In search of the Lost testament of Alexander the great

‘One should not look for thoughtful, or even consistent, characterisations any more than one looks for sincerity or accuracy… the mistake has commonly been made of trying to divide Alexander’s historians into two classes, favourable and unfavourable.’²

‘A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.’³

Disenchanted with the legacy of the literary output of these historians of old, the Roman-era satirist Lucian, whose essays have been described as forming a bridge between the dialogues of philosophers, the fantasy of Aristophanes and the criticisms of the satirists, wrote a parody appropriately named A True History to drive his point home. It was written in the thick of the Second Sophistic (broadly 54-230 CE), a period that recalled Rome’s nostalgia for all things Greek. Although Lucian proposed a historian’s mind should be ‘like a mirror’ – so reflecting events as they truly appeared – he was well aware of the cracks in the glass too.⁴

Besides proposing a trip to the moon, the Blessed Island and the Morning Star, and possibly drawing inspiration from the fantasy of Antonius Diogenes’ The Wonders Beyond Thule, Lucian’s satire on historicity ridiculed the writers who gave fantastical events a little too much credence.⁵ Amongst his victims were Homer, Herodotus and Ctesias’ Indike along with his twenty-three book Persika (history of Persia, the books appeared in the early 4^th century BCE), which, considered together, formed the backbone of Alexander’s knowledge on Asia. Lucian, a self-proclaimed barbarian (most likely ethnically Assyrian), summed up his introduction with: ‘When I come across a writer of this sort, I do not much mind his lying, the practice is much too well established for that, even with professed philosophers; I am only surprised at his expecting to escape detection.’⁶

What becomes clear from the fragments of these lost accounts is that these ancient authors have never lacked attitude and agenda, and they showed little hesitation in criticising their literary forerunners, either for the sake of self-promotion, or to hamstring a rival. In fact it has been proposed that: ‘The contentious spirit of Greek historians can be considered a significant catalyst in the development of Greek historiography.’7 But that might be a touch encomiastic for the state of literary affairs, for when Hecataeus, the Milesian geographer and mythologist of the 6th BCE, complained: ‘I write these accounts as they seem true to me, for the stories told by the Greeks are various and in my opinion absurd’, he was apparently not offering posterity a methodology to better them.⁸ We know that historians who were broadly contemporary with Alexander and his father, such as Theopompus of Chios and Anaximenes of Lampsacus, and probably Duris of Samos too, even used their prologues and prefaces to attack their peers. As Momigliano put it: ‘The Greek and Romans were not apt to kneel in silent adoration before their own classical writers.’⁹

Less contentious are the few brief references we have to the period of Alexander’s immediate successors, the Diadokhoi, in, for example, a fragment of the Parian Chronicle (otherwise known as the Parian Marble) compiled ca. 264/3 BCE which cover events from 336 to 302/1 BCE, as well as the Babylonian Chronicle of the Successors, a fragmentary cuneiform tablet that now resides in the British Museum.¹⁰ A further inscription found at Scepsis recording the contents of a letter from Alexander’s one-eyed general, Antigonus Monophthalmos, to the Greek cities of Asia Minor, is an enlightening insight into the state of affairs and a fragile peace of 311 BCE that did not last. Stelae like these are, epigraphically speaking, primary witnesses too if they were inscribed by contemporaries; moreover, they have little room for the rhetoric that we find interwoven into manuscripts, a contention that would hold true were it not for the Egyptian Satrap Stele (erected in 311 BCE) which essentially reads as Ptolemaic propaganda in stone.¹¹ As Sir Mortimer Wheeler reminded us in what serves as a useful warning on archaeological evidence: ‘The archaeologist is digging up, not things, but people’.¹²

So here we take a closer look at the background of the ‘people’: those who preserved the tale of the Alexander we just attempted to survey. They became kings, or the generals and court favourites of kings who were themselves veterans of the campaigns, and their recollections were the stock for the secondary and tertiary stews served up in the 500 years that followed, a few of which survive on the classics menu of today.

Strabo considered that ‘who wrote about Alexander preferred the marvellous to the true’, and even Arrian, who looked to court sources for reliable detail, summed up his frustration with pessimistic lines: ‘So, we see that even the most trustworthy writers, men who were actually with Alexander at the time, have given conflicting accounts of notorious events with which they must have been perfectly familiar.’¹³ So we are standing on uncertain ground with the historians who both educated Alexander, and as those who educated us on him. It is in this light we need to adjudicate on what we read today, recalling the sobering advice: ‘Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.’¹⁴

We start with Callisthenes the son of Demotimus of Olynthus, as he was the first to put pen to ink in Alexander’s name. Callisthenes was appointed by Alexander as what amounted to ‘official’ campaign historian, most likely through the influence of his relative, Aristotle, who reputedly warned his protégé on his indiscreet tongue when quoting lines from the Iliad, here poetically translated as: ‘Alas! My child, in life’s primeval bloom, such hasty words will bring thee thy doom.’¹⁷ Plutarch reported an ulterior motive for Callisthenes joining the Macedonian adventure: it was to convince Alexander to re-settle his native city, Olynthus, destroyed by Philip II in 348 BCE for its part in sheltering the king’s half-brothers, both of whom were destined for the axe.¹⁸ In fact Callisthenes was following Aristotle’s lead with this request, for he had likewise petitioned Philip to restore his birthplace, Stagira, destroyed in the same year when Macedonian forces annexed the Chalcidian Peninsula.¹⁹

Callisthenes was now mandated to toe the Argead corporate line; his new role was more akin to front-line reporting by a journalist employed by a state newspaper: a Macedonian Party Pravda. Although his account was to be a political manifesto, it became something of a biographic encomium that attempted to embody ideals that would appeal to Greek consumption.²⁰ Callisthenes had already proven himself an able historian having completed a Hellenika (Greek history from ca. 387-357 BCE), a Periplous (circumnavigation) of the Black Sea, and On the Sacred War (which may have assisted Philip’s cause in that conflict in Greece), amongst other works, before joining Alexander.²¹ He, like Theopompus, Anaximenes, Ephorus of Cyme and other writers of the 4^th century BCE, attempted more than one literary genre.²²

Callisthenes was employed at a turning point in history. Philip II had defeated the Greek alliance at the battle at Chaeronea and Alexander had levelled Thebes after which he enforced his father’s edicts: the Boeotian League (headed by Thebes) was abolished and the Greek city-states had already been reorganised into an uneasy alliance in the form of the Hellenic League, more commonly referred to as the League of Corinth and its imposition of a Common Peace. The notion of ‘freedom’, underpinned by Isocrates’ calls for Greek unity in an environment where perennial city-state war was crippling the land, was now revived in a war of revenge on the Persian Great King, Darius III, and Callisthenes performed his part. His description of the Battle of Gaugamela and which ended Achaemenid rule, has been termed ‘nothing short of a Pan-Hellenic set piece’.²⁴ It was the last major battle the campaign historians would ever witness.

Callisthenes reportedly proposed, in Thucydidean style: ‘In attempting to write anything one must not prove false to the character, but make the speeches fit both the speaker and the situation’; it dovetailed neatly with his contention that ‘history’ was ‘philosophy teaching by example’.²⁵ But Polybius later warned, writing as he was when Macedonia fell to Rome, ‘discursive speeches destroy the peculiar virtue of history’,²⁶ and many we read in classical accounts do appear self-constructed, much like the dialogues that formed almost twenty-four per cent of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War in which speech and narrative is bound together as firmly as in the Iliad.²⁷ This questions the extent to which words defined our history or events truly defined the words.

But self-righteous statements of method on reconstructed dialogues like these, repeated in various guises throughout Greek and Roman history, at once reveal an epideictic addiction and its supposed antidote, although mimesis, the ‘imitation of characters and emotions’, was considered a virtue of historical prose style.²⁸ But rather than narrowing the corridor of artistic license, this implicitly widened the path for a logos pseudes, untrue discourse, for the character and situation were both the historian’s to originate. In the case of Callisthenes, by merging didactic discursions into his history with antiquarian scholarship, he was now writing in ‘an almost rhetorical’ manner, according to Cicero, who termed him a ‘hackneyed piece of goods’; Polybius thought Callisthenes’ statements were simply ‘absurd’.29

Extant fragments of Callisthenes’ campaign account reveal a systematic denigration of the influential old guard general Parmenio who was executed on Alexander’s orders in late 330 BCE.³⁰ Knowing when Parmenio died, and supposing when Callisthenes followed him (conflicting reports make exact dating impossible, but no later than 327 BCE), we have our termini within which this latter part of his work might have been released. Campaign-related detail is limited and not all testimonia we have is necessarily first-hand.³¹ Fragments contain geographical digressions on Asia Minor linking sites to Homeric legend, and they do not suggest a coherent or progressive campaign log; they may, in fact, be taken from Callisthenes’ earlier works.

A Thucydides he was not, but Callisthenes’ book was official, vetted and, we assume, sanctioned by Alexander before publication, and thus not easily contradicted by his contemporaries. Moreover, written in ‘real time’, it was a veritable campaign atomic clock when personal memories faded, as well as an invaluable spinal column for new flesh to be grafted onto. So modern historians remain vexed by the paucity of references to Callisthenes in the extant sources. Why do the histories we have, based on the books by Alexander’s contemporaries such as Ptolemy and Aristobulus, stay silent on his contribution? In the case of Ptolemy’s testimony the answer is easily deduced: citing Callisthenes as the source would have undermined his own eyewitness position, and furthermore, the tactless sophist had been controversially executed in his presence and possibly with Ptolemy’s encouragement.³²

Hemmed in on one side by his philosophical precepts, and with an ever more censorious king the other, Callisthenes should have trodden carefully when sermonising on campaign, as Aristotle warned.³³ Yet it appears he did not, for according to Arrian he tactlessly claimed that Alexander and his exploits (along with a share of divinity) would be forgotten without him and his pen.³⁴ His aphorism has undertones of the more cynical quip: ‘Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.’³⁵ Callisthenes had ‘kept his superfluous wit but had thrown away his common sense’ and that may have spelled the end.³⁶ But his reminder proved prophetic and with him went valuable detail no one has since recovered.

As a result, it appears that only a few key episodes from Callisthenes’ campaign account survived for the Roman-era historians to consult. Moreover, Arrian’s references to him come with second-hand wrappings, such as: ‘… it is said that Callisthenes the Olynthan…’ and ‘… the following remark of his, if indeed it has been correctly recorded…’. Hammond puts this down to Arrian’s disdain for the Olynthan and yet Plutarch only twice cited Callisthenes as a source, and he too, like Arrian, could have extracted through an intermediary.37 He is not named as a source at all in the Vulgate genre. If we require further proof that his history disappeared early on, we simply need to recall that the Greek Alexander Romance, still popularly referred to as a Pseudo-Callisthenes production, was at some point (in its earlier less fabulous form) credited to him; this was a misattribution only possible in the absence of the original. But it equally suggests that Callisthenes’ reputation as a marvel-maker, propagated by those few encomiastic episodes, was established at the outset.³⁸

Callisthenes was finally arrested for his reputed part in a plot involving the paides basilikoi, the king’s royal pages (some of whom were his students) to assassinate Alexander.³⁹ It was a huge eyewitness conundrum and one that demanded some form of public relations initiative, executed as the historian was with little evidence of guilt.⁴⁰ The episode and its outcome, and the speeches couched within, neatly set the tone for the criticism of the conqueror that were to soon emanate from Greece: Alexander, the once model student, had lost his way in the East and had now become a tyrant.⁴¹

Arrian noted the disunity in the reports of Callisthenes’ death and as Lane Fox points out, he ultimately experienced ‘five different deaths’ on Alexander’s orders.⁴² Callisthenes’ incomplete book has an uncertain demise as well, for it disappeared from the corpus of history too gracefully for comfort, with his only epitaph appearing in the On Grief of Theophrastus (a former student of Aristotle and his successors at the Lyceum) which observed that Alexander misused the good fortune sent his way. But this was something of a leitmotif of Hellenistic biography; even the Persian Great King, Darius III, was portrayed as pondering fortune’s vicissitudes in his addresses to his troops before his final battle at Gaugamela.⁴³

Callisthenes’ position was surely compromised from the start; his disapproval of Alexander’s adoption of Persian court protocol, his lack of tact and alleged morose silences (we assume biting his tongue when witnessing indigestible episodes) led Alexander himself to brand the sophist ‘a sage who is blind to his own interests’, or so Plutarch claimed.⁴⁴

Onesicritus was a student of Diogenes the Cynic (as were his sons) whom Alexander reportedly admired, and this might have propelled his credentials to the top of the application pile.46 He and Callisthenes had benefited from dialectic training (reasoned truth through discourse) and philosophical teaching, so perhaps we should refer to them as ‘philosophers with a penchant for history’ rather than the reverse. The amalgam was never likely to have produced a straight-talking narrative, though Onesicritus was certainly the more tactful of the two men; his survival speaks for his political dexterity because the Cynics, and possibly the Peripatetics (followers of Aristotle’s school of philosophy taught at the Lyceum), were a significant part of that decidedly hostile picture later painted of Alexander.⁴⁷ The new Stoic followers of Zeno of Citium (ca. 334-262 BCE, from Cyprus), who was fortuitously shipwrecked to a career in Athens, look to have been influential too in the shaping of Alexander’s legacy in the generation after his death, for they retrospectively blamed him for the rise of the cults and kingships of his successors that saw their schools censored and closed.⁴⁸

In his 1953 translation of the extant fragments of the campaign histories, Robinson noted the chapters in which the sources appeared ‘thin’ on campaign detail. More recently a scholar probed into the existence of ‘a lacuna of nearly six months in the chronicle’ of a total ‘missing year’ broadly coinciding with this period.⁴⁹ Even formative episodes involving Alexander’s meeting with his first wife, Roxane, and her father, Oxyartes, suffered from these conflicts, and if we can trust the anonymous Metz Epitome, the birth and loss of a first child by Roxane fell into the reporting gap as well.⁵⁰

Callisthenes was executed at some indeterminate point after the battle at Gaugamela in September 331 BCE, possibly in Bactria and as late as 328/327 BCE, though he had already been under arrest for some time before his death.⁵¹ The clear lack of synchronicity between the court-sourced account of Arrian (who principally drew from Ptolemy and Aristobulus), and the Cleitarchus-derived Vulgate profiling of the eastern campaign, broadly relating to the period between the winters spanning 329/328 and 328/327 BCE, does suggest the absence of front-line reporting.⁵² If Onesicritus was called out to replace Callisthenes (before or after his eventual execution), and factoring in the distance a ‘recruitment message’ and its response had to travel – from the eastern Persian satrapies to Greece and back again – Onesicritus may not have arrived until Alexander was already in the upper satrapies (covering today’s northern Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), to which some fragments linked to him refer, or perhaps even preparing to enter India through the Khyber Pass.53

The blurring of detail suggests that the official campaign Ephemerides, from which the brief Journal of Alexander’s illness and death was allegedly extracted (T3, T4, T5), must themselves have been far from perfectly preserved. Plutarch reported that the tent of Eumenes of Cardia had caught fire, or rather was set on fire by Alexander as a prank in India.⁵⁴ In his regret Alexander made every effort to assist Eumenes, who held the role as the royal hypomnematographos (the diary-keeping secretary), in retrieving correspondence from the generals and regional governors. By this stage a ‘tent’ was more likely a significant pavilion of enclosures that housed the campaign secretariat; much was obviously lost and its recovery was essential to the administration of the newly acquired empire.

