–7.

Moller, A., ‘Felix Jacoby and Ancient Greek Chronography’, in C. Ampolo (ed.),

Aspetti dell’opera di Felix Jacoby (Edizioni della Normale, Pisa, 2006), 259–75.

Momigliano, A., ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’, in Studies in Historiography

(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1966), 1–39 ¼ Journal of the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950), 285–315.

—— ‘Athens in the Third Century b.c. and the Discovery of Rome in the Histories of

Timaeus of Tauromenium’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Black-

well, Oxford, 1977), 37–66 ¼ Rivista Storica Italiana 71 (1959), 529–56.

—— ‘Tradition and the Classical Historian’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Histori-

ography (Blackwell, Oxford, 1977), 161–77 ¼ History and Theory 11 (1972), 279–93.

—— Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge University Press, Cam-

bridge, 1975).

—— ‘Time in Ancient Historiography’, in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiog-

raphy (Blackwell, Oxford, 1977), 179–204.

—— ‘The Rise of Antiquarian Research’, in A. Momigliano, The Classical Foundations

of Modern Historiography (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990), 54–79.

Morgan, K. A., ‘Designer History: Plato’s Atlantis Story and Fourth-Century Ideol-

ogy’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998), 101–18.

382 References

Morgan, T. J., Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds (Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 1998).

Morstein-Marx, R., Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic

(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004).

Mosse, C., ‘How a Political Myth Takes Shape: Solon, ‘‘Founding Father’’ of the

Athenian Democracy?’, in P. J. Rhodes (ed.), Athenian Democracy (Edinburgh

University Press, Edinburgh, 2004), 242–59.

Muller, C., Geographici Graeci Minores I (Firmin-Didot, Paris, 1855).

Munro, J. A. R., review of F. Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium, in Classical Review 19

(1905), 267–9.

Murray, O., ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’, Classical Quarterly 22 (1972), 200–13.

—— ‘Herodotus and Oral History’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the

Age of Herodotus (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001), 16–44.

Nixon, L., ‘Chronologies of Desire and the Uses of Monuments: EXatunpinar to

Catalhoyuk and beyond’, in D. Shankland (ed.), Archaeology, Anthropology and

Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia: The Life and Times of F. W. Hasluck, 1878–

1920 (Isis Press, Istanbul, 2004), ii. 429–52.

Nouhaud, M., L’Utilisation de l’histoire par les orateurs attiques (Les Belles Lettres,

Paris, 1982).

Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the

People (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1989).

—— ‘Civic Ideology and Counterhegemonic Discourse: Thucydides on the Sicilian

Debate’, in A. L. Boegehold and A. C. Scafuro (eds.), Athenian Identity and Civic

Ideology (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1994), 102–26.

Olson, S. D. (ed.), Aristophanes Peace (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998).

Orsi, D. P., ‘La storiograWa locale’, in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, D. Lanza (eds.),

Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica iii 1 (Rome, 1994), 149–79.

Osborne, R., Greece in the Making 1200–479 BC (Routledge, London and New York,

1996).

—— ‘Competitive Festivals and the Polis: A Context for Dramatic Festivals at Athens’,

in P. J. Rhodes (ed.), Athenian Democracy (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,

2004), 207–24.

Panchenko, D., ‘Democritus’ Trojan Era and the Foundation of Early Greek Chron-

ology’, Hyperboreus. Studia Classica 6 (2000), 31–78.

Papillon, T. L., ‘Isocrates and the use of myth’, Hermathena 161 (1996), 9–21.

Parker, R., Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996).

—— Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005).

Parmeggiani, G., ‘Mito e spatium historicum nelle Storie di Ephoro di Cuma (Note a

Eph. FGrHist 70 t 8’, Rivista Storica di Antichita 29 (1999), 107–25.

Pearson, L., ‘Historical Allusions in the Attic Orators’, Classical Philology 36 (1941),

209–29.

—— The Local Historians of Attica. [Philological Monographs published by the

American Philological Association 11] (APA, Philadelphia, 1942).

Peek, W., ‘Eine neue samischer Historiker’, Klio 33 (1940), 164–70.

References 383

Pelling, C. B. R., ‘Fun with Fragments: Athenaeus and the Historians’, in D. Braund

and J. Wilkins, (eds.), Athenaeus and his World: Reading Greek Culture in the Roman

Empire (Exeter University Press, Exeter, 2000), 171–90.

—— Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (Routledge, London, 2000).

—— ‘Making Myth look like History: Plutarch’s Theseus-Romulus’ in Plutarch and

History: Eighteen Studies (Classical Press of Wales and Duckworth, London, 2002),

171–95.

—— ‘Speech and Narrative in theHistories’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The

Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

2006), 103–21.

—— ‘Educating Croesus: Talking and Learning in Herodotus’ Lydian Logos’, Classical

Antiquity 25.1 (2006), 141–77.

—— ‘Ion’s Epidemiai and Plutarch’s Ion’, in A. Katsaros and V. Jennings (eds.), The

World of Ion of Chios (Brill, Leiden, forthcoming) 75–109.

Perlman, S., ‘The Historical Example, its Use and Importance as Political Propaganda

in the Attic Orators’, Scripta Hierosolymitana 7 (1961), 150–66.

—— ‘Isocrates’ ‘‘Philippus’’ and Panhellenism’, Historia 18 (1969), 370–4.

Plommer, W. H., ‘The tyranny of the archon-list’, Classical Review ns 19 (1969), 126–9.

Polignac, F. de, ‘Changer de lieu, changer de temps, changer la cite’, in C. Darbo-

Peschanski, Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien (CNRS Editions,

Paris, 2000), 143–54.

Pomeroy, S. B., Spartan Women (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002).

Pomtow, H., ‘Delphica II’, Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift (Berlin, 1909).

Porciani, L., ‘Il problema della storia locale’, in C. Ampolo (ed.), Aspetti dell’opera di

Felix Jacoby (Edizioni della Normale, Pisa, 2006), 173–84.

Powell, J. E., ‘Greek Timekeeping’, Classical Review 54 (1940), 69–70.

Pownall, F., Lessons from the Past: The Moral Use of History in Fourth-Century Prose

(University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2004), with review by Jennifer McBride,

Columbia University in BMCR 2004.07.17.

Prakken, D. W., ‘A Note on the Megarian Historian Dieuchidas’, American Journal of

Philology 62 (1941), 348–51.

—— Studies in Greek Genealogical Chronology (Lancaster Press, Lancaster, 1943).

—— ‘On the date of Hereas, the Megarian Historian’, Classical Weekly 37 (1943–4),

1–2.

Pretzler, M., ‘Turning Travel into Text: Pausanias at Work’, Greece & Rome 51 (2004),

199–216.

Price, S., Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

1999).

—— ‘Local Mythologies in the Greek East’, in C. Howgego, V. Heuchert, and A. Burnett

(eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (Oxford University Press, Oxford,

2005), 115–24.

Pritchett, W. K., Ancient Athenian Calendars on Stone (University of California Press,

Berkeley, 1963).

—— ‘Thucydides V. 20’, Historia 13 (1964), 21–36.

384 References

—— ‘Thucydides’ Statement on his Chronology’, Zeitscrhift fur Papyrologie und

Epigraphik 62 (1986), 205–13.

—— and Neugebauer, O., The Calendars of Athens (Harvard University Press, Cam-

bridge, MA, 1947).

Prontera, F., ‘Prima di Strabone: Materiali per uno studio della geograWa antica come

genere letterario’, in F. Prontera (ed.), Strabone: Contributi allo studio della perso-

nalita e dell’Opera I (Universita degli Studi, Perugia, 1984), 189–256.

Purcell, N., ‘On the Sacking of Carthage and Corinth’, in D. Innes, H. Hine, and

C. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his

Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995), 133–48.

Quinton, A., ‘Spaces and Times’, Philosophy 37 (1962), 130–47.

Race, W. H., ‘Panathenaicus 74–90: The Rhetoric of Isocrates’ Digression on Aga-

memnon’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 108 (1978), 175–85.

