abbreviations
FGrH |
F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden: Weidmann/Brill, 1923– ). |
Harding |
P. Harding, From the End of the Peloponnesian War to the Battle of Ipsus. Translated Documents of Greece and Rome 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). |
Rhodes/Osborne |
P. Rhodes and R. Osborne, Greek Historical Inscriptions 404–323 bc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). |
Book 16
1.2 this principle: what Diodorus seems to mean (as the following sentence makes clearer, and compare 5.1.4) is that, in Philip’s case, he will not only cover his career from start to finish, but be able to do so within a single book, because it all happened so fast. The whole idea, which seems trivial, makes more sense if one remembers that a ‘book’ was a papyrus roll, and therefore it was convenient to have all the information about one king within a single roll. The roll could then be clearly marked ‘Diodorus of Sicily on Philip of Macedon’, for easy identification on the shelf. It is one of Diodorus’ regular claims for his history that it is designed to be useful and convenient for the reader, and this is one aspect of it. But, in fact, it was only for Books 16 and 17 that Diodorus was able to adopt this biographical approach, and in Book 18 he reverts to his more usual kind of preface, in which he states how many years the book will cover, and what its main theme will be. He also often includes in his prefaces an idea of the contents of the book, and of the previous book, which was an important aid to readers in the age of papyrus rolls. One had only to pull a roll off the shelf and read the first paragraph to find whether one needed that roll or another one.
1.3 this one book: the earliest historians, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, did not divide their work into books; the division was imposed on their work by later editors. It was Ephorus of Cyme in the fourth century who introduced the fashion of choosing his own book divisions and writing a preface for each book, as Diodorus does.
1.4 willingly submitted to him: actually, he finally gained the hegemony of the Greeks by defeating them at the battle of Chaeronea, as Diodorus well knew (16.84–7). He is being deliberately provocative at the start of a book, to draw readers in.
1.5 Scythians: in what follows, Diodorus omits Philip’s Scythian campaign of 339.
1.5 further reinforcements: not true: Alexander was sent fresh forces from Macedon from time to time (as Diodorus knew: e.g. 17.49.1, 17.65.1, 17.95.4), took over the Greek mercenaries of those he defeated (e.g. 17.76.2), gained allies along his way east, and trained up native troops (17.108.1).
1.6 achieve all this: the relative powers of Fortune or human ability were a long-standing debating topic, but given Diodorus’ stress on Fortune throughout
The Library (Introduction, pp. xxv–xxvi), his denial here that Fortune was a factor in Philip’s life is remarkable. In Book 17, for example, Alexander is constantly subject to Fortune.
1.6 brilliant strategist and outstandingly brave: Philip may well have had both these qualities, but this is one of Diodorus’ formulae for military leaders, applied, for example, to Antiphilus at 18.13.6, a general who was certainly not of Philip’s stature. There is another assessment of Philip, in similar terms, at 32.4.1–3.
2.1 360/59: since the Athenian year started in late June or early July, at the first new moon after the summer solstice, an Athenian year, when referred to as a whole, has to be written like this—that is, from July 360 to July 359, in our terms.
2.1 stade race: this was a sprint, over a distance of almost 200 metres at Olympia. The practice of naming the Olympiad after the winner of this race was long established.
2.1 Aemilius: full names of Roman consuls mentioned by Diodorus, and corrections to his versions of their names, can be found in Appendix
2 (pp. 543–9).
2.3 Epaminondas’ foster-brother: this is wrong: Epaminondas was considerably older than Philip, and Plutarch tells us that Pammenes, not Epaminondas’ father, was responsible for Philip in Thebes (
Pelopidas 26). Philip’s sojourn in Thebes probably started about ten or twelve years later, and was not instigated by the Illyrians: Diodorus gets it right at 15.67.4. The name of Epaminondas’ tutor was Lysis (10.11.2), who came from Tarentum, southern Italy being the principal homeland of Pythagoreanism at the time. At 15.39.2–3, Diodorus again attributes Epaminondas’ calibre to his Pythagorean background. Hostages were, of course, guarantees of good behaviour.
2.4 Philip … took over the kingdom: the heir to the throne, Perdiccas’ son Amyntas, was still an infant. Philip, his uncle, might have been expected to become regent, but given the current crisis and the need for a strong hand at the helm, the Macedonians tolerated his bid for kingship. Amyntas remained alive, but never became king; when Alexander the Great came to the throne, he murdered the young man, his cousin, as a potential rival.
2.6 a campaign against Macedon: it is not clear why the Illyrian king, Bardylis, did not press home his advantage. He waited a year, and was then
defeated by Philip (16.4). One of Philip’s wives was Illyrian, so possibly Philip negotiated a truce, leaving upper Macedon in Illyrian hands, and took this wife at this time to gain him the respite he needed.
2.6 to see to his restoration: we know too little about Pausanias and Argaeus to assess the validity of their claims to the throne.
3.2 his creation: these sentences give a poor idea of the extent and importance of Philip’s military reforms, on which see e.g. King,
Ancient Macedonia, 107–14. But Diodorus is right that Philip formed the Macedonian phalanx or heavy infantry; previously, Macedonian infantry had been few and light. It is not clear that Philip would have had time to turn to military reform
before dealing with all the various threats facing Macedon. He initiated them, perhaps, and did so quickly enough to be able to defeat his enemies, but it took quite a few years for them to be complete.
3.3 the recovery of Amphipolis: Amphipolis in Thrace commanded the local trade routes for timber and precious metals. Colonized by the Athenians in 437, it became independent in 424 and was never recovered, despite frequent attempts.
3.4 to see to his restoration: this probably means that he bribed the Thracian king to murder Pausanias. The king was probably Berisades, who held western Thrace while his two brothers had divided the rest on the death earlier this year of their father Cotys.
3.5 Mantias … with the mercenaries: Mantias must have set off from Athens before Philip became reconciled with the Athenians by withdrawing his troops from Amphipolis. Aegae was the earliest capital of Macedon, pre-dating Pella, and was still the centre for many religious and ceremonial activities.
3.7 Crenides: Crenides was a refoundation rather than an original settlement. Its previous name was Datus.
4.2 made them subjects of Macedon: it is to Agis’ credit that for the first time he united the Paeonians sufficiently to be a threat, but after his death the temporary unity fell apart and the Paeonians became vulnerable to Philip. His victory was easy, and good training for his new army. However, the next time we meet the Paeonians, only a few years later (16.22.3), they are again hostile to Macedon. They were more fully subjected, perhaps, by Alexander (17.8.1), and thereafter, although Paeonia retained its own kings, we find them as allies of Macedon—and a useful
buffer zone between Macedon and the Danube tribes. Paeonia is roughly equivalent to the country currently known as the Republic of North Macedonia (the former FYROM).
4.7 buried his dead: battlefield dead were generally cremated, and the bones and ashes were buried.
4.7 this battle: it would be hard to overestimate the importance of this battle, which freed the Macedonians after decades of domination by the Illyrians, and enabled the further expansion of Macedon under Philip.
5.2 peace treaty: the Carthaginians occupied the west of Sicily, as the Greeks did the east, so that they were constantly at each other’s throats.
5.4 secured by adamantine bonds: it was a famous saying: as well as 16.70.2 below, see Plutarch,
Dion 7 and 10, and Aelian,
Historical Miscellany 6.12.
6.1 Dion … fled from Sicily: actually, Dion had left, with Dionysius’ connivance, some years earlier, and had spent some time in Greece, especially Athens, before going to Corinth.
6.5 sailed into Corinth: Corinth was the mother city of Syracuse, founded by Corinthian settlers in 733
bce.
7.1 ‘stay on Taurus’: Diodorus has the etymology of Tauromenium coming from the name of the hill plus the root
-men-, to do with ‘staying’. See also 14.59. Tauromenium had certainly existed prior to this episode, so perhaps Andromachus was resettling the site. Naxos was the earliest Greek settlement on Sicily; it never fully recovered from its destruction by Dionysius I in 403.
7.1 Caesar: that is, Caesar Augustus, the first emperor. The sentence is an important clue to Diodorus’ dates: see Introduction, p. x.
7.3 their alliance: the Second Athenian League (so called to distinguish it from the Delian League of the fifth century) lasted from 379 until 338, and at its peak had about sixty members. Athens lost this Social War (‘war of the allies’), but retained a few members of its alliance. Other former members sought stronger partners, such as Mausolus of Caria. At 16.22.2 Diodorus says that the war lasted for four years, whereas he rightly says ‘three’ here.
8.1 his subjects: that is, Philip incorporated into Macedon the tribal states of Upper Macedon and Orestis.
8.2 Next: Diodorus omits Philip’s securing of his southern border with Thessaly, despite saying correctly in 16.14.2 that Philip ‘returned’ to
Thessaly in that year. See Buckler,
Philip II and the Sacred War, 59–62. Diodorus also omits Philip’s marriage to Olympias, which helped keep the Epirotes on good terms.
8.2 in considerable force: the Amphipolitans had asked the Athenians for help, but the Athenians believed Philip’s promise that he had no designs on Amphipolis (16.4.3) and ignored their pleas.
8.2 banished his enemies: an inscription exists listing some of the Amphipolitan exiles: Harding, no. 63.
8.3 wanted for their own: the terms of the alliance survive on a mutilated inscription: Harding, no. 67. Diodorus omits the fact that the Athenians declared war on Philip over his seizure of Amphipolis and Pydna, but they waged the war in a desultory fashion, arriving too late to save Potidaea, for instance. The reason for their apathy was probably the looming Social War, which demanded their attention: see 16.21–2.
8.5 importance and standing: Diodorus, or his strongly pro-Philip source, is being a bit naive. This was part of Philip’s basic approach to Athens, which was to keep them guessing whether he was a friend or enemy.
8.6 Crenides: he relieved Crenides from an attack by Cetriporis of Thrace, who had succeeded his father Berisades. Crenides had only been refounded a couple of years previously (16.3.7), and was probably more a collection of mining settlements than a town. His takeover of Crenides in due course allowed the further expansion of Macedon to the east.
8.6 Philippi after himself: he was able to increase its population because he drained the local marshes for farmland. Philippi was heavily fortified, to protect this vital resource.
8.7 ‘Philips’: gold coinage was an innovation in the Greek world. Philip probably did not begin to mint gold coins until the 340s.
9.2 grain: but it appears from 16.13.3 that Dionysius was short of grain.
9.2 unassailable citadels: Syracuse had two citadels, one on Ortygia (which Diodorus just calls the Island), and the other in Epipolae, a plateau west of the city. Both acropolises had been heavily fortified by Dionysius I.
9.4 Cocalus, the king of the Sicanians: Daedalus, the legendary craftsman, and his son Icarus, were imprisoned by Minos on Crete, but famously escaped by flying to Sicily on wings secured with wax, leading to Icarus’ death when he flew too close to the sun and melted the wax.
9.5 Sicanians and Sicels from the interior: the Sicels and Sicanians were the two main non-Greek peoples on the island, with the Sicels to the east of the Halycus river and the Sicanians to the west. The Halycus flows down from the central highlands of Sicily, south and then south-west, to join the sea at Heraclea Minoa.
10.4 Achradina: a western suburb of Syracuse that extended into the plateau of Epipolae.
11.3 Caulonia in Italy: Caulonia is on the Ionian Sea, in south-east Italy, but at 16.10.2 Dionysius was on the Adriatic.
11.3 Philistus: also a historian, but only fragments of his work survive.
11.3 later than Dion: Dion had not taken Ortygia, the Island, which was strongly fortified, virtually impregnable, and remained in the hands of Dionysius’ troops, affording him a base when he arrived even though Dion had the mainland city.
13.1 citadels: the plural is puzzling, since by now Dion certainly held the Epipolae acropolis. Perhaps Diodorus was thinking of the garrison Dionysius had at Rhegium, just across the water on the toe of Italy.
14.3 Among the historians: Diodorus scatters similar references to historians (and occasionally other writers) throughout his work, creating a kind of historiographical timeline alongside the historical narrative. These writers’ histories come and go, and Diodorus means to give us the impression that his work encompassed all of their work and more besides. His interest was not just in the writers themselves, but also in the key events at which they chose to start or finish their histories. The start of the Third Sacred War was one of the stepping-stones of history, as far as Diodorus was concerned—a fixed point to which other events could be related.
14.3 his father had failed to cover: i.e. Ephorus’ Book 30 (his final book: see 16.76.5), on the Sacred War, was actually written or completed by Demophilus. On Ephorus, see pp. 539–40.
14.3 eleven years of warfare: Diodorus gives the length of the war as ten years at 16.59.1, but here he is counting not to the end of the war, but to the elimination of the wrongdoers, which happened after the end of the war (16.61–4). More puzzling is why he mentions Demophilus’ account of the Sacred War under this year, when he thought that it started two years later, as he says clearly at 16.23.1. It may be that the Phocians seized Delphi in this year—that is the event with which Demophilus’ book started—but that the Amphictyonic Council did not declare war until later.
15.1 Porus of Malis: this is probably the same Porus who won the race at the previous Olympics (16.2.1). He was perhaps born in Cyrene and moved to Malis.
15.2 runaway slaves: there is no way of knowing whether Diodorus’ derivation of ‘Bruttii’, perhaps from Oscan, is correct, but the Bruttii had existed under that name before this occasion. The location of Terina is uncertain.
18.1 Locri: currently part of the Syracusan empire, along with much of southern Italy, and Dionysius’ preferred place of residence.
18.3 the Arethusa spring: the famous spring on the island of Ortygia, the site of the original foundation of Syracuse.
20.2 Hexapylon: a northern entrance to the suburbs of Syracuse.
20.6 his worship as a hero: according to Plutarch (
Dion 46), he was worshipped as a god, not just as a hero, and in fact that is more plausible, since no one could be a hero until after his death, but a man could be an embodied god.
22.1 his entire army: Athenian finances were so unstable in the early and middle fourth century that generals often had to find creative ways to raise money.
22.3 the Thracian king, the Paeonian king, and the Illyrian king: respectively, Cetriporis, Lyppeius (a.k.a. Lycceius), and Grabus. They had an alliance with the Athenians, who were too busy with the Social War to help. It should be noted that, whenever Diodorus (and other Greek historians) speak of ‘the Illyrians’ or ‘the Paeonians’, as though they were unified peoples, it is possible that only some, or the majority, of the tribes making up the Illyrians (etc.) were involved.
23.1 nine years: eleven years in 16.14.3 (but see the note on that passage), nine here, and ten, correctly, at 16.59.1. The nine-year count here may be due to his counting from the actual declaration of war by the Amphictyonic Council, rather than the occupation of Delphi by the Phocians.
23.2 the Cadmea: this incident (repeated with a bit more detail at 16.29.2) took place in 382; the Cadmea, the Theban acropolis, remained illegally or at least unjustifiably occupied by Spartan troops for over three years. It is not clear why the Thebans waited so long to bring charges against Sparta.
23.3 Cirrhaean sacred land: land that had once belonged to Crisa, but which was declared sacred after the First Sacred War early in the sixth century.
The land in question was what tourists nowadays describe as the ‘sea of olives’ below Delphi.
23.3 failed to pay what they owed: that is, the first tranche. They were eventually forced to pay, as we shall see—and a fragmentary inscription survives, recording the first five payments: Rhodes/Osborne, no. 67.
23.3 the delegates: there were two from each state represented on the Council.
23.3 stealing from the god: their land, once consecrated to the god, would become unavailable for any other use than grazing the herds and flocks from which those consulting the oracle had to buy animals, to perform the required sacrifices. ‘The god’ is Apollo, the main god of Delphi.
23.4 the Greeks: that is, the delegates of the Amphictyonic Council.
23.5 lines that read: Homer,
Iliad 2.517 and 519; the omitted line just gives the parentage of the named leaders. This was not the first time the Phocians had laid claim to Delphi; the Athenians had supported them in a failed attempt in 449.
23.5 Pytho: the ancient name of Delphi. Cyparissus was a nearby town.
24.1 General Plenipotentiary: for what little we know of the Phocian constitution, see the relevant chapter in H. Beck and P. Funke (eds),
Federalism in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
24.1 the Lacedaemonian king: until the third quarter of the third century, Sparta had two concurrent kings from different houses. Archidamus III was the Eurypontid king, and Cleomenes II was his Agiad colleague.
24.4 the letters: inscriptions were written with no separation between words, so where we would say they obliterated ‘words’, the Greeks said ‘letters’. Philomelus annulled in this way not only the decree against the Phocians, but also that against the Spartans, now his allies.
25.1 one and a half times the usual rate: he may have had to pay them well to compensate them for taking part in the sacrilegious occupation of Delphi. This was by far the largest recruitment of mercenaries in Greek history, and from now on the hiring of mercenaries in large numbers became standard procedure.
26.2 ‘inaccessible’: the
adyton, or inaccessible area, was the innermost part of a temple. It was not open to the general public, and often housed the cult image of the deity. In the temple of Apollo at Delphi, it was where the Pythia (the prophesying priestess) did her business.
26.4 those who sought answers: this story of the Pythia inhaling toxic fumes is still told to tourists today, but it is false. There is no fissure, and even if there were, the building of the temple would have covered it up. In any
case, the temple authorities would not have relied on such an unreliable source, and any vapours would have dispersed in the open air. All over the Mediterranean, prophesying priestesses simply went into a self-induced trance and spoke what came to them. But the story recurs in Plutarch (
On the Decline of Oracles 42 =
Moralia 433c–d), Pausanias (
Description of Greece 10.5.3), and in Pompeius Trogus ( Justin,
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 24.6); and the fissure or chasm is mentioned by several other writers.
26.6 Artemis: the virgin goddess par excellence.
27.1 the oracle that suited him: there is a very similar story about Alexander the Great and the Delphic oracle at Plutarch,
Alexander 14.4 (alluded to by Diodorus at 17.93.4).
28.3 the Phaedriades: the great south-facing cliffs just to the east of Delphi, called ‘gleaming’ because they used to reflect the sun more than usual. It is commonly believed that this is the same battle that has already been mentioned in 16.24.4, under the previous year, but there may have been another Locrian attack.
29.1 confederacies and cities: the two most common forms of political organization in Greece at the time. See Waterfield,
Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens, 37–41.
30.1 the oracular shrine: see also 16.14.3 for the claim that Philomelus plundered the sanctuary; perhaps more plausibly, however, Diodorus denies it at 16.28.2 and 16.56.5. It was his successors who did so.
30.1 high wages: see 16.25.1, of which this is a doublet.
31.1 the town: it is not clear where this action took place, or what its relation is with the preceding paragraph. The town may be Tithorea.
31.6 Pagae: there is no such place known in northern Greece and the name may be corrupt. Editors tend to correct to ‘Pagasae’, the port of Pherae, but this is unlikely. Philip did take Pagasae, but in 352: see the second note to 16.35.5.
31.6 Spartacus: more usually spelled ‘Spartocus’. These are the kings of the Cimmerian Bosporus.
31.7 Falisci: an Italic people, occupying part of Etruria. For the war, see Livy,
History of Rome 7.16.
31.7 Callippus: an Athenian, and a former student of Plato’s Academy in Athens, who had accompanied Dion on his return from Greece in 357/6.
32.1 returned home: a curious decision, since the Thebans (commanded by Pammenes) could have taken advantage of their defeat of the Phocians to liberate Delphi.
33.3 Thronium: a strategic town. The Phocians were on their way to creating a Greater Phocis in central Greece.
34.1 Artabazus: the Persian satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia.
34.3 returned to Sparta: the episode is repeated in 16.39.4, under the following year. Orneae was a dependency of Argos.
34.3 slavery: the importance of Sestus (located on the north shore of the Hellespont, directly north of Abydus) was not just that it commanded the shipping route from the Black Sea, but also, and more immediately, that the Athenian fleet there trapped Pammenes and his men in the Propontis.
34.4 Cardia: which was not Cersobleptes’ to give away.
34.4 cleruchs: a cleruchy was an overseas settlement on land confiscated by the Athenians, where the emigrant cleruchs (‘allotment owners’) lost neither the privileges nor the obligations of Athenian citizenship. Cleruchies often served as garrisons for restive or economically important states in the Athenian alliance.
34.4 to the cities: unmentioned by Diodorus is the important fact that Olynthus and the Chalcidian Confederacy, previously on good terms with Philip (16.8.3–4), asked for an alliance with Athens. It was refused—but the Olynthians’ treachery explains Philip’s hostility towards the town (16.52–3).
34.4 under siege: the siege of Methone was also mentioned under the previous year, at 16.31.6; see Introduction, p. xxxvi. Methone was the last of the several former Athenian possessions in this area of the northern Aegean; the unspecified ‘enemies’ were presumably Athenian troops. The Athenians sent a relieving force, but it arrived too late. Once Philip had Methone, he had the entire Macedonian coastline, which had formerly been largely in Greek hands.
35.1 Pherae: Pherae was in Thesssaly too: ‘the Thessalians’ means a coalition of other Thessalian states, chiefly Larisa, Crannon, and Pharsalus.
35.2 defeated them twice: these were the worst, and almost the only, defeats of Philip’s career. There is an account of the first battle in Polyaenus,
Stratagems in War 2.38.2. Philip’s life and his position on the throne were briefly under threat. It is not impossible that these defeats prompted
a change of policy. Philip now realized that he had to go on winning in order to secure the loyalty of the Macedonians, and so turned his thoughts to further conquest—even of Asia Minor.
35.5 happened to be sailing by: Chares had been sent by the Athenians to protect the port of Pagasae, but it fell to Philip before he arrived.
35.6 as temple-robbers: these gruesome actions were supposed to impress the Greeks with Philip’s pious defence of Delphi, and so earn him goodwill. Temple-robbers were to be denied proper burial (so that their souls would never settle in Hades) and so drowning was a suitable punishment. This was the largest mass drowning in Greek history, and the battle was one of the bloodiest in Greek history.
36.1 double the usual rate of pay: following the massacre and mass drowning, it must have been difficult to recruit further mercenaries, hence the double pay.
36.2 sister and wife: sibling marriage was very unusual indeed, and shocking to the Greeks. Carians were culturally but not ethnically Greek. The tradition started by Mausolus continued among Carian dynasts. It was supposed to (a) guarantee the purity of the dynastic bloodline; (b) reduce the number of cousins (by turning some of them into brothers and sisters) who might be rivals for the throne at the death of a ruler; (c) advertise the superiority of the royal family to conventional morality.
36.3 fifteen years: other sources say that Clearchus’ brother Satyrus took over.
36.4 the river Tiber: the river on which Rome was situated. This war between Rome and a coalition of three important Etruscan towns lasted from 357 to 349. Diodorus’ account is far from complete, and should be supplemented by the (also patchy) account in Livy,
History of Rome 7.
36.5 sailed into Syracuse: if Polyaenus is right, however (
Stratagems in War 5.4), Hipparinus was based in Leontini, and would therefore have travelled overland to Syracuse, not by boat.
37.3 Nausicles: these Phocian allies were probably united by suspicion or hatred of Thebes. Phocis was their preferred power in central Greece.
38.1 the reorganization of Thessaly: which included his appointment as lifelong Archon of Thessaly, the first time a non-Thessalian had been so privileged. The annexation of Thessaly gave him men and resources equal to those of Macedon. He had already more than doubled his kingdom by incorporating upper Macedon and parts of Thrace; now he doubled it again. He also increased the population of Macedon (and therefore the manpower available for military service) by settling thousands of Thracians, Scythians, and Illyrians, usually former prisoners of war, within the borders of Macedon.
38.2 the pass: Thermopylae was the best way into Greece from the north for a land army, and was therefore the site of many battles and confrontations. In those days, it was a very narrow pass. The Athenians helped the Phocians not so much out of sympathy with their cause, as out of fear about what Philip’s intentions were for Greece south of Thermopylae. They were proud of this gesture of defiance; Demosthenes, for instance, mentions it several times in his political speeches (e.g. 4.17, 18.32). The Athenian troops were those commanded by Nausicles: 16.37.3.
38.3 Epicnemidian Locris, as it is called: that is, the western part of Locris (named after the dominant tribe), while the eastern part, centred on the city of Opous, was called Opountian Locris. Locrians also lived on the north coast of the Corinthian Gulf, between Aetolia and Phocis; they were called Ozolian Locrians, after the dominant tribe there.
38.4 Abae: the Phocian town of Abae, north of Lake Copais, was famous as the location of an oracle of Apollo.
39.1 racked by disturbances and upheavals: there were four main centres of power in the Peloponnese at this time: the old cities Sparta and Argos, and the new cities Messene and Megalopolis. Despite its weakness (witness the fact that it needed allies for this campaign), Sparta continued to try to re-establish its former hegemony.
39.1 King Archidamus: the Spartans’ reason for this campaign was to try to restore territory lost to the Megalopolitans when Megalopolis had been founded in 371.
39.1 their allies: in Athens, this was the occasion of Demosthenes’ Speech 16,
For the Megalopolitans.
39.3 the sources of the Alpheius river: in the highlands of Arcadia, roughly halfway between Megalopolis and Tegea. At 110 kilometres, the Alpheius is the longest river in the Peloponnese, flowing through Arcadia and Elis, where it passes by the sacred site of Olympia.
39.5 Helissus: also known as Helisson, a small town west of Mantinea.
39.6 Some time later: in the following year, in fact. The campaign took place in Arcadia.
39.6 Telphousa: the place is more usually called Thelpousa.
40.3 Cyprus: Egypt had been in revolt since 404. Diodorus has made a mistake: this expedition belongs to 346/5, and led to the recovery of Egypt two or three years later. Artaxerxes may have campaigned in Egypt in 351/0 and the following years, but he did not recover it at this time.
40.6 to transport supplies: these figures are, of course, exaggerations. The resources of the Persian empire were so great that the Greeks were prone to such exaggerations.
41.1 and Tyrians: Arados, Sidon, and Tyre being major Phoenician cities in their own right. Tripolis was formed, perhaps in the fifth century, by resettling people from all three cities. In what immediately follows, Diodorus slides from talking about the Sidonian quarter of Tripolis to talking about Sidon itself.
41.1 issues of major concern: the ‘Phoenician council’ perhaps consisted of local satraps and governors. A ‘Phoenician assembly’ is mentioned at 16.45.1, making it sound as though the council had the function of preparing the agenda for a larger assembly.
41.3 preparing for war: numismatic evidence—an interruption of the regular issue of Sidonian coins by Mazaeus—suggests that this insurrection should be dated a few years later, to 347–346.
42.7 Phocion of Athens: Athenian generals hired themselves out as mercenary commanders, just as Spartan kings did in this period (e.g. 16.63.1).
43.2 Thessalion: slave names often indicated the country of their origin.
43.3 hand-token: by Persian custom, model hands took the place of handshakes for parties wanting to make pledges without being in each other’s presence.
45.3 to him and the king: the implication that this was his first approach to the mercenaries must be wrong. We were told earlier that Tennes had already suborned Mentor and others inside the city, and Tennes would not have risked making promises to the Persian king if he was not yet certain of entry.
45.4 before the king reached them: this must have been a major blow for the king, since he had been planning to use the fleet to reconquer Egypt.
45.5 the entire city: this must be an exaggeration (it is a common one in the Greek historians), since the city was flourishing again a dozen or so years later.