Although we remain uncertain of when his account commenced, elements of Onesicritus’ work appear to have survived intact for Roman period autopsy. Aulus Gellius (ca. 125 to post 180 CE) claimed his manuscripts were available when he arrived at Brundisium (modern Brindisi) in Italy and made his way to Rome along the Via Appia, and he linked Onesicritus’ texts to the many fabulae cheaply on sale in the streets.⁵⁵ Once again, his account or what survived of it appears to have been select titbits rather than a cogent and chronologically organised campaign history.

Onesicritus was keen to preserve the wonders of the East, and some twenty-one of the surviving thirty-eight fragments do refer to India, the ‘third part of the world’ as it was labelled; he was, for example, the very first Greek to detail a sighting of cotton plants.⁵⁶ And it was here in India, on the very edges of the Persian Empire, that he was keen to see Alexander accepted as the ‘first armed philosopher’ by the gymnosophistai (literally ‘naked sophists’), the Brahmin sages they encountered, though this approach was steeped in Platonist doctrine. Perhaps it captured something of an idealistic self-reflection as well as an attempt to align the Indian dogma with that of the Cynic school.⁵⁷ Strabo’s branding him the ‘chief pilot of fantasy’ was no doubt a play upon his attested role as pilot, kybernetes, of the fleet dispatched from the Indus to the Persian Gulf, or his position as helmsman of the royal barge on the Hydaspes-Indus river flotilla.⁵⁸

These were roles that earned Onesicritus an immortal place in the Greek Alexander Romance. His involvement with the Brahmins hints that he was something of a spokesperson for the king’s propaganda machine on ascetic matters. If new tribes and nations were to be encountered as the Macedonian-led army made its way south towards the sea, a court philosopher and councillor on the metaphysical might win them over more effectively than a soldier and a spear, for the Indian campaign had become mired in blood.59 And this may also explain his presence with Nearchus on the naval expedition of supply and discovery through the Persian Gulf; Onesicritus’ own account of that voyage did not survive, though extracts appeared in the Naturalis Historia of Pliny.⁶⁰

Onesicritus’ book of wonders and Eastern exotica seems to have dovetailed neatly with Callisthenes’ earlier colour, but we have no idea how one account met and greeted the other. If its title is accurate – Alexandrou Paideia, The Education of Alexander – it was a latter-day Kyrou Paideia (Cyropaedia), we assume in the style of Xenophon’s eulogy of Cyrus the Great.⁶¹ And that is not promising, for Xenophon rendered the deaths of his idols unrecognisable; he did, however, warn his readers in his Hellenika (his Greek history down to 362 BCE) which commenced without any introduction at all to give the impression of a seamless continuation of Thucydides’ work (which closed in 411 BCE): ‘I shall pass over those actions that are not worth mentioning, dealing only with what deserves to be remembered.’ And that is tragic, as the works of Xenophon represent Greek historical literature for the entire 4^th century BCE, and that legacy has been stripped of the Athenaion Politeia, the Athenian Constitution, once credited to him but now attributed to a still anonymous author we term the ‘Old Oligarch’ due to its anti-democratic tone.⁶² Yet Xenophon’s statement on ‘deserved’ history was reused by a much admiring Arrian, and it inevitably leads to questions on what Onesicritus may have selectively bypassed too.⁶³

Once again, Arrian’s references to Onesicritus verge on the dismissive, and they additionally fail to confirm he actually read his original campaign account;⁶⁴ his rejection of Onesicritus’ claims to naval authority, for example, looks to be sourced from Nearchus.⁶⁵ Even Plutarch’s references to the Cynic-trained historian leave us unsure whether he had a copy of his The Education of Alexander. Certainly a retort from Lysimachus, Alexander’s prominent Bodyguard who became king of Thrace and the adjacent lands after his death, and which questioned the philosopher’s credibility over an ‘Amazon affair’, did not come from Onesicritus’ own manuscript, for that would have been wholly self-incriminating.⁶⁶

Gellius’ statement on plentiful ‘Onesicritus’ material on sale, as Pearson observed, may once again refer to something other than the biography of Alexander, and his campaign account may have followed Callisthenes’ into oblivion rather earlier than we assume. The meagre length of Diogenes Laertius’ doxography on the philosopher from Astypalea certainly indicates he found little biographic detail worth extracting, though his opinion of Onesicritus’ work in comparison to that of Xenophon’s, probably explains why: ‘Onesicritus, as is to be expected of an imitator, falls short of his model.’⁶⁷

Nearchus son of Androtimus, a Cretan by birth but a citizen of the newly Macedonian city of Amphipolis, was a syntropos raised at the Macedonian court and one of the coeval hetairoi of the young Alexander. Other philoi were principally Macedonians of noble birth and veteran officers from Philip’s military ventures, though highborn Asiatics controversially entered the ranks later in Alexander’s campaign.⁶⁹

Nearchus had reputedly once been exiled from Pella along with Ptolemy (as well as Laomedon and his brother, Erygius, and Harpalus who may have been a nephew of Philip’s wife Phila) for his part in the Pixodarus affair, most likely in 337 or early 336 BCE in the final years of Philip’s reign, though the veracity of the episode has now been called into question.⁷⁰ If true, the exile suggests Nearchus was amongst the few who were truly trusted by the then teenage Alexander.

By 334/333 BCE, with Philip II dead and Alexander’s own invasion force in control of much of Asia Minor, Nearchus was appointed as governor of Lycia and Pamphylia, thus he became a prominent strategos (general or military governor of a region) with a pan-provincial brief. The role most likely required his naval experience to deny any Persian flotilla access to the numerous harbours on that rugged coastline, and potentially (with the navarch Amphoterus) to deal with pirates, the scourge of the Eastern Mediterranean since Homeric times when the Cilician coast, Skyros and the Thracian Chersonese (peninsula) were notorious for piracy; in fact as early as 380 BCE Isocrates’ Panegyrikos had laid out how Greek mercenaries were to deal with the freebooters (harshly).⁷¹ Additionally, the Persian fleet had commenced naval attacks in the Aegean in 333 BCE so that Athens needed well over one hundred ships to protect the grain shipments arriving from Egypt. Nearchus’ post, crucial to watching Alexander’s back, lasted some six years until 328 BCE when he was called to the East with new recruits once the naval threat had subsided with the end of Archaemenid rule.⁷²

Nearchus’ lost work, though substantially preserved in Arrian’s book of the same name (Indike), was most likely written in old Ionic dialect in the style of Herodotus, and his geographical digressions on rivers, monsoons and floods were rooted in Herodotean tradition as well as his own understanding of Skylax’s similar journey almost two centuries before.⁷⁶ Nearchus appears to have sensibly bypassed the land campaign in his memoirs in favour of Indian geography (in Herodotean style), customs and military organisations; he may have concluded his book at a point before Alexander’s death in Babylon as Arrian deferred to Aristobulus for detail on the fleet preparations being carried out there at the time. But he was certainly present; Plutarch and Diodorus claimed Nearchus warned Alexander against entering the city due to adverse portents the Chaldean priests had observed (T21, T22).⁷⁷

Ernest Badian, the renowned Austrian-born classical scholar, commented that Nearchus, who uniquely had a major achievement of his own amongst the officers of Alexander, ‘… shines like a good deed in the admittedly naughty world of Alexander historians.’⁷⁸ An earlier summation by Lehman-Haupt considered the conclusion to his sea voyage (as it was portrayed by Arrian) unsurpassed ‘… in loyalty and depth of penetration into human personality.’⁷⁹ Yet much of it appears ‘epic adornment’ inspired by the Odyssey, whilst the extensive list of thirty-three trierarchs (officers commanding, and funding, a trireme; here twenty-four Macedonians, eight Greeks and one Persian) he provided reads like the Catalogue of Ships from the Iliad.⁸⁰ Nearchus was most likely attempting to emulate the notoriety of the Periplous of Pseudo-Skylax and possibly Phileas of Athens; ultimately his account ended up as another ‘philosophical geography’.⁸¹

Crowned at Susa for his loyal service (as was Onesicritus), Nearchus played a prominent part in the Successor Wars in which his legacy was significant.⁸³ He was usefully employed by Antigonus Monophthalmos until the battle at Gaza in 313/312 BCE, at least, where he was cited as one of the advisers to Antigonus’ son, Demetrius Poliorketes. Nearchus was in his middle forties by then (assuming he was broadly coeval with Alexander) and he was never mentioned thereafter. If he perished in the disastrous outcome when ‘most of Demetrius’ friends fell… the majority of which were cavalry or men of distinction’, then he must have published his book in the unattested years before his attested Successor War activity (ca. 318 BCE) and possibly as early as 320 BCE, supported by the fact that it may have been referred to by Theopompus (who cited ‘authors of Indike’), who was thought to have died that year on the orders of Ptolemy.⁸⁴

A plate subtitled Nearchus leading on his followers against the monster of the deep, from Jules Verne’s Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Exploration of the World, 1882. The narrative accompanying the image reads ‘just as they entered the Persian Gulf they encountered an immense number of whales, and the sailors were so terrified by their size and number, that they wished to fly; it was not without much difficulty that Nearchus at last prevailed upon them to advance boldly, and they soon scattered their formidable enemies.’ This follows the detail in Arrian’s Indike. Made available by the Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries via Project Gutenberg.

Arrian’s principal court source, Ptolemy I Soter, the putative son of Lagus of Eordaea, lies at the heart of our suspicions of the suppression of Alexander’s Will and features prominently in later chapters. His mother, Arsinoe, was a former concubine of Philip II and possibly from a lesser branch of the Argead royal house. This fostered the rumour that Ptolemy was Alexander’s half-brother, a loud whisper Ptolemy may have propagated himself.85 As Pausanias put it in his Guide to Greece: ‘The Macedonians consider Ptolemy to be the son of Philip, the son of Amyntas [Philip’s father], though putatively the son of Lagus, asserting that his mother was with child when she was married to Lagus by Philip.’⁸⁶ This could explain why Ptolemy had the controversial Theopompus executed when he inherited governance of Egypt, for the Chian chronicler had conspicuously damned Philip and his court.⁸⁷

In 330 BCE Ptolemy became one of the Somatophylakes basilikos, the king’s seven personal Bodyguards, after which his prominence continued to grow, in his own account of the campaign at least.⁸⁸ A statement from Curtius – that ‘he was certainly no detractor of his own fame’ – suggests Ptolemy’s self-promotion had not gone unnoticed (though such wording was not unique and similar statements appeared in the Roman narratives of Livy and Tacitus).⁸⁹ A syntropos at the Pellan court, Ptolemy was, and always had been, one of those destined to exert influence over men if he showed loyalty, military acumen and political agility. Certainly the latter two were on display until he died at age eighty-four.

Waldemar Heckel, a leading Alexander scholar who ‘has made the prosopography of the late 4^th century his special preserve’, neatly summed up the problem we face when interpreting the texts citing Ptolemy’s campaign contribution: ‘Much of what we know about his career in Alexander’s lifetime derives from Arrian and, ultimately, from Ptolemy himself’; yet we have just thirty-five fragments of his writing.⁹⁰ A parallel autopsy of Xenophon’s Hellenika articulates the challenge of dealing with a self-documenting source: it ‘thus requires delicate handling by the historian. What it says, and the way it says it, is always to be weighed against what it does not say, and the reason why it does not’; certainly Ptolemy appears to have avoided commenting on Alexander’s darker episodes, for they in turn blackened him by the close association.⁹¹

By the time Ptolemy published his campaign account, his unchallengeable position as king and pharaoh of Egypt provided him with the power to manipulate character portrayals; those who opposed him in the Successor Wars no doubt suffered a damnatio memoriae as a consequence. Others were simply not spoken of; the anonymae remain, to quote Heckel, ‘… like the unhappy souls of Asphodel, on the marches of historical and prosopographic studies.’⁹² It was a far more enduring victory than any under arms, but for all that, Ptolemy’s campaign history appears to have been a dry and pedestrian military-focused affair that failed to ignite the Roman imagination, and it was less widely read than, for example, Cleitarchus’ more colourful account.93

Recalling the guidance to historians offered by Voltaire – ‘A historian has many duties. Allow me to remind you of two that are important. The first is not to slander; the second is not to bore…’ – it seems Ptolemy was, in fact, guilty of both.⁹⁴ Modern studies including those by Strasburger, Badian, and more recently Errington, have conceded Ptolemy was unreliable. Fritz Schachermeyr concluded he got what he wanted from ‘a lie, a fraud, and an intentional omission’ just as Badian noticed his ‘mixture of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi’.⁹⁵ Peter Green simply branded Ptolemy ‘a conniving pragmatic old shit’.⁹⁶

The second of Arrian’s ‘court’ sources, Aristobulus, lived to old age, beyond ninety, supposedly commencing his writing when he was a tender eighty-four, a literary achievement that was not, however, unique: Isocrates’ output was prolific through his eighties and nineties and we encounter a number of long-lived historians and philosophers in the classical texts.⁹⁷ We have no title for Aristobulus’ book, and the sixty-two genuine-looking fragments provide no chapter numbers, so we cannot gauge its length.⁹⁸ His interest in river systems and flood plains and his accurate descriptions of monuments (some he was tasked to repair) as well as the siege of Tyre reveals a technical eye with a geographical slant and leads scholars to believe he was employed as a technician or engineer on campaign.⁹⁹ Like Nearchus and Onesicritus, he was eager to recount the colour of India, though apparently without the blatant exaggerations and the overt thauma. But the gods still had their place in Aristobulus’ reckoning and their divine intervention always fell on the side of his king, that is until Alexander’s ill-omened return to Babylon in 323 BCE (T21, T22, T23, T24).¹⁰⁰

Aristobulus also appears to have avoided the negative campaign episodes and he airbrushed those he could not completely erase; if not a fully-fledged ‘flatterer’ (kolakeutikos) of Alexander, then he might be termed an ‘apologist’. Lucian claimed that a newly penned chapter that Aristobulus was reading aloud was tossed overboard by Alexander in an apparent rejection of its portrayal of him slaying elephants with a single javelin throw.¹⁰¹ But this sounds contrived (if not exaggerated), for Onesicritus was afforded a similar retrospective in the pages of Lucian’s How to Write History.¹⁰² Yet to become truly Homeric, a king had to be seen fighting monomachia, in single combat. The episode does, nevertheless, confirm that Aristobulus enjoyed a well-known intimacy with Alexander, as well as a tradition that he was an unreliable historian. But as Pearson noted, Aristobulus’ literary approach falls into no easy category.103

Aristobulus’ post-campaign activity remains unattested, and this is unsurprising because he did not hold a military command; few engineers, architects or city planners were ever referred to in the histories except perhaps in siege situations or concerning noteworthy funerary constructions.¹⁰⁴ His birthplace is uncertain though Plutarch, Lucian and Athenaeus linked him to the city of Cassandreia; this had led to one theory that proposes he was a supporter of Cassander who retired to his eponymous city founded in 316 BCE on the ruins of Corinthian Potidaea which also lay on the Chalcidian Peninsula.¹⁰⁵ But there is no further evidence of his return to Europe after Alexander’s death. Aristobulus could equally have worked for Ptolemy through the Successor Wars; Alexandria would have been the place to be for an already-established engineer, for the new city was one of the largest civic construction projects ever undertaken, though Cassandreia was a significant other.¹⁰⁶ A generation later, the ever-advancing Alexandrian building site was described by the poet Theocritus as having ‘everywhere army-boots and men in military cloaks’.¹⁰⁷