Reynolds, J., ‘Roman Inscriptions 1971–5’, Journal of Roman Studies 66 (1976), 174–99.

Reynolds, L. D. and Wilson, N. G., Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of

Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1968).

Rhodes, P. J., ACommentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford University


—— ‘Herodotean Chronology Revisited’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (eds.), Herodotus

and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford


Rice, E. E., The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 1983).

Ricoeur, P., Temps et recit III: Le temps raconte (Editions de Seuil, Paris, 1985).

Rigsby, K. J., Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World (University of


Robert, L., Hellenica: Recueil d’epigraphie, de numismatique et d’antiquites grecques

I (Bontemps, Limoges, 1940).

—— Hellenica: Recueil d’epigraphie, de numismatique et d’antiquites grecques. Vol. 13.

D’Aphrodisias a la Lycaonie, compte rendu du volume VIII des Monumenta Asias

Minomis Antiqua (Librairie d’Amerique et d’Orient, Paris, 1965).

—— ‘Documents d’Asie Mineure’, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique 101 (1977),

120–9.

Robinson, H. S., ‘Excavations at Corinth: Temple Hill, 1968–1972’, Hesperia 45

(1976), 203–39.

Rogers, G. M., ‘Demosthenes of Oenoanda and Models of Euergetism’, Journal of

Roman Studies 81 (1991), 91–100.

Romilly, J. de, ‘Isocrates and Europe’, Greece & Rome 39 (1992), 2–13.

Rood, T., Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation (Oxford University Press, Oxford,

1998).

Rosivach, V. J., ‘Autochthony and the Athenians’,Classical Quarterly 37 (1987), 294–306.

—— The System of Public SacriWces in Fourth-Century Athens (Scholars Press, Atlanta,

1994).

References 385

Ross, L. E., Sun, Moon, and Sothis: A Study of Calendars and Calendar Reforms in

Ancient Egypt (Kronos Press, DeerWeld Beach, Florida, 1999).

Rowlands, M., ‘The Role of Memory in the Transmission of Culture’, in R. Bradley

(ed.), Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society (World Archaeology 25.2; Routledge,

London, 1993), 141–51.

Rutherford, I., ‘Mestra at Athens: Hesiod fr. 43 and the Poetics of Panhellenism’, in

R. Hunter (ed.), The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstruc-

tions (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005), 99–117.

Rutherford, R. B., ‘Learning from History: Categories and Case-Studies’, in

R. G. Osborne and S. Hornblower (eds.), Ritual, Finance, Politics: Athenian Demo-

cratic Accounts presented to David Lewis (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994),

53–68.

Said, S., ‘Le mythe de l’Areopage avant la Constitution d’Athenes’, in M. Pierart (ed.),

Aristote et Athenes (Seminaire d’histoire ancienne de l’Universite de Fribourg,

Fribourg, 1993), 155–81.

Sacks, K. S., Diodorus Siculus and the First Century (Princeton University Press,

Princeton, NJ, 1990).

Samuel, A. E., Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity

(Beck, Munich, 1972).

Schepens, G., ‘Historiographical Problems in Ephorus’, in Historiographia antiqua.

Commentationes lovanienses in honorem W. Peremans septuag. editae (Leuven Uni-

versity Press, Louvain, 1977), 95–118.

—— ‘Ancient Greek City Histories: Self-deWnition through History Writing’, in

K. Demoen (ed.), The Greek City from Antiquity to the Present: Historical Reality,

Ideological Construction, Literary Representation [Proceedings of the International

Colloquium, Gent, 19–20 mei 1999] (Peeters, Leuven, Paris, Sterling, Virginia,

2001), 3–25.

—— ‘Travelling Greek Historians’, in M. Gabriella, A. Bertinelli, and A. Donati (eds.),

Le vie della storia: migrazioni di popoli, viaggi di individui, circolazione di idee nel

Mediterraneo antico. Atti del II incontro internazionale di storia antica (Genova 6–8

ottobre 2004) (Bretschneider, Rome, 2006).

Scullard, H., From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome 133 BC to AD 68 (Wfth

edition, Methuen, London and New York, 1982).

Shapiro, H. A., ‘Autochthony and the Visual Arts in Fifth-Century Athens’, in

D. Boedeker and K. A. RaaXaub (eds.), Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-

Century Athens (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 1998),

127–51.

Shapiro, S. O., ‘Herodotus and Solon’, Classical Antiquity 15 (1996), 348–64.

—— ‘Proverbial Wisdom in Herodotus’, Transactions of the American Philological

Association 130 (2000), 89–118.

Shear, T. L., ‘The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes in the Athenian Agora’,

Hesperia 39 (1970), 145–222.

—— ‘Kallias von Sphettos and the Revolt of Athens in 286 b.c.’. Hesperia Supplement

17 (Princeton, NJ, 1978).

386 References

Sickinger, J. P., Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens (University of North

Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1999).

Siedentopf, H. B., Das hellenistische Reiterdenkmal (Stiftland-Verlag, Waldsassen/

Bayern, 1968).

Simon, E., Festivals of Attica: An Archaeological Commentary (University of Wisconsin

Press, Madison, 1983).

Smallwood, E. M., Documents of the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (Bristol

Classical Press, Bristol, 1984; by arrangement with Cambridge University Press, Wrst

published 1967).

Smart, J. D., ‘Thucydides and Hellanicus’, in I. S. Moxon et al. (eds.), Past Perspectives:

Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing (Cambridge University Press, Cam-

bridge, 1986), 19–35.

Sokolowski, F., Lois sacrees des cites grecques (Boccard, Paris, 1962).

Sommerstein, A. H. (ed.), Clouds (Aris and Phillips, Warminster, 1982).

—— Peace (Aris and Phillips, Warminster, 1985).

—— Wealth (Aris and Phillips, Warminster, 2001).

Sourvinou-Inwood, C., ‘What is Polis Religion?’, in O. Murray and S. Price (eds.),

The Greek City from Homer to Alexander (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990),

295–322.

Starkie, W. J. M. (ed.), The Wasps of Aristophanes (Hakkert, Amsterdam, 1968).

Stephanes, I. E., ˜Ø��ı�ØÆŒ�d ��EÆØ : #ı��ºb� �c� �æ��ø��ªæÆ��Æ �F Ł��æ�ıŒÆd B� ��ı�ØŒB� H� Iæ�Æ�ø� � ¯ºº��ø� (Panepistemiakes, Herakleion, 1988).

Thomas, R., Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge


—— Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

1992).

—— Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge


—— ‘Herodotus’ Histories and the Floating Gap’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s

Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001), 198–210.

Todd, S., ‘The Use and Abuse of the Attic Orators’, Greece & Rome 37 (1990), 159–78.

Too, Y. L., The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates: Text, Power, Pedagogy (Cambridge


Toye, D. L., ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus on the First Greek Historians’, American

Journal of Philology 106 (1995), 279–302.

Trautmann, T. R., ‘The Revolution in Ethnological Time’, Man ns 27 (1992), 379–97.

Trevett, J., ‘History in [Demosthenes] 59’, Classical Quarterly 40 (1990), 407–20.

—— ‘Demosthenes’ Speech On Organization (Dem. 13)’, Greek, Roman, and Byzan-

tine Studies 35 (1994), 179–93.

Trotta, F., ‘The Foundation of Greek Colonies and their Main Features in Strabo:

A Portrayal Lacking Homogeneity’, in D. Dueck, H. Lindsay, S. Pothecary (eds.),

Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia (Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, 2005), 118–28.

References 387

Tuan, Y.-F., ‘Space, Time, Place: A Humanistic Frame’, in T. Carlstein, D. Parkes, and

N. Thrift (eds.), Timing Space and Spacing Time I: Making Sense of Time (Edward

Arnold, London, 1978), 7–16.

Usher, S., Greek Oratory. Tradition and Originality (Oxford University Press, Oxford,

1999).

Vannicelli, P., ‘Herodotus’ Egypt and the Foundations of Universal History’, in

N. Luraghi, (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford University

Press, Oxford, 2001), 211–40.

Van der Waerden, B. L., ‘Greek Astronomical Calendars and their Relation to the

Athenian Civil Calendar’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 80 (1960), 168–80.