45.8 Praeneste: this was the end of the hostilities between the Latin town of Praeneste (modern Palestrina) and the Romans. From now on, Praeneste remained loyal to Rome.
45.8 the Samnites: this is the first time the Samnites appear in history. They were a league of Oscan-speaking peoples, claiming kinship and occupying the south-central Apennines. The treaty made with Rome in this year was probably an agreement to share the task of repelling common enemies such as the Celts, but it also served to delay the outbreak of
warfare between them and the Romans; both peoples were aggressively expanding their territories, so that a clash was inevitable. The Samnite wars began in 343, and their eventual defeat in those wars was a crucial stage in the Roman takeover of Italy.
45.8 Tarquinii: an important Etruscan town. Livy (
History of Rome 7.19.2–3) gives the number of slaughtered Etruscans as 358, and provides context: earlier, roughly the same number of Roman prisoners of war had been slaughtered by the Etruscans.
45.9 Syracusan power-possessors: they may have been Syracusan power-possessors (though actually Callippus was Athenian), but Diodorus is misleading in implying that they possessed Syracuse itself. At 16.36.5 Callippus was expelled from Syracuse and Hipparinus took over. Callippus made himself tyrant of Catane, and Leptines held Apollonia.
46.2 in Asia: numismatic evidence suggests that he became the king of Sidon for a few years.
46.5 in my first book: Diodorus’ first book was devoted to Egyptian antiquities; here he refers to 1.30. As described there, the Pits (‘Perdition’ would be another possible translation) sound like quicksands.
47.2 the Magi: at
Histories 3.76–9, Herodotus told how seven noble Persians overthrew the regime of the Magi, an action which soon led to the seizure of the throne by Darius the Great in 522. Rhosaces (or Rhoesaces) therefore belonged to one of the great families of the Persian empire.
47.6 Warriors, as these Egyptians are called there: Herodotus,
Histories 2.164–6, described them as a caste of Egyptian society, but they were more like the citizens of semi-independent enclaves within Egypt, sometimes of Libyan origin, who owed military service to the Egyptian crown (as payback for the fact that they were granted land by the pharaoh), but were also free to sell their services to others. They often formed the backbone of the Egyptian armed forces, but much about them is obscure.
48.7 Memphis: the main city of Egypt, before Alexandria was built. Even then, it remained the centre for Egyptian religion and ceremony.
49.4 Bagoas: in the next chapter, we find that Bagoas was busy at Bubastis. It was probably Rhosaces who was engaged at Pelusium. For Bagoas’ career, see E. Badian, ‘The Eunuch Bagoas’, in id.,
Collected Papers on Alexander the Great (London: Routledge, 2012), 20–35.
51.2 all Egypt: all of northern Egypt, anyway; his hold over southern Egypt was not yet secure. Nectanebo’s ‘flight’ to Ethiopia (i.e. Nubia) was
probably a tactical retreat, and he was hoping to return via southern Egypt and retake the north.
51.3 Pherendates as satrap of Egypt: it is possible that Diodorus has made a mistake, since a Pherendates was the satrap of Egypt in the early fifth century. At 17.34.5 the name of the Egyptian satrap is given as Tasiaces.
52.2 the prize for valour: an occasional post-battle or post-campaign award—but the recipients tended to be officers or cavalrymen rather than rank-and-file soldiers.
52.3 Memnon: Memnon was Mentor’s brother, and their sister was Artabazus’ wife.
52.6 had him arrested: and subsequently killed. In the epigram the philosopher Aristotle wrote for Hermias’ gravestone (Aristotle was Hermias’ son-in-law), he stressed the treachery.
52.8 the Persians: we hear nothing more about Mentor, and it is likely that he died quite soon after this episode. He passed both his wife Barsine (his niece, the daughter of Artabazus) and his command on to his brother, Memnon (17.23.6).
52.9 Zereia: the location of Zereia is unknown, and since the text is corrupt at this point, the name may not even be correct.
52.9 Peitholaus, the dynast of the city: at 16.37.3 and 16.38.1, Peitholaus has already been expelled from Pherae. Perhaps he returned in the meantime, or perhaps this is another of Diodorus’ doublets (but his doublets are usually only a year apart, not several years).
52.10 the king of Pontus: careless: they were kings of the Cimmerian Bosporus, as Diodorus knew perfectly well; see 16.31.6, 20.22.1, and 20.100.7. Pontus had not yet become an independent kingdom, though it would be Spartocus’ descendants who would rule it. Spartocus (the more correct spelling of the name) actually died in 342, after sharing the throne with Parysades (whose name is spelled ‘Pairisades’ in Rhodes/Osborne, no. 64).
53.2 in that part of the world: Chalcidice, which is nowhere near the Hellespont, but Philip presumably did not want to leave the powerful Olynthians in his rear. Moreover, they were harbouring two pretenders to the Macedonian throne, and had drawn close to Athens. That was Philip’s excuse: they were not behaving like allies, despite their treaty with him. Mecyberna was the port of Olynthus. Unmentioned by Diodorus, Philip also campaigned in Thrace, impinging on Athenian interests in the Thracian Chersonese. He then turned back against Olynthus, and after Olynthus he had some troubles on his northern and western borders to settle.
53.2 to take the city: compare the account in Demosthenes 19.194–8 and 305–10 (
On the Dishonest Embassy). Lasthenes and Euthycrates became infamous examples of traitors: Demosthenes 8.40 (
On the Situation in the Chersonese), 19.265 (
On the Dishonest Embassy). The Athenians sent a force to relieve Olynthus, but it was ineffective, and Philip captured a number of Athenians in Olynthus and took them as hostages to Pella. Part of the reason for the Athenians’ ineffectiveness was that they were involved in trying, not very successfully, to stop the island of Euboea falling into the hands of a tyrant who was a friend of Philip’s.
54.4 guest-friends and familiars: another echo of Demosthenes’ famous speech
On the Crown: 18.46–52, 109, 284. ‘Guest-friends’ is the traditional, somewhat awkward translation of the Greek
xenoi. Guest-friendship was a formal kind of friendship between members of the elite from different states, entered into and maintained by oaths and the ritual exchange of gifts.
54.4 pernicious form of diplomacy: under the influence of Demosthenes in this passage, Diodorus is portraying Philip as a villain, not as the hero of much of the rest of the book. But the basic point is correct: Philip assiduously cultivated friendships in the Greek cities as a way of weakening their opposition to him.
55.1 Olympia: a festival of Zeus held at Dium in Macedon, under Mount Olympus.
55.2 during the symposium: after eating, the guests settled down to a symposium, in which hard drinking was accompanied by elegant conversation and contests of wit.
55.3 the actor Satyrus: this story was first told by Demosthenes, at 19.192–5 (
On the Dishonest Embassy).
56.1 Hya: more commonly called Hyampolis, the town lay to the north of Lake Copais, close to the border with Boeotia.
56.2 on their way back home: these two Boeotian invasions of Phocis belong to different years, the first to the campaigning season of 349 and the second to that of 348, with the Phocian capture of the three towns in between. See also Demosthenes 19.148 (
On the Dishonest Embassy).
56.3 relieved of his post: the faction that had always been opposed to the seizure of Delphi had gained the upper hand in Phocis.
56.3 three generals: it is not impossible that three generals was the Phocian norm, and that single Generals Plenipotentiary, such as Phalaecus, were elected only at times of crisis.
56.5 the brother of Philomelus: Diodorus has not mentioned this relationship before; he repeats it in 16.61.2, but it is almost certainly wrong.
56.6 thirty talents: on Croesus’ dedications, see Herodotus,
Histories 1.50–1.
56.6 its equivalent in silver: the gold–silver ratio was about 15:1 at the time, before Alexander the Great released huge amounts of gold, stolen from the Achaemenid treasuries. There were 60 mnas in a talent.
56.7 the Persian treasuries: actually, Alexander took at least 180,000 talents of bullion and coined money, and then other valuables such as statues and textiles.
56.7 which read: Homer,
Iliad 9.40–5. Pytho was an old name for Delphi.
57.3 to wish you well: this was the standard way to start a letter, much as we write ‘Dear so-and-so’.
57.4 their ancestral deity and their forebear: the entire Ionian sub-ethnicity of the Greeks, of which the Athenians sometimes claimed to be the leader, looked to Apollo as their forebear and presiding deity.
57.4 their universally admired constitution: the Spartans believed that their constitution had been invented at a stroke by an eighth-century lawgiver called Lycurgus, who was either galvanized to do so by the Delphic oracle, or even had the whole thing dictated to him by the oracle: Herodotus,
Histories 1.65–6.
59.1 gave King Archidamus the command: the Phocians also approached the Athenians, who sent a sizeable force. The object was to block Thermopylae, as they had earlier (16.38.1–2), but the Phocians’ surrender allowed Philip through the pass and made the enterprise futile. Diodorus has seriously downplayed Athens’ role in these years, and has even omitted the peace treaty between Athens and Philip—the Peace of Philocrates, made in 346 and prompted by the Phocian surrender, which left the Athenians little choice but to make peace. Nor did the Peace of Philocrates settle Athenian relations with Philip; intense diplomacy, omitted by Diodorus, continued after it, Philocrates was sent into exile in 343, and relations between the two states ultimately broke down altogether.
60.2 at the time of the robbery: an inscription exists (Harding, no. 88), detailing the payment of a second tranche of thirty talents in 343 or 342. By then, the Phocian towns had been rebuilt and repopulated, so that they could afford to manage their debt better.
60.2 the Pythian games: since these international games were held at Delphi once every four years, the festival had not been celebrated for the duration of the Phocian occupation of Delphi.
60.2 religious crimes: this is obscure, because the Corinthians had nothing to do with the organization of the Pythian games, nor is it clear how they were implicated in the Phocians’ crimes. Perhaps some text has dropped
out, saying that the Corinthians (and others similarly implicated) were excluded from the games, and explaining why.
60.3 sell their horses: weaponry was expensive, but the Phocians’ weapons had been used for sacrilegious purposes and therefore had to be utterly destroyed.
61.4 four hēmioliae: a
hēmiolia, ‘one-and-a-half’, was a kind of light galley, a ship with one complete and another incomplete bank of oars.
62.3 first assault: Lyctus was a neighbour of Cnossus and a frequent rival.
63.2 reigned for fifteen years: Agis ruled for seven or eight years: 338–331. Diodorus is closer to the truth at 16.88.4 and 17.63.4, where he assigns him a nine-year rule. His mistake is thinking that Archidamus died soon after arriving in Italy, when he actually died there six years later, in 338.
63.4 Elean exiles: there were two main factions in Elis, those in favour of cooperation with Sparta, and those in favour of cooperation with Macedon. The pro-Spartans had the upper hand and had expelled the pro-Macedonians.
64.1 their freedom: Sparta was defeated by Antipater in 331, Athens in 322.
64.2 a fit of madness: Helen is Helen of Troy. Eriphyle’s legendary necklace was cursed, and caused a lot of trouble in its multi-generational history before being purified by dedication in Delphi.
65.1 various tyrannies: this sentence is a very condensed summary of years of chaos in Syracuse, and severe disruption elsewhere, until the east of the island was depopulated and impoverished.
65.2 Timaenetus: or possibly Timodemus. The Timoleon narrative that follows sporadically down to 16.90 should be compared with Plutarch’s
Timoleon. Corinth had never before interfered in the domestic politics of Syracuse, originally founded by Corinthians, and it is unclear why the weakened city would do so now.
65.7 A verdict had not yet been reached: actually, Timoleon’s murder of his brother, or connivance at his murder, occurred many years earlier, and Timoleon had been in retirement since then.
66.3 all the way to Italy: comparison with Plutarch’s account (
Timoleon 8) suggests that this phenomenon was actually the Lyrid meteor shower of late March 344.
66.4 their sacred island: Sicily had a lot of good agricultural land, so worship of the cereal goddesses was central there.
67.1 Hicetas, the ruler of Syracuse: actually, as the next chapter makes clear, Hicetas was not yet the master of Syracuse, but took control with Carthaginian help. See also Plutarch,
Timoleon 7.3–7, 9.2–7. Hicetas was currently the master of Leontini.
67.2 pairs of horses for the chariots: it was standard practice to take spare teams of trained horses, because they were very vulnerable on the battlefield. There is no mention of cavalry in this list: something like the ‘two thousand horse’ I have supplied has dropped out of the text.
67.4 on the basis of their kinship: these Campanians, originally mercenaries of Dionysius I, had been settled in these Sicilian cities as a reward for their service. Entella was a town in west-central Sicily, south-east of Egesta. The location of Galeria (or, more properly, Galaria, as we know from coin finds) is unknown.
68.1 Dionysius was master of Syracuse: Diodorus failed to mention Dionysius II’s return in 346. He had been biding his time in Locri, the southern Italian town which his father had especially favoured. On his departure, the Locrians, who had hated his rule, tortured the members of his family to death.
68.1 the Olympieium: a sanctuary of Zeus not far from the shore of the Great Harbour of Syracuse.
68.5 twenty triremes: the Carthaginians were supporting Hicetas’ takeover of Syracuse, and trying to prevent Timoleon’s arrival there. They argued that since Hicetas already had all Syracuse except Ortygia, held by Dionysius, there was no need for Timoleon.
68.9 Adranum: a small town near Centuripae, in the foothills of Mount Etna.
69.1 treaty of friendship: actually, it was the second treaty: Polybius,
Histories 3.22–7. Friendship was conditional on neither side’s trespassing on the other’s zones of interest, which were stipulated in the treaty.
69.4 Marcus: this may be a mistake for the name Mamercus (Plutarch,
Timoleon 13.1), or it may be that Mamercus’ first name was Marcus. The alliance did not last long, once Mamercus realized that Timoleon’s intention was to stamp out tyrannies such as his. Mamercus had replaced Callippus as tyrant of Catane.
69.4 dispatched them to Syracuse: this was probably a response to the arrival of Dionysius in Corinth (mentioned by Diodorus at the beginning of the next chapter), which acted as proof of Timoleon’s success.
69.5 for no good reason: Plutarch supplies some reasons: Timoleon had induced Hicetas’ mercenaries to desert (
Timoleon 20). Probably Mago, the Carthaginian commander, and Hicetas had fallen out as well.
70.5 democratic laws: actually, and even though Plutarch agrees with Diodorus on this, Timoleon probably replaced his tyranny with an oligarchy. See Talbert,
Timoleon, 130–43.
71.2 curbed their aggressiveness: these garrison towns were created not just to police the local inhabitants, but also to develop local farmland. The most important of them was Philippopolis, modern Plovdiv in Bulgaria. This was a long campaign, lasting up to 340, and while Philip was away Antipater acted as his viceroy in Macedon.
71.3 the expulsion of Dionysius the Younger: if the figure of fifty years is correct, Theopompus did not start at the start of Dionysius I’s tyranny, because that would make sixty-one years until the expulsion of Dionysius II: 405/4–344/3. On Theopompus, see p. 541.
72.1 Arymbas … reign of ten years: Arymbas (‘Arybbas’ is the better spelling) did not die, but was banished; and he had reigned for more than ten years, since he came to the throne in 357. The Molossians were one of the major tribes of Epirus; Philip was in the process of reducing them to vassal status.
72.5 just as he had with Engyum: Timoleon gave the Sicilian cities back self-governance, but usually under an oligarchy, not a democracy. He left some tyrants in place as well. His overall intention was to create a league of allies, with Syracuse at the helm; he may even have given Syracusan citizenship to at least some of his allies: 16.82.4. Apollonia lay a little inland from the north coast, halfway between Himera and Messana. Engyum lay north of Centuripae.
73.2 Entella: Entella must have fallen to the Carthaginians as a result of the action mentioned in 16.67.3–4.
74.1 Cleitarchus … put in place by Philip: Philip installed several tyrants in Euboean towns in these years, not just Cleitarchus. Before long, the Athenians threw them out and installed Callias of Chalcis instead as the head of the Euboean Confederacy.
74.2 Perinthus … favoured the Athenians: Demosthenes had visited the area and brought Perinthus, an ally of Philip, over to the Athenian side, giving Philip the pretext he needed for attack. His attack on Athenian friends in the Thracian Chersonese was the logical continuation of the eastward offensive of 16.71, but it would inevitably cause open warfare between himself and the Athenians, who had vital interests in the region. Philip probably had already decided to invade Asia Minor, so he needed a peacable Chersonese. In order to delay the Athenian response, Philip wrote them a letter, which exists as item 12 in the Demosthenic corpus.
76.3 Philip divided his forces into two: this seems a strange move, since if Philip could not take Perinthus with the complete army, how could he hope to take Byzantium with only half of it? He was perhaps trying to provoke the Athenians into rash action. It was at the siege of Byzantium that torsion artillery, newly developed by Philip’s engineers, was used for the first time.
76.5 the return of the Heraclidae: in legend, the descendants of Heracles were expelled from the Peloponnese, only to return at the head of a Dorian army and establish themselves there.
77.3 made peace with the Athenians and the other Greeks: no peace was made. Philip’s actions in the Sea of Marmara led to war not peace, when the Athenians repudiated the Peace of Philocrates. Still, it is not clear how Philip extricated himself from the Sea of Marmara, so perhaps a temporary truce was made. After his failures on the Chersonese, Philip campaigned with more success against the Scythians.
77.5 just a few men: on Timoleon’s troop numbers, see Talbert,
Timoleon, 55–69.
77.5 added Hicetas’ men to his own: it seems odd that Hicetas would have chosen to help Timoleon, given their enmity. He probably realized that, divided, the two of them would never be able to repel the Carthaginian invasion. After the defeat of the Carthaginians, according to Plutarch, Hicetas then sided with them again against Timoleon; hence, at 16.82.4, Timoleon finally does away with Hicetas.
79.2 Gelon’s victory: at the battle of Himera in 480, Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse, had inflicted a memorable defeat on the Carthaginians.
79.5 the river: the Crimisus, a river in the far north-west of the island.
82.3 the Lycus river: this should probably be the Halycus river (the modern Platani), but Plutarch has ‘Lycus’ as well. Perhaps it was an alternative name for the river.
82.6 drawn up by Diocles: Diocles’ democratic revision of the Syracusan constitution had taken place towards the end of the fifth century: see 13.33–5 and Aristotle,
Politics 1304a27–8. But see the note to 16.70.5.
83.3 Agyrium: picked out by Diodorus for mention because it was his home town. It lay west of Centuripae.
84.2 committed himself to war with Athens: all this seems rather abrupt, because Diodorus has omitted the build-up. The Amphictyonic Council responsible for Delphi (but now more or less Philip’s puppet) declared a sacred war against the Locrians of Amphissa and invited Philip to take charge of the war—invited him, that is, to enter central Greece with an army. But when Philip moved south, he ignored the Locrians and seized Elatea instead, in Phocis and on the road to Athens.
84.3 the entire population converged on the theatre: the Theatre of Dionysus on the south-eastern slopes of the Acropolis was regularly used for meetings in Diodorus’ day, but in fact this meeting was held as usual on the Pnyx hill, which was capable of holding about six thousand people.
84.3 proclamation by the Archons: this may conceivably have been the practice in Athens in Diodorus’ day, but at the time he is writing about the Athenian Assembly was convened by the praesidium of the Council, or by the generals, not by the Archons.
84.5 join them in the struggle for freedom: the Thebans and Athenians had long been on bad terms, and the Thebans were terrified of Philip, so gaining an alliance with the Thebans was both a bold move for Athens, and a major coup for Demosthenes.
84.5 in two days’ time: actually, though Philip may have been only two days’ march away, he waited several months before advancing. In the meantime, he tried to recruit allies and sent Parmenion to deal with Amphissa.
85.1 the allegiance of the Thebans: the cost was high, however: Athens was to recognize Theban mastery of the Boeotian towns and pay most of the expenses of the war.
85.2 Chaeronea in Boeotia: actually, Chaeronea was the second position taken up by the allied forces, after Philip threatened to come at their previous position from the rear.
85.4 but I stood firm: this is from Demosthenes 18.136 (
On the Crown), referring to a visit by Python to Athens in 343, not to the Boeotian debate.
86.3 Alexander … a breach in the enemy lines: he was up against the renowned Theban Sacred Band, 300 strong, which was annihilated. The famous statue known as the Lion of Chaeronea was erected as their communal grave marker.
86.4 even to Alexander: rivalry between Philip and Alexander is a constant theme of the Alexander historians.
87.1 unmixed wine: the Greeks generally drank their wine heavily diluted with water, and considered it barbaric to drink it neat. The story derives from the Greek tradition that painted Philip as a heavy drinker. A more creditable story has him bursting into tears on the battlefield at the sight of the dead of the Theban Sacred Band. This is a striking example of a common Greek historiographical practice—a snapshot of the victor after his victory.
87.2 Thersites: Agamemnon was the leader of the Greeks at the Trojan War, Thersites from a lower rank. This is a typical Greek wandering story, which was attributed also to the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope.
87.2 part and parcel of a revel: such as masks for the participants and outsized model phalluses. The
kōmos, or revel, was a ritualized, if riotous, affair, requiring such paraphernalia.
88.3 the battle: this battle, Archidamus’ death, and Agis’ ascension have already been mentioned at 16.63.1.
89.1 the most notable Greek cities: Sparta would usually have made up a third with Athens and Thebes, but it was still in a post-Leuctra slump—with its kings, as we have just seen, taking service abroad in order to make money. Following the battle, Philip imposed settlements and garrisons on the Greek cities that had opposed him. Athens was treated leniently, Thebes harshly.
89.2 crimes against Greek sanctuaries: during the Persian invasion of 480–479, many Greek temples had been burnt and ransacked. Despite the fact that this occurred almost 150 years earlier, revenge against the Persians
was still a live issue—or was kept alive by ambitious politicians and kings. Philip’s other aim in invading Asia Minor was to liberate Greek cities from Persian control. It is not clear that he wanted to damage Persian interests further—as, of course, his son would—but he does seem to have been motivated by the desire to make himself the greatest leader in the known world.
89.3 General Plenipotentiary of Greece: they first formed the League of Corinth, a common alliance among almost all the Greek states, and then the league formally elected Philip General Plenipotentiary (or whatever his official title was, perhaps ‘Leader’). Some of the oath the Greeks were required to swear has survived: Rhodes/Osborne, no. 76. From now on until 1832
ce, the Greeks were subject to imperial masters. For Philip’s other arrangements for Greece, see Ellis,
Philip II, 201–4.
90.2 confiscated a portion of the enemy’s land: such confiscations were typical of the Roman imperialist process in Italy. The land was given to colonists or was made the property of Rome. These two sentences are all that Diodorus gives us about the Latin War of 340–338, in which the Romans were allied with the Samnites.
91.2 free the Greek cities: they achieved only limited success. The Greeks of Asia Minor seized the opportunity to throw out their Persian-installed garrisons, but they saw the Macedonians as just the next in a succession of masters.
91.4 Olympias’ full brother: there had been trouble in the Macedonian court. Olympias and Alexander felt themselves sidelined by Philip’s new closeness to his generals and recent marriage to the niece of one of them, Attalus (Philip’s first non-foreign bride), and had taken themselves off to Epirus while things cooled down. The marriage between Cleopatra and Alexander of Epirus was meant to soothe the Epirote king, who had been offended by Philip’s treatment of his elder sister. The breach between Philip and his son was less easily mended.
92.1 golden crowns: the gift of golden crowns (of varying weights and values) was at the time a common way to honour someone.
92.5 the twelve gods: the usual list is: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus, Demeter, Ares, and Aphrodite, but Dionysus sometimes took the place of Hestia.
93.1 himation: a
himation was the standard item of Greek outer clothing. It was simply an oblong of cloth, about 2.5 metres by 1.8 metres in size, that was draped around the body and pinned in place.
93.9 nephew: in fact, he was Cleopatra’s uncle.
94.1 also be mentioned: this is another floating story, attributed by Plutarch (
Alexander 55) to an interchange between Callisthenes and Hermolaus.
94.4 Attalus: this is a different Attalus, not the general who was already in Asia Minor with Parmenion (16.91.2) and was hostile towards Alexander. This Attalus was a friend of Alexander, and played a notable part in the months immediately following his death.
94.4 stabbed him to death: thus leaving it for ever unclear whether Pausanias acted alone, or was the front man of a wider conspiracy—possibly even instigated by Olympias and Alexander (see Justin,
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 9.7).
95.5 in a single book: see 16.1 for Diodorus’ ‘original plan’ and the importance to him of encompassing a single king’s exploits within a single book. Book 17 is incomplete, however (pp. 148–9), and if complete it would have been very long for a single book. Even as it stands, it seems not to have made a single ‘book’ (roll of papyrus). At the end of 17.63 there is a note in the text: ‘The end of the first part of Book 17.’ So it looks as though, at some point in its life, Book 17 (like the long Book 1 as well) was divided between two papyrus rolls after all, and Diodorus’ design was thwarted.
Book 17
1.2 ends joined to their beginnings: see also Diodorus’ remarks at the beginning of Book 16. Both these two prefaces follow the same pattern of methodological reflections followed by a eulogy of the central character of the book.
1.5 Aeacidae: the kings of Epirus, who in their turn claimed descent from Achilles.
1.5 the years that belong in the book: Diodorus’ Alexander narrative contains many gaps—of course, since he was planning to fit it all into a single book. Other historians should be consulted to supplement him: Arrian (Lucius Flavius Arrianus),
The Expedition of Alexander (2nd century
ce); Quintus Curtius Rufus,
History of Alexander (first century
ce); Plutarch,
Alexander (late first/early second century
ce); and Justin,
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus (a second-century-
ce epitome of a first-century-
bce work). Diodorus’ account is closer to those of Curtius and Justin than those of Arrian and Plutarch.
2.1 Manius: full names of Roman consuls mentioned by Diodorus, and corrections to his versions of their names, can be found in Appendix
2 (pp. 543–9).
2.1 as they deserved: that is, he seized the opportunity to do away with potential rivals; Pausanias was the only known murderer.
2.3 a child: the sources are divided over whether this was a girl or (more threatening to the throne) a boy.
3.4 the Cadmea: the acropolis of Thebes; the garrison had been installed after the battle of Chaeronea.
4.1 the Thessalians: urged on by the Athenians, the Thessalians had blocked the pass at Tempe, which would normally have been Alexander’s route south. But he cut a steep path down the side of Mount Ossa and entered Thessaly without using the pass at Tempe.
4.7 Cithaeron: a mountain range on the border of Attica and Boeotia.
4.8 a crook: this is taken from Aeschines 3.173 (
Against Ctesiphon), but with the words in a slightly different order.
5.1 from Demosthenes: ‘Demosthenes wrote letters to the generals in Asia, trying to arrange an attack from there on Alexander’ (Plutarch,
Demosthenes 23.2).
5.3 Ochus … Arses: Ochus was Artaxerxes III (reigned 358–338); Arses was Artaxerxes IV (338–336).
5.4 in the third year of his reign: Diodorus gets this right (Artaxerxes IV did die in the course of his third regnal year), but a Babylonian document (
BM 71537) implies that he died of natural causes.
6.1 Cadusians: they lived around the south-western coastline of the Caspian Sea.
7.4 the daughter of Melisseus: Melisseus’ two daughters, Ida and Adrasteia, looked after the infant Zeus on Mount Ida—but usually the Ida on Crete, not this one in north-west Asia Minor.