Although his was not an uncommon name, the one possible link to his post-campaign service is the ‘Aristobulus’ cited as Ptolemy’s high-ranking diplomat operating in Asia Minor to negotiate the so-called ‘Peace of the Dynasts’ in 311 BCE. The connection is offered in name alone but we would expect him to have been offered some prominent service – and especially in a role that involved dealing with former campaign comrades (as this envoy would have) – if he truly did not commence his writing until an octogenarian.¹⁰⁸ The proposal is not conflicting; a career with Ptolemy, whose interests were aligned with Cassander much of the time (he had sons by Cassander’s sister and was allied with him against the threat from Antigonus), followed by retirement to Cassandreia, is supportable for Aristobulus. Moreover, Diodorus suggested much of the population that survived Philip’s destruction of Olynthus was absorbed by Cassandreia, as were other smaller towns, so the city’s footprint and notoriety would have grown fast.¹⁰⁹ For a brief period, from 281-279 BCE, Cassandreia even became a ‘Ptolemaic’ city in the Macedonian kingship of Ptolemy Keraunos, the passed-over son of Ptolemy I Soter.¹¹⁰

Furthermore, as a writer living in the political and military sphere of influence of either these dynasts, Aristobulus would have been extremely sensitive when making references to Roxane and her son, Alexander IV, or to Alexander’s older son, Heracles, each of whom had been executed on Cassander’s direct orders or through his political reach. But no matter how well disguised a suppression is, clues always remain and ‘whilst silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial either’.¹¹³ As it has been pointed out, Aristobulus certainly ‘was not encumbered by the truth’.¹¹⁴

Chares of Mytilene on Lesbos has to be considered a primary or ‘court’ source, penning his Historiai peri Alexandron in ten or more books. As eisaggeleos, the royal usher or chamberlain to the king, he could not resist capturing court gossip he was uniquely well placed to hear. Some nineteen fragments remain, principally in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistai and Plutarch’s Lives, and they range from lucid eyewitness memoirs of court ceremony to what are clearly tinsel-covered anecdotes.¹¹⁵ The vivid descriptions of regal excesses suggest he published under a later patronage that must have been tolerant of its content; a location on Lesbos under Antigonus’ sphere of influence might support that supposition.¹¹⁶ There is no guarantee, however, that the fragments are fully representative of Chares’ work as a whole, and unlike the unrestrained accusations of alcoholism credited to Ephippus of Olynthus, he was careful not to directly slander Alexander or his Companions.¹¹⁷

Medius the son of Oxythemis from Larissa, host of the fatal party at which Alexander was reportedly poisoned, was possibly a member of the Thessalian Aleuadae royal house, and Anaximenes of Lampsacus, a Hellespontine city notable for its philosophers and historians, resided within Alexander’s inner circle; both dipped their reeds into self-serving ink.118 Anaximenes, possibly a pupil of Diogenes of Cynic, supposedly composed an epic poem and histories of Greece and Philip II, as well as a Rhetoric to Alexander; these disappeared without a trace despite his notoriety.¹¹⁹ Fragments strewn through the Roman-era texts of Pliny, Strabo, Plutarch, Aelian and Athenaeus suggest Polycleitus of Larissa may have been a contemporary author, and although he did not accompany the Macedonians, we already know Theopompus had much to say (some of it negative) about Macedonian court life.¹²⁰

Aristoxenus of Tarentum (a pupil of Aristotle) gave Plutarch a physical description of Alexander, and Marsyas from Pella, the half-brother to Antigonus and a naval commander at the battle at Salamis in 307/6 BCE, authored another now lost The Education of Alexander and a Makedonika in ten books that captured detail of the early campaign;¹²¹ his was, almost uniquely, a Macedonian history written by a Macedonian, whereas the thirteen other authors we know of who chronicled the rise of the nation were conspicuously not.¹²² Eugene Borza, the ‘Macedonian specialist’, concluded that, ‘like the Carthaginians and the Spartans, the Macedonians are among the silent people of the ancient Mediterranean basin’, referring to the lack of literary output from these once dominant powers. This might be a little over-generalised, for we know that either Alexander’s regent, Antipater, or perhaps an Antipater of Magnesia, wrote a historical work titled On the Deeds of King Perdiccas in Illyria (a former Macedonian king), and we know there once existed a Ta peri Alexandron by a Philip of Pella. We also have fifteen fragments of a Makedonika by the native Theagenes (possibly written in the Hellenistic era) whose works may have perished when Rome and her broadsword waded into the marshes bordering Pella.¹²³

References to Idomeneus of Lampsacus, a friend of Epicurus, suggest an anecdotal work in the style of Duris (whom he likely knew) had once existed, and the Suda suggested another contemporary, Menaechmus of Sicyon, wrote a history of the campaign. Strabo captured an additional snippet of the sea voyage back from India by Androsthenes of Thasos who was a prominent crewmember under Nearchus’ command.¹²⁴ A few of the titles attached to these lost works are tantalising: Ephippus’ On the Death (or Funeral) of Alexander and Hephaestion, and Strattis of Olynthus’ Five Books on the Royal Diary are mouth-watering names for our enquiry but so far they remain no more than that.¹²⁵

These writers no doubt constituted the corpus that Arrian, Diodorus and Curtius later referred to under the frustrating collectives of ‘some historians’, ‘other writers’, or even, ‘so they say’; the indeterminate in-betweens that still elude identification and dating, leaving us wondering if the snippets that feature in Plutarch’s multi-sourced biographies, or in the still-anonymous Oxyrhynchus Papyri XV 1798 found in Egypt and which looks to have been copied from a detailed archetypal history, reincarnates any of them accurately or substantially.126

A five-column fragment of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri XV 1798, probably dating to the late 2^nd century CE preserving otherwise unknown details relating to Alexander’s campaign from the death of Philip II to the prelude to the battle at Gaugamela. Now housed at the Papyrology Rooms, Sackler Library, Oxford, it was first published by Grenfell and Hunt in 1922. There are similarities to both Curtius’ book and the Romance with evidence of epitomising.¹²⁷

We should not forget the verbal material that birthed rumour, hearsay and anecdote that crept into Alexander’s tale. Tarn identified what he termed a ‘mercenary source’ which we postulate was not an individual but a recycling factory of information from soldiers of fortune and campaigners settling in the provinces in the Successor War years, some seeking sanctuary and others seeking silver. According to Tarn, this incendiary bundle included the reminiscences of a soldier who fought for the Persian king. Political discharge was just as surely emanating from Cape Taenarum to the south of Athens, the gathering ground for returning Greek mercenaries who were employed to good, or arguably poor, military use, in the Lamian War of 323-322 BCE, when Greece attempted to shake off its Macedonian shackles immediately after Alexander’s death.¹²⁸ Both locations were magnets for campaign veterans on either side of the Persian-Macedonian divide; they had stories to tell and grudges to settle in the choppy wake of Macedonia’s continued domination of Greece.

Hieronymus’ ‘post-Argeadia’, which, in its scope, most obviously followed on from the Philippika of Theopompus but which was also neatly sequelled the monographs on Alexander, was a unique work that unified Greek, Macedonian and Asian contemporary history through his unique eyewitness testimony. Hieronymus’ ‘elitist’ approach once again focused on the deeds (praxeis) of kings, generals and their statesman alone, with little space on the pages for the plight of the common man,¹³¹ an ‘aristocratic bias’ in historical writing that goes back to the Iliad and the Odyssey. But the narrative, ending sometime after the death of Pyrrhus of Epirus in 272 BCE, captured at least fifty-two years of war reporting through one of history’s most dramatic and metamorphic eras.¹³²

Like Ptolemy, Hieronymus’ affiliations and the vicissitudes of his career are central to our debate on the fate of the Will and to the portrayals of the characters that both buried and exhumed it. Yet ‘strictly speaking, we do not possess a word’ of his original material.¹³³ The eighteen or nineteen fragments we have (one is dubious), less than five pages of text in all, make any evaluation of Hieronymus’ work rather speculative, that is unless we are prepared to accept that his account is preserved reasonably intact in the more expansive sections of books eighteen to twenty-two of Diodorus’ Bibliotheke (Library of History, known in Latin as the Bibliotheca historica) of the Roman era and which deal with the same years; a reasonable conclusion considering Diodorus’ utilitarian method.¹³⁴

Though it was criticised by Dionysius, Hieronymus’ work was a unique and invaluable account of the decades that may have been less thoroughly chronicled otherwise because of the instability. A number of Hellenistic and Roman-era historians extracted detail for their biographies of his contemporary generals and statesmen and Hieronymus’ books was précised to various degrees in ‘universal’ histories of the period.¹³⁵ Hieronymus himself is said to have criticised the writing of his broad contemporary, Duris of Samos, for its hostility towards Macedonian affairs, which in turn appears to betray Hieronymus’ own political partiality;¹³⁶ it has even been suggested that he published, once again in old age, in response to Duris’ critical books, though he must have diarised events and sketched out his narrative years before.137 Hieronymus would have had an intimate knowledge of the nature of the death of Alexander (through the testimony of Eumenes, amongst others) and we believe he had a hand in the provenance and the birth of the Pamphlet; so, like Ptolemy and the royal secretary Eumenes, Hieronymus reappears in later chapters in a significant way.¹³⁸

The anti-Macedonian Duris was termed ‘tyrant’ of the island of Samos, but we should beware of the despotic label; in the pre-Hellenistic era a turannos had carried no ethical censorship or connotation of ‘tyranny’, but rather it meant the sole ruler (at the head of a plutocracy, for example) who used unconventional means, and, moreover, it was a position that could be inherited.¹³⁹ Duris had been watching events from close by after the family’s return from exile (the Samians were exiled from their island by Athens from ca. 366/365 BCE to 322/321 BCE) and he wrote at the time when Samos was ‘gradually swallowed up by Macedonian warlords.’ Duris apparently modelled his Makedonika in twenty-three or more books on the style of Herodotus and Hellanicus (ca. 480-395 BCE) the logographer and historian from Mytilene on Lesbos. The son of Kaios (possibly the tyrant of Samos before him), Duris was a self-proclaimed descendant of the Athenian Alcibiades, famous for his unconventional military tactics in the latter Peloponnesian War and his close relationship with Socrates.

Duris’ history covered the period from the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE to the battle of Curopedion in 281 BCE, at least, and he too had to carefully navigate through the political reefs and shoals of the Diadokhoi shores. His work appears to have been a highly anecdotal scandaleuse that targeted luxury and extravagance, if the thirty-six fragments are indicative, though we cannot say with any certainty (Hieronymus’ alleged criticism aside) how slanted his account was to any one regime. He certainly had cause to hate Athens as much as the continued Macedonian upheaval, and though he was perhaps younger than the first generation of Diadokhoi, he would have met certain of them (Antigonus, Demetrius and Lysimachus, for example) as part of his family’s governance of an island that came under their respective (or attempted) control.¹⁴⁰

But to Duris, these historians were concerned with merely ‘writing’ and not with mimesis or hedone, imitation or pleasure. This, too, rather reveals his own literary agenda, and it suggests he believed ‘tragic’ history (typified by Alexander’s Vulgate genre) was an imitative art, thus not distinct from poetry, as Aristotle proposed it should be.¹⁴⁴

No one can glance through the thirty-six fragments of Cleitarchus without being struck by one thing, how little we really know about the writer who in modern times has been magnified into such an influential and far-reaching source in the Alexander story, and has attracted to himself most of the flotsam brought down by that somewhat muddy stream or streams, the so-called Vulgate.¹⁴⁵

Tarn’s opening commentary from his study of Cleitarchus captures an unfortunate dilemma: though his influence on the Vulgate tradition has now been established, the extent of that sway, and the original shape of Cleitarchus’ book, remains nothing short of a mystery; he is as Badian mused, ‘the Quellenforscher’s phantom.’¹⁴⁶

Based in Alexandria (according to Philodemus) in the final years of older campaign veterans or in the early years of their offspring, Cleitarchus composed the first syncretic biography of Alexander by fusing primary material in circulation with the gossip, rhetoric and those negative philosophical tones emanating from Greece.¹⁴⁷ The fermentation vat of Alexandria did the rest in that tumultuous, creative, and yet dangerous period for historians and dynasts alike.

Many veterans found their way to new employment in Egypt, for the Ptolemies knew, as did all of the Diadokhoi, that you needed a hard core of Macedonian soldiers to face Macedonian-led satrapal armies, and no standing Asiatic contingent of the time had proved able to withstand an assault by its unique phalanx. So the klerouchoi (cleruch) system of incentive and remuneration became all-important in attracting new ‘settlers’ who formed a ‘state within a state’ in Egypt, Greek mercenaries and Macedonian former campaigners alike. Under this arrangement land was allotted on condition of continued military call-up and no doubt the enrolment of their sons into the state army.¹⁴⁸ This may explain why Cleitarchus was able to garner more eyewitness detail (as Thucydides had for the Peloponnesian War) than Arrian could obtain from his revered but long-dead and ‘sanitising’ court sources.149

The result was the most influential Greek biography of Alexander that would circulate in the Roman Republic some two centuries on. Cleitarchus became the template, if not the whole pattern, for the Latin Vulgate, even if he was at times, as Cicero thought, entertaining with ‘pretty fictions’ and a ‘better orator than historian’, a claim that somewhat undermined Cicero’s own canon on the subject. Although the Roman rhetorician Quintilian (ca. 35-post 96 CE) considered him ‘brilliantly ingenious but notoriously untrustworthy’,¹⁵⁰ Cleitarchus, nonetheless, appears to have been a talent that eclipsed the eyewitness histories written without his flair, for neither Ptolemy and Aristobulus, nor Nearchus and Onesicritus, had benefited from any formal literary training or previous journalistic experience that we know of.

Cleitarchus’ father, Deinon, came from Colophon in Lydia, one of the cities claiming to be the birthplace of Homer and one later destroyed by Alexander’s former Bodyguard, Lysimachus. Deinon had been a colourful historian who based himself in Egypt and produced a non-extant history of Persia (a Persika) that was praised by Cornelius Nepos (ca. 110-24 BCE) and much referenced in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae and Plutarch’s biography of Artaxerxes II.¹⁵¹ The Persika, however, frequently contradicted Ctesias who was resident at the Persian court from ca. 415-387 BCE, though, according to Plutarch, he too ‘… put into his work a perfect farrago of extravagant and incredible tales… often his story turns aside from the truth into fable and romance.’¹⁵² Deinon’s son, it seems, was born in the same mould, setting out to ‘improve on the facts’.¹⁵³ Alexandria was to become a centre of creative reporting and elements of Deinon’s work might well have found their way into his son’s book, especially detail concerning Babylon and a Persia Cleitarchus may never have visited himself.

The acquaintance of Ptolemy I Soter with the philosopher Stilpo of Megara, whom he (unsuccessfully) invited to Egypt around 307 BCE, suggests Cleitarchus, who is attested to have studied under Stilpo, would himself have been personally acquainted with Ptolemy or his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, in the years that followed.¹⁵⁴ Ptolemaic authority, whilst progressive in terms of architecture, the arts and trade, was also ruthless, and the new Macedonian dynasts proved to be manipulative politicians.¹⁵⁵ So it would have been impossible for Cleitarchus to publish a work under Alexander’s former Somatophylax or his son unless it was politically benign and did not undermine Ptolemy’s claims on the nature of Alexander’s death, as portrayed in the Journal with which Ptolemy closed his book. And like Aristobulus, Cleitarchus would have been unable to recount any lingering rumours or suspicions concerning Alexander leaving a Will with succession instructions.

