Between Thucydides and Polybius: The Golden Age of Greek Historiography

336 Pages·2014·5.729 MB·English

by  Giovanni Parmeggiani

Hellenic Studies 64
BETWEEN THUCYDIDES AND POLYBIUS
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http: I /chs. harvard.e du/ chs!p ublications
BETWEEN THUCYDIDES AND POLYBIUS
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GREEK HISTORIOGRAPHY
EDITED BY
GIOVANNI PARMECCIANI
(ENTER FOR HELLENIC STUDIES
Trustees for Harvard University
Washington, D.C.
Distributed by Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
2014
BetweenT hucydidesa nd Polybius
Edited by Giovanni Parmeggiani
Copyright© 2014 Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University
All Rights Reserved.
Published by Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University,
Washington, D.C.
Distributed by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London,
England
Production: Nancy Wolfe Kotary
Cover design:Joni Godlove
Printed by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Ann Arbor, MI
EDITORIAL TEAM
Senior Advisers: W. Robert Connor, Gloria Ferrari Pinney, Albert Henrichs, James
O'Donnell, Bernd Seidensticker
Editorial Board: Gregory Nagy (Editor-in-Chief), Christopher Blackwell, Casey Due
(Executive Editor), Mary Ebbott (Executive Editor), Scott Johnson, Olga Levaniouk,
Anne Mahoney, Leonard Muellner
Production Manager for Publications: Jill Curry Robbins
Web Producer: Mark Tomasko
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Between Thucydides and Polybius : the golden age of Greek historiography/ edited by
Giovanni Parmeggiani.
pages cm -- (Hellenic studies ; 64)
ISBN 978-0-674 -42834-8 (alk. paper)
1. Greece--Historiography. I. Parmeggiani, Giovanni. II. Series: Hellenic studies ; 64.
DF211.B482 014
938.007--dc23
2014013063
Contents
1. Introduction
GiovannPi armeggiani
2. Looking for the Invisible 7
RiccardoV attuone
3. Rethinking lsocrates and Historiography 39
John Marincola
4. At the Boundary of Historiography 63
RobertoN icolai
5. The Use of Documents in Xenophon's He/Jenica 89
CinziaB earzot
6. The Causes of the Peloponnesian War 115
GiovannPi armeggiani
7. Ephorus in Context 133
NinoL uraghi
8. Ephorus, Po~ybius, and ra: Ka86Aouy pacpnv 153
John Tully
9. Greek Monographs on the Persian World 197
DominiqueL enfant
10. The Sick Man of Asia? 211
ChristopherT uplin
11. Local History, Po/is History, and the Politics of Place 239
RosalindT homas
Contents
12. The Tools of Memory 263
SarahF errario
13. Aristotle and History 289
LucioB ertelli
Index Locorum 305
Subject Index 313
vi
Acknowledgments
The papers collected in this volume originate from two conferences held at
Harvard University and at the yniversity of Bologna in 2007 and organized by
Nino Luraghi and Riccardo Vattuone. Support for the events and for a particu
larly long editorial process has been provided by the Loeb Fund of the Depart
ment of the Classics, Harvard University, the Magie Fund of the Department
of Classics, Princeton University, the University of Bologna, and the Banca
Popolare dell'Emilia Romagna, and is here gratefully acknowledged. For com
plex editorial work, thanks are due to Daniel Tober and Jessica Wright (both
Princeton) and Pietro Liuzza (Bologna). Jill Curry Robbins of CHSh as provided
help, guidance, and editorial and more generally moral support well beyond any
reasonable definition of the call of duty. The contributors to this enterprise have
showed matchless patience. It is the editor's hope that they will consider their
forebearance rewarded at least in part by the present volume.
Giovanni Parmeggiani
Universita di Ferrara
vii