7.4 Alexander: this Alexander is Paris, prince of Troy, who judged the mythical beauty contest between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, winning Helen as his prize and causing the Trojan War.
7.5 Dactyls: often conceived of as dwarfs, the Dactyls were associates of the Mother of the Gods, and, in their capacity as metal-workers, of Hephaestus.
7.8 very nearly took it: he disguised his men as Macedonians: Polyaenus,
Stratagems in War 5.44.5. The Cyzicenes’ crime was to have entered into an alliance with Macedon.
7.10 the Troad: the district around Troy/Ilium. Rhoeteum was a small town between Ilium and Abydus.
8.1 the neighbouring regions: Diodorus and other writers in the same tradition omit Alexander’s campaign against the Triballians, which was presumably not covered in their sources. The Triballians were a Thracian tribe, occupying land that today straddles the border between Serbia and Bulgaria.
8.3 Alexander suddenly appeared: this was a famous forced march; Alexander reached Thebes with astonishing rapidity in order to prevent the rebellion spreading to the Spartans and Aetolians (Arrian,
The Expedition of Alexander 1.7.4).
10.2 as big as a himation: this was a large cobweb; see the note to 16.93.1. But the story is plausible: in Greece, spiders from the Tetragnatha species construct webs several square metres in size during the mating season.
10.4 the marsh at Onchestus: better known as Lake Copais. The pseudo-Aristotelian work
Problems devotes a paragraph (25.2) to explaining bellowing marshes.
10.5 temple … built with Phocian spoils: this description is hard to decipher. As far as we know, the Thebans never founded a temple in Delphi and we cannot contextualize the reference to Phocian spoils.There was a Theban treasury at Delphi, but it was built after the defeat of the Spartans at Leuctra.
10.5 the gods were departing from the city: it is not clear how they arrived at this interpretation, but Aelian (second/third century
ce) says that the likeness of Demeter was seen in the web:
Historical Miscellany 12.57.
10.6 Leuctra … by their valour: the unexpected defeat of Sparta at Leuctra in Boeotia in 371 brought Spartan supremacy to an end and initiated the slow decline of Sparta as a Greek superpower. The next nine years constitute the period of Theban supremacy in Greece.
11.5 Mantinea: the Theban victory at Mantinea in 362 was, however, qualified by the death in the battle of Epaminondas, their extremely talented general and statesman. The battle effectively brought to an end the period of Theban hegemony in Greece. On Leuctra, see the first note to 16.23.2.
13.5 enemies of the Thebans: these enemies were chiefly other cities in Boeotia. Throughout the long history of the Boeotian Confederacy, Thebes was invariably dominant, and its rule was resented by the others. They saw their chance now: the destruction of Thebes would mean that its farmland would be divided up among them.
13.6 the same language spoken: this is Diodorus’ first-century perspective. In the fourth century, Greeks had fewer qualms about killing one another.
14.4 in accordance with the will of the council: if this was an attempt to deflect responsibility, it failed: moral responsibility for the destruction of Thebes lies squarely with Alexander. Only the temples and the house of the poet Pindar were spared.
15.2 go to their deaths willingly: in legend, the Lacedaemonian Hyacinthus moved to Athens and sacrificed his four daughters in order to save the city from being taken by King Minos of Crete.
16.2 argued against them: the first hint of the constant tension between Alexander and the ‘old guard’ of those who had served his father. Diodorus repeats the story here, even though Parmenion was in Asia Minor and not in Macedon. Alexander’s failure to produce an heir resulted in the chaos narrated by Diodorus in Books 18–20.
17.4 Agrianes: the Agrianes were from Paeonia, the Odrysians and Triballians were the two main Thracian peoples. They were all light-armed troops.
17.4 Erigyius: actually, Erigyius gained his first cavalry command later. It was probably Alexander the Lyncestian who had this command at this time.
17.4 Cassander: this should be ‘Asander’. As we shall see, this is a recurrent error in Diodorus’ work, but probably stemming from the scribal tradition rather than Diodorus himself.
17.4 4,500: a careless mistake in Diodorus’ addition: the total is 5,100. Generally speaking, however, the numbers given by Diodorus for Alexander’s initial forces are held to be more accurate than those found in other writers.
17.6 in front of the temple: presumably the statue had been toppled after Ariobarzanes (this is Ariobarzanes I of Cius) had joined the Satraps’ Revolt and been crucified for his pains in the late 360s.
18.4 greatly outnumbered the Macedonians: actually, they may have had a smaller army than Alexander for this battle, but it is automatic in most Greek historians to assume that the Persians always had vast armies.
19.3 ready for battle: Diodorus’ account of the battle is irreconcilable with that of Arrian (
The Expedition of Alexander 1.13), who has the attack take place in the afternoon, but there are difficulties with Arrian’s account as well. It may be that Diodorus is to be preferred here. The fact that the Persians did not contest the river crossing dooms Diodorus’ account for some scholars, but it might only mean that the Persian cavalry lines were quite far from the river, so that it took time for them to get there.
19.4 with the Hyrcanian cavalry: satrapal armies were usually recruited locally, so it would be unusual for the ‘satrap of Ionia’ to have cavalry from Hyrcania under his command, but there was an expatriate Hyrcanian community in Lydia (Strabo,
Geography 13.4.3), and it must have been them who supplied this cavalry contingent.
20.3 pierced his breastplate: just the joint of the breastplate, according to Plutarch (
Alexander 16), which is the shoulder strap. But there is some doubt whether Alexander would have been carrying a shield, since his hands were occupied with riding and with wielding his lance and sword.
22.5 disbanded it: Alexander disbanded the Greek fleet because he did not trust the Greeks. He was right not to trust them: when Memnon made Samos his naval base, the Athenians living on the island cooperated with him. But the disbanding of the fleet was a huge tactical error, and allowed Memnon to make a nuisance of himself in the Aegean as Alexander marched east: see 17.29.1–4. Despite the defensive work of the Macedonian fleet, Miletus, for instance, was back in Persian hands by 333. Alexander’s intention was to make the Persian fleet redundant by conquering the Persian empire, rather than risk a sea-battle, but if Memnon had not died, the plan might have been a great failure. Even
so, Alexander had to admit his mistake by commissioning (in 333) another fleet for the Aegean, but by then the Persian fleet had been weakened by Darius’ recall of troops from the west to bulk up his army for what he hoped would be a decisive land battle in the eastern Mediterranean. After Alexander’s victory at Issus, the remainder of the Persian fleet fell apart.
23.5 Memnon sent his wife: she was called Barsine. She was captured at Damascus after the battle of Issus, became Alexander’s mistress, and bore him a son, Heracles, who made an ill-starred bid for the Macedonian throne and was murdered in 309 (20.20.1, 20.28.1–2). Barsine and Alexander may have been childhood acquaintances.
24.2 the rulership of Caria: once Alexander had taken Halicarnassus he made Ada satrap of Caria, but he left a Macedonian in charge of the garrison.
25.5 Neoptolemus: Arrian (
The Expedition of Alexander 1.20.10) says that this Neoptolemus deserted to the Persian side. It is not certain whether Arrian or Diodorus is to be preferred.
27.6 considerable size: in effect, then, the siege of Halicarnassus was a defeat for Alexander, or at least indecisive. It was still held against him, the enemy fleet was still intact, now based on the island of Cos, and he had to leave larger numbers of troops there than he would have wanted. The enemy troops on the acropolis (actually, the city had two citadels, one of which was on an island) could be supplied by sea. It took Alexander’s troops several more months to complete the seizure of the city.
27.7 coastline up to Cilicia: in making it sound as though Alexander followed the coastline, Diodorus omits several inland campaigns and the famous story of his diversion inland to Phrygia and the cutting of the Gordian knot. See e.g. Arrian,
The Expedition of Alexander 2.3, Plutarch,
Alexander 18. While Alexander was on this campaign, Parmenion was mopping up resistance in Lydia; the divided army met again at Gordium.
28.1 the Marmares: Diodorus is our only authority for this story, but he may be a bit muddled. The ancient name of the place was Physkos, which is today known as Marmaris because of the rich marble deposits of the district. Perhaps Diodorus confused the name of the place with the name of the people.
30.1 Memnon’s death: in his essay
On the Fortune of Alexander, Plutarch makes Memnon’s death a prime example of Alexander’s good luck.
30.2 Charidemus … his chief counsellor: this is a real muddle. Charidemus was a freelance commander who spent much of his life fighting Philip, and never worked for him. Nor was he, strictly, an Athenian. He had been given Athenian citizenship as an honour, but he was from Oreus in Euboea. The king Charidemus mostly worked for was Cersobleptes, the
Odrysian. The simplest solution may be to delete ‘Philip’ as an ignorant scribal addition, so that the text reads only that Charidemus ‘fought alongside the king’—i.e. the king of Persia.
31.6 one of his most trusted friends: Diodorus omits the famous story in which he trusted Philip and drank the medicine despite having been warned that it was in fact a poison: Arrian,
The Expedition of Alexander 2.4.7–11.
32.2 awaited his trial in prison: he is finally killed at 17.80.2. He was one of Alexander’s closest rivals for the throne. His two brothers had already been killed in the course of the purge immediately following Alexander’s accession, and Alexander had been spared only because he was quick to acknowledge his namesake’s kingship.
33.1 a single battle: for a good account of Issus that depends on sources other than Diodorus, see Hammond,
Alexander the Great, 95–110.
34.5 Atizyes: the satrap of Phrygia did die in this battle, but not at the Granicus river, as in 17.21.3.
34.5 Tasiaces: his name was more properly Sauaces or Sabaces.
34.6 attempted to shake off their bits: perhaps what Diodorus is trying to describe here is the way a frightened horse shakes its head and tries to grab the bit with its teeth so that it can bolt.
37.6 He is Alexander too: an anecdote indicating how close Alexander and Hephaestion were. In all probability, they were lovers.
37.6 his second mother: actually, his third, because (in addition to his natural mother Olympias), in an incident omitted by Diodorus but belonging in 17.24, Alexander was adopted by Ada of Caria.
38.1 show him royal honour: in seeing to the children’s future, in addition to calling her ‘mother’, Alexander was acting like her eldest son, now her guardian since she was deprived of Darius. If this traditional story of Alexander’s generous treatment of the royal Persian women is true, his reasons were strategic: to make noble Persians doubt the wisdom of resisting him, and to hold the best possible hostages.
38.2 her former happy state: it is not certain that this particular promise was fulfilled. Darius’ wife, Stateira, seems to have died in childbirth more than nine months after her capture.
39.2 the tone of which suited him better: that is, because it was more insulting. Diodorus is the only one of our sources to suggest that any of Darius’ letters to Alexander were forgeries.
40.1 the victor: in the stade race, that is. The man’s name, however, might be Eurylas, not Grylus, and the Athenian Archon’s name should be Nicetes.
40.2 he advanced towards Egypt: Alexander chose to go to Egypt rather than pursue Darius because he could not leave the Phoenician ports and Egyptian garrisons intact in his rear.
40.2 prevented him from entering the city: the ‘Tyrian Heracles’ is Melqart, the main deity of Tyre. The Tyrians had submitted to Alexander, as had all the coastal towns further north, but they (correctly) read Alexander’s request to enter the island city, accompanied by soldiers, as a request for unconditional surrender, and refused him entry.
40.4 treated with contempt by a single, unexceptional city: this, of course, is not a good reason to spend a great deal of time and money over a siege that cost him a lot of lives. The real reason was probably that Alexander felt that Tyre could act as a base for the Persian fleet.
41.1 Carthage: Carthage had originally been founded by settlers from Tyre.
41.5 an incredibly large sea-creature: perhaps a whale. The two largest species of whale in the Mediterranean are the Fin whale (
Balaenoptera physalus) and the Sperm whale (
Physeter macrocephalus).
42.4 their harbours: Tyre had two harbours, one on the north and one on the south of the island. Diodorus veers between talking of one or two harbours.
44.4 crows: a kind of grappling hook.
45.7 committed himself again to the siege: the support of the inner circle of Friends was crucial for a king, and he would usually follow their advice. Alexander is shown to be exceptional, in this as in so many other ways.
47.1 Straton: according to Curtius (
History of Alexander 4.1.15–26), Straton was the king of Sidon, not Tyre. According to Arrian (
The Expedition of Alexander 2.13.7), Straton was the king or prince of Arados, and the
king of Tyre during the siege, who was deposed by Alexander at the end of it, was called Azelmicus (Arrian,
The Expedition of Alexander 2.15.7, 2.24.5).
48.6 whatever services were appropriate for the situation: most importantly, this Persian counter-offensive regained them Cappadocia and Paphlagonia, Miletus, and some of the Aegean islands. Antigonus Monophthalmus (of whom much more in Books 18–20), left behind in Asia Minor by Alexander for this purpose, played an important part in checking the counter-offensive.
49.1 fit for service: Amyntas returned with fifteen thousand fresh troops shortly after Gaugamela.
49.2 the temple of Ammon: a famous oracular shrine, well known even among the Greeks. Ammon (the name of the god as well as the place) was considered the equivalent of the Greek Zeus. The place is nowadays called the Siwa Oasis.
50.2 Danaus of Egypt: in Greek legend, in order to avoid his fifty daughters having to marry the fifty sons of his brother Aegyptus, Danaus and his daughters fled from Egypt and settled in Argos in Greece. Aegyptus and his sons followed them there, and the marriage went ahead, but Danaus instructed his daughters to kill their husbands on the wedding night. Forty-nine of them did so.
50.4 in a paradoxical fashion: the original Greek source of this story is Herodotus,
Histories 4.181. The pool, later known as Cleopatra’s Bath, can still be visited. There is nothing abnormal about its changes of temperature, however.
50.6 inclination of the god’s head: I imagine that the courtyard of the precinct acted like a giant ouija board, with areas, for instance, that indicated future happiness or future sorrow. The god somehow indicated with his head where to go, and the prophet adapted the results to the question that had been asked. Elsewhere, we are told that a forward motion of the cult statue meant ‘yes’ and a backward motion ‘no’: see P. Goukowsky,
Diodore de Sicile, Bibliothèque Historique, Livre XVII, 205. The number eighty for the priests is surely a great exaggeration.
51.2 I shall be called your son: Alexander speaks to the priest as if he were speaking directly to the god, and in a moment, when the priest speaks, the god speaks through him.
51.3 The one who begot him: so Alexander set out on the path of deification while still alive. See also the second note to 20.46.2.
52.1 a great city in Egypt: Diodorus and the vulgate tradition place the foundation of Alexandria after the visit to Siwa, but Arrian and Plutarch place it before. Perhaps he made the first decision as to its location before, and then started work after. Not the least importance of Alexandria was that it provided a good harbour on the notoriously inhospitable Egyptian coast. The lake in question is Lake Mareotis, which formed the southern border of Alexandria.
52.2 called Alexandria after him: the first of a dozen or so foundations named after him. In naming cities this way he was imitating both Persian and his father’s practice (Crenides became Philippi, for instance).
52.2 the etesian winds: the fierce northerly winds of the summer months, known as the
meltemi in modern Greece.
52.5 the greatest in the world: by Diodorus’ time, Alexandria was the second city of the Mediterranean, after Rome. When he says that it is the largest and most populous city, he probably means the largest
Greek city—unless he is subtly putting Rome down (see Introduction, pp. 14–15).
53.4 Nineveh: the famous Assyrian city, sacked in the seventh century
bce, located on the Tigris by modern Mosul.
53.4 a village called Arbela: Arbela was a town rather than a village (see 17.64.3); the nearby village was called Gaugamela, and the battle is usually called the battle of Gaugamela, but Diodorus is following a different tradition. This battle is one of Arrian’s great set-pieces:
The Expedition of Alexander 3.7–15.
54.5 if I were Parmenion: there is a recurrent theme in the Alexander historians (though less prominent in Diodorus) of tension between Alexander and Parmenion, who was his leading general as he had been his father’s before. The theme is perhaps meant to explain or even justify Alexander’s eventual elimination of Parmenion.
54.6 the power to do so: the king of Persia was known as the King of Kings. Many kings and chieftains were his vassals, and his satraps were the equivalent of kings in their provinces. Alexander is saying that Darius was welcome to have them as his subordinates, as long as he was Alexander’s subordinate himself. Since it was clear that Darius would
never accept this option, Alexander was provoking the king to battle, even without the sneering tone of his message.
55.2 he did not bother to guard it: was this negligence, or has Diodorus’ source misunderstood the Persian strategy? Darius might have wanted Alexander to cross the river, so that battle could be joined on terrain that favoured the Persian forces.
57.1 the rest of his Friends: they formed what is usually known as the Companion Cavalry. Diodorus has already used the term at 17.37.2.
54.1 the other seven cavalry units: that is, the other seven units of the Companion Cavalry, which was divided into eight squadrons—seven plus the Royal Squadron (Arrian,
The Expedition of Alexander 3.11.8). But if the unit of ‘Friends’ also refers to the Companion Cavalry (previous note), then there is a muddle here, since the Companion Cavalry will have been mentioned twice.
54.2 the Silver Shields: this regiment will play a considerable part in the wars that followed Alexander’s death. It was an elite infantry unit formed by Alexander probably in 326 from the pick of his hypaspists.
57.2 the Elimiote Battalion, as it is called: Elimiotis was one of the cantons of Upper Macedon (along with Orestis, Lyncestis, and Tymphaea/Stymphaea) that had been incorporated into the state by Philip II.
57.4 Achaean mercenaries: Achaea, being poor, was (along with Arcadia) one of the regular sources of Greek mercenaries.
57.5 slantwise: that is, forming an oblique backward angle, necessarily
en échelon, to increase coverage of the flank and prevent encirclement.
57.6 without endangering the Macedonians: this was standard practice: compare Xenophon,
The Expedition of Cyrus 1.8.20, and Cassius Dio,
Roman History 40.2.4. For an analysis of the use of scythed chariots in this battle, see W. Heckel, C. Willekes, and G. Wrightson, ‘Scythed Chariots at Gaugamela: A Case Study’, in E. Carney and D. Ogden (eds),
Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son, Lives and Afterlives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 103–9.
57.6 responsible for the decisive victory: the right wing was very often under the command of the general-in-chief of an army, which gave it prestige, but also the necessity of proving itself more valiant than the other units.
59.3 Apple-bearers: named for the butt-spikes of their spears, which were golden and shaped like apples, they formed a prestigious regiment of five hundred and acted as the foot guards of the king.
59.3 Mardians and Cossaeans: Mardian homeland was south of the Caspian Sea, while the Cossaeans lived in the Zagros mountains. The Cossaeans
would later make trouble for Alexander (17.111.4–6) and worse trouble for Antigonus Monophthalmus (19.19.2–7).
59.5 take the baggage: the baggage train contained not just the army’s equipment and the men’s personal belongings and accumulated booty, but even (see 19.43.7) their families and womenfolk, so it was a not uncommon tactic to try to capture it, as a powerful bargaining counter. Alexander’s army was effectively an entire city on the move.
60.3 Darius … turned to flight: interestingly, Babylonian documents (
BM 36761 and 36390) suggest that the Persian troops abandoned the king, not the other way around.
60.7 in his pursuit of the enemy: other historians say that Alexander had to break off his pursuit in order to help Parmenion, whose situation was critical.
61.3 more than ninety thousand men: certainly a huge exaggeration, though Persian losses were undoubtedly enormous. But all the figures of Persian troop numbers in these battles—the Granicus, Issus, and Gaugamela—are hugely exaggerated. For Gaugamela, Diodorus assures us that Darius had an army of a million men (17.53.3)!
62.1 while the Persian empire still remained: the battle that Diodorus is about to describe took place in 331, before the battle of Gaugamela, and so was not triggered by the news of Gaugamela, as Diodorus has it. This is the start of some slippage in Diodorus’ dating of Alexander’s expedition. Diodorus’ dating of the events of these years should be compared with a reliable, detailed chronology of Alexander’s expedition, such as that on pp. xv–xxii of P. Cartledge,
Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past (London: Macmillan, 2004).
62.7 more than any other Greek state: see 17.15.5. But the Athenian decision was not as easy as Diodorus makes it sound. There was considerable debate in Athens as to whether or not to support Agis.
63.1 from his Greek allies: he had to do this, because he had recently sent fifteen thousand Macedonian troops off to join Alexander (see the note to 17.49.1).
64.4 more than thirty days: Babylon was surrendered to Alexander by Mazaeus, the high-ranking Persian who had been prominent in Diodorus’ account of the battle of Gaugamela. In return, Alexander appointed him satrap of Babylonia, the first but not the last time he appointed a native. He did this partly because he had no choice—there were not enough
Macedonians to fill all the senior posts—but also as a matter of policy, to blend Macedonian and Iranian rule, and to win over to his side the supporters of Mazaeus and the other appointees. Diodorus tells us little about the administration of Alexander’s empire; the gap can be filled by reference to Anson,
Alexander the Great, 121–79, and Bosworth,
Conquest and Empire, 229–58.
65.3 strong ties of affection: command had traditionally been based on ethnic factors: a general recruited and commanded the fighting men from his canton of Macedon. So, for instance, at 17.57.2, we find Polyperchon in command of the Stymphaeans. Alexander’s innovation was to promote men on the basis of their military service, which served to weaken the feudal hold of the generals over their men and bind them more closely to himself.
66.2 darics: a daric was a standard Persian gold coin, named after Darius I the Great (reigned 522–486), who introduced it. It bore the image of the king kneeling, as an archer. One daric was worth 35 drachmas in Greek monetary terms.
67.1 the Tigris river: the Pasitigris, actually—the Karun, nowadays. The mistake is common in ancient authors.
67.3 the Tigris: here Diodorus does seem to be talking about the Tigris rather than the less navigable Pasitigris.
67.4 Madetes, a Kinsman of Darius: Madetes (or Madates) was not just a Kinsman in the honorary sense, but was married to the daughter of the sister of Darius’ mother.
68.1 destination … Persis: he had divided the army. While he took the lighter troops through the mountains, Parmenion led the main army and the baggage train by the more direct route to Persis along the Royal Road.
68.4 pulled back three hundred stades: a much smaller figure is needed; Diodorus’ figure places the camp about 50 kilometres away from the pass. Curtius’ figure of 30 stades is more likely (
History of Alexander 5.3.23).
68.4 admission of defeat: by the conventions of Greek warfare, asking an enemy for permission to collect your dead was formal acknowledgement of defeat.
69.3 resettled: for a list of known Greek deportations, see P. Goukowsky,
Diodore de Sicile, Bibliothèque Historique, Livre XVII, 268. Since these unfortunates cannot be identified with any known deportation, the whole episode may be fictional. It does sound rather implausible.
70.1 the capital of the Persian empire: actually, the Achaemenid kings had several ‘capital’ cities (e.g. Sardis, Celaenae, Ecbatana, Susa), and travelled around from one to the other, depending on the season and their need to be seen somewhere. On Persepolis, see A. Mousavi,
Persepolis: Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012).
70.3 purple: purple dye from the murex shellfish was so laborious to collect and extract in quantity that it was very expensive, and throughout the Mediterranean purple-dyed textiles were a sign of rank and wealth.
71.1 the gold-to-silver ratio: the value of gold in relation to silver at this time, before Alexander released so much on to the market, stood at about 15:1.
71.4 Three circuit walls: archaeology has not confirmed the existence of three walls. Could Diodorus be taking the tall platform on which the palaces were built to be a wall?
71.7 Four plethra away: away from what? Perhaps the palace. Four plethra is about 120 metres or 400 feet.
72.2 Thais, an Athenian by birth: Thais was later married to Ptolemy, the future king of Egypt, but it is not clear whose companion she was at this time—perhaps Alexander’s.
72.2 a revel: usually, at a symposium, the guests did not get so drunk that things got out of hand, but if they did, they might take to the streets in a revel (
kōmos). See also the second note to 16.87.2.
72.6 for fun: archaeology has uncovered the layer of ash from Alexander’s burning of the palace, revealing it to have been probably a premeditated act, not a piece of drunken foolishness. For one thing, the palace had been carefully cleared of valuables before it was burnt. It looks as though Alexander focused on destroying buildings associated with Xerxes, the invader of Greece; he was being true to his mission of avenging the Persian invasion of 480.
73.2 Bactra: the chief city of Bactria, modern Balkh in northern Afghanistan.
73.5 for him to resolve: Alexander was unexpectedly merciful: the Lacedaemonians were required only to pay a small indemnity to Megalopolis, which they had attacked.
74.1 Nabarzanes and Barxaes: Nabarzanes was Darius’ chiliarch (second-in-command) and Barxaes (better known as Barsaentes) was the satrap of Arachosia.
74.2 king: not just king of Bactria, but of the whole empire, with the royal name of Artaxerxes V. This was a setback for Alexander, who was trying to present himself as the legitimate successor of the Achaemenids, by having conquered the empire and by having gained the acceptance of as much of the Iranian nobility as he had already won over. It is more likely that Bessus proclaimed himself king immediately on the death of Darius, rather than waiting until he was safe in Bactria.
74.3 army assembly: this is the first recorded army assembly. Over the years, the infantry troops, both Macedonians and mercenaries, assembled more and more often, and sometimes not when convened by one of their leaders—which is to say that over the years they took more power on to themselves, especially under the Successors.
75.1 Hecatontapylus: more usually ‘Hecatompylus’, but the meaning is the same: the city of a hundred gates. It was later the capital city of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia.
75.2 once more into the open air: this is apparently a fair description of the spring called Cheshmeh-Ali (‘Fountain of Ali’) in northern Iran.
75. 4 more productive than anywhere else: the marvels that follow are not untypical of the edges of the earth in the Greek imagination. A
metrētēs was about 40 litres (somewhat over 10 liquid gallons US, 8.5 liquid gallons UK). The average yield of a vine in reality is about 4.5 litres of wine. For modern equivalents of a
medimnos, see the note to 17.69.8.
75.7 in our part of the world: see I. Beavis,
Insects and Other Invertebrates in Classical Antiquity (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1988). Some aphids and scale insects secrete a sugar-rich liquid, called ‘honeydew’, as they feed on plant sap, but this
anthrēdōn is probably a kind of wasp.
76.3 the Mardians: this was an unprovoked attack, but the burning of the farmland suggests that Alexander thought it could have supplied an enemy army.
76.6 Demaratus of Corinth: the famous alternative story of how Alexander acquired Bucephalas by taming him is well told by Plutarch,
Alexander 6.
77.1 paid him a visit: it is of course troubling to have fiction like this story included in the history. How many of the other stories about Alexander are fictional? Arrian makes no mention of the Amazon queen, but the story recurs in all our other sources, though Plutarch mentions it only to reject it as fictional. On the Amazons, see A. Mayor,
The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
77.1 her domain: the south-eastern coastline of the Black Sea. Diodorus’ major description of the Amazons can be found at 2.44–6.
77.4 ushers of eastern origin: their job was to control access to the king—that is, to make the king more aloof and remote, a distinct break from Macedonian tradition.