But a more malevolent Alexander did, nevertheless, appear; Cleitarchus may have been influenced by Theopompus’ earlier harsh moralising on the Argead court, as well as the earlier negative Peripatetic-school noises (as proposed by Tarn and others, though we have little actual evidence) that were originally aired from Athens under the protection of Cassander’s shield. For through the period 317-307 BCE, Cassander installed as his administrator (later termed a ‘tyrant’ too) Demetrius of Phalerum, a student of Theophrastus, in a role that was ‘in theory an oligarchy, but in practice a monarchy’. We should note, however, that Stilpo, Cleitarchus’ philosophy teacher, had himself been influenced by Diogenes the Cynic whose movement had little good to say about the Macedonian king.¹⁵⁷ It is not impossible that tragic elements of Duris’ Samian Chronicle, if not his later Macedonian-centred history, also infiltrated Cleitarchus’ account, if it was published sufficiently late.¹⁵⁸

Besides these influences in circulation, disgruntled veterans and their offspring reared on stories of the campaign sagas, may well have recalled the gradual deterioration in Alexander’s behaviour when the troubled campaign was quagmired in the East. Like many who had taken part in the decade-long invasion and subjugation of the Persian Empire, veterans surely faced the dilemma of wanting to be associated with, and yet disassociated from, select episodes of the story. As time passed, the second generation Ptolemies had nothing to lose from seeing a more tarnished image of Alexander manifest itself, as this in turn highlighted their own ‘benign’ rule, and ‘… not every monarch has an interest in preserving the immaculate purity of their predecessor’s reputation.’¹⁵⁹ Thus the compromised, politicised and carefully re-characterised template of what we term the Roman-era Vulgate genre of Alexander was born.

Significantly more military actions had taken place in the Successor Wars, probably before Ptolemy and Aristobulus published, some eclipsing even these in complexity and others in strategic importance to the survival of the Diadokhoi. Whilst Lucian did refer to a collection of letters to and from Ptolemy, suggestive that he maintained communication with Seleucus at least, these veteran luminaries would have wished to consult any surviving logs from the campaign Ephemerides, alongside any extracts they still had of Callisthenes’ history, as far as it went.¹⁶¹ And it didn’t go far; the contradictions between Ptolemy and Aristobulus that Arrian cited are frequent; some are minor and some relate to the most fundamental of detail.¹⁶²

The earlier published accounts of Onesicritus, Chares and Nearchus were already in circulation, so Ptolemy and Aristobulus would have been able to extract from them, but the result, like Cleitarchus’ book, would have effectively been another syncretism. Moreover, a century ago Eduard Schwartz re-asked a question linked to an observation Polybius had once made:¹⁶³

For since many events occur at the same time in different places, and one man cannot be in several places at one time, nor is it possible for a single man to have seen with his very own eyes every place in the world and all the peculiar features of different places…¹⁶⁴

Pearson more sarcastically added: ‘Indeed, it is hard to imagine how history could have been written at all in ancient times, except by men with great powers of memory.’¹⁶⁵ He also doubted Xenophon could have taken notes on the so-called ‘march of the ten thousand’ from which he created his Anabasis (and there are gaps), or that Nearchus could have kept a useful log on his almost fatal sea voyage. The latter seems a little unfair; even the Indus-Hydaspes fleet had a secretary, Evagoras, and surely the sea fleet did too.166 But the relative value of a ‘primary’ source to a ‘secondary’ offspring is not always as clear as the label suggests, rendering the definition of ‘tertiary sources’ even more opaque.

In these circumstances the Roman expression, rem ad triarios redisse, comes fittingly to mind. It broadly translates as ‘it has come to the third rank’ and it came to suggest a military last-resort situation. A legacy of the Etruscans and the reforms of Camillus (ca. 446-365 BCE), the class-based ranks within the Roman legion positioned the inexperienced hastati in the front row in battle, the more heavily armed principes in the second row, and the veteran triarii behind them on whom the first ranks would fall back if unable to break the enemy line.¹⁶⁷ It was a system that served Rome well until faced with less conventional generals like Hannibal. In attempting to break the secrets of the primary sources, Quellenforschung is often similarly challenged as so little early material survived. Secondary sources are thin on the ground, and it is often left to the tertiary sources – the thrice or more removed historians – to defend a story; so figuratively speaking, Quellenforschung is often relying on the texts of the triarii too.

The consequences of this are not always disastrous, for we are also faced with the myopic symptoms of long-sighted historical perspective, an apparent contradiction in terms explained by Hornblower’s comment: ‘Proximity as well as distance, can distort the vision.’¹⁶⁸ Historians in the thick of things might be compromised by their direct involvement. In contrast, later historians, and even coetaneous writers compiling from the ‘privileged’ position of ‘reflective’ distance and even exile, often provided a more holistic and balanced narrative, if not entirely free from bias. Xenophon, Thucydides and Hieronymus, as well as the Greek Sicilian historian Timaeus and Polybius who followed them, all commenced or completed their historical writing in forced absentia.¹⁶⁹

Exile, by definition, obliged the authors to live in the sphere of an opposite, or at least neutral, regime, and Plutarch provided insight into its result: ‘…ostracism was not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this disfranchisement.’¹⁷⁰ Thucydides, who had been banished from Athens, was sufficiently self-aware to explain:

It was also my fate to be an exile from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; and being present with both parties, and more especially the Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, I had leisure to observe affairs more closely.¹⁷¹

Should we therefore value refugee reportage over that of the statesman-historian who dispossessed him of his home? And do we credit the account of the embattled general with more authenticity than the narrative of the civilian onlooker? Which primary is ‘prime’ material and which is primed by the threat of war, ‘the continuation of politics by other means’, according to Von Clausewitz?¹⁷⁴ The answer to the last question if of course both, and these questions bring us back to Alexandria in the vibrant and dangerous years that saw the insoluble and permanent dyes of Alexander’s first blueprints stain papyrus.

A layout of Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphos, showing the Pharos lighthouse centre top. According to Philo, the city was laid out in five major quarters: the Brucheion or royal quarter; the gymnasium quarter; the Soma; the Museion quarter; and Rhacotis, in an overall grid layout of the city. To the south of the canal lay Lake Mareotis. From K Baedeker Egypt, handbook for travellers. pt. 1. Lower Egypt, with the Fayum and the peninsula of Sinai, 1885. From Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/9303.

The conclusion to be drawn here is that the books of the Alexandrian and possibly Cassandreian-influenced historians – Ptolemy, Aristobulus and Cleitarchus – dominated the Roman-era perceptions of Alexander, and, in turn, the Roman-era derivatives are the basis of the interpretations we make today. One result is that modern scholars believe (to quote Pearson) that: ‘The history of events after his [Alexander’s] death is intelligible only on the assumption that he made no Will.’¹⁷⁷ Yet that contention falls apart if we are prepared to accept that those blueprint histories were specifically fashioned to give credence, or serve obeisance, to claims of intestacy and Alexander’s failure to clarify his succession.

If Ptolemy and Aristobulus were at the foundation of Arrian’s court-sourced biography (as Arrian himself stated on his opening page), and if Cleitarchus’ book substantially templated the Vulgate-genre accounts, our suggestion of an ‘Alexandrian’ monopoly seems to hold. The combined tradition carried forward by these three historians became a robust pesticide on the tenuous roots of any mention of a succession attempt by Alexander; it was a Hellenistic literary inheritance tax that foiled his estate planning. And this is our suggested publication order for these three influential books: Ptolemy first, then Aristobulus, and lastly Cleitarchus, a discussion not without contention and discord.

We do not have space here to cite the full extent of previous arguments and they are in any case inconclusive, but a few serve to illustrate the disparity of opinion.¹⁷⁸ Gustav Droysen’s 1833 biography of Alexander employed newly developing critical methods at work on the ‘great men’ of history and in 1877 he proposed that Cleitarchus’ book had been in circulation before those of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, a view later backed up by Eduard Schwartz.179 The ‘early’ view was broadly supported by a 1921 article by Felix Jacoby proposing a date of ca. 300 BCE, with Helmut Berve, whose 1926 Das Alexanderrei auf prosopographischer provided additional prosopographic perspective on the command structures within the Macedonian army, following suit. Since then many scholars have concurred, believing Cleitarchus published within twenty years of Alexander’s death.¹⁸⁰

In contrast, Tarn saw the order as Aristobulus, then Ptolemy, with Cleitarchus writing last, after Ptolemy’s death and possibly as late as 260 BCE. Tarn further believed Cleitarchus had little later impact on the Vulgate genre and on Curtius in particular, whose principal source therefore remained obscurum per obscurius.¹⁸¹ Like Tarn, Pearson argued that Cleitarchus used Aristobulus as a source, while other scholars have proposed publication in instalments, so straddling the dating divide. Hammond, for example, proposed Ptolemy circulated his account between 320 to 295 BCE, with chapter-packets being issued at intervals (as did Livy three centuries later), though the earlier end of this dating conflicts with Arrian’s claim that Ptolemy was a ‘king’ when he published, for this suggests a terminus post quem of 305 BCE.¹⁸²

Although the geographical arguments, titular dissections, and acquaintance evidences that underpin the chronology debate each fall short of ‘proof’, the mantra for those concluding Cleitarchus published first is his report of the alleged heroics of Ptolemy in a gruesome battle against a city of the Mallians in India when Alexander found himself alone inside the city wall.¹⁸³ The episode was treated rather vocally by both Arrian and Curtius who both went to the trouble of uncharacteristically describing Cleitarchus, and also Timagenes who wrote later in Alexandria (he was captured by Romans ca. 55 BCE), as ‘careless’ and ‘gullible’, when on the whole he forgave source discrepancies, and more so if they were inclined to flatter Alexander.¹⁸⁴

The interpretation born of this critique is that when Ptolemy stated in his own book that he was not present at the battle (as he apparently did), he was making a deliberate, and thus later, correction to Cleitarchus, whose account placed Ptolemy in the thick of the fighting and saving the king’s life; this was supposedly (just one version of) how Ptolemy gained the title Soter, ‘Saviour’. But if that correction, or even the total wording of the polemic against Cleitarchus, originated with Ptolemy, we would have expected Arrian and Curtius to be more specific on its origin; had they not, their own mirror critique would have appeared a rather obvious and unimaginative plagiarisation. Moreover, as Tarn pointed out: ‘Ptolemy never contradicted anybody; things he believed to be wrong he usually omitted altogether…’185 And clearly Ptolemy could not have been including Timagenes in any rebuttal, for his Universal History was a product of a much later and begrudging Augustan Rome.¹⁸⁶

A reverse interpretation seems more valid. Curtius and Arrian knew all about conflicting accounts; Arrian recounted numerous other discrepancies in a matter-of-fact way.¹⁸⁷ Here, however, their parallel chastisement of Cleitarchus indicates Ptolemy had published his version of events first in which he claimed to have been absent from the battle. That would have been, as they voiced, a careless and egregious contradiction for Cleitarchus (and later Timagenes) to have made. It further suggests that there existed in the Roman era an unambiguous certainty on the publication order, which argues for a gap of some years between Cleitarchus’ and Ptolemy’s publication dates. But it does confirm Cleitarchus’ desire to eulogise the memory of the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

In this interpretation it follows that Curtius must have read Ptolemy’s book to have criticised Cleitarchus in this way (which argues for his Vulgate archetyping), and it is also highly suggestive that Arrian read Curtius (who we believe published, more or less, a century before him) and he thought the didactic value of Curtius’ criticism too good to pass up, for their wording is unique and strikingly similar.¹⁸⁸ The campaigns in India and the voyage down the Hydaspes-Indus were nothing short of wholesale slaughter and so not easily captured by Nearchus, Onesicritus, Ptolemy and Aristobulus – the court sources at the heart of policy decisions or complicit in some way in their implementation. As Curtius’ account and Arrian’s narrative remain in close agreement on major place names here, it does suggest to their parallel (self-admitted) use of Cleitarchus at this point, for he had garnered testimony that originated outside court sources – campaign veterans, for example – and that filled their reporting gaps.¹⁸⁹

A final, though rather cynical, possibility does need voicing: Ptolemy was present at the battle but he felt the whole Mallian affair, like the earlier reported massacre of the Branchidae in Sogdia (or Sogdiana), was too gruesome to be a part of, when, as even Arrian reported, many unarmed men were slaughtered and ‘neither women, nor children were spared’. So Ptolemy spirited himself away on an expedition elsewhere.¹⁹⁰ That would have additionally exonerated him from failing to protect Alexander, for other accounts had claimed it was the future Bodyguard, Peucestas (or Leonnatus) in his role as one of the hyperaspisantes who reportedly held a shield above his fallen king.¹⁹¹ Somewhat suspiciously, Ptolemy did provide a most detailed description of Alexander’s wound which issued ‘both blood and breath’, but perhaps Critobulus (or Critodemus), the attending physician, recorded his work patching up his king; the description points to a lung piercing and yet it is at odds with other statements in which the arrow lodged in Alexander’s breastbone.¹⁹²

A further formative event in the chronology debate beckons parallel autopsy. It concerns Thais, the Athenian courtesan who became Ptolemy’s mistress, the mother of three of his children, and according to Athenaeus, eventually his wife.¹⁹⁴ Vulgate texts credited Thais with instigating the fire that burned the palace of Persepolis to the ground in a bacchanal that took place in May 330 BCE. The royal complex completed ca. 518 BCE by Darius the Great was no more, and the firing was supposedly the conclusion to a drunken Dionysiac affair, though it came some months after the Macedonians had arrived in the city (in December 331/January 330 BCE). Quite in contrast, Arrian claimed the burning was a political decision and no accident, and so it is argued, once again, that Ptolemy, Arrian’s principal source, had corrected Cleitarchus on the matter.¹⁹⁵

A reconstruction of the royal palace at Persepolis, ceremonial capital of the Achaemenids, depicted before Alexander burned it to the ground, by the renowned Iranologist Charles Chipiez (1835-1901).

Her Dionysiac revelry was possibly setting out to emulate Herostratus, the Greek arsonist whose blaze at the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was supposed to bring him immortal fame; this was an infamous inferno portentously linked to Alexander’s birth.¹⁹⁸ If Cleitarchus published his book late, however, in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphos, Thais’ heroic imagery would have suited a dynasty that had propelled her children into prominent positions in the Successor Wars.¹⁹⁹ The portrayal became immortal through Shakespearean-era plays and John Dryden’s 1697 Alexander’s Feast: or the Power of Music:

A further pointer to a late Cleitarchean publication date would be Onesicritus’ alleged reading of his own account aloud to the Thracian dynast ‘when he was king’:

And the story is told that many years afterwards Onesicritus was reading aloud to Lysimachus, who was now king, the fourth book of his history, in which was the tale of the Amazon, at which Lysimachus smiled gently and said: ‘And where was I at the time?’²⁰⁰

Jacoby believed this suggested: ‘Onesicritus stood on the same footing with Lysimachus as Cleitarchus did with Ptolemy.’²⁰¹ But the episode sounds as suspicious as Aristobulus’ river recitation even though some scholars believe it indeed captured a key date marker: the publishing when the Diadokhoi were crowned.

And yet this all hangs on the reference to ‘kingship’; this could have just as credibly meant ‘when Lysimachus had established himself in Thrace’, and there is no further evidence the reading came from Onesicritus’ newly inked scrolls. Furthermore, as we will see, the Diadokhoi acted as kings soon after leaving Babylon in 323 BCE. If the claim that Onesicritus was fearful of naming the supposedly guilty guests at Medius’ banquet did originate with the Pamphlet (T1), Onesicritus may in fact have published before anyone else.²⁰⁶

Tarn brings our attention back to Diodorus’ comments (T6) on other ‘fearful historians’ who avoided commenting on Cassander’s reported part in the regicide at Babylon (T1, T2).²⁰⁸ If, as Tarn logically concluded, this ‘fear’ can only refer to writers publishing before Cassander’s death in 297 BCE, then Cleitarchus, who did detail the plot to poison Alexander and Cassander’s alleged central role, must have published later, assuming he was the common source behind these Vulgate allegations.