Veyne, P., Les Grecs ont-ils cru a leurs mythes? Essai sur l’imagination constituante

(Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1983).

Vidal-Naquet, P., ‘Temps des dieux, temps des hommes’, Revue de l’histoire des

religions 157 (1960), 55–80.

Wacher, C., ‘The Record of the Olympic Victory List’, Nikephoros 11 (1998), 39–50.

Waddington, W. H. and Le Bas, P., Inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en Grece et

en Asie Mineure (Didot, Paris, 1853–70).

Walbank, F. W., Polybius [Sather Classical Lectures 42] (University of California Press,

Berkeley and London, 1972).

—— ‘Timaeus’ Views on the Past’, in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays

and ReXections (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002), 165–77.

—— ‘Polybius and the Past’, in Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World: Essays and

ReXections (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002), 178–92.

Waters, K. R., ‘ ‘‘We Fought Alone at Marathon’’: Historical FalsiWcation in the Attic

Funeral Oration’, Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie 124 (1981), 204–11.

Welles, C. B., ‘Isocrates’ View of History’, in L. Wallach (ed.), The Classical Tradition.

Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan (Cornell University Press,

Ithaca, 1966), 3–25.

West, M. L., Ancient Greek Music (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992).

Whitmarsh, T., ‘ ‘‘Greece is the World’’: Exile and Identity in the Second Sophistic’, in

S. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and

the Development of Empire (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001).

Whitrow, G. J., Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day

(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988).

Wilamowitz-MoellendorV, U. von, Greek Historical Writing, and Apollo: 2 Lectures,

trans. G. Murray (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1908).

Wilcox, D. J., ‘The Sense of Time in Western Historical Narratives from Eusebius to

Machiavelli’, in E. Breisach (ed.), Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography

[Studies in Medieval Culture XIX] (Western Michigan University Press, Kalama-

zoo, 1985), 167–237.

—— The Measure of Times Past: Pre-Newtonian Chronologies and the Rhetoric of

Relative Time (Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1987).

388 References

Wilkins, J., ‘Dialogue and Comedy: The Structure of theDeipnosophistae’, in D. Braund

and J. Wilkins (eds.), Athenaeus and his World: Reading Greek Culture in the Roman

Empire (Exeter University Press, Exeter, 2000), 23–37.

Wiseman, T. P., ‘Unhistorical Thinking’, in Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-

Roman Literature (Leicester University Press, Leicester, and Rowman and Little-

Weld, Totowa, NJ, 1979), 41–53.

—— ‘Poetry and History’, in Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman Litera-

ture (Leicester University Press, Leicester, and Rowman and LittleWeld, Totowa, NJ,

1979) 143–53.

—— ‘The Intellectual Background’, in Clio’s Cosmetics: Three Studies in Greco-Roman

Literature (Leicester University Press, Leicester, and Rowman and LittleWeld,

Totowa, NJ, 1979), 154–66.

Woodhead, A. G., The Study of Greek Inscriptions (Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, 1959).

—— ‘The Calendar of the Year 304/3 bc in Athens’, Hesperia 58 (1989), 297–301.

Woodward, A., Rome, time and eternity (Malvern, 1995).

Wooten, C. W., ‘Clarity and Obscurity in the Speeches of Aeschines’, American Journal

of Philology 109 (1988), 40–3.

Worman, N., ‘Insults and Oral Excess in the Disputes between Aeschines and Demos-

thenes’, American Journal of Philology 125 (2004), 1–25.

Worrle, M., Stadt und Fest in Kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien: Studien zu einer Agonistischen

Stiftung aus Oenoanda (Beck, Munich, 1988).

Worthington, I., ‘History and Oratorical Exploitation’, in I. Worthington (ed.) Per-

suasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (Routledge, London, 1994), 109–29.

Wyrick, J., The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish,

Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions. [Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature 49]

(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004).

Yarrow, L. M., Historiography at the End of the Republic: Provincial Perspectives on

Roman Rule (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006).

Young, S., ‘An Athenian Clepsydra’, Hesperia 8 (1939), 274–84.

Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (The University of Michigan

Press, Ann Arbor, 1988).

Zeitlin, F., ‘Foreword’, in N. Loraux, The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about

Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes, trans. C. Levine (Princeton Univer-

sity Press, Princeton, NJ, 1993; Wrst published 1981), pp. xi–xvi.

References 389


Subject Index

Abraham 159, 163Abydenus 160–1Acragas 112, 126, 223, 231, 232, 240Acusilaus of Argos 190, 208, 219Aeneas 75, 89, 122, 126, 141–2, 155–6,

196, 234Aeschinesopponent of Demosthenes 248, 254, 274,

278, 279, 288, 293, 294, 296past in 256–61, 273, 276, 279–80, 286,

287–8, 295, 297–8Aeschylus 300–1, 310, 326–7, 331, 333–4, 335Agathocles of Cyzicus 196, 199Agathocles of Syracyse 124, 134, 138, 239, 335Alcimus the Sicilian Greek 196Alexander the Great 60, 78–9, 123, 138, 139,

152, 331, 334–5as temporal marker 62, 66, 67, 68, 73,

75–6, 79, 85, 164, 218, 231, 238alien wisdom 150–67

Althaemenes, as temporal marker 100,145, 147

Amazons 89, 125, 140–1as invaders of Attica 262, 263, 265–6,

285, 310, 311, 332Ammonius of Athens 53Anaxagoras 71, 327, 334Anaxandridas of Delphi 215ancestorsappeals to 12–13, 254, 256, 265, 275,

276–84, 308, 353–4, see alsoexemplarity of past

brought back to life 261, 272, 282, 287diVerentiated as models 257, 258–61,

278–80Androtion of Athens 180, 211, 316, 364annalistic historiography 17, 107–8, 139,

154–5, 179, 209–10, 213–14, 230,239, 250, 313

anthropology 10–11, 13, 26Antiochus of Syracuse 102, 133, 196–7,

218–19, 239, 242antiquarianism 34, 40, 51, 180–3, 324–5,

356–7Apion of Oasis 165, 167Apollodorus of Athensand Jacoby viii, 49

chronology in 67, 70–2, 73–4, 79, 80–1,83, 86

scope of works 48, 60Apollonia on the Rhyndakos 319Apollonius of Acharnae 52Apollonius of Aphrodisias 196, 199Archilochus

historical poetry of 190, 330, 343cult of on Paros 209, 330, 341, 342–3, 365date of 72

Archon, as regulator of calendar 21, 22, 26,41, 44, 94–5, 180

Archon-dating 20–1, 34, 229, 293–4, 353as continuous 67, 68, 80in chronography 67, 77–8, 79–80, 82in local historiography 209, 210–13,

222, 306in Parian Marble 201, 227–8, 307, 325–7in universal history 90, 91, 97, 128,

129–32, 192archon-list of Athens 66, 91, 93, 110, 183aristocratic milieu for historiography188,

331–2, 341, 343, 362Aristodama of Smyrna 352–4Aristophanes the Boeotian 196, 199Aristophanic comedy

as evidence for everyday time 23, 33,305–8, 337

historical allusions in 246, 279, 307–8playing with time 16, 29–30, 43–6, 305

Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia 22, 30–2,180, 185, 327

Aristotheus of Troezen 360–2, 365Aristotle 80, 180, 327Artapanus 159–60, 163artists of Dionysus 364–7Athanas of Syracuse 137Athenian calendar

lunar 20–6, 43–5prytany 22, 34festival 22–7, 33–45, 334

Athens, dominance ofin civilization 268–9, 304–5, 329in historiographical frameworks 213,

217–18in Persian wars 263–5, 267–8in scholarship 177, 245

atthidography 175–83, 210–14, 315–16as paradigmatic 178, 194, 213, 243–4, 246

autochthony 170, 318, 335–6Athenian 256, 269–71, 285, 300, 308,

310–12, 317–18

Babylonia 151–2, 159, 160–1, 165Berossus of Babylon 151–2, 160–1, 165Byzas, founder of Byzantium 169–73, 195

calendar frieze 150–1calendar

Christian 15, 21, 23–4, 35deme- 38–41local 8, 36–41, 47, 51, 90–3, 207, 215–17lunar 15, 22–3, 165manipulated 25–7, 41–6, 94–5of Athens, see Athenian calendarsof Pope Gregory XIII 46of sacriWces 36–40subject to scholarly analysis 35–6, 215–17