77.5 Persian diadem: a diadem was a Persian sign of high rank, but it was no more than a simple fillet or headband, knotted in a bow at the back of the head. Kings wore a tall tiara, bound to their head with a diadem. Alexander’s innovation was to wear the diadem by itself as a sign of royalty. On the delicate balance of East and West in Alexander’s style of kingship, see E. Fredricksmeyer, ‘Alexander the Great and the Kingdom of Asia’, in A. B. Bosworth and E. Baynham (eds),
Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 136–66. Alexander had to adopt features of eastern kingship to make himself acceptable to the Iranians, just as the Achaemenids before him had learnt aspects of their courtly behaviour from those they conquered.
77.5 kandys: a sleeved coat fastened at the neck like a cloak.
78.1 marched against him: Satibarzanes had formally submitted to Alexander, so this was sheer treachery.
78.1 Chortacana: more usually called ‘Artacoana’, the capital of Areia.
79.2 very young: typically a ‘boyfriend’ (
erōmenos) would be aged between 14 and 18, while the lover (
erōn) would be in his 20s.
80.1 the foremost of Alexander’s Friends: Parmenion was just about the last of the ‘old guard’—those who had risen to prominence under Philip rather than Alexander. His and Philotas’ removal left room for men of Alexander’s own generation to be promoted.
80.2 three years: he was arrested in 17.32.2, in the year 333/2.
80.2 Antigonus: this should be ‘Antipater’, whose son-in-law he was.
80.3 dromedaries: the word ‘dromedary’ literally means ‘racing camel’, as opposed to the slower, two-humped Bactrian camel.
80.4 the bluntness with which they spoke: this paragraph seems to be based on a source hostile to Alexander—especially with its implication that he was reading his men’s letters home—unlike Diodorus’ usual glorifications. Alexander also comes off less than gloriously in 17.5.1–2 (where Attalus is killed despite proving loyal), in 17.39.1–2 (where Alexander undermines peace negotiations by forging a letter), in 17.70.1–3 (where he allows Persepolis to be sacked), in 17.77.4–78.1 (where he adopts outrageous ‘oriental’ habits and bribes dissenters into quiescence), and in
17.84 (where he massacres some mercenaries, contrary to his promise to them).
81.2 appropriate gifts: he made them responsible for a larger amount of territory, though they were still answerable to one of his satraps.
81.3 rebellion: this was one division of a more concerted rebellion in the north-eastern satrapies, which was being set in motion by Bessus. Satibarzanes was quickly dealt with, but settling the entire rebellion took many months.
81.3 only a few days: the speed of this conquest (and others in the eastern satrapies) was due to the fact that these provinces were relatively uninhabited, so that the conquest of one or two main towns constituted the conquest of the entire province. Arachosia was what is now southern Afghanistan.
82.1 In this year: see the note to 62.1. This march through the Hindu Kush took place in the winter of 330/29, not in 328/7.
82.2 under the Greater and Lesser Bear constellations: this phrase usually means ‘in the far north’, but this is hard to square with the location of the Paropanisadae in the Hindu Kush. Diodorus must be using it to refer to anywhere really cold.
82.5 inhospitable and inaccessible: this is something of an exaggeration: not all the country was a wilderness. The Paropanisadae were an important link in the commercial routes between India and the Near East.
82.7 reflected light: if they had read their Xenophon, they would have known what to do to counteract the glare:
The Expedition of Cyrus 4.5.12–13.
83.1 made camp: this is not the same Caucasus as the range between the Black and Caspian Seas; this Caucasus is what we call the Hindu Kush, which the Greeks thought was a continuation of the true Caucasus, which, in turn, was a continuation of the Taurus mountains of south-east Asia Minor: see 18.5.2.
83.1 Alexandria: since almost all of Alexander’s eastern foundations were called Alexandria, this one is distinguished by being called Alexandria of the Caucasus, or Alexandria in Paropanisadae. See Fraser,
Cities, 140–51.
83.1 marks of the chains: Prometheus was the fundamental Greek culture hero. In order to preserve the human race and allow it to develop, he stole fire for them from the gods, and for this he was punished by being chained to a rock (in a cave, on this version of the story); every day an eagle came and pecked out his liver, and every night he healed again in anticipation of the next day’s torture.
83.7 got into an argument: we learn elsewhere that Bagodaras advised Bessus to surrender to Alexander: Curtius,
History of Alexander 7.4.8–19 (where he is called Cobares).
83.9 punishment: the brother of Darius is presumably Oxathres: 17.77.4.
84.1 the queen: Queen Cleophis of the Assaceni: Curtius,
History of Alexander 8.10.22–36. Her kingdom was in the Lower Swat Valley, in what is now Pakistan. The notes of P. Goukowsky,
Diodore de Sicile, Bibliothèque Historique, Livre XVII (in French), and Stronk,
Semiramis’ Legacy, are particularly useful for the Indian campaign. See also A. B. Bosworth,
Alexander and the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
84.1 the city: Mazagae or Massaga. By the terms of the truce, these Indian mercenaries were to be incorporated into Alexander’s army.
84.2 slaughter them: at several points in the Indian campaign (including some episodes lost in the great gap that precedes 17.84) Alexander’s savagery was on display. Once he found out how enormous the country was, he was in a hurry to get on, and he used terror tactics to cow peoples into submission, so that he would not be held up by the necessity of fighting them.
85.2 Heracles: the Indian ‘Heracles’ was either Indra or Krishna. For the identification of Aornus and other places in Pakistan, the fundamental work remains A. Stein,
On Alexander’s Track to the Indus (London: Macmillan, 1929). Aornus is probably Mount Pir Sar.
86.2 fifteen elephants: this is the first mention of war elephants, but in fact Alexander first encountered them in the Persian army at Gaugamela. On their use, see C. Epplett, ‘War Elephants in the Hellenistic World’, in W. Heckel, L. Tritle, and P. Wheatley (eds),
Alexander’s Empire: Formulation to Decay (Claremont, CA: Regina, 2007), 209–32.
86.7 Taxiles: since Taxiles was clearly the local king name, ‘the king of Taxila’, this is to say that Alexander recognized his kingship. Mophis is elsewhere called ‘Omphis’. Taxila was the country around Rawalpindi.
87.3 the Indians: Diodorus’ account of Alexander’s clash with Porus is brief and should be supplemented by Arrian,
The Expedition of Alexander 5.8–19. Porus was the king of Pauravas, an ancient kingdom to the north-east of Mathura. Its exact location is unknown, however, because the rivers of the Punjab have altered their courses over the centuries.
89.5 the Ocean: the legendary river that surrounded all the land-masses of the earth. Here it presumably refers to what we call the Bay of Bengal.
90.4 Sasibisares: this ‘Sasibisares’ is the ‘Embisarus’ of 17.87.2. In fact, as we know from elsewhere, the man’s name was Abisares. Either Diodorus has made two mistakes, or the text has become corrupt in both places, and Diodorus did originally write ‘Abisares’. He was the king of what is now western Kashmir.
90.7 antidote: perhaps the root of
Hemidesmus indicus, which clinical tests have shown to significantly reduce the effects of snake bites on rats.
91.1 the Gandaridae: Porus fled because Alexander supported one of his rivals, but he had already surrendered to Alexander, so Alexander treated his flight as defection. The Gandaridae (or ‘Gangaridae’) lived to the south: 17.93.2–4.
91.2 the Cathaeans: they probably lived around modern Sialkot. It is not clear who the Adrestae were, but they were presumably neighbours of the Cathaeans.
91.3 poisoned her husband: the practice of
sati (or
suttee) of course became very widespread in India, until being outlawed in 1987. See also 19.33.3 on
sati.
91.7 received it back again: as a vassal king, clearly—and possibly even a vassal to the friendly Porus, who along with Taxiles would emerge as Alexander’s chief proxies in India. It is not clear who Sopeithes is or quite where his kingdom was.
93.1 the Hyphasis river: the five rivers of the Punjab (which means ‘land of five rivers’) are the Chenab, the Jhelum, the Ravi, the Sutlej, and the Beas—respectively, to the Greeks, the Acesines, the Hydaspes, the Hydraotes, the Zadadrus, and the Hyphasis. As Alexander retraces his steps from the Hyphasis, Diodorus mentions only the Acesines and the Hydaspes.
93.2 a desert: the Thar desert. Phegeus is otherwise unknown.
93.2 the Gandaridae: their exact location is unknown, as is that of the Tabraesi.
93.4 dominion over the whole world: Ammon had also called him invincible (17.51.3). The story about the Pythia is not in Diodorus, but can be found in Plutarch,
Alexander 14.4.
94.5 he abandoned the plan: other Alexander historians make much more of this, with a full-scale mutiny by the troops, and Alexander trying to win them over and failing. See Arrian,
The Expedition of Alexander 5.25–9; Curtius,
History of Alexander 9.2–3.19; Plutarch,
Alexander 62. It makes a great deal of difference: were the troops Alexander’s passive tools, or were they a force to be reckoned with in the army? See Roisman,
Alexander’s Veterans, 31–40.
95.5 in the battle with Porus: according to Plutarch (
Alexander 61, though he seems rather hesitant about the story), Alexander also named a city after
his favourite hound. Nicaea and Bucephala are the two cities also mentioned at 17.89.6, but there they were said to be founded by a different river, the Hydaspes.
96.2 the rock: see 17.85 for the Rock of Aornus and Heracles’ expedition. The name ‘Sibi’ might be related to the god Siva. See the
Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 6, for the rough location of these and the other peoples mentioned by Diodorus.
96.2 as kin: the Argeads, the ruling house of Macedon, claimed descent from Heracles.
97.1 the Indus: actually, the confluence with the Indus is much further south; this was just the confluence of the Acesines and the Hydaspes, as Arrian says (
The Expedition of Alexander 6.4.4).
97.3 just as Achilles had: Iliad 21.212–382 is an account of a monumental battle between Achilles and the river Scamander.
99.4 Alexander was saved: this famous story attracted many falsifications which Arrian (
The Expedition of Alexander 6.11) set out to correct.
99.6 after Alexander’s death: Diodorus here conflates two Bactrian rebellions. The three thousand may have got safely home—Curtius suggests they did:
History of Alexander 9.7.11—and the later rebellion after Alexander’s death, involving twenty thousand, was the one that was massacred: 18.4.8, 18.7.1–9.
100.2 the most notable games: the four ‘crown games’ (where crowns and prestige were won, not cash prizes) were the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean games. Dioxippus was a boxer and pancratiast, and in what follows uses his skill at pancration (similar to today’s Mixed Martial Arts) to defeat his opponent.
100.4 the Greeks were on Dioxippus’ side: this incident should not be generalized into evidence of deep-seated hostility within Alexander’s army between Macedonians and Greeks. They naturally supported their own men in this contest, and Alexander’s subsequent hostility towards Dioxippus probably had much more to do with the fact that he had shamed a Macedonian in front of Indian and Iranian dignitaries. On the Greek–Macedonian dynamic within the army, see Anson,
Eumenes of Cardia.
102.2 democracies: this probably means no more than that they had no king.
102.4 worship as a hero: in Greek culture, no one could be worshipped as a hero until after his death. Diodorus is presumably trying to say that they worshipped him as more than human—as a
deva perhaps.
102.4 the Sodrae: neither the Sodrae nor the Massani can be further identified.
102.7 Brahmans: the word is reminiscent of the Brahmins, the highest, priestly caste of Hindu society. As for Sambus,
Sambhu is one of the titles of the god Siva.
103.1 Harmatelia: the identification of this town is uncertain. But see P. Eggermont,
Alexander’s Campaigns in Sind and Baluchistan, and the Siege of the Brahmin Town of Harmatelia (Leuven: Peeters, 1975).
103.6 a great favourite of Alexander’s: Diodorus is clearly drawing here on an account favourable to Ptolemy, perhaps the future king’s own history of the expedition and his part in it. In fact, Ptolemy was not yet that prominent in the expedition. It was only about now, and especially in India, that Alexander began to entrust him with major commands.
103.8 ground it up: a very similar story was told of the fifth-century Athenian statesman Pericles: see Plutarch,
Pericles 13.8.
104.1 to Tethys and to Ocean: in mythology, Tethys and Ocean were Titans, sister and brother, and also wife and husband.
104.1 Patala: the town is probably modern Thatta.
104.3 take note of everything they saw: exploration, and scientific and anthropological research, were always two of Alexander’s goals, and intellectuals of all stripes accompanied the expedition. Nearchus wrote an account of his voyage, which is lost, but Arrian drew on it for his
Indica.
104.4 Abritae: that is, the Arabitae, living on the east bank of the Arabis river (the modern Hab), while the Oreitae lived on its west bank.
104.8 Alexandria: on this city, see Fraser,
Cities, 164–8. It was not by the sea, as Diodorus has it; the coastal foundation was no more than a depot.
105.5 the creatures’ scales: if these ‘monstrous sea-creatures’ are whales, as seems likely, whales do not have scales. Perhaps they used sections of whale skin. Shark scales are small.
105.7 laden with food and other supplies: an implausible story (though repeated by others, with the exception of Arrian), because he needed food immediately, not in the future, and Parthyaea, Drangiana, and Areia are a long way from Carmania.
106.1 celebrations: Arrian dismissed this story (
The Expedition of Alexander 6.28), but it is probably largely true.
106.4 Salmous: better known as Harmozia (modern Hormuz).
106.6 sizeable islands: mud banks or sand banks, presumably, and perhaps colonized by mangroves, as is common along this coastline.
107.1 Caranus: the other Alexander historians call him Calanus, and that is perhaps what we should read here.
107.6 Persian women from the most noble families: this was a famous occasion. About ninety of Alexander’s senior staff took eastern wives, and Alexander took two further wives. In addition to Stateira, he also married Parysatis, a daughter of Artaxerxes III. The intention was to signal the end of warfare and the start of peace, but also perhaps to create a future mixed-blood master race to rule the empire. Many of the Macedonians resented this forced marriage and, subsequently, the only truly multicultural court was that of the Seleucids.
108.4 the Red Sea: to the Greeks, this meant either what we still call the Red Sea, or what we call the Persian or Arabian Gulf.
108.6 a bolt-hole there: he was awarded honorary Athenian citizenship for his benefactions to the city.
108.6 left Asia: this was not the first time Harpalus had fled. In 333 he had absconded with some money, but he was pardoned by Alexander and reinstated as Imperial Treasurer in 331.
108.7 Cape Taenarum in Laconia: Taenarum in these years was a huge mercenary camp, under the authority of Sparta, and a place where recruiters were certain to find large numbers of professional soldiers.
108.7 Olympias demanded his extradition: this is an important indication that Olympias, despite being a woman, was able to play a part in international politics. Royal Macedonian women with enough spirit could break out of their confining moulds to a certain extent. See Carney,
Women and Monarchy (on royal women in general) and
Olympias (on Olympias in particular).
109.1 When the Olympic festival was held: this is the Olympic festival of 324, mentioned now because Diodorus is giving the context of the proclamation Alexander ordered to be read out then—the context being Harpalus’ removal of six thousand mercenaries to a footloose existence in Greece, as mentioned in the previous chapter (17.108.7), and the general alteration of the ethnic make-up of Alexander’s forces, which involved the dismissal of his mercenaries as well (17.106.3, 17.111.1). For more on the Exiles Decree and its importance, see 18.8.
110.3 left Susa: Diodorus (and Curtius) have Alexander still in Susa for the ‘mutiny’ of the end of 17.109, but Arrian places it in Opis, near Babylon, a few weeks later.
110.3 the Carian Villages: actually, the Carian Villages (mentioned also at 19.12.1) were located to the east of the Tigris, not the west. They were probably named after a population that had been removed by some Persian king from Caria to Babylonia, perhaps the Milesians mentioned by Herodotus at
Histories 6.20.
110.5 Bagistana: south-west of Ecbatana, Bagistana is better known as Behistun (or Bisutun), famous for the giant inscription and carvings commissioned by Darius I around 500
bce, celebrating his victories and warning against future rebellions in the empire. The inscription overlooked one of the main caravan routes, so it was widely seen and known.
110.7 sixty thousand: these were the famous Nysaean horses of Media, which were generally the largest and strongest breed in the known world at the time.
111.3 the Aetolians … were no friends of Alexander: largely because of the Exiles Decree, which was also the chief cause of Athenian alarm. The Aetolians had taken over the Acarnanian port of Oeniadae, and by the terms of the decree they would lose it. The Athenians had occupied the island of Samos for decades, and the prospect of the eviction of their citizens from the island by the returning Samian exiles—let alone the loss of this strategic and fertile island—was what drove them to war.
112.3 the tomb of Bel: Bel, ‘Lord’, was a title of the god Marduk, the guardian deity of Babylon. Arrian (
The Expedition of Alexander 3.16.4) has Alexander rebuilding the temple during his first visit to Babylon (17.63–5).
112.5 arguments drawn from philosophical texts: the gist of the arguments were ‘what was subject to fate was beyond the knowledge of mortals, and what was due to nature could not be changed’ ( Justin,
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 12.13.5).
112.6 the words of the philosophers: Diodorus forcefully presents Greek philosophical rationalism as superior to Babylonian superstition, despite the fact that in this case the Greeks were wrong and the Babylonians right. Alexander changes his mind back again at 17.116.4.
113.2 the first time that Greeks had ever come across Celts: several Celtic tribes lived around the Danube, and were therefore neighbours of the Thracians, and the Greeks had certainly come across them before. The Celts they had no experience of were those from Gaul. But would the Gallic Celts have sent ambassadors to Alexander? It seems unlikely. At
The Expedition of Alexander 17.15.4–6 Arrian reports that the Etruscans sent an embassy to Alexander—and, though he doubts the story, the Romans.
113.4 according to the importance of the sanctuary: the sanctuaries were, in order: Olympia, which was managed by the Eleans; the Ammon oracular shrine; Delphi; the sanctuary of Poseidon on the isthmus of Corinth; and the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus.
114.1 preferred him to all his other Friends: for some years before his death, Hephaestion had been Alexander’s chiliarch, the second-in-command of the kingdom. Perdiccas now succeeded to this post.
114.2 He is Alexander too: the story is repeated from 17.37.5–6, perhaps because to identify Hephaestion and Alexander at this point makes Hephaestion’s death and funeral a foretaste of what was about to happen to Alexander.
114.3 no one greater than Alexander: meaning, I suppose, that Olympias’ enmity would always be outweighed by the fact that Alexander loved him. The use of the royal or authorial ‘we’ in the letter is odd; the letter is almost certainly spurious, although some kind of rivalry between Olympias and Hephaestion is plausible within the rivalrous court of Alexander.
115.1 tore down a ten-stade stretch of the city wall: it seems unlikely that he actually demolished a stretch of wall. He probably just removed the brick facing, for reuse as the foundation of the pyre. Remnants of this foundation, consisting of bricks piled up to more than seven metres, have been discovered by archaeologists. For help with understanding Diodorus’ description of the pyre, see P. McKechnie, ‘Diodorus Siculus and Hephaestion’s Pyre’,
Classical Quarterly 45 (1995), 418–32.
115.4 a centauromachy rendered in gold: the battle between humans and centaurs was commonly used to symbolize the war between Greeks/Macedonians and Persians, suitable for Hephaestion’s pyre. For the relevance of each level of ornamentation to Hephaestion, see O. Palagia, ‘Hephaestion’s Pyre and the Royal Hunt of Alexander’, in A. B. Bosworth
and E. Baynham (eds),
Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 167–206.
115.6 as a god: as a hero, according to Arrian,
The Expedition of Alexander 7.23.6, which sounds more plausible. See also Plutarch,
Alexander 72.3.
116.4 that is what Alexander did: if we ignore the element of the man’s miraculous escape from prison, this is close to being a story of the sacrifice of a scapegoat, killed in order to avert danger from the king. Scapegoats were often drawn from condemned criminals.
117.4 his foremost Friends: see also 18.1.4. These ‘games’ are the wars that the Successors fought among themselves for the right to possess at least some of Alexander’s empire. They are the subject of Books 18–20. But the tale of Alexander’s last words is fiction; one of the main symptoms of his ailment was that he could not speak. He may have died from a ruptured oesophagus (Boerhaave’s Syndrome), which can follow heavy drinking.
118.1 fallen out with Olympias: the precise reasons are not known. As a native Epirote, Olympias returned to Epirus (18.49.4).
118.1 the king’s cup-bearer: the son’s name was Iollas (or Iolaus). In Athens, the rumour of poisoning was taken seriously, and it was proposed that Iollas should be honoured for having killed the king. And later Olympias disturbed Iollas’ tomb, in alleged revenge for the poisoning (19.11.8). However, the rumour is unlikely to be true, because if there had been a plot to murder Alexander, the killers would have been more organized. The chaos that followed Alexander’s death suggests that no such plot existed.
Book 18
2.1 Decius Junius: full names of Roman consuls mentioned by Diodorus, and corrections to his versions of their names, can be found in Appendix
2 (pp. 543–9).
2.1 a major bone of contention: Diodorus omits much of the negotiation and conflict that followed Alexander’s death. See Bosworth,
Legacy, 29–63; Meeus, ‘Power Struggle’; Roisman,
Alexander’s Veterans, 61–86.
2.2 Arrhidaeus … to become king: it is impossible to be certain what was wrong with Arrhidaeus, Alexander’s older half-brother. He could function fairly well, but was liable to embarrassing displays of emotion in public (e.g. Plutarch,
Phocion 33). Might he have been autistic?
2.2 Bodyguards: there were seven Bodyguards and they were all in Babylon: Aristonous, Leonnatus, Lysimachus, Pithon, Perdiccas, Peucestas, and Ptolemy.
2.4 under the name of Philip: he became, in our terms, Philip III of Macedon. It is a powerful testament to the hold the Argead house had on the hearts and minds of Macedonians that they would choose Argead kings even when they were not fully competent.
2.4 custodian of the kingdom: Diodorus’ wording is vague, and the word translated ‘kingdom’ can equally mean ‘kingship’. Perdiccas became the guardian or curator or custodian or manager of the kings, with the right to take decisions in their names and to command the royal army. It is not clear whether this was an official title—Custodian of the Kings—or whether Diodorus is using the words more loosely. He fails to mention the birth of Alexander IV to Rhoxane a few months later, and also makes no mention at this point of Alexander’s son Heracles, by his mistress Barsine.
3.1 Asander: the manuscripts have ‘Cassander’ here and on every other occasion when it should be ‘Asander’ (18.39.6, 19.62.2, 19.62.5, 19.68.5, and 19.75.1). In fact, Diodorus probably originally wrote ‘Asander’ (see the seventh note to 18.39.6, and the note to 19.68.5), which would make ‘Cassander’ in all these places a scribal error. It is an error that occurs in other historians as well (e.g. Justin,
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 13.4.15).
3.1 Menander: Diodorus or a scribe mistakenly wrote ‘Meleager’.
3.2 Lysimachus … Black Sea coast: there is little about Lysimachus in the surviving portions of Diodorus’ history. In general, Lysimachus and Ptolemy appear in the narrative only when their history coincides with that of Eumenes, Antigonus, or Demetrius (who were the chief focuses of Diodorus’ source, Hieronymus of Cardia). In the years immediately following Alexander’s death, Lysimachus was trying to pacify his satrapy, and tended to stay aloof from the earlier wars of the Successors which drew historians’ attention.
3.3 Pithon: see 18.39.1–2: this Pithon, the satrap of India, was the son of Agenor; he is not Pithon the son of Cratevas and satrap of Media.
3.3 Media to Atropates: Atropates received the north-western portion of Media, known as Lesser Media, which soon became independent and was ruled by his descendants for a long time (and hence became known as Media Atropatene). The rest of Media, Greater Media, was given to Pithon, the son of Cratevas.
3.3 Arrhidaeus: a different Arrhidaeus, not the one who has just become King Philip III. On the city of Ammon, and its temple, see 17.49–51. On Arrhidaeus’ bier, see 18.26–8.
4.4 as follows: not every scholar accepts the authenticity of these famous Last Plans of Alexander, for which Diodorus is our main source. They are of course astonishing—especially the dream of a Mediterranean empire—but Alexander never did things by halves.
4.5 the Seven Wonders of the World: the ancient list varied somewhat, but a common version was: the hanging gardens of Babylon, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the Colossus of Rhodes, Pheidias’ statue of Zeus in Olympia, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, and the temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
5.3 Red Sea: as often, this must be the Persian Gulf. Diodorus’ description of the other seas is hardly clear, but he must mean respectively the Arabian Gulf and the Bay of Bengal (which has also just been called simply ‘the eastern Ocean’), where the Ocean is apparently conceived of as running directly alongside the coast. Diodorus gives a description of the geography of India, as he understands it, at 2.35–7.
5.4 Tanais river: the Tanais is what we call the Don, but the Greeks often confused the Oxus and even the Jaxartes rivers with the Don; here the Oxus is meant.
5.4 a distinct body of water: that is, it is an inland sea, according to Diodorus, not an inlet of the Ocean, as some geographers thought. Hyrcania was wrapped around the south-eastern coastline of the Caspian Sea.
6.2 five rivers: Diodorus is talking about the Punjab, which means ‘five rivers’.
6.3 Coele Syria, which includes Phoenicia: ‘Coele Syria’ is a slightly vague term in the Greek writers. To Diodorus, it seems to mean much of
Lebanon, while the northern part, around the mouth and lower reaches of the Orontes, he calls Upper Syria.
7.5 the spoils among his men: this twist to the tale is deeply suspect. If Perdiccas knew that Pithon was planning to set himself up as king of the upper satrapies, he would have killed him, or at least not trusted him with this mission. Pithon must in fact have acted as a loyal satrap on this occasion, and the story of his ambitions became grafted on at a later date, after he had indeed tried to make himself master of the upper satrapies in 319 (on which see 19.14.1–4).
8.1 the Rhodians: they had submitted to Alexander in 332. For Rhodes in the Early Hellenistic period, see R. Berthold,
Rhodes in the Hellenistic Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
8.2 restored to their homelands: on the notorious Exiles Decree, see Bosworth,
Conquest and Empire, 220–8. The Exiles Decree was notorious because Alexander did not have the right just to issue a fiat about such a matter, without going through the League of Corinth. It was bound to cause states a great deal of political and economic turmoil, because many of the exiles had been banished for political reasons, and their land had been confiscated and resold. Their return would raise the whole question of the legality of their banishment in the first place. Could Alexander conceivably have been trying to stir up trouble in Greece, to give himself an excuse for interference and the imposition of direct rule? A long inscription survives from Tegea (Rhodes/Osborne, no. 101; Harding, no. 122) that shows the kinds of moves states had to make to re-incorporate their exiles.
8.3 the victorious herald: the ancient Olympic games always included more than athletic contests. One competition pitted heralds or town-criers against one another, to see who had the loudest and clearest voice. The winner was used to make announcements at the festival. Nicanor’s visit took place during the Olympics of 324. Nicanor may be the nephew of the philosopher Aristotle, who (unmentioned by Diodorus) was the tutor of Alexander the Great.
8.7 cleruchy: see the second note to 16.34.4.
10.2 the other three tribes: for administrative and military purposes, all Athenian citizens were divided up among ten tribes.
10.3 the common homeland of the Greeks: this sounds obvious to the modern ear, but in fact ‘Greece’ was made up of hundreds of individual states, great and small, who, so far from treating one another as kin, were often at war. The idea that all Greece was the homeland of the Greeks (rather
than, say, Athens being the homeland of the Athenians, Corinth of the Corinthians, and so on) was scarcely possible in the fourth century, and was the view of only a few statesmen and thinkers.