More convincing still is a first publication after Cassander’s sons had been killed (by 294 BCE) and his nephews too (by 279 BCE with the death of Ptolemy Keraunos), as well as his former brothers-in-law who had sons by his sisters: this category included Ptolemy I Soter himself who died in 283 BCE and Lysimachus who died in 281 BCE, the year in which the still-dangerous Seleucus, possibly named as a Babylon plotter, was also killed.²⁰⁹ After then, those who might have defended the reputation of Cassander and his extended family, and theirs by association, were gone. It is in this environment, logically focusing on the period after 280 BCE, that the rebroadcasting, without repercussions, of the Pamphlet allegations of poison and regicide would have first been possible by a historian seeking fame without the fear of execution.

Aristobulus’ penchant for the portentous further pushes out the Cleitarchean publication date. It was Aristobulus who reported the presence of the mysterious Syrian prophetess when the royal pages made an attempt on Alexander’s life, and he was additionally the source for the supernatural episodes and divinations heralding Alexander’s death, the detail the Vulgate accounts picked up on along with other corroborating augural detail (T21, T22, T23, T24).210 As we have no indication that the Roman-era Vulgate historians used Aristobulus directly, we assume their source was once again Cleitarchus.²¹¹ But for him to have read Aristobulus, who commenced his book in his eighties (or at least ‘late’ in life) and who was yet sufficiently young to complete challenging assignments for Alexander on campaign, once more suggests Cleitarchus published his book later than many scholars have concluded.

A final dating clue involves the emergence of Rome, as, according to Pliny, Cleitarchus claimed a Roman deputation visited Alexander at (or on the way to) Babylon, presumably sent to pay homage to the Macedonian king and avert his expansionist eye.²¹² Arrian named Aristus of Cyprus and Asclepiades (who is otherwise unknown) as the historians behind the detail (though he referenced ‘other writers’ too when discussing Italian delegations), and it was accompanied by suspicious pro-Roman ambassadorial propaganda: Alexander recognised the ‘proud freedom of their bearing’ and with ‘greatness prophesised for their country’.²¹³

No Roman legation was mentioned by Diodorus, whose Sicilian origins suffered in the Roman politics of his troubled day, though it has been argued that he may have omitted the detail for political expediency, writing as he was in the dangerous Roman era of the Second Triumvirate (43-33 BCE), and when Antony and Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Macedonian dynasty in Egypt, still posed a threat. Tarn accused later authors, including Trogus (as evidenced in the epitome of Justin), of inventing embassies from all the lands by then subject to Rome – though not to Macedonia centuries before – as paying tribute to Alexander.²¹⁴ And many scholars do still uphold the anonymity of the Latin city in Cleitarchus’ day, but that is on the premise that he published early. The contention falls apart, however, if he published in the 270s, and, moreover, if we analyse Rome’s ascent, its ‘anonymity’ is clearly questionable.

Polybius believed (possibly duped by Fabius Pictor’s propaganda) that as early as 509 BCE Rome had already signed a treaty with Carthage (a modern scholar suggests 348 BCE), but certainly by 338 BCE, the year of Philip II’s victory at Chaeronea, Rome had reached an accord with the Italian states that had revolted in the Second Latin War; the dissolution of the Latin League was a major step towards Rome’s pre-eminence in the Italian peninsula.²¹⁵ And that is unlikely to have gone unnoticed overseas; the south of Italy and Sicily were populated by many Greek colonies that were trading with mainland Greece.

The discrediting of Cleitarchus’ claim of Roman ambassadors additionally ignores the significance of Livy’s recording the peace treaty between Alexander Molossus of Epirus (Alexander’s uncle and brother-in-law mentioned in the extract above) and Rome in 332 BCE, a year or two before Molossus was killed in Italy.²¹⁶ His death, apparently fulfilling a prediction from the oracle at Dodona, was mourned by the conqueror in Asia who threw three full days of funeral games, so communications were intact.217 Strabo additionally believed that Alexander (though which one is not clear), and later Demetrius Poliorketes, petitioned Rome to take steps against the piracy of Antium in which they were apparently participating (or perhaps simply tolerating).²¹⁸

After Molossus’ misadventure in Italy almost a decade before Alexander’s death in Babylon, Rome surely watched the rise of Macedonian power with interest, noting how easily the Adriatic was being crossed by its westward-looking Epirote neighbour on the pretext of protecting Tarentine interests in Italy. What is accepted is that the Lucanians and Bruttians (and Samnites) who felt the Epirote blade and successfully turned it back on the Molossian king, did wisely send a delegation to ‘apologise’ to Alexander, and Arrian further stated that ‘other writers’ claimed Italy was a future target for the Macedonian war machine.²¹⁹ So it is not impossible, in fact, that the Latins did too. Trogus’ generalised list of ambassadors at Babylon also included ‘some from Italy’ and Diodorus’ reference to ‘those who dwell around the Adriatic’ may well have been meant (guardedly) to include Rome.²²⁰

Although a Rhodian trade negotiation with Rome dating to 306 BCE is widely regarded as the city’s first known formalised contact with a Greek (rather than Epirote) state,²²¹ the rhetorical On the Soul by Heracleides of Pontus (died ca. 310 BCE), the Greek philosopher-astronomer and ‘inventor’ of a pre-Homeric literary ancestry, had already claimed Rome was founded as a ‘Greek city’; a later tradition even held that a Corinthian, Demaratus, sired Tarquinus Priscus the fifth king of Rome, parts of whose first Cloarca Maxima, the great sewer that drained the marshes and gave the city her forum (constructed ca. 600 BCE), is still functioning today.²²² Moreover, both Hecataeus (ca. 550-476 BCE) and Hellanicus had detailed the legends of Rome’s founding some two centuries (or more) earlier.

Closer to Alexander still, the sack of the city by the Gauls under Brennus in ca. 387/386 BCE was known, it seems, in Aristotle’s school.²²³ His successor, Theophrastus, the Greek historian Callias of Syracuse (3^rd century BCE), as well as Timaeus and the poet Lycophron in his Alexandra (likely written pre-264 BCE at the court of Ptolemy II Philadelphos) also touched on the rising presence of Rome; the city was certainly not the agnotos, ‘unknown’, that her absence from early Hellenistic history suggests.²²⁴ And just forty-three years after Alexander’s death the dispatches of Pyrrhus were broadcasting Rome’s presence to the Hellenistic world in no small way; Hieronymus most likely had a hand in that when using Pyrrhus’ memoirs.²²⁵ So the whole chronological debate is rather questionable. Whether Pliny was correct in naming Cleitarchus or not, and regardless of whether Cleitarchus himself was lying about events at Babylon, if he was publishing as late as the 270s BCE, the name of Rome, which invaded Sicily in 264 BCE, would have been ringing in the ears of the second-generation Diadokhoi, and the idea of the city’s submission or allegiance to the Macedonian king may have been useful propaganda for the Ptolemies.

Before then, powerful and well-informed enemies resided close by (Coele-Syria and Phoenicia changed hands repeatedly) and an invasion of Egypt was only ever a Nile Delta crossing away. Ptolemy’s grip on power was still tenuous and alliances were not yet consummated with marriages between the Diadokhoi outside Macedonia; those were not the years in which to publish a web of deceit, for dangerous repercussions were likely. If Ptolemy had read his Euripides, he would have known of a pertinent wisdom: ‘Silence in season, speech where speech is safe’;²²⁷ and, moreover, as Ovid later poetised, ‘fine-spun verses come from a tranquil mind’.²²⁸ But even then: ‘There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.’²²⁹

Although it appears that in the longer term Ipsus ‘created more tensions than it resolved’,²³¹ galvanised by Demetrius Poliorketes’ still-intact ambition, the trio of Alexander’s former Bodyguards, Ptolemy, Seleucus and Lysimachus, avoided self-destruction for the best part of the next twenty years, each living into their eighties.²³² That is not to say they didn’t intrigue, use their intermarriages nefariously, or, in fact, sponsor some of the most famous generals in history to undermine their opponents. Responding to Seleucus’ occupation of Coele-Syria in the wake of Ipsus when governance of the empire was again reviewed, Ptolemy allegedly commented on the quiet revenge he may one day extract: ‘For friendship’s sake he would not for the present interfere, but would consider later how best to deal with friends who chose to encroach.’²³³ And that might just have been carried out through the medium of his book.

In the view of many historians, the battle at Ipsus represented the true beginning of the Hellenistic era, when the landscape of the empire was reshaped by ‘agreement’ rather than by brute force for the very first time.²³⁴ In the following decades superpowers emerged and around them the Eastern Mediterranean and former Persian Empire gravitated for generations to come. The kingdoms of Seleucus, Ptolemy and Lysimachus (and Antigonus before them) riveted Asia, Egypt and Macedonia together as never before, propagating Greek culture and language eastward, perhaps in a way Alexander had originally conceived, though now without the Argead Star (more commonly known as the Vergina Sun) stamped on state correspondence.

Perhaps we should finish by asking why the long-lived Seleucus and Lysimachus declined to publish campaign accounts and stake their own claims to heroics and a share in Alexander’s success, for they became kings with great tales to tell and no doubt with their own hatchets to bury deep. Possibly it was because Ptolemy ended his account at Alexander’s death, and until then, his pages had treated them fairly enough, if perhaps not ‘frequently’ enough, for their liking, for Ptolemy’s reluctance to attribute credit to Alexander’s other nobles has long been recognised.²³⁵ But for all we know, Seleucus and Lysimachus were felled halfway through writing their memoirs in old age with primed court historians ready to dictate to. But manuscripts, diaries, journals, libraries and official correspondence disappeared without a trace in the face of defeat in battle, giving the impression that a literary desert had existed at their court. Along with treasuries, wives, generals and their men, chattels, ships and cities, literary ordnance was also seized, so the history of the vanquished slipped into the folio of the victor.

The result is that the hierarchic historians – the Alexandrian-Cassandreian-linked trio of Ptolemy, Aristobulus and Cleitarchus – were overwhelmingly influential in fixing the chemical formula of Alexander’s compound. Although we may be accusing them of gross historical manipulation, so that ‘the challenge of the historical Alexander was therefore refused’, they themselves would have thought quite differently on the matter, for the known world was itself in flux: geography, astronomy, the calendars, philosophy, scientific classification and even currencies were all being replaced, reorganised and recalibrated.²³⁹ The present was finally obscuring the earlier preoccupation with the Homeric past, for Heraclean tasks were being presented to the new generation of kings.

So we doubt Cleitarchus lay awake over passages that captured Alexander’s darker hues, and surely Ptolemy wasted no sleepless nights over his manipulative methodology that may have inserted a self-serving Journal extract into his closing pages. If, as Cicero reminds us, the duty of every historian is to the future, then they simply shifted that obligation to their own paths ahead. Polybius later commented upon the state of the historians writing in the late Argead era: ‘… because there are so many various conditions and circumstances, yielding to which men are prevented from uttering or writing their real opinions.’²⁴⁰ It appears the following years were no less constraining.

5.Lucian A True History 1.12. Quoting Highet (1949) p 304 for Lucian’s unique approach.

6.Lucian A True History 1.4, translation by HW Fowler and FG Fowler, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1905. Lucian referred to himself as ‘Assyrian’ rather than of Greek or Roman descent. He also claimed his native language was a foreign tongue, probably Syriac, a form of Aramaic; see his comment in Lucian The Double Indictment 27. For a summary of Lucian’s career see the introduction by AM Harmon to The Works of Lucian in the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1913. Lucian, from Samosata on the banks of the Euphrates (in modern Turkey), entered imperial service late in life.

8.Hecataeus Genealogies FGH 1 F 1, cited in Boardman-Griffin-Murray (1986) pp 216-217.

9.Momigliano (1966) p 128. Walbank (1962) p 3 for polemic appearing in prefaces. For Duris’ criticism of Ephorus and Theopompus see Kebric (1977) p 39.

10.Discussion of the steles in Bosworth (2002) pp 20-24 and pp 241-242. For a detailed transcription of the Satrap Stele, see Bevan (1968) pp 28-32; its propaganda discussed in Marasco (2011) pp 70-72.

11.See chapter titled Sarissa Diplomacy: Macedonian Statecraft for more on the Satrap Stele.

12.M Wheeler, Archaeology from the Earth, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1956 p 13; its use inspired by Musgrave-Prag-Neave-Lane Fox (2010): People and Archaeology.

13.Strabo 2.1.9, 15.1.28, Arrian 4.14.3, translation by A de Selincourt, Penguin Classics edition, 1958; his jibe was aimed at Ptolemy and Aristobulus, and specifically at their reporting of Callisthenes’ death.

14.Carr (1987) p 24. The original 1961 publication of EH Carr’s What is History?, which challenged the notion of a historian’s objectivity, stirred up a hornets’ nest of criticism following the series of lectures behind it; he sagely added this quote in his 1987 update.

17.His ‘official’ role confirmed at Arrian 4.10.1, Plutarch Sulla 36. Callisthenes was a relative according to the Suda and a great nephew according to Plutarch 55.8; he was the son of Hero, niece of Aristotle. Callisthenes’ father had married Aristotle’s older sister, Arimneste, mother of Hero. Diogenes Laertius termed him ‘kinsman’. Seneca Suasoria 1.5 called him ‘cousin’. Iliad 18.95 quote from Diogenes Laertius Aristotle 6, translation by CD Yonge.

18.Plutarch 53.1 for Callisthenes’ motives and Justin 8.3.9-11 for the Olynthian intrigue. Philip had already executed a third half-brother and the other two by Gygaea, his stepmother, and Amyntas, his father, were destined for the same.

19.Diogenes Laertius Aristotle 6 for both his and Callisthenes’ petitions to Philip.

21.Pearson (1960) p 25-27 for discussion of the fragments of Callisthenes’ works. The Suda also accredited him with a Persika. Barber (1993) p 133 for the quality of Callisthenes’ work. Robinson (1953) pp 45-77 for other possible publications including a History of Thrace and a Makedonika that may or may not be distinct from the Hellenika. Diodorus 14.117.8, 16.14.4 stated Callisthenes’ ten-book Greek history ended in the fourth year of the 105^th Olympiad, the year in which Philomelus the Phocian despoiled the temple at Delphi.

23.Gnomologium Vaticanum 367 for Callisthenes’ riposte. The fragments that attest to Callisthenes’ caging collected in Robinson (1953) pp 52-53; citations came from Ovid, Plutarch and Strabo as well as eyewitness historians. Pearson (1960) p 33 for discussion on the title of Callisthenes’ work.

24.Curtius 3.10 and Justin 11.9.3-6 cited Alexander’s multi-national encouragement to his allied force. Plutarch 33.1 mentioned Callisthenes ‘seeking to win the favour of the Hellenes’. The ‘pan-Hellenic set piece’ quotes Bosworth-Baynham (2000) p 112.

25.Pearson (1960) p 31 for discussion quoting the Vatican Gnomologos 367. Full citation in Robinson (1953) p 54. Dionysius of Halicarnassus On Thucydides 36. Discussed in Pitcher (2009) p 105. Also in the Art of Rhetoric 11.2.19-21 of Pseudo-Dionysius, referring to Thucydides 1.22.4 and his contention that the reading of history should be profitable.