Callias of Syracuse 196, 239canon-formation 176canopus decree 41–2Carthage

foundation of 112, 158, 165, 223, 233, 234,history of 117, 120, 121, 138, 232–3,

236, 241Castor of Rhodes 73, 74–5, 83, 85cecrops 140, 206, 210–11, 212, 227–8,

269, 330, 332Chaldaeans 152, 158, 159, 165Christian chronography 48–9, 83–5, see also

calendar, Christianchronicle, from Oxyrhynchus 77–9,

87–8, 110chronographic tradition 48–50, 55–6,

75, 84–5chronography

and generic classiWcation 51–3, 55–6,59–64, 69

and non-Greeks 150–67and scholarship 48–9, 55–6, 64–5, 85,

151, 229competitive expertise in 48–9, 55–6,

57–8, 81–2, 85, 92, 93–4, 105importance of for historiography viii, 14,

56–7, 93, 110–11problems of evidence 48, 51, 55,

57–8, 63–4city history, see local historycivic honours, given to intellectuals 344–5,

346–7, 350–1, 352–4, 360, 365

Cleidemus of Athens 183, 316Clement of Alexandria 64, 68, 88–9, 206, 218,

228Clepsydraas democratic 32, 300, 306in law courts 29–33, 296, 305–6comedy by Eubulus 31–2

collective memory 186, 245–7, 301, 311–13,315, 319, see also history as sharedcolonization 104–5, 144–7, 169–70,182, 185, 197, 240–1, 268

of Ionia 68, 86, 147, 185, 211Comarchus 215connectivity, see local history, as outward-

looking; network, MediterraneanConstantinople, history of 169–73Consulship at Rome 82, 116–17, 129–32continuators of historical works 112,

136–7, 242continuity 250, 272–3, 276–7, 283–7,

290–1, see also preservation of pastcosmic time 74–5, 84, 166–7Crates of Athens 53Creation-myth 154, 159, 160, 163Crete, myths of 347–9, 350–1Ctesias of Cnidus 135, 136, 157–8, 161–2Cyrene, foundation of 169–70, 186, 193

decline theory 132–3, 253–4, 277–80,297–8, 308

Deinias, Argolica 198, 204, 217–20Delos, as Panhellenic site 351, 354, 362,

366, 367Delphiand colonization 182, 202 see also oraclescalendar of 24, 25, 215political importance of 351, 353–4,

360–2, 366Demetrius, History of Judea 162–3Democracy, and time 12–13, 32, 292, 306Demon, Atthis 206Demosthenes 252–6, see also Aeschines,

opponent of DemosthenesDemosthenes of Bithynia 196Demoteles of Andros 346–7Deucalion 142–3, 201, 208, 332, see also

Xood, of Deucalion, as temporalmarker

Dieuchidas of Megara 223–4Diodorus Siculus 16, 86, 88, 96, 121–39,

226–7annalistic structure in 17, 107–8, 129–30,

137, 139

392 Subject Index

organization of work 122–5, 126, 138–9scope of work 121–2, 123–4, 125Sicilian perspective of 122, 135, 138sources of 102, 107use of eponymous magistrates 129–32use of Olympiads 128–32

Dionysius of Halicarnassus 48, 66–7, 75,81–2, 154–6, 184–5, 234

Dionysius the Argive 206, 218Dioscurides of Tarsus 350–2, 354dynastic time 18–20, 75–7, 114–15, 133–4,

148, 166–7, 204–8

Egyptinterest in time 150–2, 163–7, 324calendar of 21, 41–2, 164, 165–6

Ephorus of Cyme 96–109life of 96–7local history of 181–2, 315organization of work 106–9, 122scope of work 97–106, 125, 137sources used by 98, 101–3, 106–7

Epicharmus, poet 204, 226, 327, 334epiphany 188, 214, 248, 324, 344–5, 369epitaphios, see funeral orationeponymous heroes 200, 312, 317, 322eponymous magistrates 20–1, 73, 90–3,

107, 127–8as local 208–15, 295

Eras 18–20, 207Eratosthenes of Cyrene 48, 59–60, 64–70,

82, 85–6, 110and Jacoby viii, 49

Erchia, deme-calendar of 38–9, 40Erechtheus 206, 211, 269etruscan time 133, 153–4Eumolpus 206, 211, 265–6, 269, 326, 328Eupolemus 159Euripides, date of birth 232, 327, 334date of death 68, 72, 135, 232, 327, 333

Eusebius 64, 74–5, 77, 85, 127, 161, 166Exaenetus of Acragas 112, 223Exegete 41, 178–80, 213, 220–1, 356–7exemplarity of past 11–12, 133, 245–303Exodus from Egypt 88–9, 163, 165

fertile Crescent, chronology of 83–5, 153,158–67

festival calendars 23–7, 33–5, 36–43, 105, 328as subject of chronography 50, 53, 54–5,

81, 215–16as subject of local history 51–2, 53, 175,

215–16

festivals, as context for local history 189,290, 295–6, 300, 302, 343, 366

Floodbiblical 158, 161, 162, 163, 165of Deucalion, as temporal marker 16,

104, 153, 332foundation-myths 99–105, 146–7, 169–70,

195–200, 268–70, 318–19of Rome, see Rome, foundation of

fragments, methodological problemsof 55–6, 60–2, 63–4, 103–4, 153,174, 250

funeral oration 251, 299–300, 309, 311–12

genealogy 18, 100–1, 162–3, 192, 200–3, 308generations, see also genealogy; dynastic time

as measure of time 18, 69, 88, 161, 162,204, 207–8

in mythical period 100, 125–6, 146–7, 201genres, evolution of viii, 174–5, 185, 191,

194, 341‘great’ history 97–8, 174–9, 183–4, 186–7,

189–93, 214, 345

Hagias-Dercylus, Argolica 198, 218Halicarnassus 335–8, 360, 364Harpocration of Alexandria 55–6Hecataeus of Miletus 18, 62, 100, 185, 201,

224, 346Hegesippus of Mecyberna 199, 223Hellanicus of Lesbos

and Ephorus 99, 100, 102, 107and Thucydides 91, 93–4as chronographer 208, 210, 213, 214,

217, 218, 228, 238as Atthidographer 179, 183, 201, 213,

228, 316Priestesses of Hera 74, 91, 180

Hellen 143, 203, 208, 332Hellenica 116, 242–3Heraclea Pontica 134, 197–8Heracles

as temporal marker 48, 58, 83, 89, 100,125, 127, 192

career of 89, 143, 149, 198–9, 200, 215,231, 271–2, 289

festivals for 25, 33Heraclidae, return of as temporal marker 67,

73, 86, 89, 168, 191, 231, 238in oratory 256, 263, 270, 280in Strabo 144–5, 147, 149, 150, 228in universal history 96, 97–101, 103–4,

127, 139

Subject Index 393

Hereas of Megara 316, 367Hermogenes of Smyrna 343–4Herodotus of Halicarnassus

historiography of 185–93, 357interest in chronology 2–4, 95, 164, 166,

191–3literary context of 185–6, 188, 368sources of 185–6spatial scope of 97–8, 130time in 98, 99, 130

Herodotus of Teos 347–9, 352, 355Hesiod

Catalogue of Women 202, 208date of 64, 72, 192, 225, 326time in 16, 18, 35, 95, 208, 220