11.1 Arhyptaeus: this should probably be Arybbas, the uncle of Olympias—the same man as the ‘Arymbas’ of 16.72.1. He had been in exile, but had returned and reclaimed the throne. He was soon to die, however, and was succeeded by Aeacides, who is king by the time we reach 19.11.2.
11.2 the Headland: the eastern peninsula of Argolis was commonly referred to as just ‘the Headland’. It turned out that most of the Peloponnesian contingents were unable to reach the battlefield because of the strong Macedonian garrison in Corinth.
11.3 had to pass through Boeotia: because, as we find out shortly, Leosthenes was at Thermopylae, where he planned to meet the Macedonian army.
12.1 Philotas: this is a mistake for ‘Leonnatus’.
12.1 one of his daughters in marriage: this form of ‘bedroom diplomacy’ was widely practised by the Successors, in their desperate search for alliances that would give them an edge over their rivals.
12.4 Lamia: Antipater may have retreated to Lamia for safety, but his possession of the town also prevented Leosthenes from leaving Antipater’s forces in his rear and launching a direct assault on Macedon itself.
13.2 some internal business: we have no idea what this ‘internal business’ was: an invasion by the Acarnanians, who were often enemies of the Aetolians? Their annual assembly and elections? In any case, as light-armed troops, the Aetolians were less necessary for a siege.
13.5 the funeral eulogy: the speech survives, even if not in its entirety, and is traditionally numbered the sixth of Hypereides’ extant speeches.
14.1 In Asia … Egypt: Egypt was considered part of Asia by some geographers, part of Africa by others.
14.1 he inherited: the money had been raised by Cleomenes, a high official in Alexander’s Egypt. Ptolemy’s killing of Cleomenes was one of the things that had irritated Perdiccas. It casts doubt on Diodorus’ assertion that Ptolemy took over Egypt ‘without any trouble’.
14.4 the final struggle: we hear no more of this, and rather than fighting, Seuthes and Lysimachus seem to have reached a modus vivendi (sealed by Lysimachus’ marriage to an Odrysian princess), since archaeological evidence shows that Seuthes’ main town, Seuthopolis, flourished despite Lysimachus’ presence.
14.5 Macedonians in large numbers for his army: this is a bit surprising, given that we were told in 18.12.2 that Macedon was short of men of military age. More likely, most of Leonnatus’ troops were those assigned him by Perdiccas for the purpose of installing Eumenes in Cappadocia (an order which is not mentioned by Diodorus). But instead of using them for this purpose, Leonnatus took them to Greece. Antigonus too was supposed to help Eumenes, but refused, leading to a total rift between him and Perdiccas (18.23.4). On the draining of the Macedonian population of men of military age, see (controversially) Bosworth,
Legacy, 64–97.
15.1 Meliteia: a town north of Lamia, in Achaea Phthiotis.
15.3 back to the baggage train: so Leonnatus’ great hopes came to nothing. Olympias had offered him her daughter Cleopatra as his wife, which would have been a route to the Macedonian throne. He was related to the royal house anyway, and had long affected a number of mannerisms and extravagances that spoke of royal pretensions.
15.9 the Echinades: these islands are off Acarnania, and near Oeniadae, which may well have been a scene of conflict (18.8.6). But is Diodorus talking about two engagements, both near the Echinades, in which Athenian losses were heavy, or three engagements, two elsewhere (presumably in the Aegean) and one off the Echinades? Discussion by A. B. Bosworth, ‘Why Did Athens Lose the LamianWar?’, in O. Palagia and S. Tracy (eds),
The Macedonians in Athens, 322–229 bc (Oxford: Oxbow, 2003), 14–22, and by G. Wrightson, ‘The Naval Battles of 322 bce’, in Hauben and Meeus (eds),
The Age of the Successors, 517–35. Diodorus’ focus on the land war has caused him to neglect the war at sea, which was arguably decisive.
16.2 met in battle: it took two battles for Perdiccas to defeat Ariarathes (Arrian,
After Alexander F 1.11 Roos/Wirth).
16.3 impaled: in Achaemenid times, this had been the usual penalty for rebels against the Persian throne, so Perdiccas was taking a leaf from the Persian book. But at 31.19 Diodorus says that Ariarathes died in battle.
16.3 Eumenes of Cardia, to whom it had originally been assigned: Eumenes clearly did not have enough forces of his own to secure his satrapy, so Perdiccas had to help. Originally, Antigonus and Leonnatus had been supposed to help install Eumenes (see the note to 18.14.5). After the battle of Ipsus in 301, Ariarathes’ son, Ariarathes II, recovered his kingdom with the help of the Armenian king. He later became a vassal king of Seleucus, a position he passed on to his successors.
16.4 crossed from Europe into Asia: he had ten thousand or so with him in Cilicia (17.109.1, 18.4.1), so, in a change of plan, he left four thousand of these veterans behind. They included the 3,000 Silver Shields, whom we will meet in 18.58–63. The ‘four thousand added in the course of the march’ were mercenaries.
16.5 by the river Peneus: near the town of Crannon, after which the following battle is usually named.
18.1 against Athens: Demosthenes and other anti-Macedonian politicians left the city, but they were hunted down. Demosthenes committed suicide.
18.1 sue for peace: on Demades’ usefulness as an ambassador to Macedon, see 16.87 and 17.15.3–5.
18.4 he changed the constitution from democracy: the democracy was renewed later, more than once, though in somewhat diluted forms, but essentially this was the end of the great Athenian experiment in democracy, initiated by Cleisthenes almost two hundred years earlier.
18.5 more than twenty-two thousand: some editors emend the text to ‘twelve thousand’, to bring it into line with Plutarch,
Phocion 28.7, but the Athenian democratic system could scarcely have functioned with a citizen population of only 21,000 (12,000 plus the 9,000 who remained as citizens), so the higher figure (making a citizen population of 31,000) is more likely to be correct.
18.5 the laws of Solon: Solon was popularly regarded as one of the founders of the Athenian democracy, but he actually put in place (this was early in the sixth century) a wealth oligarchy, so the comparison of Athens’ new constitution with his is apt.
18.6 the kings: this is Diodorus’ first use of the plural ‘kings’—an acknowledgement that Alexander IV had been born and was now joint king with Philip III, both under Perdiccas’ guardianship. On Samos, see 18.8.7. The Athenians appealed to Antipater to reverse the Exiles Decree in their case, but the decision was now referred to the kings—that is, to Perdiccas (18.18.9).
18.7 return to Asia: Antipater’s helping Craterus was an aggressive move against Perdiccas. Unmentioned by Diodorus, Perdiccas had made Craterus joint General in Europe with Antipater, but Craterus was refusing to be confined to Europe, and wanted to return to Asia to make a bid for real power. This decision is firmed up in 18.25.4. For a character sketch of Phila, see 19.59.4–5.
18.8 good constitutions in place: Diodorus was writing at a time when the Roman empire depended on the cooperation of the landowning class in all the provinces. So a constitution that favoured landowners was a ‘good’ one.
18.8 awarded crowns: Diodorus makes it sound as though the Lamian War was entirely over, but the Aetolians never surrendered, and were soon to suffer an invasion by Antipater and Craterus: 18.24–5. For the gift of crowns, see the second note to 16.92.1.
19.1 in their proper sequential order as much as possible: Diodorus implies that some of the preceding material has been presented out of order. He is probably thinking of the Bactrian rebellion. For this suggestion, and an
analysis of Diodorus’ reason for not following a strict sequence (because he wanted the Bactrian rebellion to serve as a ‘literary overture’ to the Lamian War), see Walsh, ‘Historical Method’.
19.3 this venture: in theory, Thibron, a Spartan adventurer, was supposed to be restoring these exiles to Cyrene. In practice, he was intending to make himself master of the city. Since Cyrene was one of the largest and most prosperous Greek cities of the Mediterranean, this was a bold plan.
19.4 the port: Cyrene’s port was called Apollonia.
21.1 Cape Taenarum: see 17.108.7 and 17.111.1 for Taenarum as a temporary mercenary settlement.
21.9 King Ptolemy: this is premature, since Ptolemy did not begin to style himself king until 306 or possibly 304 (20.53.3). But he then back-dated his kingship to 323, when he had taken over Egypt.
21.9 dependencies of the Ptolemaic kingdom: Ophellas stayed on as the governor of Cyrenaica, and we will meet him again in 20.40–2. Cyrenaica remained a dependency of Egypt (with occasional interruptions) until 96
bce, when it was taken over by the Romans. Ptolemy at this time also entered into a series of strategic alliances with the kings of the Cypriot cities. Both this and his takeover of Cyrene will have disturbed Perdiccas.
22.1 satrap and military governor: he was satrap and military governor of Cilicia, with responsibility, it appears, for Pisidia as well. The point of mentioning that he was both satrap and military governor is that Alexander often separated these two functions, so that each incumbent would act as a counterweight to the other; Balacrus must have been especially trustworthy. The date of his assassination is uncertain.
23.3 Antipater’s hostility: Perdiccas’ brother Alcetas had been advising him to marry Nicaea, while Eumenes was recommending Cleopatra. Eumenes was close to Olympias, and his objective was invariably to secure the future of her grandson, Alexander IV. At this moment in time, Perdiccas seemed the most promising protector of the child.
23.4 the Athenian ships: we do not know what Athenian ships these were, or what they were doing in Asia Minor. Perhaps they were taking Athenian cleruchs off Samos and back to Athens.
23.4 his son Demetrius: Demetrius would have been about 14 years old. This was the first time he had set foot in Europe.
25.4 but on good terms with them: like Craterus, Ptolemy became a son-in-law of Antipater. Perdiccas had been alarmed by Ptolemy’s takeover of Cyrenaica and other signs of independence, but the last straw was yet to come: the hijacking of Alexander’s corpse (18.28.3, with note).
26.1 In this year: the next two Archon years, heralded by the usual chronographic indicators, do not occur in our text. Normal service resumes at 18.44. See Introduction, p. xxxvii, for the suggestion that there is a largely unsuspected lacuna in the text. Thanks to the lacuna, the entire First War of the Successors has been compressed, making the dating of events down to the Triparadeisus conference (18.39) difficult. Probably Perdiccas’ death is to be dated to the late spring of 320 (Athenian year 321/0) and the conference to the late summer of 320 (Athenian year 320/19).
26.3 and preserving it: needless to say, the body had already been embalmed. It had taken Arrhidaeus almost two years to complete the carriage.
26.6 with Ionic capitals: so it was like a miniature temple, though with a vaulted roof. See the various reconstructions in S. Miller, ‘Alexander’s Funeral Cart’,
Ancient Macedonia 4 (1986), 401–11.
27.3 Persian-style wheels revolved: Persian wheels apparently tended to be larger in diameter, with more solid rims and a greater number of spokes, than Greek wheels.
27.4 uneven ground: without being at all certain, I think this means that the rods simply penetrated the floor of the carriage, into the open space of the vault, so that, with nothing to stop the rods rising and falling, the axle system had play.
28.3 to meet the catafalque: in Diodorus’ version (which coincides with that of Curtius and Justin), Alexander’s body was always due to be buried in Ptolemy’s territory, and all Ptolemy did was change the destination from Siwa (Ammon) to Alexandria. Arrian, however, implies that the body was due to be buried in Macedon, and has Ptolemy, with Arrhidaeus’ connivance, hijack it to Egypt (
After Alexander F 1.25 Roos/Wirth).
28.3 the city founded by Alexander: Alexandria. Pausanias (
Description of Greece 1.6.3 (second century
ce)) has the corpse interred first in Memphis before being moved later to Alexandria, which would have been a building site at the time of the corpse’s arrival in Egypt.
29.2 his skill as a strategist: actually, Eumenes was relatively untested as a general. He did brilliantly. Diodorus’ account of Eumenes is consistently favourable, and is almost certainly derived from Hieronymus of Cardia, a fellow citizen and probably a relative of Eumenes.
29.4 brought their forces over from Europe: Eumenes was unable to stop them because, unmentioned by Diodorus, Perdiccas’ admiral, who was patrolling the Hellespont, defected. This was Cleitus ‘the White’, who would duly
be rewarded with a satrapy by Antipater (18.39.6), and then fought for Antipater’s successor (18.72).
29.4 Neoptolemus … secretly got in touch with Antipater: it was probably Antipater who made the first contact: Arrian,
After Alexander F 1.26 Roos/Wirth. It was not just jealousy that made Neoptolemus loathe Eumenes; earlier, Perdiccas had sent Eumenes to Armenia, to settle affairs where Neoptolemus had failed.
37.4 Memphis: Diodorus omits Attalus’ unsuccessful attempt to seize the island of Rhodes: Arrian,
After Alexander F 1.39 Roos/Wirth.
38.1 their agreement with Perdiccas: this is the first we have heard of this agreement, but of course it makes sense that Perdiccas and the Aetolians would unite against the common enemy.
38.2 Amphissa: the town had been garrisoned by Antipater and the Aetolians did not want to leave this force in their rear when they invaded Thessaly.
38.6 Polyperchon won: Polyperchon was generally a better diplomat than general; it seems likely that he put the Acarnanians up to their invasion, so as to give himself a better chance of winning in Thessaly against the Aetolians’ mercenaries.
39.1 Triparadeisus in inland Syria: a
paradeisos was an ornamental park and hunting ground for Persian royals and nobles, so Triparadeisus must have been a good place for a summit meeting, the equivalent of the luxury hotels used by today’s leaders. It might be the place that later became Baalbek.
39.2 Queen Eurydice: this is abrupt, since Diodorus has omitted her marriage to Philip III in 321 (see the note to 19.52.5). Diodorus is slightly inaccurate in calling her queen. It was not until a few decades later that the wife or wives of kings began to be called queens, or at least ‘royal women’. Eurydice (whose birth name was Adea) was the daughter of Amyntas (the infant king whose place on the throne was taken by Philip II) and Cynnane, a daughter of Philip II (called ‘Cynna’ at 19.52.5).
39.4 frightened Eurydice into quiescence: Arrian has more on this:
After Alexander F 1.30–3 Roos/Wirth. See also Roisman,
Alexander’s Veterans, 136–44. Money was at the root of the trouble: the Macedonians had not been paid for a while; and Pithon and Arrhidaeus had promised to consult Eurydice before doing anything, but then ignored her. Eurydice was still a teenager, possibly as young as 17. This was not her last bid for power: see 19.11.
39.6 Cilicia to Philoxenus: actually, Philoxenus was already the satrap of Cilicia, having been installed by Perdiccas to replace Philotas (18.3.1), who was a friend of Craterus and was therefore removed. Antipater now confirmed Philoxenus’ appointment, which suggests that he had cooperated with Antipater and won his favour.
39.6 Arbelitis: Upper Mesopotamia, named after the town of Arbela, where the battle of Gaugamela was fought (17.53.3–61.3).
39.6 Babylonia to Seleucus: Diodorus gives no reason for the sudden elevation of Seleucus, but it is possible that he was one of the assassins of Perdiccas (Cornelius Nepos,
Eumenes 5.1).
39.6 Parthyaea to Philip: but see 19.14.1, where the satrap of Parthyaea is said to be Philotas. Philip is probably correct.
39.6 Caria to Asander: see the first note to 18.3.1. The mention of Cassander a few lines later, and his introduction as Antipater’s son, makes it likely that Diodorus originally wrote ‘Asander’ here—and if here, then elsewhere as well.
39.7 without Antipater hearing about it: this judgement about Cassander’s appointment is probably a later accretion; originally, it would have been seen as a gesture of friendship for Antipater to assign his son to Antigonus.
40.7 and thirty elephants: Antigonus’ full forces were much larger (18.45.1, although by then he had also incorporated many of Eumenes’ former soldiers), but he had to leave troops to guard against an attack by Alcetas from Pisidia.
40.8 Eumenes’ camp: Apollonides was later captured by Eumenes and executed (Plutarch,
Eumenes 9.3). As well as suborning Apollonides, Antigonus seems also to have tricked Eumenes by having a fake dust-covered messenger run up and tell him (Antigonus) about the arrival of reinforcements, in the hearing of Eumenes’ envoys, so that the news would get back to Eumenes’ camp and undermine morale (Polyaenus,
Stratagems in War 4.6.19).
41.1 called Nora instead: the precise location of this fortress is unknown; it was on the border of Lycaonia and Cappadocia (Plutarch,
Eumenes 10). It might be the fortress later called Neroassus, at modern Gelin Tepe.
41.6 subsequently: the negotiations are repeated in a somewhat different form under the following year (18.50.4), where they more properly belong. They are summarized for a third time at 18.53.5.
42.1 History of the Successors: this work by Hieronymus of Cardia, which no longer survives, was almost certainly Diodorus’ chief source for the Successor period. Nothing seems to have come of Hieronymus’ mission to Antipater on Eumenes’ behalf.
42.2 his absolutely steadfast loyalty: it would be nice to think that this statement is ironic, given that within a very few months Eumenes betrayed his agreement with Antigonus: 18.58.1–2.
43.2 a brief and effective campaign: see Appian,
Syrian History 52 for more details. This illegal (or at least highly aggressive) campaign was an early sign of Ptolemy’s ambitions.
44.2 2,500 stades in seven days: an astonishing rate of about 65 km (40 miles) a day, suggesting that only cavalry and light troops were involved.
47.3 unburied: in the Greco-Macedonian worldview, an unburied man was unable to enter the underworld and find peace, so it was a common punishment to leave enemies unburied. Mutilation of a corpse by cutting off its extremities was supposed to stop the dead man taking revenge on his killer.
47.3 buried it with full honour: a rock-cut tomb, plausibly identified as that of Alcetas, exists near the site of ancient Termessus. An internet search under ‘Alcetas tomb’ will bring up some images.
48.2 attack Antipater: Demades memorably described Antipater as ‘the old and rotten thread’ by which Macedonian and Greek affairs were suspended (Plutarch,
Phocion 30—a slightly different version of this story).
49.4 the custodianship of Alexander’s son: Polyperchon seems to be suggesting a division of labour, with him remaining guardian of Philip III (if Eurydice would let him have any influence there), while Olympias was guardian of Alexander IV. It is curious that Diodorus rarely names ‘Alexander’s son’, preferring such circumlocutions.
50.2 the treasuries: the main Asian treasuries at this time were at Ecbatana, Susa, and Cyinda (somewhere in Cilicia).
50.4 the stronghold called Nora: for Nora, see 18.41.1–3, and 18.42.1 for Hieronymus’ presence there and his mission. He seems to have been on his way back from Macedon to Nora when Antigonus intercepted him.
51.1 to install garrisons in the most important cities: the Greek cities of Asia Minor, like those of Greece, were theoretically independent—located within satrapies, but not part of them. It was therefore an act of war for Arrhidaeus to use force to impose garrisons on them.
51.1 siege equipment: Arrhidaeus had first tried to install a friend of his as tyrant in Cyzicus, and attacked the city when that tactic failed.
51.5 they had control of the sea: if this was the case, it is unclear how Arrhidaeus expected to exert enough pressure to impose a garrison on them.
52.4 gain him as an ally: we hear nothing more of this. Perhaps Eumenes had already been freed from Nora by the time Arrhidaeus’ men arrived.
53.7 in the fortress: there were six hundred in the fortress according to 18.41.3.
55.4 The resolution was as follows: on this resolution, see especially E. Poddighe, ‘Propaganda Strategies and Political Documents: Philip III’s
Diagramma and the Greeks in 319 bc’, in V. Alonso Troncoso and E. Anson (eds),
After Alexander: The Time of the Diadochi (323–281 bc) (Oxford: Oxbow, 2013), 225–40. It was in effect an invitation to the Greek cities to rise up against their current masters.
56.1 our throne … we: the royal ‘we’: the decree was clearly written in the name of Philip III, since he was the only one of the two kings who could speak of ‘our father Philip’. His name alone was used, probably because he was more acceptable to the Greeks than the mixed-race Alexander IV.
56.4 politically inspired antagonism: a very common occurrence, since many exiles had been banished for political reasons, because they were oligarchs trying to undermine a democracy, or vice versa.
56.5 exiles from … Heraclea: we do not know enough to be sure why all these men were excluded from the amnesty. Best guesses: Poddighe (op. cit. in the note to 18.55.4), 234–5. Pharcadon and Tricca were in Thessaly, but Amphissa was in Ozolian Locris, and of the several towns named Heraclea, probably the one by Mount Oeta in central Greece is meant.
56.6 as it is at present: possession of Oropus, a strategic and sacred town on the border between Attica and Boeotia, was frequently disputed between the two parties. Most recently, it had been assigned to Athens by Philip II; it became independent during the Lamian War.
56.7 our father Philip did: this reverses the decision taken by Alexander in the Exiles Decree, and confirmed by Antipater, that Samos was to be removed from the Athenians. The mention of Philip II is due to the fact that Athens was allowed to keep Samos in the settlement that followed Chaeronea.
57.2 inherited his father’s kingdom: this repeats 18.49.4. The lack of mention of Philip III is somewhat sinister; the kingdom is assumed to be destined for Alexander IV. It looks as though there were effectively two rival courts in Macedon, one for each of the kings. Adea Eurydice was the main player in Philip III’s court, and Polyperchon was inviting Olympias to come and challenge Eurydice.
59.3 declared their loyalty and commitment: despite this, Eumenes’ later troubles came from the leaders of the Silver Shields, who were the cream of Alexander’s former army and considered themselves almost an autonomous force. For Eumenes’ relations with the Silver Shields, see Roisman,
Alexander’s Veterans, 177–236.
59.4 their own ruling: it might not have been an official ruling, but just an outburst of hatred by the Macedonian troops in Egypt after the murder of Perdiccas. See 18.37.1–2.
60.6 at the head of his kingdom: the main point of the last two paragraphs is that Eumenes, anxious about the envy of his immediate subordinates (Antigenes and Teutamus, especially), tried to make out that he was not their superior and that they would all be equal before Alexander’s royal throne.
61.1 diadem, sceptre, and … panoply: like the throne, these were probably replicas of Alexander’s regalia, not the originals. The originals had either been deposited in a treasury or incorporated into Alexander’s catafalque.
61.1 fire altar: an eastern element to the ritual, reflecting the blending of East and West in Alexander’s own monarchical style.
62.2 Cyinda: the location of the fortress of Cyinda in the mountains of Cilicia is unknown. It had been used as a treasury since Assyrian times in the seventh century, and was one of the main treasuries used by the Successors.
62.4 Philotas, as his agent: this is probably the Philotas who had originally been assigned the satrapy of Cilicia (18.3.1), but was then removed from his post (18.39.6).
63.6 all the cities to send him ships: Phoenicia and Cilicia together had the largest cluster of ports with ship-building as well as harbour facilities, and, with long traditions of seafaring and wealth, every major city there had a good-sized fleet.
66.3 as they pleased: Polyperchon did not really make it a free choice. Plutarch reports (
Phocion 34.3) that he got Philip III to write a letter to the Athenians the gist of which was ‘that while he had no doubt of the men’s treachery, he left it up to them, as free and autonomous agents, to reach a verdict’. In other words, if they were to please Polyperchon, they had to execute Phocion and the others.
67.6 the traditional method of execution: the drinking of hemlock was a common form of execution, used for instance on the philosopher Socrates in Athens in 399; it was not a particularly gruesome way to go, and it was held to absolve the community from the pollution of taking a life because it was self-administered and involved no shedding of blood.
69.3 an alliance with him: this looks like an attempt to form the Peloponnesian cities into some kind of league, under Macedonian domination.
72.1 more pressing matters: it would have been nice to have been told what these were. For the suggestion that he led a campaign in Asia Minor, see P. Paschidis, ‘Missing Years in the Biography of Polyperchon (318/7 and 308 bc Onwards)’,
Tekmeria 9 (2008), 233–50.
72.9 some of Lysimachus’ soldiers: this presumably happened in Thrace, Lysimachus’ satrapy. So Lysimachus was cooperating with Cassander and Antigonus, but if there was a formal treaty of any kind in place we know nothing of it. The defeat of Cleitus gave Antigonus control of the sea. Unmentioned by Diodorus, Nicanor next sailed to Cilicia (Polyaenus,
Stratagems in War 4.6.8–9) and captured Eumenes’ fleet.
73.3 by Seleucus: at 19.12–13, however, Diodorus correctly locates this incident at the Tigris, not the Euphrates.
74.3 at least ten mnas: this needs setting in context. Ten mnas (or 1,000 drachmas) was the minimum qualification for citizenship and voting rights, so Athens became an oligarchy—but the previous phase of oligarchy, under Antipater, had (see 18.18) been twice as stringent, since it set the minimum qualification at 2,000 drachmas. Nevertheless, democracy was once again dissolved.
Book 19
1.3 ostracism: under the fifth-century democracy, every year the Athenian Assembly had a chance to send a prominent citizen into exile, if he was felt to be a threat to the democracy. A minimum of 6,000 votes had to be cast, in a secret ballot, and of the several candidates for exile, the one with the most votes was sent away for ten years. Votes were cast by inscribing the candidate’s name on a shard of broken pottery (the ancient equivalent of a scrap of paper)—an
ostrakon, hence the name ‘ostracism’. The exiled man was not treated as a criminal—he retained his property and his business interests in Athens—but he could not live in Athens or take part in political life. Diodorus makes it sound as though it was a common event, but although the debate took place every year, ostracism was used only fifteen times between 488/7 and 417/16.
1.4 the following couplet: the middle two lines of the six-line F 9 West. The full fragment is quoted at 9.20, along with the longer F 11 West. Solon had probably died before Peisistratus first tried to seize power in 560, so he was not predicting that particular tyranny so much as tyranny in general, and indeed there seem to have been attempts to seize power in the 580s, more immediately after Solon’s legislation. Alternatively, if the verses do refer to Peisistratus (and F 11 West also seems to), they were probably retrospectively assigned to Solon. A few scholars, however, believe that Solon’s work should be dated to the 570s or 560s, and so that he could have been contemporary with Peisistratus. Peisistratus’ tyranny began in 546, though he had attempted to make himself tyrant also in 560 and 556.
1.7 he worked as a potter: Agathocles’ background is not as certain as Diodorus makes out. One of the men sent into exile by Agathocles was the historian Timaeus of Tauromenium (on whom see p. 541). Timaeus naturally gave Agathocles a very poor write-up in his history of Sicily. An impoverished background was a fairly standard sneer against tyrants, and
Diodorus is following the Timaean tradition at this point. Elsewhere, however, he admits that Timaeus’ account of Agathocles was strongly biased (21.17). The sneer ‘He worked as a potter’ could, from the mouth of a member of the landed elite (or of a satiric poet), easily be a deliberate downgrading of ‘He owned a chain of pottery workshops.’ From time to time, Diodorus cannot help reflecting a different view of Agathocles’ background: he claims that in Sicily his father Carcinus of Rhegium was poor—but also that he was prominent enough to ‘instruct’ the Carthaginians of Therma, and to be concerned about attracting the hostility of the Carthaginians (19.2.3, 19.2.7); Agathocles held a priesthood (20.54.1), and these posts were generally restricted to the rich. See also the note to 19.2.9.