27.For the reference to narrative and epic in the Iliad see Pernot (2005) p 1. Grant (1995) p 47 for twenty-four per cent comprising speeches.

28.Thucydides imitation of Herodotus discussed by JL Moles in Gill-Wiseman (1993) p 100. Gray (1987) p 468 for discussion of mimesis, and quoting Dionysius of Halicarnassus ad Pompeium Geminum 18 (776) as it appears in Gray (1987).

29.Cicero De Oratore 2.58; full text in Robinson (1953) p 55. Quoting Pearson (1960) p 250 for the merging of ‘rhetorical history and antiquarian scholarship.’ Polybius 12.12.b and 17-22.

30.For examples of the treatment of Parmenio see Tarn (1921) p 24; this appears to have infiltrated the Vulgate, examples at Curtius 4.9.14-15, 4.13.4 and 4.7-9; also Arrian 3.10.1-2 and Plutarch 31.11-12.

32.Arrian 4.14 suggested both Aristobulus and Ptolemy deliberately implicated Callisthenes in their texts. Certainly they were not apologetic. Curtius 8.6.22 suggested Ptolemy brought Callisthenes’ involvement to Alexander’s attention.

33.Aristotle was reportedly aware of the danger of Callisthenes’ outspokenness in front of Alexander; Diogenes Laertius 5.4-5.

36.Robinson (1953) p 46 for the fragment relating to Aristotle’s purported joke on wit and common sense.

37.At Plutarch 33, Callisthenes is mentioned twice; Plutarch Aristeides 27.2 mentioned Callisthenes as a source but this is clearly not from his account of Alexander; Pearson (1960) pp 72-74.

38.Stoneman (1991) p 28 for discussion of the possible more sober archetype of the Romance texts. Also Fraser (1996) pp 210-226 for the earliest form of the Romance.

39.For Callisthenes’ alleged part in the pages’ conspiracy see Plutarch 55.3-5, Arrian 4.12.7, 4.13.3-4, 14.1 and 8.6.24-25, Curtius 8.7.10, 8.6.8, 8.8.21, Justin 12.7.2. There are five conflicting reports of how he died; see chapter titled The Damaging Didactic of the Classical Death for fuller explanation.

40.Plutarch 55 claimed letters were circulating to Craterus, Attalus and Alcetas in which Alexander stated the pages had no accomplices, a contention supported by Arrian 4.14.1.

41.The underlying themes and speeches surrounding the Hermolaus affair discussed by S Müller in Carney-Ogden (2010) pp 26-27.

42.Arrian 4.141-4 for the reporting disunity of the eyewitness sources. Lane Fox (1980) p 307.

43.Diogenes Laertius Theophrastus 1.5.44. Atkinson (1996) p 135 for citation on fortune. However the treatise may not have been about Callisthenes, just dedicated to him. Curtius 4.4.19 for Darius’ long speech prior to the battle at Gaugamela when fortune’s changing blessings are pondered.

44.Pearson (1960) p 25 for discussion of his being referenced as a ‘sophist’. Plutarch 53.2 for the quote and Callisthenes’ superior sophistry that earned him the hatred of the Macedonians.

45.Heckel (2006) p 183 assumes he was with the campaign earlier, citing Diogenes Laertius Onesicritus. However this remains uncertain as this text simply suggested ‘he accompanied Alexander’ with no dating reference. It does not confirm Onesicritus ‘set out’ with Alexander. Onesicritus’ family may have been from Aegina, according to Diogenes Laertius 6.84. For discussion see Heckel (2006) p 183 and Pearson (1960) p 85 and in depth in Brown (1949) p 1 ff, 4, 24. He was a student of Diogenes the Cynic; see Plutarch 65.2, Strabo 15.1.65, Metz Epitome 331e.

46.Diogenes Laertius Onesicritus 6.75-76, Plutarch 65.2, Plutarch Moralia 331e, Strabo 15.1.65 for Onesicritus’ association with Diogenes the Cynic.

47.Tarn 1 (1948) p 82 and Tarn (1948) p 97 for discussion of the Peripatetic treatment of Alexander. The hostile tradition to Alexander from the Peripatetics is challenged by Badian (see Borza (1995) pp 179-182 and Milns (1966) p 499 as there is little evidence to prove this. Aristotle founded the Lyceum in Athens in 335/334 BCE. It took its name from Apollo-Lyceus, the god incarnated as a wolf, and was initially a gymnasium and meeting place. The building had colonnades, peripatoi, though which Aristotle would walk whilst teaching, earning him the title peripatetikos, hence peripatetic. Whilst the link is attractive, the term peripatetikos, of walking, was likely already in use; Diogenes Laertius Aristotle 4 for the origins of the name.

48.Diogenes Laertius Zeno 4-5 related a different version of a story that Zeno was shipwrecked at Athens and thus began his own philosophical movement thereafter. Tarn (1949) pp 93-98 for discussion of the peripatetic portrait of Alexander.

49.Robinson The Ephemerides of Alexander’s Expedition (1953). The missing year discussed in full in Bosworth (1981) relating to the lack of synchronicity through 329/328 and 328/327 BCE.

50.Conflicts best summarised in Heckel (2006) p 187 for Oxyartes and p 250 for Sisimithres, where the possible meeting with Roxane took place after the capture of the Rock of Chorienes, or after the siege of the Rock of Sogdia. The sons that Curtius attributed to Oxyartes, Roxane’s father, appear in fact to belong to Chorienes. Even Oxyartes’ governorship and territorial claims are uncertain. Also Bosworth (1981) pp 29-32 for discussion of conflicting reports from this period. Metz Epitome 70 recorded that Roxane bore a child that died in its infancy; its narrative runs, broadly, from July 330 to July 325 BCE.

51.Heckel (2006) pp 76-77 for a summary of the conflicting deaths recorded by Curtius, Arrian, Chares, Aristobulus and Ptolemy and references to either Bactria or Bactra (the regional capital, modern Balkh) in Zariaspa.

52.For the dating of Callisthenes’ death and the termination of his writing, see Robinson (1953) Preface pp viii-xi.

53.Robinson The Ephemerides of Alexander’s Expedition (1953) Introduction p 11 and pp 70-71. Fragments of Onesicritus’ work do relate the curiosities of Sogdia and Bactria, though this could be hearsay and does not prove he was there. For the relevant fragments see Robinson (1953) pp 152-153. Likewise the Amazon affair was probably considered ‘essential’ reporting though Onesicritus might have arrived after the event; Plutarch 46 for Onesicritus’ version.

55.For Onesicritus’ reputation as a purveyor of marvels, see discussion in Pearson (1960) p 86, citing Aulus Gellius 9.4.1-3.

56.Brown (1949) p 7 for the fragments relating to India. Brown (1949) p 89 for the reporting on cotton; Herodotus had more vaguely referred to the plant’s ‘wool’ as a fruit and p 7 for the surviving fragments of Onesicritus in Strabo 15.1.63-65.

57.The ‘philosopher in arms’ is distilled from Onesicritus’ own narrative preserved by Strabo 15.1.58-66. Various other texts including, most notably, Plutarch 64-65, described dialogues between Alexander and the sages. Onesicritus referred to India as ‘a third part of the world’, suggesting his view that it was a distinct continent, possibly as a PR move to help explain Alexander’s decision to turn back west at this point. Discussion in Pearson (1960) p 95.

58.Strabo 15.1.28 discussed by Pearson (1960) pp 83-111 and p 98 for Onesicritus’ place in the Romance, referring to Strabo 15.1.58-66 and the description of the Indian wise men or gymnosophists and the philosophical dialogues.

59.Sphines became known as ‘Calanus’ after ‘kale’ the word he addressed the Macedonians with; Plutarch 65.5; Heckel (2006) p 74 suggests Kalyana as its possible origin. The Indian campaign discussed further in chapter titled The Reborn Wrath of Peleus’ Son.

60.Brown (1949) p 108 for discussion of Pliny preserving Onesicritus’ account of the coastal voyage.

63.Discussion on the reference to Xenophon’s lack of introduction in McGing (201) p 61. Xenophon Hellenika 4.8.1. Compare with Arrian Preface 1.1-2, discussed further in chapter titled Classicus Scriptor, Rhetoric and Rome.

64.There are four references to Onesicritus, two that indicate he was the original source of detail; see Robinson (1953) pp 149-166.

65.Arrian 6.2.3. In contrast the Suda N117 claimed it was Nearchus who lied about his role of admiral of the fleet.

67.Pearson (1960) pp 84-87 for discussion; other third-party references can be found in Diogenes Laertius Onesicritus 6.84-85; Aulus Gellius 9.4; Strabo 2.1.9; Arrian 6.2.3-4, 7.5.6, 7.20.9; these are pro-Nearchus suggesting they came from Nearchus’ own account. Quoting Diogenes Laertius Onesicritus 6.84.

68.Plutarch Moralia 345c or de Gloria Atheniensium. Eunapius Lives of the Sophists VS 1.453. A katabasis more ominously denotes a trip down to the underworld.

69.Anson (2004) p 42 also Borza (1995) pp 166-167 for the use of hetairoi and philos for the inner circles of the Macedonian court.

70.Arrian 3.6.5 for confirmation of his exile and Plutarch 10.1-4 and Arrian 3.6.5-6 for the alleged Pixodarus affair that led to Philip banishing them. Hammond Philip (1994) pp 173-4 suggests the whole affair was the ‘malicious fiction’ of Satyrus’ Life of Philip. However for a different interpretation see Carney-Ogden (2010) pp 4-11. Chapter titled The Reborn Wrath of Peleus’ Son for more on the Pixodarus affair.

71.Ormerod (1997) p 14 and p 108 for Cilician piracy. Ormerod (1997) p 119 for Isocrates Panegyricus 115.

72.Following the arguments cited in Pearson (1960) pp 114-115 surrounding Nearchus’ naval expertise. Piracy was still rife and Alexander had tasked his admiral Amphoterus with clearing the seas of them; Curtius 4.8.15. The Hymn to Apollo 452-5 from the anonymous Homeric Hymns mentioned the hazards of pirates. Thucydides 1.5 also described their plundering. Demosthenes 17 explained how the Athenian fleet needed a further one hundred ships to escort Athens’ grain fleet; Blackwell (1999) pp 95-96 for discussion.

74.1,700 miles according to Pliny 6.96-100. Apparently Nearchus and Onesicritus concurred on the distance. Arrian Indike 18.10 and 18.14 for Nearchus role on the Indus. The Erythrean Sea is literally the ‘Red Sea’ though the Greeks loosely extended its use for the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Curtius 8.9.14 and 10.1.13-14 claimed the name ‘Red’ came from King Erythrus who also featured in Strabo 16.3.5, Pliny 6.13.28, 19.1.2, Arrian Indike 37.3. Engels (1978) p 13 for the calculation of the length of Nearchus’ voyage.

75.Pearson (1960) p 83 for discussion on the nautical conflict with Onesicritus and p 15 for Nearchus’ observations for crossing the tropics and equator. Other titles for his work are suggested by Pliny and Strabo; full discussion in Badian (1975) pp 157-159. Arrian 6.2.3 suggested Onesicritus lied about his and Nearchus’ relative authority and at 7.20.9 outlined a disagreement. There is evidence Nearchus slandered Onesicritus as evidenced in Arrian’s Indike. See discussion in Heckel (2006) p183. For discussion of epiplous see Berthold (1984) p 44.

76.Arrian penned his Indike in Ionian dialect, which suggests Nearchus had too. Pearson (1960) pp 112-149 for discussion of Nearchus’ emulation of Herodotus, the Odyssey and even Pseudo-Scylax’s Periplous. Herodotus 4.44 claimed Scylax ventured down the Indus and west to the Persian Gulf.

77.Arrian 7.19.3-6 for Nearchus’ warning, Plutarch 73, Diodorus 17.112.3; discussed in Pearson (1960) p 116.

80.Arrian Indike 18.1-11 for the list of trierarchs and Homer Iliad 2.494-759 for the catalogue of ships. Tarn 1 (1948) p 101 for the ethnic breakdown.

81.Quoting Pearson (1960) p 135 for ‘epic adornment’ and Shipley (2011) for a ‘philosophical geography’, referring to Pseudo-Scylax’ Periplous. The Periplous was attributed to a ‘Pseudo-Scylax’ for it was supposedly compiled by the 6^th century BCE Greek navigator mentioned at Herodotus 4.44 and yet its knowledge base appears to be that of a much later age, perhaps the mid 330s BCE and with direct connections to Athenian teaching. It was nevertheless widely known and perhaps inspired Alexander to send a fleet on a voyage of exploration of the southern coasts of ‘his’ new empire. It is likely Alexander still harboured the desire to find a coastal route back to Egypt; see Strabo 15.1.25 and Alexander’s short-lived belief that the source of the Nile was to be found in India. The periplous of Hanno the Carthaginian was likely by now in circulation too; Pearson (1960) p 139.

82.Strabo 2.1.9. For examples of the mirabilia see Badian (1975) p 148. Deimachus was Megasthenes’ successor at the Mauryan court in India.

83.Arrian 7.5.6 recorded that all the Bodyguards were crowned with the addition of Onesicritus.

84.Diodorus 19.85.1 for the death of ‘most of Demetrius’ friends’. Peithon son of Agenor is cited as the most distinguished of them, which may suggest Nearchus may have survived. Heckel (2006) p 171 for discussion of Nearchus’ birth date. Nearchus’ whereabouts from Babylon to his reemergence working under Antigonus some four or five years later are unknown. An episode in Polyaenus 5.35 is undated (possibly 318 BCE) though he was operating under Antigonus by 317/316 BCE, as suggested by Diodorus 19.19.4-5 Plutarch 76.3 portrays Alexander listening to Nearchus’ account of the sea voyage; it hints, but does not necessarily prove, he might have already completed a written account. See Flower (1994) p 34 for a possible reference (in Strabo 1.2.35) to the authors of an Indike by Theopompus who is reckoned to have died ca. 320 BCE.

85.Quoting Heckel (2006) p 235 for Arsinoe’s possible royal roots. For the rumour of parentage see Curtius 9.8.22 and Pausanias 1.6.2, but it is rendered unlikely by the claim in Pseudo-Lucian Makrobioi 12 that Ptolemy was eighty-four when he died, thus born in 367 BCE when Philip II was only sixteen. Also see discussion in Heckel 1992 p 222. The authorship of the Makrobioi is however disputed and other commentators variously assigned it to a ‘pseudo’ compiler.

87.See below and chapter titled Sarissa diplomacy: Macedonian Statecraft for Theopompus’ treatment of the Pellan court; Photius reported that Ptolemy wished Theopompus dead; discussion in Flower (1994) p 12.

88.Arrian 3.27.5. Heckel (2006) p 351 pointed out that the term Somatophylakes is occasionally used in the general sense and hypaspists were at times being referred to, i.e. the king’s personal infantry corps. Diodorus 17.61.3, Curtius 4.16.32, Arrian 3.15.2 for references to Hephaestion commanding the undefined bodyguard corps. We restrict its usage to the Bodyguards alone. Also discussion in Chugg (2009) pp 14-18 citing specific examples where the term was more broadly used and also Tarn (1948) p 138. Heckel Somatophylakes (1978) p 224 for the Latin derivatives.

89.Curtius 9.5.21. Bosworth (1983) p 157 noted the similarity with Livy 34.159 and Tacitus 11.11.3; see chapter titled Comets, Colophons and Curtius Rufus for more on Tacitus’ emulation of Curtius – it is a contentious point and some scholars argue the opposite.