Hesychius Illustris of Miletus 169–73Hippias of Elis 65–6, 91, 93, 110, 183Hippostratus 221, 225, 238Hippys of Rhegium 234, 235historia perpetua 99, 136–7, 176historian

as itinerant 337–8, 346–54, 360–3, 364–6,see also local history, and diplomacy;network, Mediterranean

authority of 363, 366–7, 368in community 6–7, 40, 173–4, 210,

338–54, 358, 363–9history

as didactic 101, 245, 274–86, 308as entertaining 160, 182, 184, 343, 349,

361, 369as ordo temporum, see chronography,

importance of for historiographyas shared 185–6, 245–7, 249, 273,

289–90, 301competing versions of 245–6, 247, 255,

260, 273–4, 357recent used in oratory 251, 252–4,

256, 261–3used in intra-polis rivalry 315–16

Homeras subject for chronography 48, 57, 60as temporal marker 146, 211, 333concepts of time in 16, 18,date of 64, 68, 72, 86, 100, 192, 205, 211,

224–5, 326importance of to later writers 141–6, 266,

267, 288–9, 336, 343, 350–1human life-span 1–2, 15–18, 157, 163, 308Hyksos dynasty 166–7

Inachus, King of Argos; river-god 85, 88,170, 203

Indian time 157–8inscriptionsand local history 152, 183, 212–14,

319–30, 335–8as evidence for history 101, 171, 173, 277,

290–3, 322concerning calendars 29, 36–42, 52dating in 19, 23, 33–4, 212–13,

214–15, 229honoriWc for historians 209–10, 339–54,

359, 360–2intellectual time 68–72, 78–81, 87–9,

129–30, 134–5, 159–60, 224–7,232, 334–42

intellectuals, as itinerant 354–60, see alsohistorian, as itinerant

intercalary months 1–2, 25–6, 41, 94, 163–4interstate relations, use of past in, see local

history, and diplomacyinvention, history of 88–9, 159–61, 224–7,

268–9, 306–7, 326–8, 332–3Ion of Chios 187, 204, 208, 222, 224, 341Iphitus 87, 89, 228Isocratesand myth 265–72and Panhellenism 270, 271–2, 273, 302as historian 246, 261–72as tutor of Ephorus 96, 248, 261

Istrus the Callimachean 53, 199, 222, 223, 306

Jacoby, Felixand chronography viii, 49Atthis of 6, 175–93, 213, 243, 315–16, 363career of viii–ixcontinuators of ix, 177–8

Jason 83, 142, 172Jewish chronology 83, 85, 88, 159–60, 162–3

Kar, king of Megara 204, 208, 210King-lists 66, 73–7, 93of Argos 74, 128of Assyria 74, 161–2of Athens 74, 206–7, 212, 228, 235, 269of Babylonia 160–1of Egypt 75–6, 77, 152, 166–7of Greece and Macedonia 76–7,

128, 134of Persia 74, 133–4, 148, 219of Rome 74, 133, 148of Sicyon 74–5of Sparta 67, 86, 110, 127, 134, 192, 205,

224of Thebes 74

394 Subject Index

Kings, dating by 18–20, 72–5, 105, 127–8,148, 204–11

kinship 147, 188, 229, 231, 317, 319, 348, 356,359

Lelex, king of Megara 204, 208Leon of Samos 340–2Lindian chronicle 163, 214–15, 321–5,

328–9, 341literacy 29, 186–7, 190, 292, 367–9local history 169–244and chronology 193–230, 237–43and diplomacy 183, 314–15, 316–20,

345, 346–52as outward-looking 219, 322, 323–4,

345–6, 355–6, 362–3, see alsoPanhellenic time

as parochial 181–3, 184, 221–2, 230as patriotic 181, 183, 313–14, 345, 367,

see also polis, self-assertion ofas professional 349–51, 364–7as scholarly 325, 337audience of 174, 186–9, 213, 324–5,

349, 367–9proliferation of 176, 194

local pride in home-grown talent 226, 335–8,338–46, 349, 351, 363–4, see also localhistory, as patriotic

local tradition, see collective memoryLucius Cincius Alimentus 82, 155, 156Lyceas of Argos 356–7Lycurgus, as temporal marker 68, 73, 86,

147, 223, 228Lysimachides, On the Athenian months 54–5Lysimachus of Alexandria 206, 217, 224,

228–9

Magnesia on the Maeander 209, 229, 319Manetho of Sybennetus 166–7Mariandynians 198Medea 142, 217Megara, history of 204, 223–4, 316–17, 367Memnon of Heraclea 198Menecles of Teos 347–9, 355Meton 135, 306Miletus 21, 147, 207, 319, 331Miltiades 141, 254, 257, 273, 277, 287Mimnermus, Smyrneis of 103, 185, 341months, see also intercalary monthsaetiologies of 52–3, 54–5, 105, 206, 215dating by Athenian 80–1, 206,

294–5, 332dating by local 47, 84, 87, 91, 215–18

Mosesas inventor Wgure 159–60date of 83, 85, 88–9, 162–3, 165

mutability of fortune 3, 139, 161–2, 263, 276Myrsilus of Methymna, Lesbiaca of 217Myth in history 98–106, 125–6, 155–6, 164,

195–203, 266, 289–90, see also spatiummythicum, spatium historicum

Mythological landscapes 141–3, 169–70, 317

native historiography 151, 157, 165, 183, 194,338–46, 363

network, Mediterranean 351–2, 354–6,358–60, 362–3

Ninus 136, 162non-Greek time 75–7, 150–67Nymphis of Heraclea 198

oYcial tradition, see collective memory;history as shared

Ogygus, as temporal marker 16, 83–4, 85,210, 218, 228

Old Testament, time in 13, 83–5, 88–9Olympiad

Wrst as start of accurate dating 83, 85–6,89, 110–11

Wrst as temporal marker 67–8, 75, 112,127, 228, 233

Olympiadic dating 66–89, 107, 109–21,127–32, 149

as continuous 67, 68, 73, 76–7, 85–6,111, 132

as Panhellenic 66, 111, 116, 130–1, 155,191, 220–3, 236

as universal 66, 78, 86–8, 107, 109–21, 168in local history 155, 165, 205, 219, 220–3used of intellectuals 70–2, 222, 225

Olympic Games, history of 203, 215, 220–1,228, 229

Olympic victor lists 59–60, 63, 65–7, 77–8,87, 110–11, 220–1

ominous days 35–6, 42–3, 84–5, 233oracles 87, 99, 204, 209, 229, 259, 269, 289,

316, 324and colonization 169–70, 182, 202, 206,

208, 271orator

as chronographer 293–6, 297as competitive 246, 273–4, 279–80, 287–8,

296, 297–8as historian 245–303authority of 247, 249, 259, 274–5, 288,

294–5, 301

Subject Index 395

Orestes 197, 201, 301, 310, 335Osymandeas, tomb of 150–1, 163

P. Anteius Antiochus 359Panhellenic time 220–4, see also Olympiadic

dating, as PanhellenicPanhellenism 97–8, 190, 223, 271–2, 357–8Parian Marble

and chronology 66, 201, 212–13,227–8, 325

and intellectual history 88, 227, 325–9and Jacoby viii, 49context of 330–1, 341, 342–3, 368

past, as negotiated 248–9, 295–6Xexibility of, see history, competing

versions ofPausanias 142, 199, 220–1, 228, 356–9Peloponnesian war 68, 98, 108, 132, 262Pergamum 148, 209, 319–20periodization 16, 65, 90–1, 114, 173Persian wars

as temporal marker in history 108, 128,219, 222–3, 231, 232

in art, see Stoa Poikilein comedy 307–8in funeral oration 309in oratory 253–4, 257, 263–4, 267,

278–80, 298in poetry 103, see also Simonides

Phanodemus of Athens, Atthis of 53, 214Philip of Macedon

as temporal marker 68, 77, 79, 137history of 78, 80, 114–15, 117, 138, 171in Demosthenes 252–3, 256, 295

Philistus of Syracuse 135, 136, 137, 221, 235,238, 242

Philo of Byblos 158–9Philochorus of Athens

and festival calendar 35, 52–3, 56, 180Atthis of 199, 306time in 206–7, 210–12, 216–17, 219,

239, 250Philoxenus of Cythera 135, 327, 334Phlegon of Tralles 48, 58, 62–3, 69, 83, 87Phoenicia 151–2, 158–9, 165, 203Phoroneus, king of Argos 83, 203, 210,