1.7 Libya: that is, all of North Africa west of Cyrenaica.
1.8 this terrible: actually, earlier Syracusan tyrants raised the bar for savagery very high.
1.10 after the fall of Troy: the Greeks came up with many dates for the start of the legendary Trojan War; for historians, the war served as a baseline chronographic marker, so dating it was important to them. Diodorus follows his primary chronographic source, Apollodorus of Athens, who wrote his
Chronicles in the second century, and was in his turn following third-century Eratosthenes of Cyrene in choosing 1183
bce as the date of the start of the Trojan War.
1.10 seven years: Diodorus is still keen to have each of his books focus on a single individual whenever possible; see the prefaces to Books 16 and 17, especially the former.
2.1 Fulvius: full names of Roman consuls mentioned by Diodorus, and corrections to his versions of their names, can be found in Appendix
2 (pp. 543–9).
2.3 sacred ambassadors: theōroi were sent by a state to represent them at international religious festivals such as the Pythia at Delphi. It is interesting that, this early, the Carthaginians were sending representatives to a Greek religious festival, but they had already adopted the worship of Demeter and Korē (the chief deities of Sicily), so it is not implausible that they would have wanted to pay their respects at this important religious centre.
2.4 make sure it died: exposure was practised throughout the Greek world. Because it involved no direct bloodletting, it was considered a non-polluting way of getting rid of unwanted children. Some—perhaps quite a lot of—abandoned babies were reared in other households as slaves, and Carcinus’ guards must have been ordered to make sure that this did not happen.
2.9 a dedication: in honour of her dead husband. Marble statues were not cheap, so again Diodorus slips if he really wants to portray Agathocles’ background as poor.
3.1 replaced him with Agathocles: Damas would have become Agathocles’ lover when the boy was in his mid-teens, many years before Agathocles would have been made a chiliarch. It was typical of Greek homosexual customs that the boy’s older lover would later help him gain a start in public life, even if by then the sexual side of their relationship was over. We know nothing more of this war between Syracuse and Acragas, which must have taken place in the early 320s, and was one of the few disturbances to mar the twenty or so years after Timoleon.
3.3 Sosistratus: for almost all occurrences of the name ‘Sosistratus’, one or more MSS have ‘Sostratus’. I have gone with ‘Sosistratus’ throughout, which is the version of Plutarch (
Pyrrhus 23).
3.3 in the previous book: not so: Sicilian affairs play no part in Book 18 at all. Might there be a gap in the manuscripts for Book 18, as for Book 17? See also the note to 19.10.3.
4.3 sent into exile: it was probably Agathocles’ defeat of the oligarchs at Rhegium which put an end to their regime in Syracuse. The oligarchy had been in power for some years, but now Syracuse became a democracy, with Agathocles in a position of some authority.
5.1 Acestoridas of Corinth . . .General in Syracuse: Plutarch reports (
Timoleon 38.4) that in recognition of all the good Timoleon had done them, the Syracusans voted always to have a Corinthian as their General at a time of foreign war—i.e. war with the Carthaginians. Hence Acestoridas quietly drops out of the story at the beginning of the next paragraph, where peace is made with the Carthaginians.
5.4 the Carthaginians as well: there is a bit more detail of this phase of Agathocles’ life in Justin,
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 22.2.
6.1 Erbita: the exact position of this town is unknown.
6.4 the Timoleontium: a gymnasium named in honour of Timoleon and built around his tomb. Compare Polyaenus,
Stratagems in War 5.3.8, on this incident.
7.3 courtyard doors of houses: a typical Greek house opened from the street into a courtyard, surrounded by a portico with rooms off it.
7.3 the temple precincts: where they should have been safe, since all temple precincts were supposed to be inviolable; but Greek history is littered with breaches of this unwritten law. See e.g. 19.63.5.
8.4 tragic effects … in the historians: Diodorus obviously found his sources going to town over this episode. On the whole Diodorus does avoid rhetorical excesses, but he does occasionally slip in passages that are
supposed to set some moving scene directly before the reader’s imagination; see Introduction, p. xxvii.
8.5 the absolute power of their bitterest enemies: these atrocities tended to occur at the end of every successful siege, but it is surprisingly rare for ancient historians to highlight such an episode. It was, unfortunately, one of those aspects of warfare that they took for granted.
9.5 to abolish debts and give land to the poor: this was the usual revolutionary programme in Hellenistic Greece. Compare, for example, the reforms of Cleomenes III of Sparta in the 220s, as reported by Plutarch in his
Cleomenes.
9.6 a completely different kind of person: Polybius too, citing the historical tradition, attributes this sudden change of character to Agathocles (
Histories 9.23). It may originally have been a way of reconciling two contrary traditions about Agathocles—the bloodthirsty tyrant and the benevolent king. In any case, as Diodorus’ account makes plain, he seems to have remained no less savage towards his enemies than he was before.
9.7 diadem: see the note to 17.77.5.
10.1 as they had been for eight years: a confession by Diodorus that he has been less than meticulous in his recording of Roman history, although, to be fair, not much happened in the first years of the war beyond some skirmishing. Still, Diodorus’ omissions should be made up by consulting Books 7–9 of Livy’s
History of Rome. The First Samnite War lasted only from 343 until 341, and ended with a renewal of the treaty of 350 (16.45.8), but this second one went on from 326 to 304 (albeit with a period of uneasy truce from 320 until 316), and a third one was to follow, from 298 to 290, until Rome was finally victorious. The struggle would decide whether it was the Romans or the Samnites who were supreme in Italy.
10.2 Canusium: Canusium was a Hellenized city in Apulia, which was being punished for its alliance with the Samnites. The Daunii lived in northern Apulia, just under the spur of Italy.
10.3 in the previous book: again (see the second note to 19.3.3), this is not so as Book 18 stands. See Introduction, p. xxxvii.
11.1 return to Macedon: she had been living in Epirus for seven years: 18.49.4, 18.57.2, 18.58.3–4.
11.1 Cassander in the Peloponnese: where he was trying to undo some of Polyperchon’s gains (18.69.3–4). Eurydice had recently prevailed upon her husband, Philip III, to depose Polyperchon from his regency of the kings in favour of Cassander, and the king had written around all the Greek cities to that effect.
11.7 the weight of her misfortunes: later, Philip III and Eurydice were given a proper royal funeral by Cassander: 19.52.5. The relief sculptures of Eurydice’s grave have survived: see O. Palagia, ‘The Grave Relief of Adea, Daughter of Cassander and Cynnana’, in T. Howe and J. Reames (eds),
Macedonian Legacies: Studies in Ancient Macedonian History and Culture in Honor of Eugene N. Borza (Claremont, CA: Regina, 2008), 195–214.
12.5 wherries: I use this word in the British sense of large, light, flat-bottomed vessels. Diodorus’ word is literally ‘a vessel propelled by a pole’, but in midstream the river would have been too deep for poles, so they must have had sails as well.
13.2 wiped out by the flood: these events were also mentioned prospectively in 18.73.3, though as happening at the Euphrates, not the Tigris.
14.8 Eudamus came from India: this Eudamus is not Pithon’s brother, mentioned at the start of this chapter. He became satrap of ‘India’ after Alexander’s first satrap, Philip, was murdered.
17.1 Deinomenes: other sources call him Demosthenes or Deinosthenes. This last name, supported by an inscription found at Olympia, seems to be the correct one.
17.2 set out against the enemy: there is an excellent account of the following monumental clash between Antigonus and Eumenes in Iran in Bosworth,
Legacy, 98–168.
17.3 the Tigris: this should be the Pasitigris; see the note to 17.67.1.
17.3 the Red Sea: that is, the Persian Gulf. At 17.67.2 Diodorus said that the non-mountainous stretch of the river was 600 stades long.
18.4 forage for food: they were probably light-armed troops, who were commonly used for foraging.
19.1 Badace … Eulaeus: the location of the city is unknown, and the identification of the river uncertain. If the Karun is the Pasitigris and the Dez is the Coprates, then the Eulaeus may be either the Shaur or the Karkheh. The river systems in this part of the world have changed a great deal over the centuries.
19.2 the Royal Road system: the famous Persian Royal Road ran from Smyrna in western Asia Minor east, and then south-east to Susa, running alongside the east bank of the Tigris. It was created in the fifth century. There were regular staging posts along the way, where horses could be exchanged and food found, and it was said that a courier could do the whole journey of almost 3,000 kilometres in about nine days. We do not know quite where Calon was, though it was presumably near the Zagros mountains.
19.3 independent since ancient times: at 17.111.4–6, however, Diodorus told us that Alexander subdued the Cossaeans. Presumably they regained their independence after his death.
21.1 inland provinces: Ecbatana was too far north for Antigonus to be able to stop Eumenes returning west and threatening Babylonia and Syria. That is what Eumenes wanted to do, but it would leave the upper satrapies vulnerable to attack by Antigonus from Media.
21.2 the so-called Ladder: a literal description: it was a stair-cut pass through the mountains to Persepolis.
23.2 drawing near Cappadocia: it seems that Eumenes’ men knew of Olympias’ return to Macedon, but not of Cassander’s subsequent success against her. But then Diodorus has not yet told us this part of the story; we have only got as far as Olympias’ success (19.11.2–9). The rest comes at 19.35–6 and 19.45–51.
23.3 written in Syrian: that is, Aramaic, which had been the official language of the Achaemenid empire.
23.3 Orontes: the Orontids were hereditary rulers of Armenia, vassal kings of the Persian and then the Macedonian empire. This is Orontes III, who reigned from 321 until 260.
23.4 condemned to death by the army assembly: Sibyrtius supplied some troops (19.14.6) and was in the camp, where he was put on trial and from where he escaped. Why was his baggage not in the camp? Perhaps he had sent it on ahead, intending to follow it himself when he could. He must have
known that trouble was in the offing. In fact, however, Eumenes never got around to deposing him: at 19.48.3 he is still the satrap of Arachosia.
26.1 Gabene: a district of Susiane, called ‘Gabiene’ by some of the sources, probably around modern Isfahan.
26.3 that night: the use of false deserters to convey misinformation was a common tactic. See, in general, F. Russell,
Information Gathering in Classical Greece (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).
27.1 sixty-five elephants: when Diodorus enumerates Antigonus’ units in 19.29, we find a significant discrepancy in the numbers. The infantry numbers add up, but Diodorus makes no mention of Antigonus’ light infantry (see 18.73.1), who by now probably numbered around fifteen thousand. Otherwise, he is vague on the elephant numbers, and enumerates far more cavalry than the 8,500 mentioned here.
28.4 and 114 elephants: none of the numbers add up. The infantry numbers are way off, but Diodorus has omitted the light infantry—the irregulars, as it were—in Eumenes’ army, as he did for Antigonus (see the note to 19.27.1). There must have been eighteen thousand of them. The cavalry numbers are only two hundred off. Diodorus enumerates 125 elephants (five more than Eudamus brought (19.14.8)), but then claims the total was 114. But other than these problems with the numbers, Diodorus’ account of the battle of Paraetacene is the best of his battle narratives. It is undoubtedly based on the eyewitness account of Hieronymus of Cardia, and the generally superior battle narratives of Books 18–20 (with statistics, an understanding of terrain, and the times and distances of marches) may be attributed to Hieronymus. Battle descriptions elsewhere tend to be formulaic.
29.2 loyal to him: the name ‘Tarentine’ means ‘from Tarentum’, the Greek city of southern Italy. But the name was used for cavalrymen armed with a javelin and employing Tarentine tactics, whether or not they were actually from Tarentum. Tarentine tactics involved wheeling and harrying, just like the other light cavalry listed in this paragraph.
29.2 ‘two-horsers’: the tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia called the
Suda claims (s.v.
hippikē) that these cavalrymen rode into battle with an extra horse trailing the one they were riding, so that they could rely on the second one if the first was disabled.
30.6 quite elderly: at 19.41.2 Diodorus says that none of them was younger than 60, which may not be much of an exaggeration. They had served
with Alexander since the beginning of his eastern campaigns and many had served Philip before that.
31.3 beyond dispute: by military convention, the army in possession of the battlefield at the end was the victor, and the losers indicated their acceptance of defeat by applying for a truce during which they could collect their dead.
32.1 the collection of their dead: Polyaenus,
Stratagems in War 4.6.10, says that he did this so that the herald would not see that Antigonus’ losses were greater than those of Eumenes. It also bought time for the wounded and the heavy baggage to get away.
34.7 Paraetacene: a large district straddling the border between Media and Persis.
35.2 on good terms with Olympias and Polyperchon: the bedrock of Aetolian policy had for some decades been hostility to Macedon; they saw a chance to get on better terms with what might turn out to be the new Macedonian regime.
35.5 Pyrrhus … who later fought the Romans: in 280, Pyrrhus (by then king of Epirus) went to help the southern Italian Greek city of Tarentum resist the Romans. He fought well, but ultimately indecisively, against them, and withdrew a few years later (after failing to make himself king of Sicily as well) when it became clear that the Romans could not be beaten.
35.7 his previous invasion of Macedon: this expedition is also alluded to at 18.75.1, where it is said that many Macedonians came over to his side. This seems unlikely, since it was a raid rather than a full-fledged invasion.
36.3 neutralizing Aeacides: this was a brilliant campaign by Cassander, particularly in his exploitation of the geography of the region: by having Deinias and Atarrhias occupy the passes into Macedon, Olympias was cut off from help by land, while Polyperchon was neutralized in Perrhaebia.
36.5 civil and military governor: the Epirotes did not abolish the monarchy, but they now promoted the other branch of the royal family (Plutarch,
Pyrrhus 2), and Cassander sent Lyciscus to support the new young king, Neoptolemus II.
37.1 Gadamela: this is presumably the same place as the Gamarga of 19.32.2, or perhaps one was part of the other, but neither name is otherwise attested.
40.1 22,000 foot: as with the figures for the battle of Paraetacene, Diodorus omits the numbers of light infantry.
42.1 the majority of the cavalry: that is, the cavalry on Antigonus’ right wing, commanded by Demetrius, and the cavalry on Eumenes’ left wing, commanded by Eumenes.
43.1 greatly outnumbered: it is unlikely that the 3,000 Silver Shields routed so many thousands of Antigonus’ men; they must have been working in conjunction with the rest of Eumenes’ infantry.
43.2 gain the enemy’s as well: this echoes the famous saying of Alexander the Great at Gaugamela, when he learnt that his baggage train was captured, that ‘the victors will recover their own belongings
and take those of the enemy’ (Curtius,
History of Alexander 4.15.7).
43.5 the river: Diodorus has not told us, but this river must be the rallying point for Eumenes’ army, otherwise there would be no one to whom the Silver Shields could denounce Peucestas. However, there is no way of knowing what river this might be, since rivers (and lakes) in this desert are seasonal and temporary.
43.8 handed him over: according to Plutarch (
Eumenes 16), Antigenes, Teutamus, and the satraps had decided before the battle to kill Eumenes immediately after the battle. But in Diodorus’ version of events, Antigenes, at least, is loyal to Eumenes. Since Antigenes was put to death by Antigonus, Diodorus’ version seems likely.
43.8 enrolled in Antigonus’ army: Antigonus, however, still punished them, or some of them, for their long resistance to him: see 19.48.3–4.
44.2 the Macedonians … see Eumenes punished: ‘the Macedonians’ here means those in Antigonus’ army who still adhered to the condemnation of Eumenes that had taken place in Egypt after the murder of Perdiccas: 18.37.2.
45.7 safe and sound: bricks were made out of sun-dried mud, so they would dissolve in water.
46.5 the military governor: in appointing a Greek or Macedonian military governor to act as a counterweight to a native civil governor, Antigonus was taking a leaf out of Alexander the Great’s book. But the size of the forces
assigned to Hippostratus suggests that he was responsible for keeping the peace throughout the upper satrapies, not just Media.
48.1 the satrapies: the upper satrapies, that is, where the rebellion had taken place and satraps needed to be replaced.
48.2 Evitus to Areia: Stasander, who had sided with Eumenes, must have fled, or been killed or captured.
48.5 took him with him: Peucestas remained in the service of the Antigonids, but never again held high office. The fact that he was not killed by Antigonus after the battle of Gabene suggests that his poor performance there was due to his having been suborned.
48.6 at Antigonus’ disposal: Antigonus had made Seleucus interim satrap of Susiane, on top of his satrapy of Babylonia: 19.18.1. Now that Eumenes was dead, Xenophilus was prepared to treat with Antigonus.
49.4 Some barbarians: all cities had non-native residents; in this case, they were probably Thracians.
51.1 his advancement by Alexander: at the time of Alexander’s death, Aristonous was one of the seven elite Bodyguards: see the second note to 18.2.2.
51.4 a trial before the assembled Macedonians: she has already had a trial before the Macedonians, in the previous paragraph, but she was not actually present to plead her case in person. But Diodorus may have mistakenly made two trials out of a single one.
51.6 Alexander, who campaigned in Italy: in 334, Alexander I of Molossis responded to a plea for help from the southern Italian Greek city of Tarentum, which was at war with the local native peoples. It was at his marriage to Cleopatra, Alexander the Great’s sister, in 336, that Philip was assassinated. For Pyrrhus’ Italian campaign, see the note to 19.35.5.
52.2 take up residence there as well: Olynthus had been destroyed by Philip: 16.53. At much the same time, Cassander also founded Thessalonica, named in honour of his wife. Pallene is the most westerly of the three fingers of Chalcidice.
52.5 Cynna, whom Alcetas had killed: it was traditional for the new king to bury the old king, so in doing this Cassander was claiming the position of king; compare Ptolemy’s hijacking and burial of the corpse of Alexander the Great. Cynna, or Cynnane, a half-sister of Alexander the Great (her mother was Philip’s first wife, Audata of Illyris), had been killed in 321 by Perdiccas’ brother Alcetas, who was trying to prevent the marriage of her daughter Adea to Philip III. The marriage went ahead and Adea took the royal name Eurydice. There are a number of scholars who believe that the original occupants of Tomb II at Aegeae were not Philip II and one of his wives, as is commonly believed, but Philip III and Eurydice. ‘Aegeae’ is more usually known as ‘Aegae’ (as, in our manuscripts, at 16.3.5), modern Vergina, where (among other things) the palace and fabulous, probably royal tombs have been excavated.
53.1 from the Peloponnese: Alexander had taken advantage of Cassander’s absence, as had been feared in 19.35.1.
53.2 refounding Thebes: destroyed by Alexander the Great in 335 (17.8–14), so Cassander was boldly reversing one of the Conqueror’s major decisions.
53.4 come together from various locations: ‘Sparti’ could mean ‘scattered’, but it is more usually taken to mean ‘the sown men’ and to refer to the race that descended from the survivors of the warriors who sprang up from the ground when Cadmus sowed the teeth of a dragon.
53.5 driven out of the city: the Encheleans were an Illyrian people, and they were associated with Cadmus in legend, but this is the only occasion on which we are told that they sacked Thebes.
53.5 the seven-gated city of Thebes: Homer,
Odyssey 11.263. Amphion and Zethus attacked Thebes to seek revenge for the maltreatment of their mother by the current king and his wife.
53.5 what had happened to his children: Amphion’s wife, Niobe, boasted of her large family of seven sons and seven daughters, and claimed to be a better child-bearer than Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis. In punishment, her sons were shot down by Apollo and her daughters by Artemis.
53.6 rulers of Thebes: Eteocles and Polyneices, the sons of Oedipus. They had agreed to share power, but Eteocles refused to stand down to let Polyneices have his turn, so Polyneices came from Argos with six other heroes—the Seven against Thebes—but failed to take the city. The Epigoni, shortly to be mentioned, were the sons and successors of the Seven against Thebes, and it was they who successfully captured the city.
53.8 the oracle of the crows: the exiled Thebans were living in Thessaly, to the annoyance of the local inhabitants. The Thebans were reassured when
they were told by the Delphic oracle that they would remain there until white crows were seen. Eventually, for a drunken prank, some young men painted crows white, and the Boeotians were expelled and returned to their homeland.
54.2 the work that needed doing: a very damaged inscription survives, detailing some of the donations and benefactors: Harding, no. 131.
54.4 Ithome: Diodorus retains the old name of Messene, named after the mountain on which it was located.
54.4 at the Gerania isthmus: Mount Gerania, between Corinth and Megara, was a formidable barrier for anyone entering central Greece via the isthmus, and relatively easy to defend.
55.4 the potential to take power: it is not clear why Antigonus found Seleucus a threat. Perhaps it was no more than he wanted to be absolutely sure of whoever was responsible for the great wealth of Babylonia.
55.7 lose his life in battle against him: the Chaldaeans were a priestly class of astrologers and astronomers; see 17.112, but especially 2.29–31. The talk of Antigonus’ death at Seleucus’ hands refers to the battle of Ipsus in 301.
55.9 when we come to the relevant period of time: the account would have been in Book 21, now largely lost. Seleucus seems to have attracted prophecies—or even to have encouraged them for propaganda purposes. See also 19.90, and there are others in other sources (especially Appian,
Syrian History 9.56). See D. Ogden,
The Legend of Seleucus: Kingship, Narrative and Mythmaking in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), especially pp. 68–98 on this passage of Diodorus.
57.4 sent there by Cassander: it is not clear what Cassander was up to in Cappadocia, but nothing seems to have come of it. At 19.69.1, Diodorus attributes to Cassander a desire to conquer Asia Minor for himself, but this seems unlikely, and Cappadocia would be an odd place to start.
59.1 an alliance with Ptolemy: the alliance had been in existence since 320. Salamis (of which Nicocreon was king), Soli, and Paphos were the powerful cities Diodorus refers to, but the alliances Agesilaus did manage to arrange were enough to distract Ptolemy’s attention so that Antigonus could advance further down the Phoenician coast.
59.2 Joppa and Gaza: these were Ptolemy’s last outposts, so Antigonus now had all of Phoenicia and Palestine.
59.6 the final crisis of Demetrius’ reign: this account would have occurred in one of the lost books of Diodorus’ history, and was probably attached to an account of Phila’s suicide in 287, when the Antigonid cause seemed lost.
61.1 visitors: Macedonian visitors, presumably, since at 19.62.1 the assembly is said to have consisted of Macedonians.
61.2 destroyed by the Macedonians: it may have been destroyed by the Macedonians, but, strictly, they were acting on Greek orders: 17.14. Antigonus’ attempt to undermine Cassander’s marriage to Thessalonice reveals how important an element it was in Cassander’s legitimation as king of Macedon.
61.3 officially appointed general and legitimate custodian of the kingdom: this was probably true enough, not just an attempt to usurp the position. It is likely that Antipater ceded the guardianship of the kings to Antigonus at the Triparadeisus conference, even though Cassander soon prevailed upon his father to take the kings to Macedon for protection.
62.1 the freedom of the Greeks: it was of crucial importance to the Successors that they gained the allegiance of the free Greek cities within their domains, and won friends in the Greek cities in lands they intended to add to their domains. The cities, with their dependent villages, formed the basic infrastructure of the Successor kingdoms; they acted as hubs for the collection of taxes and as sources of manpower and expertise. Hence, apart from anything else, the Successors’ many new city foundations and resettlements. The relative urbanization of Asia was one of the main ways in which the Successors changed the face of the world.
62.2 Asander: see the first note to 18.3.1.
62.5 go to Caria to help Asander: we hear no more of this force of 10,000 mercenaries; given Asander’s defeat in Caria, they were clearly ineffective.
62.8 galleys: presumably the rest were triremes, left unmentioned because they were still the most common class of warship. For the designs of the various classes of ship, see Murray,
Age of Titans.
63.4 Cenchreae: the southern port of Corinth, on the Saronic Gulf.
64.1 the city: Diodorus can say just ‘the city’, because there was only one in Messenia, Messene (called ‘Ithome’ at 19.54.4).
64.1 the Nemean festival: the Nemean games were held every two years; these are the games of the summer of 315.
64.5 the Rhodian ships: presumably the ships of 19.58.5. It seems that they are different from the Rhodian ships commanded by Dioscourides, which was perhaps an existing Rhodian fleet, rather than ships specially built by the Rhodians for Antigonus.
64.8 Ecregma: a town roughly halfway between Gaza and Port Said, situated at the point where the marshy Lake Serbonis opens, through a ravine or fissure (that is the meaning of ‘Ecregma’), into the Mediterranean. On this meeting, see R. Simpson, ‘The Historical Circumstances of the Peace of 311’,
Journal of Hellenic Studies 74 (1954), 25–31.
65.3 after a siege: Mylae was a Messanian possession, nearby on the north coast of Sicily.
65.6 Abacaenum: Abacaenum lay a little south of Tyndaris in the north-east of the island.
65.7 Ferente, a town in Apulia: there is no known town called Ferente in Apulia, but there is a Forentum (Livy,
History of Rome 9.20.9).
66.1 for the second time: actually, both consuls were holding their fourth consulships. Papirius would go on to have a fifth, in two years’ time.
66.2 the Aetolian assembly: gaining the Aetolians was a major coup; given the weakness of their former ally Polyperchon, they must have leapt at the chance of an alliance with Antigonus. Aristodemus was always a faithful and effective agent for the Antigonids.
66.2 Cyllene: this town had formerly been Elis’ port, so they must have lost control of it at some point. In 400 the Eleans had been compelled to dismantle Cyllene’s fortifications, but the fact that they put it under siege now proves that the fortifications had been rebuilt.
67.1 Cratesipolis: her name means ‘holder of cities’, and is so decidedly unfeminine in a Greek context that it was probably awarded her as a nickname as a result of her successful command of Sicyon and Corinth. But compare Nicesipolis of Pherae, the mother of one of Philip II’s wives, whose name means ‘victory over cities’.
67.3 the Campylus river: location unknown, but presumably in the west of Aetolia, near the border with Acarnania.
67.4 Agrinium: nothing more is known of the Derieis, and the location of Sauria is unknown, but it cannot have been too far from Oeniadae. Oeniadae already existed as a strong town in the fifth century; the reason the Acarnanians did not flock there from their villages was presumably that it was currently in Aetolian hands. It was a superb harbour, and its possession was often a bone of contention between the two peoples. Agrinium lay to the south-east of Stratus, and had previously been an Aetolian town. Hence the brutality of the Aetolians when they took it back (19.68.1).
67.6 Glaucias: Glaucias was king of just one tribe, the Taulantians. The many Illyrian tribes never fully united, but Glaucias’ coalition was very strong at the time, and before long Cassander’s presence on the Adriatic coast had been more or less eliminated (19.70.7; 19.78.1).
67.7 returned to Macedon: as far as we know, neither Apollonia nor Epidamnus owed allegiance to any of Cassander’s enemies. The point of this campaign was to secure his western flank against an attempt to invade Macedon from that direction.
68.5 Asander: see the first note to 18.3.1. The fact that the true Cassander is mentioned very shortly makes it likely that Diodorus originally wrote ‘Asander’.
69.3 with their crews: so Cassander’s Carian campaign had been a complete disaster, since he lost on both land (19.68.5–7) and sea. The ships from Pydna were in the region probably because they had been used to transport the land army.
70.5 the battle against Antipater: 17.62–3. The battle had taken place many years earlier, in 331, but apparently resentment of Acrotatus still lingered.