90.Heckel (1992) p 222 and Marasco (2011) p 59 for the thirty-five fragments. Quoting G Shipley’s review of Heckel (1992) in The Classical Review, New Series 49, no. 2, 1999, pp 480-482, on his prosopography.

93.Discussion of the military slant in Ptolemy’s account in Pearson (1960) p 196. Pearson (1955) p 436 for lack of interest in Ptolemy’s book in Rome.

94.The quotation is attributed to Voltaire without reference to a specific work. It appears to be an aggregation of two or more quotes: ‘All styles are good except the boring kind’ from L’Enfant prodigue: comédie en vers dissillabes (1736), Preface, and ‘We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth’ from his Letter to M. de Grenonville (1719).

95.Citing Roisman (1994) pp 373-374; bias in Ptolemy’s history is well covered by Errington (1969) and also by Pearson (1960) pp 188-211. For the reference to Badian, see Roisman (1994) p 374 who sees less propaganda than some others in Ptolemy’s history.

96.Citation from J March, D F Kennedy, J Salmon, T Wiedemann, BA Sparkes, P Walcot, Greece and Rome, 2nd Series, Vol. 41, No. 2, 1994 pp 220-255 and also Ellis (1994) p 60: private letters of Professor Peter Green to WM Ellis.

99.Pearson (1960) p 151 for his technical roles and examples on p 161; his account of the siege of Tyre was praised by Menander Oration 27.6 ff; Brunt (1974) p 66 for discussion.

100.Pearson (1960) p 186 for divine intervention, including the Siwa episode. For the journey to Siwa see Diodorus 17.49.2-52.7, Arrian 3.4-5, Curtius 4.7.8-4.89, Plutarch 26.3-27.11, Justin 11.11.1-13, Strabo 17.1.43, Itinerarium Alexandri 48-50.

101.Lucian How to Write History 12. See Pearson (1960) p 150 who rejects the veracity of Lucian’s reference.

103.See discussion in Pearson (1960) pp 150-151 for discussion on Aristobulus’ flattery and pp 156-157 for discussion of his possibly sanitised reporting of the Gordian Knot episode. Following Pearson (1960) p 263 for the conclusion that Aristobulus fell into no obvious category.

104.The various accounts of the siege of Tyre are a good example where engineers were mentioned, and Hephaestion’s death for architects, for example.

105.See Robinson (1953) pp 205-243 for fragments citing Cassandreia. Tarn argues Kos; discussion in Pearson (1960) p 106 and Pearson (1960) p 151. Plutarch Demosthenes 23.6 cited him as a Cassandreian. See full career discussion in Pearson (1960) pp 150-187. Arrian 6.29.4-6.30 for his engineering role suggested by the task of restoring Cyrus’ tomb. Heckel (2006) p 46 assumes Aristobulus returned to Europe, but there is little evidence.

106.Cassander’s brother Alexarchus founded the city of Uranopolis at the same time; Athenaeus 3.98d-e.

108.The letter from Antigonus to Scepsis for the reference to an Aristobulus who appears to have been a representative of Ptolemy in the so-called ‘Peace of the Dynasts’. See citations by Bosworth-Baynham (2000) pp 231-232 and Heckel (2006) p 46. A late publication date for Aristobulus’ work is supported by Arrian’s detailing of the divination of Pythagoras the seer in which Aristobulus is mentioned as the source, and it suggests the engineer-historian published after the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BCE, for Arrian also recounted the fate of Antigonus Monophthalmos who perished at the battle; it is inconclusive as Arrian used Hieronymus for this period.

110.See chapter titled Sarissa Diplomacy: Macedonian Statecraft for detail on Keraunos’ career.

111.Arrian 7.26.3. The interpretation of the Greek has been debated, but it seems clear the Journal had nothing more to say about events after Alexander’s death.

112.Ptolemy’s link to the Journal discussed in chapter titled Guardians and Ghosts of the Ephemerides.

116.Until the battle at Ipsus in 301 BCE Lesbos was most prominently under the control of Antigonus or his supporters. Thereafter the Ptolemies assumed control.

117.Robinson (1960) p 86 for Ephippus’ accounts of the symposia that led to the downfall of Hephaestion and Alexander.

119.Pearson (1960) p 244 for discussion of Anaximenes’ background and pp 68-70 for Medius; p 243-245 for Anaximenes’ work, citing Pausanias 6.1.8 and Diodorus 15.89.3 for Anaximenes’ Hellenika and Philippika.

120.Pearson (1960) pp 70-78 for Polycleitus. Polybius 8.9.1-4 claimed Theopompus denigrated Philip II’s behaviour at court; see Pearson (1960) p 18 for discussion.

121.Suda M 227 and Plutarch Moralia 182c for Marsyas’ relations to Antigonus, and Diodorus 20.50.4 for his command at Salamis; Robinson (1953) p 166 for the fragments. Pearson (1960) pp 253-254 and Kebric (1997) pp 43-44 for discussion of Marsyas’ career and work. Plutarch 4.4 for Aristoxenus’ description.

122.The reference to thirteen possible historians that wrote histories of Macedonia is taken from Roisman-Worthington (2010) p 7.

123.Roisman-Worthington (2010) p 24 for full citation from Borza’s Before Alexander: Constructing Early Macedonia, 1999, Claremont, p 5. Quoting Carol Thomas’ introduction to Eugene Borza’s Makedonika for ‘Macedonian specialist’. The title of Antipater’s book in FGrH 114 T1 from the Suda, Marsyas and Philip of Pella in FGrH 135-6; see Marasco (2011) p 45 for discussion of Antipater’s identity and the opinion of C Bearzot on misidentification. Roisman-Worthington (2010) pp 85-86 for Theagenes.

124.Kebric (1997) p 42 for discussion of Idiomenias’ work. Pearson (1960) pp 250-251 for discussion of Menaechmus’ work. Brown (1949) p 106 for the account of Androsthenes mentioned in Strabo 16.32 (citing Athenaeus 3.93b). His role in the Hydaspes-Indus fleet mentioned at Arrian Indike 18.4.6. Billows (1991) pp 334-337 for Duris’ fragments and style.

125.Athenaeus 4.146c for the title of Ephippus’ book. Pearson (1960) is rightly dubious about the corruption of the title and suggested it could equally have been titled Five Books of Diaries on the exploits of Alexander. Bosworth A to A (1988) p 181 discussed the issue and reminds us many attributions made in the Suda are questionable. Strattis of Olynthus was cited in the Suda as the author of Five Books of Commentary on the Diary (Ephemerides). The title is probably corrupt. Pearson (1960) p 260 suggested the dating but Hornblower p 252 rejected it noting many people called themselves Olynthians much later. Nevertheless we may assume Strattis was born before Olynthus’ destruction by Philip II in 348 BCE, making him a possible contemporary and eyewitness to campaign events, whilst the destruction of his city would have explained any hostile reporting. Pearson (1995) p 437 suggests the attachment to Olynthus was to reinforce the authenticity of forged diaries.

126.See Bosworth-Baynham (2000) p 287 for discussion; as examples Arrian 7.15.4-6 mentioned two further little known Alexander historians, Aristus and Asclepiades, and Plutarch 46.1-3 mentioned six otherwise unknown historians, including Ister, Antigenes, Anticleides, Philo the Theban and Philip of Theangela. Pearson (1960) p 255 for the Oxyrynchus Papyri XV 1798.

128.Tarn (1948) proposed the source was a Greek working for Darius, see discussion in Atkinson (1963) p 133.

129.Hornblower (1981) pp 5-7 and Heckel (200) p 139 for the dating of Hieronymus.

130.Anson (2004) pp 3-4 for the lost title. Discussion of Dionysius’ opinion in Hornblower (1981) pp 246-248. Detail discussed of Hieronymus’ account in chapter titled The Tragic Triumvirate of Treachery and Oaths.

131.For Hieronymus’ approach see chapter titled The Tragic Triumvirate of Treachery and Oaths and in particular Roisman (2012) p 18 and pp 9-30 for a discussion of the bias in Hieronymus.

132.Bosworth (1990) p 330 for discussion of the period covered by Hieronymus and see chapter titled The Tragic Triumvirate of Treachery and Oaths.

133.Quoting Hornblower (1981) p 16. None of the eighteen or nineteen fragments are direct quotations of Hieronymus.

134.Brown (1947) p 691 for discussion and referring to Jacoby’s Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker which collected the fragments. See chapter titled Classicus Scriptor Rhetoric and Rome for more on Diodorus’ method and use of sources. Diodorus’ books eighteen and twenty-two survive in fragments and yet the era they covered suggest they too would have used detail from Hieronymus who detailed events down at least to the death of Pyrrhus in 272 BCE.

136.See discussion in Green (2007) p xxvii and Billows (1990) p 333-337 and quoting Kebric (1977) p 9.

137.Kebric (1977) p 46 for the proposition that Hieronymus published in response to Duris’ account. For his career and dating see Kebric (1977) pp 1-5. The conclusions are refuted by Billows (1990) pp 333-336 who sees no evidence of the use of Duris. Diodorus is reckoned to have drawn from Duris rather than Hieronymus for detail that appears in book 19 concerning Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse; the logic being that Duris had published a so-named book and had possibly been born in Sicily-Kebric (1977) p 4. Whilst Timaeus, who harboured a special grudge against the tyrant, is a strong contender as a source, as are the pro-Tyrant Callias and Antander (brother to Agathocles) – all mentioned by Diodorus himself (21.16-18) – several episodes found in Plutarch are specific to Eumenes’ career, and Duris must be a prime candidate for each. The absence of these episodes from Diodorus suggests the possible strategic omission by Hieronymus, who may well have been involved in their provenance; a point of some significance to our investigation. Hieronymus’ method and bias discussed in chapter titled The Tragic Triumvirate of Treachery and Oaths. Perdiccas’ enforcement of Alexander’s Exiles Decree allowed Samians to return to Athens-dominated Samos but Polyperchon overturned this in 319 BCE and returned the island to Athens after which they turned to Antigonus for support: Kebric (1977) pp 4-5.

138.Chapter titled The Tragic Triumvirate of Treachery and Oaths for detailed discussion of Hieronymus’ role in the Successor Wars.

140.See Kebric (1977) p 37 for discussion of Duris’ style and emulation and pp 10-11 for the fragments; p 19 ff for his political stance. He is thought to have taken much material on Egypt and Africa from Herodotus. Billows (1990) p 333-335 for the length and dating of Duris’ work. Some sixteen of the thirty-six fragments appear in Athenaeus Deipnosophistae. Diodorus 15.60.6 confirmed where Duris’ history commenced. Duris was personally familiar with Antigonus, Demetrius and Lysimachus; Kebric (1977) p 81.

141.Plutarch Demosthenes 23.4, Pericles 28 and Alcibiades 32 for Duris’ unreliability; also Photius Myriobiblion 176. Plutarch Eumenes 1.1 for his confirmation that he was drawing from Duris for Eumenes’ background.

142.Plutarch Moralia 1043d. Hammond (1994) p 189 for discussion of Ephorus’ treatment of Philip and his excellence appearing in the early chapters of Diodorus’ book 15. Flower (1994) Introduction p 1 for discussion of the scope of Ephorus’ history; 1069 represented the return of the Heracleidae.

144.FGrH 76 F1 for the fragment of Duris; cited in full in Gill-Wiseman (1993) p 184. Mimesis and its use discussed in Gray (1987) and following Gray for history as an ‘imitative art’, Aristotle’s Poetics saw a separation of the disciplines. Grafton (1990) p 78 for Ephorus stealing 3,000 of Duris’ lines, see FGrH 70 Ephorus T 17.

147.Cleitarchus was ‘Alexandrine’ according to Philodemus De Sublimate 3.2 (FGrH 137 T 9). Bosworth (1992) p 2 however considered the evidence tenuous.

149.The comparative lack of information in Arrian’s account, for example, compared to the Vulgate for the period after 328 BCE, discussed in Bosworth (1981).

150.Cicero Brutus 43. Cleitarchus was popular in Rome and he was cited as a source by Diodorus, Plutarch, Strabo, Athenaeus and Diogenes Laertius, to name a few. Quintilian 10.1.74-5. Cicero Brutus 11.42. Cicero had proposed that orators alone should be entrusted with the care of the past. For other criticisms see Pearson (1960) p 153 footnote 21.

151.Deinon’s account was rich in Persian court customs, as inferred by a fragment in Athenaeus 2.67a. Plutarch Artaxerxes mentioned Deinon nine times as an information source; we assume Deinon’s Persika was being referenced. Nepos Conon 5 for his praise of Deinon.

152.Quoting Plutarch Artaxerxes 1.2 and 6.6, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1926; Ctesias had in fact called both Hellanicus and Herodotus liars.

153.Quoting Pearson (1960) p 213. Ctesias appears a preferred source as he was resident at the Persian court; Diodorus 2.125, 2.129-137 for Ctesias’ capture and service under Artaxerxes II.

154.Diogenes Laertius Stilpo suggested Stilpo ‘won over’ Cleitarchus, detaching him from his previous teacher of Aristotle of Cyrene. See discussion in Bosworth (1996) p 2. As Bosworth (1996) points out, the meeting would have taken place in Greece not Egypt. For more on the philosophy and influences of Stilpo see Brown (1950) pp 136-137.

155.Ptolemy’s manipulative or even ruthless character is well demonstrated. As examples: his murder of Cleomenes, a local governor or treasurer, see Pausanias 1.6.3; for the forced suicide of Polemaeus, a defecting nephew of Antigonus’ and who had become ‘presumptuous’ see Diodorus 20.27; and his annexation of Coele-Syria after a failed bribe, Appian Syrian Wars 52 and Diodorus 18.43.2.

156.For the flattery still visible in Curtius’ account of the Babylonian settlement onwards see chapter titled Babylon: the Cipher and Rosetta Stone.

157.For Cleitarchus’ use of Theopompus see Pearson (1960) Introduction p 19. Following Tarn (1948) p 127 for the proposal of Peripatetic polemic and p 297 for ‘under Cassander’s shield’. Athenaeus 10.435b-c for an example of Theopompus’ treatment of the Macedonian court under Philip II. Brown (1950) for discussion of Diogenes’ influence over Stilpo, and thus Cleitarchus. Brown (1950) p 153 disputes there is any proof of Cleitarchean hostility towards Alexander. Flower (1994) pp 98-116 for Theopompus’ treatment of Philip and pp 166-167 and pp 169-183 for his moralising. Quoting Plutarch Demetrius 10.2 of the Athenian regime. Pausanias 1.25.6 termed Demetrius a ‘tyrant’.

158.See Kebric (1977) p 36 ff for Duris’ influence on other historians and p 79 for the early publication of the Samian Chronicle; Theopompus is not proposed but if the Samian Chronicle was published before Samos was occupied by Ptolemaic forces in 281 BCE, then it is possible Samos’ struggle under Alexander’s Diadokhoi influenced Cleitarchus, assuming he published late.

161.Lucian Pro lapsu inter salutandum 10; discussed by C Bearzot in Marasco (2011) p 46.

162.In Arrian’s account he cited, or implied, there had been discrepancies between Aristobulus and Ptolemy at 2.3.7 (implied), 2.4.7 (implied), 3.3.6, 3.4.5, 3.30.5, 4.3.5, 4.5.6 (implied), 4.13.5 (implied), 4.14.3-5, 5.14.3 (implied), 5.20.2.

163.E Schwartz Arrian no 9 in Pauly-Wissowa Real Encyclopedia I, 1894. See discussion in Brunt (1975) p 23.

167.Polybius 6.19-28 and 6.40 gave a fulsome description of their uses and arms.