218, 228physical objects, as veriWcation of stories 143,

171, 173Pindar 13, 129, 185, 236, 342, 362place-names, aetiologies of 61, 156, 170–2,

196, 250Plataea, as subject for poetry 188–9, 343

battle of 47, 129–30, 236, 309, 331poetryand local historians 341–3, 346–9,

350–4, 365–6as historiography 102, 135, 185, 187–90,

330–1, 356as source for historiography 102–3,

135, 169cited in oratory 266, 287–9

Polis, self-assertion of 183–4, 191, 200,313–14, 329–30, 336–8, 345, 357,see also local history, as patriotic

Politas of Hypata 352, 353Politeia, works on 180–1, 316Polybiuson historiography 100–1, 105, 108, 110–11use of local dating 116–19use of Olympiadic dating 82, 87–8,

110, 112–16use of temporal markers 73, 117, 120–1

Polyidus 135, 327, 334, 347–8Pompeius Trogus 136–7Porcius Cato 66–7, 82Porphyry of Tyre 48, 72, 75–7, 83, 86preservation of past 165, 286–93, 299, 342Priestesses of Heraas dating device 90–1, 214, 226, 231, 235list of 74, 109–10, 131, 180, 183, 313

priestly records 152, 155, 156, 178–80, 213priests, dating by 73, 74, 93, 214–15, 295, 321Promathidas of Heraclea 197–8prose revolution 187–91, 310, 341, 356–7,

368–9prytany, dating by 22, 34, 54, 118, 209Psaon of Plataea 137Ptolemy Philadelphus, procession of 167

Quintus Fabius Pictor 82, 118, 154–5

record-keeping 152, 153, 158, 163, 165,see also priestly records

regal time, see also king-lists; dynastic timeas continuous 18–20, 74–7, 133, 134,

160–1, 166–7, 206as fragmented 133–4, 148, 162, 206, 207as local 204–7, 210–11, 218

relative chronology 72–89, 128, 147, 171,192, 239–41

Romehistory of 17, 70, 76, 79, 114, 121, 132–3,

154–6, 195–6foundation of 36, 66–7, 112, 127, 233–4,

see also Romulus

396 Subject Index

impact of on Greek historiography 131,157, 324, 339, 354–6, 359–60

impact of on Mediterraneanhistory 155–7, 337, 355–6, 357,360–2

temporal systems of 20, 87, 116–18, 130,131–2

Romulus 75, 82, 142, 155–6, 196, 361

Saints, local 198Salamis, battle ofcelebrated in Athens 34, 311in comedy 308in historiography 102, 219, 231–2, 236in oratory 246, 253–4, 260, 279–80, 291,

300Samos, Heraion 339–42Scaliger 48–9seasonsas natural cycle 14–15, 20, 21, 42, 44–5, 95,

158, 165, 167, 308as metaphor 16, 69in military campaigning 90, 92, 93–5,

119–20, 132Second Sophistic 324, 354–60Sicels, crossing of 126, 208, 214, 234–5, 239Sicilian historiography 124–5, 133, 135, 136,

137, 194, 220, 223, 230–43as western Hellenica 242–3aspirations to Hellenism of 111, 122, 131,

235–43, 313Sicyonian record 226Simonides 102–3, 135, 188–9, 327, 343Solonand Croesus 1–5, 56, 81, 354as oratorical exemplum 254, 256, 258,

297–8as poet 254, 287–8as political reformer 264–5, 354calendar of 23, 37–8, 40

Sophocles, date of death 72, 135, 327Sosibius, of Sparta 205, 224–5, 228Sparta, as comparandum for Athens 259–60,

262–4, 266, 269–70, 276Spartan ephorate, dating by 90–1,

109–10, 229Spartan king-list, see king-list of Spartaspatium mythicum, spatium

historicum 98–106, 140–6, 164, 175,195–201, see also myth in history

Stephanus of Byzantium 61–3, 196, 250, 318Stoa Poikile, display of past in 257–8, 309–10Strabo 102, 104–5, 140–50, 222, 240–1

sundial 32, 304–5, 306Syncellus 73–4, 83–5, 166synchronism 108, 114–16, 129–30, 135,

138–9, 231–4, 334synchronization

of calendars 26, 36, 43of time-systems 79–89, 90–150, 219,

222–3, 227–30synoecism 140, 149, 171, 215, 222,

323, 327Syriscus of Cheronnesus 248, 321, 344–5,

346, 369

Tauromenium, painted inscription at 154temporal markers 58, 85–6, 143–6, 161Teos 347–9, 366–7Thallus 73, 74Thargelion 53, 81, 218Theseus 15, 89, 141, 199, 259, 269, 272,

304, 327, 328bones of 34, 197, 300

Thorikos, calendar of 38Thrasyllus 88–9Thucydides

as paradigmatic 175–6spatial scope of 98, 103, 176time in 90–6, 99, 108, 109–10, 240–1

Timaeus of Tauromenium 105, 122and Olympiadic chronology 66, 110,

111–13, 222dating in work 82, 218, 219, 222–4, 228,

230–4, 238, 239–40scope of work 199, 230–4, 235, 237–8

timeas biographical 15–16, 17–18, 69, 115, 157,

208, 240, 262as borrowed 217–18, 219as comic 31–2, 43–6as cyclical 12–13, 15–16, 34–6, 42–3, 50as humanly constructed 69–70, 128–9,

see also time as reXective of societyas linear 7, 8, 11, 12–13, 50, 212as local 163, 193–230as natural 36, 55, 69–70, 93–5, 151, 157–8,

167, 306, see also seasons as naturalcycle; time as biographical

as reXective of society 7–8, 10–13, 26–7,28–46, 173–4, 216, 305

personiWcation of 15, 45–6, 129reality of 9, 27–8, 69–70, 129telescoping of: historical time within

calendars 34–6, 42–3, 50, 84–5, 216,290, 306–7

Subject Index 397

time pastcontinuity of 11, 126, see also continuity;

exemplarity of pastdiscrete moments in 67, 250, 253, 285, 307,

312–13, see also temporal markerstime-zones 2, 8, 46Timotheus of Miletus 135, 347–8Titias 197, 198tragic history 120, 135tragedy, as historical 139, 266, 288, 289–90,

300, 310Trojan War

and nostoi of heroes 58, 141, 143, 145,217, 223

as temporal markerin local historiography 171, 211, 212in Sicilian historiography 231, 235in universal works 128, 144–6, 147,231, 168

disputed date of 49, 58, 60, 68,subject for oratory 266–7

Troy, fall ofas temporal marker 123–5, 127–8, 132,

158, 223–4, 225disputed in chronography 58, 68, 72–3, 81,

83, 86, 206, 217, 224truth, importance of in historiography 98,

101–2, 140, 171, 175, 248, 344–5, 367

tyrannicides, Harmodius andAristogeiton 70, 252, 255, 256, 259,311, 334

Tyranny in Greece 148, 211

universal chronology 65–6, 74, 81–9,96–150

universal historyrelationship with local history 107,

115–19, 174, 175–93, 345scope of 97–106time in 96–150

visual displays of time 12–13, 154, 207,309–10

votive oVerings, as chronologicalstructure 163, 172, 321–4, 341

war years, dating by 90, 93–4, 118, 132, 163week, as unit of time 7, 21,

Xanthus the Lydian 106, 145Xenagoras of Heraclea 59Xenophon of Samos 339–40, 354, 356, 367Xenophon, date of 80, 222Xerxes, crossing of to Europe as temporal

marker 68, 71, 73, 117, 127,129, 139

398 Subject Index

Index of Passages Discussed

LITERARY TEXTS

AESCHINESAgainst Ctesiphon24 29327 29475 286, 292105 276107–13 259115 295132 276135 288136 288178 278181 257182 287183 257, 291189 298197 296243 257257–9 260–1, 282

Against Timarchus6 2587 258, 28625 258, 297132–3 259141 288152–3 288180–2 259, 262183 258

On the Embassy31 25932 29258 29363 258–9, 279–8074 260, 28075–8 260, 28089 29296 260, 294115 259, 292126 296164 257165 260171 260, 280