70.5 opposed the decree: by Spartan custom, Spartiates who surrendered (rather than winning or dying on the battlefield) were called ‘Tremblers’; they were treated with disdain and lost some citizenship rights. But since Sparta was critically short of citizens, they did not apply the convention in this case, to the dismay of the hardliner Acrotatus.
70.6 the approval of the Ephors: five Ephors were chosen each year in Sparta, with wide-ranging powers, especially as regards internal security, foreign policy, and public finance. They also chaired assembly meetings and issued the orders that executed assembly decisions.
70.8 their kinship: Tarentum had been founded by Spartans in the eighth century.
71.6 the Messanians: the inclusion of the Messanians here is probably a mistake; see 19.102.
71.7 Heraclea: this is the town of Heraclea Minoa, which is called just ‘Minoa’ at 16.9.4.
72.3 Plestice: location unknown, and ‘Plistica’ may be the better spelling. This Samnite offensive was a response to Roman aggression against the Volscians, and marked the resumption of the Second Samnite War after some years of peace. Sora was a Latin town about 100 kilometres east-south-east of Rome.
72.4 Saticula: a Samnite town on the border of Campania, east of Capua.
72.6 Master of Horse: that is, Fabius became dictator. The Master of Horse was the traditional second-in-command to a dictator. At this period of Roman history, dictatorship was awarded for an initial period of six months, or until the task (usually military in nature, as here) had been completed. For the duration of the crisis, even consuls were subordinate to the dictator.
72.7 Laustolae: or ‘Lautulae’, a small Latin town near Tarracina.
72.9 right up until today: Luceria was especially important as a base during the Second Punic War against Hannibal (218–201).
73.3 through Thrace: he was probably based on the Thracian Chersonese, the modern Gallipoli peninsula. At any rate, that was where, starting in 309, he built his new capital, Lysimachea, on the site of former Cardia.
73.6 Hieron: presumably the so-named place on the north-east coastline of the Bosporus, though that was some distance from the towns threatened by Lysimachus.
73.7 unsettled Lysimachus: Antigonus was perhaps intending to defeat Lysimachus, take over his satrapy, and come at Cassander in Macedon from Thrace. We hear no more of Lycon and his fleet, however.
74.1 Telesphorus: a nephew of Antigonus, the son of an unknown sibling.
74.2 Polyperchon’s headquarters: Sicyon and Corinth were currently ruled by Cratesipolis (19.67.1), but she had obviously remained on good terms with her father-in-law.
74.3 to take command of the war against the Aetolians: Cassander’s general on the west coast of Greece was basically Lyciscus (19.36.5, 19.67.5), so Philip’s appointment was presumably temporary, while Lyciscus was ill or otherwise engaged. Lyciscus reappears at 19.88.2.
75.6 an alliance with them: ratifying the alliance with the Aetolians arranged by Aristodemus at 19.66.2. The Aetolians and Boeotians were at least cooperating, if not actually in alliance.
75.6 no common ground at all: Antigonus was trying to split up the enemy alliance by coming to terms with them separately; he had already tried this with Ptolemy at 19.64.8. In the famous Letter to Scepsis (Harding, no. 132), Antigonus puts the blame for the failure of the negotiations squarely on Cassander.
76.2 Cinna: Cinna is not otherwise known. Perhaps we should read ‘Pinna’ or ‘Tarracina’.
76.2 more than ten thousand lives … for a long time: it was during the pursuit that a vanquished army was at its most vulnerable. An extended pursuit such as this one was unusual, since even the victors needed not to stray too far from the battlefield in case the enemy rallied. It implies that the defeat of the Samnites was so thorough that there was no chance of their recovering.
76.3 Master of Horse: neither of these names is quite right: the dictator was Gaius Maenius, and the Master of Horse was Marcus Folius, according to Livy (
History of Rome 9.26.7).
77.2 to free the Greeks: Antigonus’ commitment to the freedom policy announced in the Proclamation of Tyre is impressive. Of course, it was also good propaganda, but it would be a mistake to think that it was entirely cynical.
77.4 Salganeus: a small town on the east coast of Boeotia, north-west of Chalcis.
78.2 supremacy in Greece: a later Macedonian king, Philip V (reigned 221–179), named Chalcis one of the three ‘fetters of Greece’, along with Demetrias and Corinth: Polybius,
Histories 18.11.5; Livy,
History of Rome 32.37.3.
78.4 with a view to making an alliance: although Demetrius was nominally the sole ruler of Athens, and whittled away at democratic institutions, it appears that he could still be forced to go along with the Assembly’s wishes. The Athenians who were in secret contact with Antigonus must have been an unofficial group, because Demetrius would never have allowed such contact to be official.
78.5 After Attica: despite his intense programme of liberating cities, Ptolemaeus left Cassander’s garrison on the Munychia acropolis of Piraeus in place, presumably because he lacked the strength to evict it.
78.5 continuous assaults: in short order, Ptolemaeus brought almost all of central Greece into alliance with Antigonus.
79.4 Pygmalion: Pygmalion was the king of Citium. The last we heard of Citium (19.62.6), it was under siege. Pygmalion probably surrendered and was allowed to stay on as king.
79.6 Potami Caron: this place, ‘Carian Rivers’, is not otherwise known. It must have been near Posideium. These were not major towns. Ptolemy’s gains were slight in military terms, but had considerable propaganda value. If he could persuade others in the Antigonid realm that Antigonus was incapable of protecting them, he could encourage secession.
80.2 twenty-four stages: a ‘stage’ was not a determinate distance, but simply the distance between staging posts on a route.
81.4 exceptionally handsome and tall: his father was so large that in addition to his nickname ‘Monophthalmus’, the one-eyed, he was also known as ‘Cyclops’, the one-eyed giant from Homer’s
Odyssey.
83.2 stop the creatures moving forward: I suppose this to resemble the medieval
cheval de frise, which was portable and easy to plant firmly on the ground. Some scholars think that Diodorus is talking not about pointed stakes (i.e. a palisade), but about a long chain of iron (not ‘iron-clad’) spikes—a kind of series of connected caltrops. But it is hard to get this sense from the Greek. Besides, why would one connect caltrops together? The first elephant to tread on them would drag them away from the others.
84.7 without their armour: this is all we hear about the heavy infantry. Did they even engage in the battle? See the next note.
85.3 more than five hundred men: five thousand, according to Plutarch,
Demetrius 5.2. If this figure is right, the heavy infantry must have engaged. The eight thousand who surrendered were presumably the mercenaries. The death of Pithon, son of Agenor, left Babylonia without a satrap, and therefore paved the way for Seleucus’ return.
85.4 the nomes: a nome was an administrative unit—a ‘county’, perhaps—in ancient Egypt. The number of nomes varied, but ultimately there were forty-two of them. It was standard practice for a victorious Successor to incorporate his enemy’s mercenaries into his own army. Ptolemy also gave his mercenaries land in Egypt, so that more land would be farmed and brought within the taxation system, and so that soldiers would be easily available for call-up.
86.3 desire his friendship: these sentiments are clearly taken from a pro-Ptolemy source, as are the assessments of his character in 18.28–36.
87.3 gave it back to the Eleans: Diodorus tells us no more of Telesphorus, but he seems to have remained loyal to the Antigonids after this brief defection.
88.1 Arymbas: more usually ‘Arybbas’; see also the notes to 16.72.1 and 18.11.1. Alcetas was Aeacides’ brother. The Epirotes ‘gave’ the kingship to Alcetas, just as in 19.36.4 they banished Aeacides (if that was indeed pan-Epirote action, rather than just Molossian), because they had formed themselves into a confederacy, constitutionally powerful, but still ruled by a king.
88.4 Eurymenae, a town in Epirus: the location of Eurymenae is not absolutely certain, but it probably lay south of Lake Pamvotis, the lake on which the modern city of Ioannina is situated.
90.4 the god had addressed him as ‘King Seleucus’: ‘Branchidae’ is another name for Didyma, near Miletus, where there was a famous oracle of Apollo managed by a priestly family or group of families called the Branchidae. Seleucus’ consultation took place after Ptolemaeus had chased him away from Erythrae (19.60.4).
92.4 Evagrus: possibly the same man as the Evagoras of 19.48.2.
92.5 some of the neighbouring territories: presumably Persis, Areia, and Parthyaea. Diodorus’ account is very compressed, since the process took Seleucus at least a couple of years. As he extended into the upper satrapies, it is not known in detail what administrative measures he put in place or took over. Most likely, he copied Alexander’s triad of satrap, general, and finance minister. To supplement his meagre forces, he seems to have recruited the mountain-dwelling Cossaeans, who had been enemies of both Alexander and Antigonus. Trouble from India was averted in 303 by ceding much of the frontier satrapies of southern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and southern Iran to the emperor Chandragupta Maurya, in exchange for several hundred war elephants.
93.2 Myous: this is the only occasion on which we hear of a town in Syria with such a name.
93.6 the natural defences of the region: Egypt’s natural defences were chiefly two: that a land army had to cross a desert to get there, and that there were few good harbours for ships.
94.1 the Nabataeans: this is the Nabataeans’ first appearance in history. Any visitor to the rock cities of Petra in Jordan and Al-Hijr in Saudi Arabia knows some of their later history.
95.1 at a certain rock: probably the place later known as Petra; ‘rock’ is
petra in Greek.
95.2 2,200 stades: the figure clashes badly with that of 19.98.1.
97.1 only a single, man-made way up to it: continuing with the assumption that the ‘rock’ being talked about is in fact Petra, this path must be the winding flight of stone-cut steps that leads up to the fortified summit of the tallest of the towering cliffs of Petra.
98.1 the Asphalt Lake: the Dead Sea, as we call it, which regularly sends up asphalt from its depths, though today not in such large quantities as Diodorus describes.
98.1 loses its characteristic colouring: asphalt commonly contains sulphur (hence, in part, the foul smell that Diodorus is talking about), and although nothing tarnishes gold, sulphur tarnishes the base metals, of which there are traces in gold. The same goes for silver, and bronze tarnishes anyway.
99.3 the preservation of the corpse can be permanent: this is probably not true. Asphalt (bitumen) was more likely used in the mummification process to coat the bandaged body. Its biocidal properties were known, since it was used, for instance, to protect vulnerable plants against pests, so the mummifiers probably appreciated that about it too. It might also or alternatively have been used to blacken the skin of the mummy. Diodorus has a fuller account of embalming at 1.91, and along with Herodotus,
Histories 2.86–8, it is the most important account. No Egyptian description survives, and, as far as literary sources are concerned, we rely largely on these two Greeks. The recent discovery of an ancient embalming workshop at the Saqqara necropolis in Egypt should cast more light. Asphalt was also used to waterproof boats, and as a builder’s mortar.
100.5 the Red Sea: the Persian Gulf. Euteles was presumably Seleucus’ governor of the region.
100.6 to keep an eye on the enemy: and to interrupt their supplies. Patrocles was conducting a kind of guerrilla warfare, which was not at all common in the ancient world.
100.7 due back as ordered: the information in this chapter on the Antigonids’ Babylonian war against Seleucus is precious; the war is otherwise little known. It seems to have gone on for two years (311–309), with a second major invasion, by Antigonus, in 310–309 (once the Peace of the Dynasts had freed him up), and to have finally been settled to Seleucus’ advantage by treaty. See Wheatley, ‘Antigonus Monophthalmus in Babylonia’; van der Spek, ‘Seleukos’; and Vădan, ‘Inception’.
101.3 Fregellae: the colonization of this town in Samnite territory by the Romans in 328 was the catalyst for the Second Samnite War. It was surrendered
to the Samnites in 320, after the Roman defeat at the battle of the Caudine Forks in 321 (unmentioned by Diodorus). After being taken back by the Romans in 313, it remained within the ambit of Rome.
101.3 the citadel of Nola: Nola lay south-east of Capua in Campania; ‘Calatia’ is a correction of a garbled text, and so the name is not absolutely certain. The nearby town of Caiatia would fit the bill as well.
102.2 instructions, privately delivered: presumably because the exiles in Messana had sympathizers in Syracuse who would leak the information to them if they had the opportunity.
103.5 and the Phoenicians: Carthage had been founded, perhaps late in the ninth century, by settlers from Phoenicia (from Tyre, to be precise); hence Diodorus occasionally substitutes ‘Phoenicians’ for ‘Carthaginians’.
105.1 concluded a treaty with him: the treaty that brought the Third War of the Successors to an end is commonly called the Peace of the Dynasts.
105.1 cities in Libya and Arabia: in other words, these three dynasts gained little or nothing, and certainly nothing like what they had demanded in 19.57.1. The war was pretty futile, and therefore a victory for Antigonus. But by granting all Asia to Antigonus, they left Seleucus, with territory in Asia, as a prominent loose end and guaranteed that there would be further fighting between him and the Antigonids. Seleucus was excluded from the treaty because it was a treaty for peace, and he was still at war. Besides, he had just declared himself ‘General of Asia’—the title once claimed by Antigonus—and that might have made the others suspicious of his intentions. But it is still puzzling why Ptolemy, say, did not come to Seleucus’ assistance against Antigonus and Demetrius. The bargain must have been that Ptolemy’s help came to an end with his gift of men to help Seleucus return to Babylon; see the use of the word ‘until’ at the end of 19.86.5.
105.1 the Greeks should be autonomous: in the Letter to Scepsis (Harding, no. 132), Antigonus claims that this clause was his doing and, given his crusade to free the Greek cities, the claim is plausible.
105.2 completely secret: as a consequence of this tactic, no one is quite sure when the murders took place; 308 is perhaps a better bet than 311/10, the year we are currently in.
105.4 Asia, Europe, Greece, and Macedon: from this point onwards our knowledge of the doings of the Successors decreases in line with Diodorus’ increasing interest in events in his native Sicily. But since the accounts of the Successors in these years are also patchy in Plutarch and Justin, it is not impossible that they all found less material in their sources.
105.5 Marrucini: an Italic tribe with territory on the east coast of south-central Italy. They were allies of the Samnites. Pollitium is unknown.
105.5 the place known as Interamna: the purpose of the colony was probably to protect the local farmland from Samnite raids. ‘Interamna’ means ‘between the rivers’. Of the several towns with this name in Italy, this one is Interamna Lirenas (on the Liris), south-east of Fregellae. As well as this colony, and those at Luceria (19.72.8) and on Pontia (19.101.3), they also in these years (314–312) founded colonies at Suessa and Saticula, effectively ring-fencing the Samnites with Roman allies. From now on, the writing was on the wall for the Samnites.
106.2 chariot-riders: it is not clear what the unique Greek word
zeugippai means. If my translation is correct, perhaps they fought from a light chariot. Alternatively, if
zeug- means ‘pair’ rather than ‘yoke’, perhaps they rode a pair of horses into battle, like the ‘two-horsers’ (
amphippoi) of 19.29.2.
107.2 at the strait: the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and the toe of Italy.
108.6 Carthaginians of the highest rank: there would not be very many such men. I suppose their presence was a tactical factor because each of them would have been accompanied by a sizeable personal cavalry guard.
109.4 salt water: the river’s modern name is the Salso, the salt river. It runs from north to south, joining the sea between Gela and Acragas.
Book 20
1.1 oratory: this was an extremely common Greek historiographical practice. Diodorus was perhaps thinking in particular of Theopompus of Chios, who worked as a speech-writer as well as a historian and relished speeches in his historical writing, or of Timaeus of Tauromenium, who was well known for inserting lengthy speeches into his history. Diodorus was not the only historian to have cut down on speeches; he may have borrowed the idea from Cratippus of Athens, a fourth-century historian (see
FGrH 64, F 1), and Pompeius Trogus seems also to have felt that speeches interrupt the narrative ( Justin,
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 38.3.11). There are also echoes of Polybius’ words at
Histories 36.1.1–7.
1.2 praise or find fault with their subjects: that is, epideictic rhetoric, speeches written for display, as distinct from the political oratory implied by ‘politicians and ambassadors’. The third branch of rhetoric identified by Aristotle in
The Art of Rhetoric was forensic, speeches written for the law courts. But Diodorus despised this branch of rhetoric: 1.76.1–2.
2.2 make use of speeches: in the extant books of Diodorus, extended speeches are very rare. There are none in the books translated in this volume. They occur only at 8.12, 10.34, 13.20–32, 13.52–3, 14.65–9, 21.21, 27.13–18, and 31.3. However, he is happy to give us short bursts of direct speech (in our books: 16.43.4; 16.87.2; 17.54.4–5; 17.66.5; 18.60.6; 19.97.3–5).
3.1 Aemilius: full names of Roman consuls mentioned by Diodorus, and corrections to his versions of their names, can be found in Appendix
2 (pp. 543–9).
3.3 men who had been schooled by danger: the Carthaginians had of course been fighting for a long time in Sicily, but Diodorus means (a) that Carthage itself had not been a theatre of war, and (b) that the Carthaginians themselves were no fighters; they largely employed mercenaries, especially from North Africa. Hence the importance of detaching the ‘Libyan auxiliaries’.
4.8 freedom: not just to bulk up his numbers, but also to ensure a loyal militia.
7.1 Demeter and Korē: Korē, ‘the Maiden’, is a common Greek name for Demeter’s daughter Persephone.
7.2 magnificent himation: see the note to 16.93.1 on the
himation. The garland was traditional headgear for a sacrifice.
7.2 a burnt offering to them of the entire fleet: that is, he had vowed to do so, or was pretending to have vowed to do so, if they were saved. Demeter and Korē, goddesses of cereal crops, were the protectors of Sicily because of its fertility.
7.3 the sacrificial victims: that is, something about the entrails and especially the liver of the sacrificed animal or animals indicated victory.
7.4 stood by the stern: ships were beached with their prows towards the sea, for rapid departure if needed.
8.1 Agathocles’ sorcery: the idea that rhetoric is a kind of sorcery is as old as Gorgias of Leontini (fifth to fourth century), one of its earliest practitioners, who said as much in his
In Praise of Helen.
8.4 make them pleasing: passages such as this suggest that Diodorus’ source for Agathocles’ African campaigns had visited Carthage.
8.7 White Tunis: this was probably on the site of modern Tunis (though this makes nonsense of Diodorus’ idea that it was 2,000 stades distant from Carthage; the distance is more like 100 stades). The site of Megalopolis is unknown.
9.2 stowed them in their own vessels: the sheaths that went over the ramming timbers were made of flawless bronze and were therefore very valuable as booty; they might also be used to decorate a monument commemorating naval victory.
10.5 and the allied cities: the ‘troops from the countryside’ would be largely Libyans, and the ‘allies’ Libyphoenicians.
10.5 two thousand war chariots: if these figures are right, almost all male Carthaginians of military age must have been called up for service.
11.1 his son, Archagathus: Diodorus varies between the form ‘Archagathus’ (which is also found at Justin,
Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 22.5) and, less commonly, ‘Agatharchus’ (as at 20.55.5 and at Polybius,
Histories 7.2.4).
11.2 shield covers: shields were covered with cloth or leather during transport, to keep them safe and shiny.
11.4 Athena: one of Athena’s most prevalent functions was as a goddess of war.
14.1 the god of their founders: Heracles was the Greek equivalent of Phoenician Melqart. The worship of Melqart was central to every colony founded by Tyre.
14.3 temples, simulacra and all: these were small model temples offered as dedications in Melqart’s sanctuary. The simulacra were miniature statuettes of the god.
14.6 fiery pit: this is clearly fanciful. It is more likely that the children were first burnt and then their remains were thrown into the pit—that is,
if the Carthaginians really did practise child sacrifice, which is not certain. The fanciful nature of Diodorus’ account (as well as contradictions in other sources), combined with the commonplace topic of Carthaginian cruelty, should make one pause before attributing child sacrifice to them.
At the most, it was an occasional, emergency practice, not as regular as Diodorus implies.
14.6 sacred fire within: Euripides,
Iphigeneia in Tauris 625–6. The words ‘and she replies’ have dropped out of the transmitted text and I have restored them. In our MSS of Euripides, the second line has ‘a great pit of stone’.
14.7 Cronus did away with his children: Cronus knew that his children would depose him from his position as chief deity, so every time a child was born he swallowed it. But when Zeus was born, Cronus’ wife, Rhea, gave him a stone to swallow instead of the child, and arranged for Zeus to be brought up. And in due course he took over his father’s position as chief deity.
15.1 completely wiped out: this stratagem would of course be exposed as soon as he sent the reinforcements to Carthage, but he was hoping to force the Syracusans to surrender before that.
15.3 opposed to what they were doing: they could not afford any dissent in the city, since they intended to continue resisting the siege and to wait for Agathocles to return.
16.1 weak man: ‘weak man’ translates the Greek
anandros, while Antander’s name is
Antandros—a rare Diodoran pun.
16.1 Erymnon of Aetolia: presumably the commander of the mercenaries, and therefore on the war council.
17.1 Neapolis: the city was destroyed by earthquake and tsunami in the fourth century
ce, and has only recently been rediscovered by underwater archaeologists.
17.1 Hadrumetum: an important Phoenician colony, pre-dating the foundation of Carthage, on the coast south of Carthage.
19.3 garrisoning the cities: despite the basic Antigonid policy of Greek freedom, it was always hard for the Successors to keep a promise to leave cities ungarrisoned. They might avoid installing a permanent garrison, but if the city was close to a war zone it might well have one temporarily.
19.4 the growth of Antigonus’ power: these moves by Ptolemy were a response to Seleucus’ success in the East. He could now (only six months after the peace) provoke Antigonus, knowing that he would have a powerful ally in Seleucus. Ptolemaeus’ rebellion, just mentioned, was also a response to relative Antigonid weakness.
20.1 grudge against Cassander: the grievance dated originally from Cassander’s resentment of Polyperchon’s regency and attempts to depose him: 18.49, 18.54, etc.
20.1 summoned Heracles, the son of Barsine, from Pergamum: this must have happened with Antigonus’ approval, since Pergamum was under his control.
He had been hoarding Heracles, so to speak, in order to use him some time against Cassander. Now that Heracles was almost of an age to be king, he put the plan into motion. Clearly by now the killing of Alexander IV (19.105.2–3) was no longer a secret.
20.3 the Aetolians … his wishes: they were still on good terms with Polyperchon (19.52.6), as long as he was not working with Cassander.
21.1 Nicocles, the king of Paphos: many scholars believe that the king so cruelly murdered by Ptolemy was not Nicocles of Paphos, but Nicocreon of Salamis, who was being punished by Ptolemy for treachery, since he had been Ptolemy’s viceroy of Cyprus (19.79.5).
21.3 this tragic fashion: Diodorus means this literally, not metaphorically: it was like the plot of the kind of Greek tragedy in which calamity falls unexpectedly on a household.
22.1 the Cimmerian Bosporus: this Bosporus has nothing to do with the well-known strait by Byzantium. The Bosporan Kingdom occupied the east of the Crimean peninsula and the Taman peninsula opposite.
22.3 the river Thates: the river flowed into the Sea of Azov (Lake Maeotis to the Greeks), but its precise location is unknown, and so therefore is the territory occupied by the Siraces.
24.4 the ancestral political system: it is not clear what Diodorus means by this, since what follows does not add up to a ‘political system’. The Spartocid dynasty, of which Eumelus was a member, had ruled Panticapaeum for over a hundred years, and before that the city had been ruled by tyrants. Perhaps an emergency constitution had been in place for the duration of the war.
24.4 no more wealth taxes at all: the
eisphora (literally, ‘paying in’) was an occasional tax on the rich to raise money in an emergency, usually for war.
24.5 ruled as Archon: a Spartocid king’s fullest title was ‘Archon of Bosporus and Theodosia and King of the Sindoi, Toretae, Dandarioi, and Psessoi’.
25.2 Callatis under siege: see 19.73. Either the siege went on for a number of years, or this indicates a separate uprising by Callatis. In either case, we do not know the outcome.
25.4 Sindice: a district within the Bosporan kingdom.
26.1 ‘mouse’: ‘mouse’,
mys in Greek, was also the word for ‘muscle’ in general and for the biceps in particular.
26.4 Cataracta and Ceraunilia: if Ceraunilia is modern Cerignola in Apulia, presumably Cataracta (the name implies a waterfall or rapids) was nearby. Talium is equally unknown. Diodorus’ account of Roman activity against the Samnites in this year is completely different from that of
others (Livy,
History of Rome 9.31; Zonaras,
Extracts of History 8.1). It may be that Diodorus is to be preferred here.
27.1 Demetrius of Phalerum: Demetrius was of course also the dictator of Athens (18.74.3). Since it is unlikely that he would have entrusted his gaining the Archonship to a lottery, which had been the way Archons had been chosen (from a list of volunteers) in Athens since 487, this is good evidence that he substituted election for sortition, probably as soon as he gained power in 317. In fact, it is likely that all the Archons Diodorus lists for the ten years of Demetrius’ regime were close associates of the dictator. He probably wanted the Archonship in this year because it was a year in which the Great Panathenaea was celebrated, which it was the Archon’s job to organize—a chance to shine and win popular favour. He would also have presided over Athens’ other major festival, the City Dionysia.
27.3 After that: Ptolemy undoubtedly took over more cities than those mentioned (e.g. Myndus: 20.37.1). The Ptolemies held this vital corner of Asia Minor for decades.
27.3 to cooperate with Ptolemy: Ptolemaeus, with his possessions in mainland Greece, would make a very useful ally for Ptolemy, who was planning to invade Greece (20.37).
27.3 drink hemlock: we know from an inscription (
I.Iasos 2) that before his death Ptolemaeus had done valuable work for Ptolemy, bringing the town of Iasus (which he had earlier won for Antigonus: 19.75.5) over to his side as part of his takeover of the region.
28.1 Stymphaea: Stymphaea, or Tymphaea, was the region of Macedon from which Polyperchon originally came.
28.1 fickleness … go over to Heracles: the fickleness of the Macedonian troops was perhaps not a factor so much as their fierce loyalty towards the Argead house, given that (a) Cassander had murdered the last legitimate king, Alexander IV, and (b) Heracles was therefore the last surviving male member of the house. Even so, Diodorus is premature in calling Heracles ‘king’, since he did not yet have possession of his kingdom; but perhaps Polyperchon had arranged for him to be publicly acclaimed king in Stymphaea.
28.2 General of the Peloponnese: in other words, he would have the same position under Cassander that he had under Antigonus, whom he was now betraying.
28.3 done away with the young man: this despicable act became a paradigm of the evil consequences of moral weakness: Plutarch,
On Spinelessness 4 =
Moralia 530d.
29.1 sixty years and ten months: at 15.60 the text, clearly corrupt, has 34 years for Cleomenes’ reign. Despite his longevity, Cleomenes appears to have been a rather ineffectual king.
29.4 Euryelus: high ground opposite the high ground of the Olympieium, with the Anapus river valley between them.
31.3 the liberation of the Greek cities: which had been garrisoned by either the Syracusans or the Carthaginians as they swept across the island after the battle of the Himeras river.
31.4 Xenodicus: he is called Xenodocus below, in 20.56.1–2 and 20.62.2–5.
31.5 Herbessus: a town overlooked by Mount Heraea, west of Morgantina and north of Gela.
32.1 Echetla: the location of Echetla is unknown.
32.2 Megara: commonly known as Megara Hyblaea, with the eponym referring to a Sicel king called Hyblon, who gave the Megarians land to settle in.
