This is the first of three volumes by H., which will cover Books 14–20 of Diodorus Siculus’ work. Volume 1 includes Books 14 and 15, ranging chronologically from 404/3 to 360/59 bce. It is a handsome volume, pleasant to the eye and easy to navigate, generously spaced throughout for readers to annotate. There are helpful running summaries in the margins of the translation. Equally helpful are the many maps, a chronological outline and a glossary. The forte of the book is the excellent English translation and detailed accompanying notes. Given the importance of Diodorus for the study of the fourth century, H.'s contribution is to be welcomed.
H.'s assessment of Diodorus as a historian in the introduction, on the other hand, is more questionable. H. examines the major aspects of Diodorus, and here I must voice my disagreement. In a brief review I can only concentrate on the more important of the issues raised, at the heart of which are Diodorus’ sources: can these be identified, and how did Diodorus use them? H.'s view seems rather contradictory. On the one hand, and this is in line with much of contemporary thinking, Diodorus is a ‘well-read scholar’ who based himself ‘upon extensive and diligent study of numerous sources’, while on the other he concedes Diodorus’ ‘manifold faults’ (p. xxxviii). H.'s explanation is to blame Diodorus’ method of working: dealing with unwieldy scrolls and not books, ‘ancient scholars read and memorized’, and Diodorus likewise ‘read, absorbed and digested a body of material and then produced his own version’. Hence Diodorus’ blunders. But ancient scholars, for instance literary critics and historians, did not work like that, at least not always and as a rule; it would depend on the task in hand, as can be illustrated abundantly.
Regarding Diodorus and his sources, let us first see what H. makes of the long-established and widespread belief (not just ‘Stylianou and Parker’) that Ephorus was Diodorus’ main narrative source for Books 11–15(16); the main, not the exclusive, as H. says, source, for the Greek and Persian narratives, that is. The sources for the Greek West are more complicated – H. misrepresents my position somewhat. He seeks to undermine the close connection that many see between Ephorus and Diodorus (p. xxxvii). This view, he thinks, is based on a few certain references to Ephorus ‘and a series of questionable assumptions’, especially the assumption that we know what Ephorus’ history was like, which in turn is largely based on the tradition that the historian was a pupil of Isocrates. H. cites Cicero (De oratore 2.94), where Ephorus and many others are mentioned as pupils of Isocrates, and he is correct that the passage is of small evidential value: ‘After all, when Isocrates lists his favourite pupils at Antidosis 93 he names none of those named by Cicero’. But this does not clinch H.'s argument, since Ephorus can hardly have been included in the list at Antidosis 93. H. further dismisses any thought of Ephorus being influenced by Isocrates’ ideas: ‘it is rather presumptuous … to think that we know what Isocrates’ ideas were, or even if he held any definite views’ (p. xxxvii). This is an extraordinary assessment of Isocrates, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for one, would not share. The case for Isocrates’ influence on Ephorus is stronger than that.
What H. seems not to appreciate fully are the important conclusions to be drawn as to sources and methods from a comparison of Diodorus’ text with those of surviving sources, such as Ephorus (FGrHist 70 F76 & F191), Agatharchides and Polybius (as done by, for instance, J. Hornblower and myself). H.'s idea about how Diodorus generally worked, first reading extensively, memorising and digesting before putting pen to paper to produce his own accounts (p. xxxviii), reaches extreme lengths when considering Diodorus’ sources for Cyrus’ expedition. For this, he thinks, Diodorus read Xenophon, Ephorus and Ctesias and then wrote ‘his own eclectic version’ (p. xliii). This makes no sense. Consider, for instance, 14.29.1–3, the detail preserved there and the correct sequence in which it is given. Clearly, Diodorus worked with a text before him; and a closer and direct engagement with his sources while writing is also indicated by the comparison with the parallel texts just noted, where we often find verbatim quotations or close paraphrases. This strongly points to the use of as few main sources as possible and to a different way of working than H. imagines, for historical narratives at any rate.
Something also needs to be said about the chronographer. H. has a section on ‘Chronology’ (p. xliv), but it is rather vague and falls short of bringing out the important contribution of the chronographic source to the Bibliotheke. Readers might well form the impression that the chronographer merely provided a framework of annual magistrates and Olympiads, while in fact he offered a great deal more. For instance, in the notes to the translation H. persistently avoids pointing out the chronographic entries interspersed in the text, even when the nature of these entries is unmistakable. It would be more correct when speaking of Diodorus’ sources to divide these into two groups, the chronographer on the one hand and narrative sources on the other. I would go further and say that the Bibliotheke is essentially the chronographic source fleshed out, to a greater or lesser extent, and with greater or lesser competence, with the material Diodorus culled from narrative sources.
A comment on the plan of the Bibliotheke, original and modified. Under the heading ‘Plan’ (p. xxxii) H. quotes Diodorus’ outline of his work, as this stood completed, though yet unpublished (1.4.6–5.1). There is a well-known problem here. The terminal point of the history, Diodorus tells us, was the beginning of the Celtic War, dated to the first year of the 180th Olympiad, when Herodes was archon in Athens, i.e. 60/59 bce. Diodorus repeats this a little further on, at 5.1, yet the figure he gives for the number of years from the Trojan War to the end of the history brings us down to 46/5 bce, not 60/59. In a puzzling note to this (n. 19) H. writes: ‘Readers will notice a discrepancy between the date given for the beginning of the Celtic War at 1.4.7 and that given here and reinforced by the calculation in the next sentence. One popular solution is to assume that Diodorus originally intended to include Caesar's campaigns in Gaul … and carry his history to the end of the Celtic War, but later … changed his mind and decided to end at year 60. However, in this passage he clearly associates the year 46 with the beginning of the Celtic War, which rather undermines this solution’. But at 1.5.1 Diodorus is not giving a date for the beginning of the Celtic War, setting it now in 46/5. And the ‘popular solution’ is not based on an assumption. Diodorus had indeed originally intended to conclude with the year 46/5: 3.38.2–3; 5.21.2; 5.22.1, passages that H. seems to have overlooked. In the event, Diodorus concluded the work with 60/59, for whatever reasons, but typically left uncorrected the figures pointing to 46/5.
In the final section, ‘Substance’, H. rightly points to the value of Diodorus for the history of the period covered by Books 14 and 15. H. is not the first to do so. In the last paragraph, which is something of a eulogy of Diodorus, he unnecessarily denounces extreme views of him, which no one holds in that precise form, but he agrees about the many and serious flaws of the Bibliotheke. ‘Every piece of information provided by Diodorus’, he warns, ‘must be evaluated critically. That is the historian's task’. Precisely. And this is where Quellenkritik enters. Without it we are skating on thin ice.