1
Introduction
GIOVANNI PARMEGGIANI
IN THE MODERN reception of ancient Greek history, the fourth century BCE
has always been seen as a period of transition from the golden Classical age of
the fifth century to the Hellenistic period: an appendix to the former, a prologue
to the latter. Given this peculiar and unfavourable intermediary position, the
fourth century has often been seen in a negative light, and has never really
gained the status of an age with a proper, legitimate identity.
It is a widespread opinion that, as often happens with periods of transi
tion, the fourth century was, above all, a time of decadence (decadence of the
Greek polis,a nd of Greek historiography). Considering that many political and
cultural changes did take place in the period 404-323 BCE,h owever, the concept
of decadence is hardly helpful. On the contrary, since it has been brought into
play in order to explain the transition from the greatness of the Classical to the
Hellenistic age, it appears to reflect the prejudice that the fifth century was the
pinnacle of the Greek cultural experience as a whole. It goes without saying
that such a perspective is affected by a classicist bias and is, in every respect,
questionable. The idea that the time when founders of Western thought such as
Plato and Aristotle lived, and also the literature they shared, was decadent does
not seem particularly convincing.
The fourth century has always suffered from comparison with the fifth.
This is an initial difficulty that every modern scholar has to deal with when
studying fourth-century historiography and, more generally, the way that
fourth-century literature dealt with the past. Indeed, one could speak of the
shadow that the fifth century casts on the fourth. Just as Photius the Patriarch
was puzzled by Theopompus of Chios' self-praise, observing that the superiority
Theopompus claimed for himself over fifth-century predecessors was incon
ceivable because of the undisputed greatness of Herodotus and Thucydides,1
1 Photius Bibliotheca1 76.121a (Theopompus FGH 115 F 25).
Giovanni Parmeggiani
similarly Felix Jacoby stated in 1926 that Greek historiography reached its
perfection with Thucydides, thus implying that historians of the fourth century
could not match the greatness of their predecessor. 2 "Abstieg nach Thukydides,"
dixitJacoby,a nd once again the concept of decadence creeps in, as a consequence
of the preconceived superiority of the fifth century. Things do not appear to
have changed much since the time of Photius (ninth century CE).
Classicist prejudices are prevalent even today. But a closer examination of
Theopompus' own words as they have been transmitted to us by Photius would
suffice to make clear that Theopompus was not simply praising himself, but
also the literature of his time, seemingly regardless of genre boundaries. If we
cannot agree a prioriw ith Theopompus (for in so doing we would simply reverse
the classicist bias), we should meditate on this statement and take it as a starting
point for a careful reexamination of fourth-century culture.
A survey of the Triimmerfeld( "field of ruins") of ancient Greek historiog
raphy-as Hermann Strasburger memorably called it3-and of fourth-century
historiography in particular, gives discouraging results. The most important
works of that time, admired by the ancients for centuries, survive only in scanty
fragments, mostly citations by later authors. This obviously complicates inter
pretation, since the manner of citation is diverse and often driven by agendas
and interests that have nothing to do with those of the original author. Recent
studies, for example, have shown how the various biases of Polybius, Athenaeus,
and Diodorus distort our image of the lost historical works that they made use
of and quoted.4 The shadow projected by the citing author over the author cited
presents a second difficulty in dealing with the fourth century: the 'cover text',
as Guido Schepens taught us some time ago,5 and as is illustrated in various
papers collected in the present volume, always requires a careful approach and
in-depth study.
On top of this, there is a third difficulty we need to consider: the tendency
of modern critics to use inadequate concepts for defining and understanding
fourth-century literature. This approach has obviously led to serious misunder
standings, as in the case of Isocrates (Marincola, this volume) and Xenophon
(Nicolai, this volume). The concept of 'rhetorical historiography' is a major
case in point. It rests on the false premises that Isocrates, as the teacher of
Ephorus and Theopompus, was the proponent of an historiographical program
and that devoting attention to style and using historical exemplaa re practices
2 See Jacoby 1909 and 1926.
3 Strasburger 1977.
4 On Polybius, see Schepens and Bollansee 2005. On Athenaeus, see Lenfant 2007. On Diodorus,
specifically in relation to Ephorus, see now Parmeggiani 2011.
5 See Schepens 1997:166n66 for the concept of 'cover-text'.
2