34.1 undertake to bring their forces over to them: it should be remembered that the majority of Agathocles’ forces were mercenaries rather than native Syracusans. They were usually led by a professional mercenary captain and recruiter, who, like his men, owed allegiance above all to a reliable paymaster and would be prepared to desert for a better offer.
35.1 Sutrium: the Etruscans, Rome’s ancient enemy, had decided to intervene in the war between the Romans and Samnites, in favour of the Samnites. Sutrium, east of Tarquinii, occupied an important position on the main route between Rome and Etruria, and had long been in Roman hands.
35.2 Allifae: a Campanian town north of Capua. But Allifae was back in Samnite hands only three years later. Perhaps Marcius assaulted the town but failed to take it.
35.5 Arretium, Cortona, and Perusia: Etruscan towns. It seems likely that only inland Etruscan towns were involved in this offensive, not the coastal towns.
36.1 censors were elected: two censors were elected, under normal circumstances, every five years for a term of eighteen months, to conduct a census, promote or downgrade people from one census class to another, according to their stated income, contract out public works, and, as guardians of Rome’s morals, decide on entry to and expulsion from the Senate. This 312 censorship is the first we know of where the censors had this full range of powers.
36.1 Lucius Plautius: Plautius’ first name should be Gaius. It appears from Livy,
History of Rome 9.29, that Plautius resigned in protest at his colleague’s popularism, and that from then on Claudius acted as sole censor.
36.1 eighty stades: the
Aqua Appia ran for about 16.5 km (10 miles) east of Rome. Much of it was underground, for security, and it has been estimated that it delivered about 73,000 cubic metres of water to the city every day.
36.2 expended the entire revenue of the state: this is not as wilful as it sounds, because he himself was responsible for increasing Rome’s revenues by his successful military campaigns. The Appian Way was intended, in the first instance, for military use, to enable Roman armies to move quickly and safely against the Samnites.
36.4 census classes of their choice: by these measures, Claudius made it possible for freedmen, and poor and landless men, who had previously almost entirely lacked political influence, to make their voices heard. Many freedmen were rich, but not in landed property, and by custom landless men voted last, by which stage of the process a majority had invariably been reached, so that their vote was ineffective. Claudius made it possible for their wealth to be assessed by their movable property, so that they could be assigned to the class to which their wealth entitled them. Likewise, he effectively enfranchised the poor by distributing them among all the tribes, rather than the four to which they had been restricted before, whose voices were rarely heard.
36.5 deprived none of them of his horse: Knights (
Equites) were given not just a horse by the State, but also money for its upkeep (and for that of their mounted batman). So if a censor refused a man his horse, it was a symbolic way of denying him entry into that census class, and if a man was already registered as a Knight, to deprive him of his horse was to downgrade him.
36.5 the consuls: that is, the consuls for the following year.
36.6 the most prestigious of the aedileships: at this stage of Roman history, there were four aediles, responsible especially for the maintenance of public buildings and public order, and for overseeing public festivals and markets. They also had some judicial functions. The four formed two pairs: one pair (plebeian aediles), elected by the people, were the original two; the other (curule aediles), introduced in 367, were elected by the tribal assembly. It is not clear what Diodorus means by calling one aedileship more prestigious, seeing that the functions of both pairs were very similar, but since the plebeian aediles were not elected by the entire people of Rome, he was perhaps not counting it as a proper political office at all, leaving just the pair of curule aediles.
37.1 Apollonides of Tegea: the Eusebian Olympic victor list has Andromenes of Corinth here, but since he was also the winner in the subsequent
Olympics, perhaps his name was miscopied for this festival too, in which case Diodorus’ version is to be preferred.
37.1 liberated Andros and installed a garrison: the island of Andros had also been garrisoned by Antigonus. It was a member of the Confederacy of (mainly Cycladic) Islanders, the protection of which Ptolemy would soon take over.
37.1 in the previous book: see 19.67.1–2. We hear no more of Cratesipolis. We do not know what happened to her, or whether the cession of her realm to Ptolemy was coerced or voluntary.
37.2 greatly increase his power: Ptolemy is often portrayed by modern scholars as cautiously pursuing a policy of securing his core territory, Egypt, and being little interested in emulating Antigonus and others in their attempts to take over the entirety of Alexander’s empire. But this expedition, in combination with the prospect of marriage to Cleopatra, Alexander’s sister (next paragraph), was Ptolemy’s great bid for power. It came to nothing, but that should not alter our assessment of his ambitions. Talk of ‘liberating’ the cities probably means that he wanted to form them into a league, along the lines of the League of Corinth founded by Philip II. See especially the papers by Hauben, Meeus, and Strootman in Hauben and Meeus (eds),
The Age of the Successors.
37.2 sailed back to Egypt: he retained the two cities for several years, until Demetrius, son of Antigonus, took them from him (20.102.2–3). His departure from Greece was perhaps prompted by news of Cleopatra’s death, which thwarted his bid for rulership of Macedon. Ptolemy was also claiming to be an illegitimate son of Philip II, but that was not enough on its own to legitimate rulership of Macedon.
37.3 the Alexander who campaigned in Italy: that is, Alexander I of Epirus, who died in Italy in 331. See the note to 19.51.6. For Cleopatra’s role in these years, see A. Meeus, ‘Kleopatra and the Diadochoi’, in P. van Nuffelen (ed.),
Faces of Hellenism: Studies in the History of the Eastern Mediterranean (4th Century bc–
5th Century ad) (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 63–92.
38.1 the Numidians: the same noun means both ‘Numidians’ and ‘Nomads’, because that is how the Numidians lived in those days; but within a century they had begun to urbanize and were moving in the direction of statehood, though nomadism remained a central aspect of the economy.
40.5 Marathon: the battle of Marathon fought in 490
bce.
41.2 straight up to a peak: as far as I am aware, no such cave has been discovered west of Automalax, but Diodorus’ description might fit the Slontha cave temple in Cyrenaica, at the modern village of Aslanta Lasamisis, where there are relief carvings representing Lamia.
41.5 measure: we still occasionally use ‘basket’ as a measure, as in ‘a punnet of strawberries’ or ‘a quarter cran of herring’.
41.6 he says: the lines are from an unknown play of Euripides, perhaps the
Busiris. A better version has Lamia speaking the lines herself: ‘Is there anyone on earth who does not know my name, a name to horrify mortal men, the name of Libyan-born Lamia?’
42.2 the Syrtis: the great gulf (the modern Gulf of Sidra) on the North African coast.
43.7 does not correspond to reality: at any rate, this is a limitation of Diodorus’ annalistic method of writing, whereby events that take several years are necessarily broken up as many times as there are years. But Diodorus occasionally circumvents this limitation by giving an extended history of a place, as of Thebes at 19.53.3–8.
44.6 the gravest danger: Bomilcar’s failed coup was the last attempt we know of by any single individual to make himself king. Absolute kingship had given way to a monarchy tempered by the aristocratic Council of Elders in about 480
bce, but from now on Carthage was a republic.
44.8 the Marsi: an Italic people of central Italy.
44.9 Caerium into submission: Caerium is unknown. It was probably a fortress near Caere, an important Etruscan town, as in Greece Ambracus was a fortress near Ambracia.
45.2 issued a proclamation: the proclamation would have focused on what he had come for: to free Athens and then the other Greek cities, in accordance with the promise made by Antigonus at the Proclamation of Tyre (19.61.1–3). Perhaps he would also have mentioned the league his father wanted him to create (see 20.46.5).
45.4 to Ptolemy in Egypt: where he became Ptolemy’s chief adviser for the creation of the library within the Museum. It was modelled on Aristotle’s library, which Demetrius knew well, as a member of Aristotle’s school.
46.2 Harmodius and Aristogeiton: by assassinating the brother of the tyrant Hippias in 514, these two were considered to have established democracy
in the city and were venerated as its saviours. This was the most prestigious position imaginable for statues of Antigonus and Demetrius. Plutarch (
Demetrius 10) lists more honours than those mentioned by Diodorus. Stratocles was the most prominent politician in the years of Antigonid supremacy in Athens, with over twenty-five surviving decrees in his name, and many more undoubtedly lost.
46.2 Saviour Gods: it was possible within Greek religion for living men to be regarded as gods, as long as they had godlike achievements to their name. Demetrius and Antigonus had saved Athens from starvation and tyranny, and held out the prospect of renewed glory in the future, so they were Saviour Gods.
46.2 Demetrias and Antigonis, to the existing ten: these new tribes were made up of demes removed from the other ten tribes. The council of five hundred necessarily became a council of six hundred, with each tribe still supplying fifty councillors each year. Before long, the rule that no one could be a councillor more than twice in a lifetime had to be given up, because the pool of citizens was not large enough for the rule to be retained with the two extra tribes.
46.2 Athena’s robe: the robe was presented to Athena with great ceremony each year. The gods showed their displeasure with this obsequious move by having a storm rip the robe as it was being escorted to the Acropolis (Plutarch,
Demetrius 12).
46.3 the Lamian War: for the Lamian War, see 18.12–13, 16–17, and for Antipater’s dissolution of the democracy, 18.18.4.
46.4 gave the city back to Athens: like most islands, Imbros had only the one city, so to possess the city was to possess the island. Imbros was usually occupied by Athenian cleruchs, whose job was to send grain back to Athens, and was considered therefore an overseas extension of Athenian territory, along with other islands, including Lemnos, which, unmentioned by Diodorus, was also returned to Athens at this time.
46.5 make policy for the Greeks: in other words, Demetrius formed the Greek cities and confederacies (or at least those that were Antigonid allies) into a league, a revival of Philip II’s League of Corinth. Harding, no. 138, is a copy of the charter of the league. Its first task was to decide how to respond to Cassander’s inevitable counter-attack.
46.6 his father’s orders: but were the orders a mistake? Demetrius was very close to securing Greece for the Antigonid cause, but his efforts would start to unravel without his presence, until eventually he had to return urgently (20.100.5).
46.6 peaceful terms with everyone: the Rhodians were prosperous traders and preferred peace to war for that reason. They had particularly strong commercial links with Egypt, and served in effect as brokers for Egyptian grain throughout the Aegean.
47.6 named Seleucia after him: Seleucus did indeed build several cities called ‘Seleucia’ (the two most important were Seleucia Pieria, the port of Antioch, and Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, not far north of Babylon); but the one that replaced Antigonea was Antioch, or Antiocheia-on-the-Orontes, to give it its full name.
48.2 he constructed … a ‘city-taker’: along with all other Greek historians, Diodorus has the habit of saying that a king ‘did’ something when in reality he ‘saw that it was done’. But in this instance the active tense is right, because Demetrius’ hobby was engineering.
49.4 heavy bolt-shooters: literally, ‘catapults capable of firing bolts three spans in length’. The word occurs only twice more (20.83.1, 20.85.3), and has on each occasion been translated ‘heavy bolt-shooter’. Three spans is about 66.5 cms, or 26 ins.
50.2 108 ships: this seems too low, and emendations have been suggested (see H. Hauben in
Chiron 6 (1976), 1–5) that would make the figure either 180 or 190, aligning it more closely with the figures of 20.47.1 and with other sources.
50.6 the boatswains: ‘boatswain’ translates
keleustēs or ‘orderer’. He was originally the man who beat the time for the rowers to follow, but by now he had long had others to do the physical work for him, while he was a senior officer, responsible, among other things, for the oarsmen and for transmitting the captain’s orders to them.
52.3 left wing: Diodorus meant to write ‘right wing’.
53.1 sailed back to Egypt: the loss of Cyprus was bad enough for Ptolemy, but he also lost control of the sea, which remained Antigonid for many years.
53.2 the same title and rank: joint kingship with the favoured son became a common tactic in the early Hellenistic kingdoms. It was a way of trying to ensure a smooth succession, as well as a practical way of managing such vast and complex kingdoms.
53.4 the territory they had originally been allotted: this is true of Lysimachus, but not of Cassander, who was not involved in either of the two major allotments of territory—at Babylon in 323 (18.3), and at Triparadeisus in 320 (18.39)—and who gained his territory by conquest.
55.3 lake that lay beside it: this Hippou Acra is the same as Hippo Diarrhytus, which lay on the coast north-west of Carthage, beyond Utica.
57.5 almost as black as Ethiopians: to Diodorus ‘Ethiopia’ means, geographically speaking, the huge desert area south and west of Ammon (17.50.2). He probably thought of it as extending far in both directions, because ‘Ethiopian’ in Greek just means ‘black’ (literally ‘burnt face’), so Ethiopia was wherever black-skinned people lived.
57.6 as mentioned in my third book: there is nothing about this in Book 3 as it stands. This is yet another sign that Diodorus did not revise the final text of the
Library. Book 7 would be a more natural home for material following the Trojan War, so perhaps the material was in the lost Book 7, in which case Diodorus’ only mistake was to have written ‘Book 3’ instead of ‘Book 7’.
63.5 Potter! Kiln-operator!: Diodorus’ original readers would have immediately caught the snobbery implicit in these words. The ‘rather illustrious city’ is steeped in upper-class disdain of those who had to work for others, and especially to work indoors by a fire, ruining their bodies by doubling the noonday heat. See, for instance, Xenophon,
On Estate-management 4.2–3.
69.3 the setting of the Pleiades: the setting of the Pleiades in November was traditionally taken to be the end of the sailing season (as their rising in spring was its start) and the onset of wintry weather. See also 20.73.3 and 20.74.1.
69.3 murdered by the soldiers: ordinary soldiers may have been involved in the murders, but it appears from Polybius,
Histories 7.2.4 that certain high-ranking individuals were the ringleaders.
71.2 broken on the wheel: the victims were tied to large cartwheels and then beaten with clubs, the gaps between the spokes of the wheel guaranteeing that their bones would be broken.
71.3 Phalaris’ bull: see 19.108.1. There is a fuller description at Polybius,
Histories 12.25.
73.3 the setting of the Pleiades: see the note to 20.69.3. But Antigonus felt he had to persevere, in order to take advantage of Ptolemy’s relative weakness after Demetrius’ great victory at Salamis.
75.4 Pseudostomon: the word means ‘false mouth’, so perhaps the town was founded on a mouth of the Nile delta that had become silted up. Note that although Antigonus is the subject of this sentence, it was Demetrius who was in fact in charge of the fleet. As often with kings, generals, and other potentates, ‘He sailed’ means ‘He had his men sail’.
76.4 the Pelusiac mouth of the river was in enemy hands: Antigonus’ strategy had been designed to get around this difficulty. Demetrius had been supposed to land beyond Pelusium, thereby forcing Ptolemy to weaken his defences there by withdrawing men to face Demetrius.
78.2 tyranny makes a fine shroud: the story is repeated by Diodorus from 14.8 and is commonly referred to by other writers. The meaning of the saying is that, since one is going to die anyway, one might as well die as a tyrant.
79.3 men who speak their minds: it was a common criticism of democracy that one had to dissemble before the people, because to speak one’s mind would get one into trouble.
79.5 150 talents: the gold–silver ratio at the time was about 10:1.
80.1 Sora and Calatia: this represents an unexpected Samnite irruption into Campania.
80.1 Silvium: the town had been captured by the Samnites a couple of years earlier.
80.4 their farmland: Anagnia and Frusino were towns of the Hernici, south-east of Rome. Their ‘infractions’ were to have succumbed to Samnite
pressure and taken up arms against Rome. Anagnia lay less than 65 km (40 miles) from Rome.
81.3 his will regarding the overall disposition of his kingdom: this contradicts Diodorus’ narrative at the start of Book 18, where he assumes that Alexander left no will, and that the Successors had to decide things for themselves. Almost certainly, Alexander left no will, at Rhodes or anywhere else. See A. B. Bosworth, ‘Ptolemy and the Will of Alexander’, in A. B. Bosworth and E. Baynham (eds),
Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 207–41.
82.2 put it under siege: Rhodes had entered into an alliance with Antigonus in 312 (see 19.77.3). We do not know the terms of the alliance, but it is possible that the Rhodians were infringing it by refusing to help the Antigonid cause and therefore that Antigonus was justified in threatening them. But the problem they faced (as emerges from Diodorus’ next sentence) was that they also had an alliance with Ptolemy, which Antigonus was asking them to infringe. On the other hand, Diodorus has just said that Antigonus approached the Rhodians for an alliance now, in 306, so perhaps the 312 alliance had lapsed, having been only a temporary measure.
82.4 Loryma: in Caria, on the Anatolian mainland across from Rhodes, and one of the island’s mainland possessions. See the note to 20.97.5.
84.2 residents or temporary visitors: in Classical Athens, foreigners were allowed to stay in the city for a month before they were required to register as ‘metics’ (resident aliens, but literally ‘immigrants’). Perhaps the time allowed in Rhodes was longer, so that even temporary foreigners might want to stay and fight.
84.3 honoured in the theatre at the Dionysia with a panoply: these and other similar provisions for the treatment of war dead and their families are known from other Greek states, such as Athens and Thasos. The Dionysia, the festival of Dionysus, was used for such purposes in Athens as well, displaying the might and magnanimity of the state.
84.6 five hundred for a slave: does this make sense? First, rather large sums of money are involved. Second, why bother with the money? Why not just exchange prisoners? Third, the alleged arrangement would strongly favour the Rhodians, by keeping the number of defenders up, so it is unlikely that Demetrius would have agreed to it.
86.1 the harbours: Rhodes had two harbours, the Great Harbour and a smaller one, adjacent to each other on the north-east side of the city. Diodorus does not always make clear which harbour he is talking about.
88.3 the Prytanes: five Prytanes were elected every six months in Rhodes, to oversee the Council (the members of which were also elected for six months), whose job was to prepare business for the popular assembly and to preside at assembly meetings.
88.3 before all was lost: it is puzzling that the rich were not already involved. The Prytanes can only have been asking them for money (to pay, in this instance, for the crews of ships), but Diodorus’ account makes it sound as though they crewed some ships themselves. There were not enough of them to do that. It looks as though Diodorus has misunderstood his sources or conflated two episodes.
88.5 the iron-plated palisade: this is another way to describe the ‘floating palisade’ of 20.85.2 and 20.86.3. ‘We should probably envision a long boom made of squared logs held together with iron nails and reinforcement plates at the joins between the logs’ (Murray,
Age of Titans, 115).
88.5 the third contraption: Diodorus’ language implies that there were only three siege engines mounted on ships, but in 20.85.1 there were four, two sheds and two towers. Perhaps there were only three left by now.
90.3 the Paeligni: an Italic tribe, and staunch allies of the Samnites. Their neighbours were the Marrucini (19.105.5) to the east, and the Marsi (20.44.8) and Aecli (20.101.5) to the west.
90.4 Gaius Gellius: at
History of Rome 9.44.13, Livy calls him Statius Gellius. In general, Livy’s account of the events of this year is somewhat different from that of Diodorus. Bola is unknown.
90.4 Serennia: a mistake for ‘Cesennia’ (Livy,
History of Rome 9.44.16), but the town is in any case unidentifiable.
91.2 a ‘city-taker’: he built a city-taker also for the siege of Salamis (20.48.1–3). There is another description of the current monster in Plutarch,
Demetrius 21.
92.5 some truly enormous ships: we hear of his commissioning ‘thirteens’, ‘fifteens’, and ‘sixteens’ (Plutarch,
Demetrius 32 and 43). For the designs of the various classes of ship, see Murray,
Age of Titans.
93.3 triēmioliae: see the note to 16.61.4, though these ships are called
triēmioliae, not just
hēmioliae. They seem to have had a third half-bank of oars for extra speed.
97.5 their Peraia in Asia: the Rhodian ‘Peraia’ (the ‘land on the other side’) consisted of the towns, villages, and farmland possessed by the Rhodians on the nearby mainland of Asia Minor. Many islands close to coastlines had such a Peraia.
99.3 keep its revenues: I take this vague phrase to mean both that they would continue to be allowed to do business even with Antigonid enemies, as they had before, and that they would be untaxed by Antigonus.
100.1 after the siege had gone on a year: it may not seem that Diodorus’ narrative covers a whole year (and he has no doubt omitted some details he found in his sources), but there were long periods of stalemate, while, for instance, Demetrius built the city-taker, or repaired his machines.
100.5 as his father had wanted: Antigonus was presumably motivated by the news that the situation in Greece was critical and demanded Demetrius’ attention.
100.6 abandon their friendship with Cassander: the last time we met the Boeotians, in 20.28.4, they were still honouring the treaty they had made with Antigonus in 19.75.6. Cassander had won them over in the interim, while Demetrius was absent from Greece.
100.6 an alliance with the Aetolians: the Antigonids had entered into an alliance with the Aetolians at 19.75.6. Either Diodorus has forgotten this, or the alliance had lapsed in the interim.
100.7 Spartacus: more usually spelled ‘Spartocus’.
101.3 the master of the winds: Aeolus; see especially Homer,
Odyssey 10. Lipara was the largest of the so-called Aeolian Islands, north of Sicily.
101.3 a being named Hephaestus: the name of the god of fire, ‘Hephaestus’, was often used as a synonym for fire. Agathocles’ death is recounted by Diodorus at 21.16.4–6. He was poisoned and then placed on his funeral pyre while still alive.
101.3 saving their parents at Etna: in legend, Amphinomus and Anapia were rescuing their parents from an eruption of volcanic Etna, and Hephaestus, whose workshop was said to be inside the mountain, parted the lava flow and allowed them to pass. The spot where this happened was known as ‘the Place of the Pious’.
101.5 peace with each other: the peace probably left both sides with what they currently possessed—in other words, major gains for the Romans, and major losses for the Samnites.
101.5 the Aecli: otherwise known as the Aequi, they occupied a substantial part of the mountains east of Rome. They had been restive for a while, and had inclined to support the Samnites in the war. The Roman campaign against them was particularly brutal, and was certainly a factor in persuading nearby peoples to end the war against Rome; see the next note.
102.3 the founder of a city: it was universal practice for founders of cities to be venerated as heroes—more than human, but less than gods. Within a couple of years, the city had reverted to its original name.
103.1 its harbours: Corinth had two harbours: a northern one on the Corinthian Gulf called Lechaeum, and a southern one on the Saronic Gulf called Cenchreae. Cenchreae fell to Cassander at 19.63.4, but it seems that his occupation was only temporary.
103.2 the Acrocorinth: the massive acropolis of Corinth; the shrine of Sisyphus, a legendary king of Corinth, was probably situated somewhere on its northern slope, overlooking the town.
103.7 how things stood with Demetrius: he was close to eliminating Cassander from southern Greece. The roll call of places that fell to him is incomplete in Diodorus; from elsewhere, we can add or infer Argos, much of Argolis, and possibly Elis too.
104.1 Cleonymus as general: in an earlier war, the Tarentines had also received help from Sparta: 16.62.4. Tarentum was originally founded by Spartans. It is not clear that the Tarentines were already at war with Rome, or whether they first clashed some years later. Certainly Diodorus does not mention the Romans again in this stretch of narrative. He might have been confused by the fact that after the end of the conflict with the Lucanians, the Tarentines entered into a formal treaty with the Romans, who were allies of the Lucanians. Or he might have been confused by the fact that Cleonymus, at any rate, does seem to have clashed briefly with the Romans, according to Livy (
History of Rome 10.2).
104.2 the Messapians: the Messapians occupied much of the heel of Italy; the Lucanians, who were immediate neighbours of the Tarentines, some of the toe.
105.1 captured their town: we do not know what Lucanian town Diodorus means. The location of Triopium is unknown.
105.3 Cleonymus sailed back to Corcyra with his forces: Cleonymus continued his career as a cross between a mercenary commander and a brigand for
a while before being accepted back in Sparta; in 272 he died in the course of, or as a consequence of, an unsuccessful bid for the Agiad throne which he had launched with the help of Pyrrhus of Epirus. He had expected to gain the throne originally on the death of his father, Cleomenes II, in 309 or 308, but he was a second son, and the Spartans instead chose Areus, the son of Cleomenes’ dead eldest son.
107.2 his general, Prepelaus: since Prepelaus was primarily Cassander’s general, it is quite possible that his name has dropped out of the text and should be restored a couple of sentences earlier: Cassander ‘sent Prepelaus as general’ along with the forces he gave Lysimachus, who was clearly the commander-in-chief of the anti-Antigonid forces.
107.4 come over to his side: this was not Docimus’ first act of treachery: see 19.16.3–4. There was a town in Phrygia, not far north of Synnada, called Docimeum, which was presumably his headquarters.
109.2 to winter quarters: in the section of his
Stratagems called ‘On Escaping from Difficult Situations’, Frontinus says (1.5.11) that Lysimachus’ men filled in sections of the trench with rubble to aid their escape.
109.7 Amastris … the ruler of the city: the Persian princess Amastris became Craterus’ wife at the Susa mass wedding (see 17.107.6). Then she married Dionysius, tyrant of Heraclea Pontica, and when he died (see 20.77.1), she acted as regent for her underage sons. Before Lysimachus’ marriage to Amastris, the powerful city had been aligned with Antigonus, so this was a major coup.
110.1 initiated before the appointed day: for the Eleusinian Mysteries, see H. Bowden,
Mystery Cults of the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). Diodorus’ account of this episode is vague. Demetrius’ chief Athenian flatterer, Stratocles (20.46.2), arranged for the three-stage initiation to happen all at once by dint of renaming the current month twice. Bizarre though this may sound, it should at least be noted that renaming months was not uncommon in cultures that had a 360-day year, where extra months had to be added every few years.
110.2 the harbour of Larisa: this is not the famous Thessalian Larisa, but Larisa Cremaste, on the mainland just north of the north-western tip of Euboea, in Achaea Phthiotis.
110.3 Thebes: again, this is not the famous Thebes—Demetrius was not in Boeotia—but Phthiotic Thebes, and the other places mentioned are all in Achaea Phthiotis. Dium and Orchomenus are not otherwise known, but they were villages or small towns, and we do not know the names of every village or small town in ancient Greece, so it is better not to emend the text. Cassander was trying to strengthen Phthiotic Thebes by incorporating more of its outlying villages. It was far from unknown for recent Macedonian kings, since the time of Philip II, to merge towns, moving populations around. For the topic in general, see Boehm,
City and Empire.
111.4 Cius and [. . .]: the transmitted text has ‘Arrine’, but there is no such place in or near Mysia, and no emendation is very plausible. We have to accept that we do not know the name of the other town.
111.4 ruled over Cappadocia and Paphlagonia for thirty-six years: Mithridates III of Cius, probably the son of Mithridates II (some sources say his father was Ariobarzanes), was probably a member of the Iranian noble family that had ruled Cappadocia for quite a while, and so came to inherit the throne of Cappadocia-cum-Paphlagonia as well. He used this as a foundation for carving out a new kingdom, that of Pontus, so he is known not just as Mithridates III of Cius, but as Mithridates I Ctistes (the Founder) of Pontus.
113.1 all the cities of Coele Syria: Ptolemy was helping his allies—and helping himself, since he always wanted to possess Phoenicia and Coele Syria—by attacking Antigonid interests in the Near East.
113.5 the next book: very little of the final twenty books of Diodorus’ history survives. We have only excerpts preserved by other authors and an occasional longer paraphrase.