ANDOCIDESOn the Peace with Sparta

29 275

ANTIOCHUS OF SYRACUSE,see FGrH 555

APOLLODORUS OF ATHENS,see FGrH 244

ARISTOPHANESAcharnians

693 29–30Birds

471–536 308685 308997–8 3061694–6 305–6

Clouds16–17 45615–16 44626 44749–52 45961–83 3081417 16, 3081131–4 451287–9 45–6

Lysistrata1150–6 3081250–3 308

Peace414–15 41, 44

Thesmophoriazusae375–6 33

Wasps92–3 29, 31, 45857–8 291071–90 308

Wealth1125–6 33

ARISTOTLEAtheniaion Politeia

43 2267.2–3 30–1

ARISTOXENUSHarmonica

2.37 47

ATHENAEUSDeipnosophistae

5.25–35 16713.567c–d 31–2

BEROSSUS OF BABYLON,see FGrH 680

CTESIAS OF CNIDUS, see FGrH 688

DEINARCHUSAgainst Aristogeiton

6–7 29616 27524 291

DEMOSTHENESAgainst Leptines

11 284, 29118 25564 29168–70 255117 284142 284

For the People of Megalopolis14 252

Olynthiacs1.8 252

On Halonessus36 295

On Organization21–2 27726 277, 28128–9 27733 28335 283

On the Chersonese74–5 252

On the Crown29 29437 29448 27554 29468 282

90 295108 254139 296154 295155 293, 294186 256, 280203–4 285219 298225 248, 294318–19 298

On the False Embassy16 257, 27957–60 260, 293, 29666 282136 286251 254, 297255 254256 287269 276, 280271–2 277273 279312 298

On the Navy Boards1 27732 299

Philippics1.17 2522.10 2833.41 291

DIO CHRYSOSTOMOration11.38 165

DIODORUS1.1–4 2741.9.1 1211.12.6 1641.23.1 1641.26.1 1641.26.3–5 1651.44.1 1641.44.4–5 1521.49.4 150–11.63.5 1653.52.2 1253.74.4 1254.1.1 1254.19.2 1264.21.1 1264.79.3 1264.80.4 1264.83.4 126

400 Index

5.1.3–4 106, 1225.6 1265.16.3 1265.47–9 2275.55 2275.63.1 1255.64–80 2265.84 1257.1 1277.5.1 1277.5.4 1557.8 1277.11 127, 1339.2 49.17 1289.21 128, 13410.2 13310.9.5 1611.1.1 1211.11.6 102, 13511.14.4 13511.20.1 12911.27.1 12911.34.1 129–3011.37.6 13011.38 13011.48 13012.2 12712.3.4 13212.23–6 13112.32.1 13112.36.2–3 13512.37.2 132, 13612.40.6 102–312.53.1 131–212.71.1 13412.74.5 13212.81.5 13213.1.2–3 123–413.42.3 13613.75.1 13413.103.3 13713.103.4 13513.108.1 13413.108.5 232–313.114 13814.2.3 12414.3.1 13214.23.5 13514.46.6 13514.84.6 13414.84.7 13614.93.1 134

14.117.8 136–715.2–13 13815.23.2 13415.37.3 13615.60.3–5 13815.75 13215.89.3 13615.94.4 13716.1 12316.3.8 13616.14.3 13716.70.6 13116.76.5 9716.76.6 13716.88.3 138–917.1 12317.113 137–818.19.1 12319.1.10 12419.1–15 13820.2.3 12420.30.1 13420.43.7 12320.77.1 13420.100.7 13421.5 13721.16.4 13430.8 132–331.19 13432.27.1 13534 and 35.15 13234 and 35.17 12936.10.3 13537.1 13937.3–8 13337.30.2 13538 and 39.1 133

DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUSAntiquitates Romanae

1.4.2 1561.5.4 1561.8.1 1561.63 811.70–1 751.72.5 1561.73.1 1561.74.1 155, 2341.74.2 66–71.74.3 821.79–84 155–62.59 814.30.2 154

Index 401

de Thucydide5 184–59 93–4

EPHORUS OF CYME,see FGrH 70

ERATOSTHENES OF CYRENE,see FGrH 241

FLORUS1.1.4–8 17

HERODOTUSHistories

1.1 97, 120, 1301.5 3, 139, 2631.24 1701.32.2–4 1–5, 2081.50–2 1701.74 42.3.1 1642.4.1 1642.43.4 1642.53.2 1922.100.1 1522.100.2 1662.109 322.142.1 1662.145.2 1642.145.3 1642.145.4 1922.160.3 1113.122.2 994.145 1694.146 169–704.150–8 1705.42–3 1705.57 2038.51.1 192

HESIODWorks and Days

109–201 16

HOMERIliad

1.249–52 186.145–9 166.357–8 276

Odyssey3.245 18

HYPERIDESEpitaphios35–9 299

ISOCRATESArchidamus8 28017–21 27124 28941 28142 26243–53 262–382 28084 281105 281

Areopagiticus14 26116 265, 27820–8 264–530 28438 28450 27862 27874 284–575 285

For the Liberty of the Rhodians35 281, 285

On the Peace36–7 27947–8 27849 27054–5 27879 27986 26487 30089 26891 27994 281

Panathenaicus1–3 26749–50 26471–2 26674–87 266119 269120 285121–2 290124 269126 269153 269161–2 278168–71 290204–7 269

402 Index

Panegyricus8 2979 245–6, 247–9, 255,

289, 32023 28324 27025 26828 268, 29029 29030 26531 268, 29037 26864 26366–7 26368 26571 28383 26799 283158 267, 268176 292181 267186 267

Plataicus1 28361 28253 28357 284

To Philip12–13 30222–3 301–225 30132–4 271, 28040 26357–65 261105 272, 282132 272134 287144 272146–8 264

JOSEPHUSAntiquitates Judaicae1.93 158

Contra Apionem1.58 1511.74–92 1661.93–105 1661.106–11 152, 1581.143 151–210.228 158

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

LYCURGUSAgainst Leocrates

7 27514 27862 26668–9 28084 26998–100 266101 266110 275117–19 291

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

PAUSANIAS1.13.8 3565.7.6 220

PHILOCHORUS OF ATHENS, see FGrH 328

PHLEGON OF TRALLES, see FGrH 257

PINDARPythian

1.75–80 2362.1–8 2366.5–14 342

PLUTARCHLife of Aristeides

19.8 47Life of Demetrius

26 25Life of Numa

1.2–3 81–21.4 65

Life of Solon25.3 2327.1 56

Life of Theseus31.2 1535.3 15

On Brotherly Love489b 43

Table Talk741a 43

POLYBIUSHistories

1.3.1 1131.5.1 112–131.6.1 120–1

Index 403

1.63.5 1201.88.7 1202.20.6 1212.32.1 1162.34.1 116–172.35.2 1202.37.4 1162.41.1 1152.71.3–7 1153.1.9–11 1203.16.7 1143.22.1–2 1173.77.1 1193.106.1 1173.118.10–11 1134.1.3–9 1154.2 114–154.5.1 1184.14.9 1144.26.1 1144.27.1 1184.28.4 884.28.5 1164.37.1–2 1194.52.4 1184.66.11 114, 1185.1.1 1195.30.7 1195.33.2 965.79.1 1195.91.1 1195.95.5 1205.105.3 1145.105.10 1215.108.9 1175.111.9 113–148.2.1–11 115–169.1.4 100, 1959.14.6–12 1219.15.1 12111.1.1 11312.4a.3 10512.11.1 11012.23.7 23712.27.6 23812.28.11 10214.1.5 11314.12.1 11516.24.1 11718.42.1 11721.18.1 119–2021.40.1 11423.1.1 11423.9.1 11427.7.2 118