169.Noted by Hornblower (1981) p 234. Polybius and Hieronymus could have returned to their native lands but had by then become influential to regimes elsewhere.

170.A view supported by Momigliano and quoted in full in Grant (1995) p 70. Plutarch Themistocles 22.3.

173.The nom de plume discussed in Pitcher (2009) p 4. See Xenophon Hellenika 3.1.2 for his attribution to Themistogenes and Plutarch Moralia 345c, de Gloria Atheniensium for the revealed identity. The Suda compiler(s) assumed Themistogenes of Syracuse was a separate author.

174.Von Clausewitz On War, published posthumously. Originally Vom Kriege, 3 volumes, Berlin, 1832-34.

175.Robinson (1953) believed Callisthenes himself drew from the diaries as did later historians, yet paradoxically he believed the ‘thin sources’ in 327-326 BCE were due to Eumenes’ loss of the documents in a tent fire rather than Callisthenes’ death. This is paradoxical for while Callisthenes is mentioned as a source in later works, the Journal is never mentioned aside from the fragment dealing with Alexander’s death.

178.A summary of the earlier chronology debate is given in Pearson (1960) pp 152-154, pp 172-173 and pp 226-233; also Brown (1950).

179.Droysen Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen 1833. Fused with later 1836-42 work on Alexander’s successors as Geschichte des Hellenismus, Gotha, Perthes, 1877-87.

180.Bosworth more recently proposed that Cleitarchean publication was as early as 310 BCE, citing the research of Badian, Prandi and Schachermeyr who believed it was published within twenty years of Alexander’s death (thus before 303 BCE). Bosworth (2002) p 43 citing G Droysen (1877) Geschichte des Hellenismus, Gotha; E Schwartz, Aristobulus, Pauly-Wissowa, R.E. II, 911 ff, 1957, H Berve (1926), Hamilton (1961), Prandi (1996) p 28. Jacoby Pauly-Wissowa R. E. XI, 622 ff, 1921. Heckel (1988) p 2 for Schachermeyr’s view.

181.Tarn (1948) p 101 described the relationship between Curtius and Cleitarchus’ underlying source as obscurum per obscurius, though on pp 124-125 he did concede Trogus’ use of Diodorus and a common source.

182.Hammond (1993) p 195 citing the earlier research by Goukowsky. Pearson (1960) pp 212-242 for the profile and dating of Cleitarchus and in particular his use of Aristobulus. Arrian Preface 1.2 for his claim that he wrote when a king. As with the claim that Lysimachus was a king when Onesicritus read aloud to him, we do not need to take this too literally; both became kings. See chapter titled Sarissa Diplomacy: Macedonian Statecraft for the dating of regal proclamations by the Diadokhoi.

183.The geographical argument is based on Cleitarchus’ comment on the relative sizes of the Black and Caspian Seas; see Tarn (1948) pp 16-29 and his use of Patroclus’ geography. The titular argument surrounds Ptolemy’s investiture with the title Soter. The chronology argument is based around Cleitarchus’ time studying with Stilpo of Megara. Well summarised in Pearson (1960) pp 212-242 and Brown (1950) pp 137-139 and Hamilton (1961). For Alexander’s entry into the Mallian city and subsequent wounds see Arrian 6.8.4-6.13.5, 6.28.4, Curtius 9.4.26-9.5.30, Diodorus 17.98.1-17.100.1, Plutarch 63.5-13. Curtius 9.4.15 for the mutinous behaviour before entering Mallia.

184.Arrian 6.11.8 and Curtius 9.5.21 for their polemics on other historians reporting the events, including Timagenes and Cleitarchus.

186.‘Begrudging’ because Timagenes fell out with both Caesar and Augustus and was banished from court; see Seneca, On Anger 3.22-23. Timagenes originally arrived in Rome as a slave in 55 BCE; discussed in Hamilton (1961) p 456.

187.See Robinson (1953) pp 183-243 for the fragments, especially in Arrian, detailing their conflicting accounts.

188.Arrian 6.11.8 and Curtius 9.5.21 for the lines referred to. For Curtius’ likely publication date see chapter titled Comets, Colophons and Curtius Rufus.

189.See discussion of the similarities in Robinson (1953) The Ephemerides pp 69-71.

190.Arrian 6.6.3 for the slaughter of unarmed men and Arrian 6.11.1 for the women and children. For the massacre of the Branchidae see chapter titled The Rebirth of the Wrath of Peleus’ Son.

191.Arrian Indike 19.8; hyperaspizantes are hypaspists who protected their king or colleague with a shield. Plutarch 63.5 has Limnaus instead of Leonnatus in the role but this could be a manuscript corruption. An aspis is a small light shield though a larger hoplon-style shield is implied.

192.See discussion in Hammond (1993) pp 268-9 citing Arrian 6.10.2 who in turn cited Ptolemy as his source. For Leonnatus’ actions see Arrian 6.4.3 and Curtius 9.4.15; for Peucestas’ actions, Curtius 9.5.14-18, Arrian 6.9.3, 10.1-2, 11.7-8, 6.28.4, Diodorus 17.99.4. The arrowhead was allegedly four fingers in breadth; Plutarch Moralia 341C gave Aristobulus’ equally detailed account of the wound. Curtius 9.5.24-28 for Critobulus’ role; this is the same name as Philips’ physician at the siege of Methone 28 years before; Pliny 7.37; Arrian 6.11.1 called him Critodemus.

193.Chapter titled Babylon: the Cipher and Rosetta Stone for discussion of Cleitarchus’ respective treatment of Perdiccas and Ptolemy and Arrian’s belief, probably from Ptolemy, that Alexander never replaced Hephaestion’s chiliarchy. Collins (2001) pp 270-273 for discussion of the chiliarch’s peripheral roles.

195.Briant (1974) p 108 for the chronology of Persepolis’ fall, looting and burning. Plutarch 37.6 mentioned a four month stay. Diodorus 17.72 and Curtius 5.7.3-7 embodying Cleitarchus’ version of events; Justin 11.14.10 is too brief for any analysis. The report of Strabo 15.3.6 and Arrian 3.18.12 didn’t mention Thais but focused on Alexander’s political decision to please the Greeks. Plutarch 38 reported both versions. Arrian 6.30.1 claimed Alexander regretted his action upon returning to Persepolis on his way back to Babylon after the Indian campaign.

196.Diodorus 18.70.3, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1963.

197.Plutarch 38.2-5 captured the heroic theme but commented that her speech urging on Alexander was not in keeping with her place. Diodorus 17.72 followed closely clearly putting Thais in the lead role. Athenaeus 13.576d-e confirmed Cleitarchus was his source for the reporting of the fire.

199.Athenaeus 13.576e. A daughter, Eirene, married Eunostus of Soli, King of Cyprus, and a son by Thais fought at Salamis in 307/6 BCE against the Antigonids according to Justin 15.12. Bosworth (1996) p 3 disagrees that Cleitarchus would have dared change Ptolemy’s version of events at Persepolis.

202.Heckel (2006) p 183 and Pearson (1960) pp 84-85 for discussion on Onesicritus’ age.

204.Brown (1949) p 7 for the comparison of the length of Onesicritus’ work with that of Xenophon’s On the Education of Cyrus, its model which was similarly divided into eight books, as was the Anabasis of Arrian. Pearson (1960) pp 83-84 for discussion of Nearchus’ criticism of Onesicritus, citing Arrian 7.20.8-10 and Indike 32.9-13. A more specific rebuttal of Onesicritus’ claims appears at Indike 3.5 and Strabo 15.1.12.

205.See discussion on the relative chronology of Nearchus’ and Onesicritus’ publication dates in Brown (1949) pp 4-5, Pearson (1960) p 84 and in Brown (1950) pp 5-7. Plutarch 46.4 for the reference to Lysimachus. Heckel (2008) p 7 brings to our attention the fact that the Journal claimed Nearchus read an account of his voyage to Alexander in his final days in Babylon, thus suggestive that he published soon after. However the Journal citations are spurious and reading excerpts from a diary does not imply an immediate publication when events that followed were so calamitous.

206.See chapter titled The Silent Siegecraft of the Pamphleteers for further discussion.

209.Though Ptolemy I Soter, the Egyptian dynast, had married Cassander’s sister Eurydice in 321/320 BCE, he was to repudiate her in 317 BCE in favour of Berenice, Eurydice’s lady-in-waiting who ‘had the greatest influence and was foremost in virtue and understanding’; Plutarch Pyrrhus 4.4. Pyrrhus singled her out for his affections knowing she held sway with Ptolemy. Berenice was nevertheless of the Antipatrid house; her paternal grandfather was the brother of the regent Antipater, the father of the accused Cassander. Cassander’s own sons were exploited by Pyrrhus the ‘Eagle of the Epirotes’ (Plutarch Pyrrhus 10.1), and executed by Demetrius and Lysimachus for their internecine intrigues; by 294 BCE the power once wielded by the house of Antipater, the former regent, and his offspring, was finally spent; see Plutarch Pyrrhus for Pyrrhus’ relations with the sons of Cassander – though he had provided aid to one brother (Alexander) against the other (Antipater), he ultimately made both pay. Moreover, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, who succeeded his father in 282 BCE (he had been co-ruler with his father from 285 BCE), put to death his half-brother by Cassander’s sister, Eurydice, who was based at Miletus in Caria by 287 BCE where she formed a dynastic alliance with Demetrius Poliorketes, Cassander’s old enemy (Eurydice offered her daughter, Ptolemais, to Demetrius in 298 BCE – Plutarch Demetrius 32 and 46). Philadelphos allegedly murdered his half-brother for inciting the Cypriots to revolt (Pausanias 1.7.1); the half-brother might have been in league with Ptolemy Keraunos, another son of Eurydice, to oust Philadelphos. Lysimachus, once married to another of Cassander’s sisters, Nicaea, died at Curopedion in 281 BCE. Eurydice’s eldest son, Ptolemy Keraunos (thus Cassander’s nephew), who had been passed over for the kingship in Egypt, died in the Gallic invasions in 279 BCE, and her second son, Meleager, followed him soon after. Between them they had held the Macedonian throne for less than three years (281-279 BCE) at the court based at Cassandreia. Antipater Etesias, the son of Cassander’s brother, soon followed them as his reign lasted just forty-five days – ‘as long as the Etesian Winds blew’. For Seleucus’ possible Pamphlet guilt see chapter titled The Silent Siegecraft of the Pamphleteers.

210.Arrian 4.13.5-6, also Curtius 8.6.16 for the Syrian prophetess. See further discussion of Aristobulus as source of the portentous in chapter titled The Guardians and Ghosts of the Ephemerides.

211.There is a lacuna in point in Curtius’ account preceding Alexander’s death, but Justin (so we assume Trogus) and Diodorus captured the supernatural detail. Hammond (1998) pp 420-421 assumes Curtius drew directly from Aristobulus for some portentous incidents, but he could equally have taken the detail from Cleitarchus. And Curtius never mentioned Aristobulus as a source elsewhere.

213.Arrian 7.15.4-6 for the embassies to Babylon and sources behind them. He was doubtful on the report; Aristus is further mentioned as a historian of Alexander in Athenaeus 10.10 and Strabo book 15.

214.Well summed up by Tarn (1949) pp 374-378; see Justin 12.13.1 for Trogus’ list of embassies.

215.Polybius 3.22. Momigliano (1977) p 104 for discussion; the Pyrgi Tablets relating to ca. 500 BCE suggest an Etruscan-Carthaginian relationship which may be the basis of Polybius’ claim.

216.See Justin 12.2.12-13 and Livy 8.17.10 for the peace treaty with Rome in the Varronian years, so 332 BCE. The date of the death of Alexander of Epirus is uncertain though Livy 8.24.1 credited it to the year of the founding of Alexandria, thus 332/1 BCE, yet Livy dated these events to 326 BCE, so uncertainty remains. Alexander Molossus had married Alexander’s sister, Cleopatra, his own niece.

217.Justin 12.3.1 for the funeral games. Justin 12.2.2-4 and 12.1.14-15 for the oracle of Dodona that warned Alexander to beware of the city of Pandosia and the river Acheron.

219.In Arrian 7.15.4-6 the Tyrrhenians, alongside Lucanians and Bruttians, were reported to be sending ambassadors to Babylon and this could have referred to Etruscans or other Latins bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea. Arrian 7.1.3 for the alleged plans to campaign in Sicily and Italy.

221.Chugg p 11 for a discussion of Rome’s emergence after Pyrrhus’ campaigns, and for the Rhodian trade discussion see Berthold (1984) p 80.

222.For Tarquinus’ heritage Pliny 35.152, Livy 1.34, Dionysius of Halicarnassus 3.46; discussed in Boardman (1964) p 202. Whether the original Cloarca Maxima was all subterranean or an open canal remains debated. It was certainly built over by later Rome.

223.Plutarch Camillus 22.2-3. The date of the sacking of Rome is often stated as 390 BCE based on the faulty Varronian chronology. This stems from Heracleitus’ claim that Hyperboreans descended on a Greek city named Rome; Aristotle apparently credited Camillus as its saviour.

224.Pliny stated that Theophrastus was the first foreigner to write about Rome in detail, though Theopompus had mentioned the capture of Rome by Gauls; discussion in Pearson (1960) p 233. The coverage of Rome in Timaeus and Callias came from their associations with Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse; Diodorus 21.17.1-4 for their relative positions; Momigliano (1977) pp 52-55 for discussion.

225.Hieronymus’ portrayal of Pyrrhus necessarily brought Pyrrhus’ clashes with Rome into his narrative and thus he was one of the earliest Hellenistic authors to bring Rome into mainstream Hellenic history. See discussion in Hornblower (1981) pp 71-72. Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 1.5.8 claimed Hieronymus was the first historian to give an account of Rome and Timaeus the second. Yet an ‘account’ might suggest the definition of something fuller than the mention of an embassy; perhaps something of a background history to their origins, which fits Hieronymus’ style. Discussion in Tarn (1948) pp 22-23.

226.See chapter entitled The Tragic Triumvirate of Treachery and Oaths for Antigonus’ career.

227.Euripides Ino fragment 413.2 quoted by Plutarch On Exile 16 and Moralia 506c.

229.Quoting Voltaire Treatise on Toleration, 1763 and Letter to François-Joachim de Pierre, Cardinal de Bernis, 1761.

230.Diodorus 19.95.3, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1963.

231.Quoting Bosworth From A to A (1988) p 266 and for full discussion pp 260-270.

232.According to Pseudo-Lucian Makrobioi 10-13, Lysimachus was over eighty when he died, Ptolemy eighty-four and Seleucus eighty.

233.For the opening of hostility between Ptolemy and Seleucus post-Ipsus see Diodorus 21.5-6.

236.Memnon’s work is preserved in an epitome by Photius FGrH no. 434 F 7.3 and detailed the city’s history and the influences upon it, dating from the tyranny of Clearchus (ruled 364-353 BCE) to the city’s capture by Rome in 70 BCE.

237.Discussed in Bosworth-Baynham (2000) p 287. See Billows (1990) p 339 for sources.

238.See chapter titles Sarissa Diplomacy: Macedonian Statecraft for more on the fate of the children.

240.Polybius 8.8.8-9, translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, vol. III, 1922-1927. See discussion in Walbank (1962) p 4.

241.Aristotle Politics 1.1253a2-3 proposed that men are by nature political animals.

242.Aristotle Historia Animalium, 2.7. Aristotle actually wrote: ‘On the whole, the wild animals of Asia are the fiercest, those of Europe the boldest, and those of Libya the most varied in form.’ Later authors turned this into a well-used adage.