28.16.10–11 11339.8.6 113

PORPHYRY OF TYRE, see FGrH 260

STRABOGeography1.1.10 1461.2.31–5 3251.3.2 1451.3.17 1482.2.1–3.8 3043.5.6 1494.6.3 1484.6.9 1485.2.4 1405.2.7 1435.3.2 1426.4.2 1487.25 1438.3.2 1468.3.3 146, 2668.3.30 143, 149, 2288.4.1 1438.5.4 1448.6.2 149–508.6.15 1448.6.20 1488.7.1 1449.1.6 1409.1.7 1449.1.17 1419.1.20 1409.1.22 1419.3.12 1439.4.7 1049.5.6 1439.5.12 14910.1.8 14510.3.2 10210.4.17 10210.4.18 14710.5.2 14611.5.3 14012.8.4 14613.1.3 143, 145, 14713.1.33 14113.1.34 14113.1.46 14213.1.52 14113.1.53 14114.1.3 14714.1.21 14814.2.5–12 22714.2.10 149

404 Index

14.5.12 14117.1.29 16417.1.46 16417.3.24 304

SYNCELLUSChronography1 842 84–5

THUCYDIDES1.1.2 1201.3.4 1761.4 991.10 1021.11.3 1471.17 1761.22 95, 102, 182, 187, 3681.97.2 931.126.6 522.2.1 90–1, 94, 2292.41.1 2432.64.2 2983.18.5 925.3.5–6 915.4.1–2 915.19.1 915.20 92–4, 1195.54.3 42–36.1–5 2406.4.4 2406.5.2 2416.5.3 2416.53 2597.57 2387.87 120

TIMAEUS OF TAUROMENIUM, seeFGrH 566

INSCRIPTIONS

Blinkenberg, Lindos2 163, 214–15, 321–5

CIG3311 343–4

Fouilles de Delphesiii.3.124 360, 361iii.3.125 361, 365

IC1.8.12 350–21.24.1 347–9, 355

IGi2 304b–c (I 3 377) 34

i3 78.53–4 25, 41i3 256 38ii2 2318 2122 2326 22122 5526 1–2 469 (2) 62 352–49 (2) 63 352–39 (2) 740 35411 (4) 5443 346–712 (5) 444 212–13, 227–8, 325–35,

342–312 (5) 445 209, 33012 (6) 285 340–212 (6) 308 339–4012 (9) 207 2514.1297 70

IK 6 (Lampsacus)8 351

Inscr. Delos1506 3671512 351

Inschriften von Priene37 314–15

LSCG4 3810 39–4016 3818 38–9

Milet6 (1) 155 319

OGIS56 41–2264 209, 319–20

SEG14.65.3–4 41

SGDI2724 360–23086 248, 344–5, 369

PAPYRI

P. Haw. 80/1 304–5P. Oxy. 12 77–9, 80P. Oxy. 3965 188–9

FRAGMENTARY TEXTS

FGrH70 (Ephorus of Cyme)T 8 98T 30 107T 30a 102T 34 96

Index 405

F 9 102F 11 104F 15 104F 16 104F 18a 104F 22 105F 31 99F 31b 98F 34 104F 97 315F 102 100F 115 104F 118 104F 121 104F 123 104F 125 105F 149 100F 173 100

240 (Xenagoras of Heraclea)F 26 59F 29 59F 31 59F 32 59F 34 59

241 (Eratosthenes of Cyrene)T 1 65T 2 65T 3 65F 1a 68F 1b 66–7F 1d 67F 2 67F 9 68F 12 68F 13 68–9F 40 60F 47 69

243 (Euthymenes)F 1 64, 72

244 (Apollodorus of Athens)T 6 73T 12 60F 28 79F 31 71F 32 62F 34 80–1F 35 72F 37 81F 38 80F 42 81F 61 86F 63 86F 64 86

F 66 79F 74 72F 85 74F 86 74–5F 158 60F 163 60F 167 60F 178 61F 185 61F 332 79F 335 73F 336 72F 339 72F 343 80

250 (Castor of Rhodes)F 2 74–5F 6 74–5F 7 83F 10 75F 12 73F 14 83

252 (Roman Chronicle)F 1 70

253 (Thrasyllus)F 1 88–9

254 (Ti. Claudius Polybius)F 2 67, 111

255, see P. Oxy. 12256 (Thallus)F 3 73F 4 74F 7 74

257 (Phlegon of Tralles)T 3 83F 1 87F 8 58F 12 87F 37 69F 38 69

260 (Porphyry of Tyre)F 2 75–6F 3 76F 4 86F 20 72F 23 72F 31 77F 32 77F 33 83F 87 83

305F 2 206, 218, 228

306 (Deinias of Argos)F 2 217

406 Index

F 4 204314 (Pausanias)

F 1 199323a (Hellanicus of Lesbos)

F 10 210, 218F 13 211F 21b 217F 22 201F 23 201, 238F 24 201F 37 211F 98 211

325 (Phanodemus of Athens)F 17 63F 18 53F 25 63

328 (Philochorus of Athens)F 3 201F 18 199F 83 52F 84 52F 92 210F 122 306F 166 53F 168 53F 196 239F 202 219

334 (Istrus the Callimachean)F 6 306F13 53F 24 53

361 (Ammonius of Athens)F6 53

362 (Crates of Athens)F 6 53

365 (Apollonius of Acharnae)F 2 52F 5 52

366 (Lysimachides)F 1 54F 2 55F 3 54–5F 5 53F 6 53F 8 54

382 (Lysimachus the Alexandrian)F 13 206, 217, 229

390 (Hesychius Illustris of Miletus)F 1 169–73, 195

392 (Ion of Chios)T 1 222T 6 222F 1 187, 204, 208F 16 224

404 (Anaxandridas of Delphi)F 3 215

410 (Comarchus)F 1 215

417 (Creophylus)F 1 198

424 (Archemachus)F 3 225

430 (Promathidas of Heraclea)F 1 197F 2 197–8

443 (Artemon of Clazomenae)F 2 225

448 (Heropythos of Colophon)F 1 197

469 (Acesandrus)F 3 204

472 (Agathocles of Cyzicus)F 2 199F 5 196

477 (Myrsilus of Methymna)F 1 217

482F 2 229F 5 209

485 (Dieuchidas of Megara)F 4 223–4

487F 3 204, 208

526F 1 219

550 (Sicyonian Record)F 1 226F 2 226

554 (Hippys of Rhegium)F 3 235

555 (Antiochus of Syracuse)T 3 219F 2 102F 3 239F 4 208F 9 239F 12 239

556 (Philistus of Syracuse)T 15a 238T 16b 238T 22 238F 2 221

564 (Callias of Syracuse)F 1 239F 5 196

566 (Timaeus of Tauromenium)T 10 110, 231F 7 238

Index 407

F 19b 111–12, 222–3F 26 112, 223F 41 235F 51 240F 58 240F 60 112, 222–3,

233, 234F 65 224F 89 199F 105 232F 106 232F 112 240F 119 111F 125 112F 126 218, 238

568 (Hippostratus)F 5 225F 6 238

584 (Persaeus of Citium)T 3 225

595 (Sosibius the Laconian)F 2 205F 3 205

607F 1 200

609 (Manetho of Sybennytus)F 8 166F 9 166F 28 166

610F1 152, 166F 2 166

616 (Apion of Oasis)F 4 165F 13 167F 20 165–6

618 (Chaeremon of Alexandria)F 7 165

624 (Asclepiades)T 1 164

627 (Callixenus of Rhodes)F 2 167

659F 3 165

661F 4 167

665F 170 165

679F 7 152

680 (Berossus of Babylon)T 3 161F 1 160F 3b 160, 161F 4b 161, 165

685 (Abydenus)F 2b 160–1

688 (Ctesias of Cnidus)F 1b 161–2F 29 161F 33a 161F 45 157–8

706F 7a 154F 7b 154

722 (Demetrius)F 1 162, 163F 2 162–3

724 (Eupolemus)F 1 159

726 (Artapanus)F 2 159F 3 159–60

790 (Sanchouniathon)F 1 159

795 (Hermogenes)F 2 153

810 (L. Cincius Alimentus)F 2 156

813 (C. Acilius)F 2 156

817 (Promathion)F 1 156

818 (Galitas)F 1 156

821 (Zenodotus of Troezen)F 1 156F 3 156

408 Index