Diodorus Siculus, Books 11-12.37.1: Greek History, 480-431 BC--the Alternative Version

337 Pages·2006·2.09 MB·English

by  Peter Green

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DIODORUS SICULUS, BOOKS 11–12.37.1
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DIODORUS SICULUS,
BOOKS 11 –12.3 7.1
b.c.
Greek History 480–431 —
the Alternative Version
Translated, with Introduction
and Commentary, by Peter Green
university of texas press, austin
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This book has been supported by an endowment dedicated to classics
and the ancient world and funded by the Areté Foundation; the Gladys
Krieble Delmas Foundation; the Dougherty Foundation; the James R.
Dougherty, Jr. Foundation; the Rachael and Ben Vaughan Foundation;
and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The endowment has
also benefited from gifts by Mark and Jo Ann Finley, Lucy Shoe Meritt,
the late Anne Byrd Nalle, and other individual donors.
Copyright © 2006 by Peter Green
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2006
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be
sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX
78713-7819. www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html
(cid:2)(cid:2)The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of
ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Diodorus, Siculus.
Diodorus Siculus, books 11–12.37.1 : Greek history 480–431 b.c., the
alternative version / Diodorus, Siculus ; translated, with introduction and
commentary by Peter Green.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn0-292-70604-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) —
isbn0-292-71277-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Greece—History—Athenian supremacy, 479–431 b.c.
I. Green, Peter, 1924– II. Title.
df227.d56 2006
938(cid:3).04—dc22
2005014976
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To my students of the past four decades,
who asked so many of the right questions
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Though writing the lives of our predecessors presents difficulties
to those who undertake it, the practice offers no small benefit to
society at large; for by frankly delineating noble [and base] actions,
it adorns the virtuous and diminishes the base, through the praise
and censure appropriate to each. The praise, one might say, is a
prize for virtue that costs nothing, while the censure is a punish-
ment for vice that draws no blood. It is good for later generations
to be reminded that whatever life a man chooses to live determines
the way in which he will be remembered after his death, and thus
to avoid the passion for setting up memorials in stone (which exist
in one place only, and are liable to the sharp inroads of decay), and
rather choose reason, allied with the virtues in general, which reach
everywhere through word of mouth. Time, which withers all else,
keeps these immortal, and indeed with increasing age renders them
youngerstill.Andclearlymywordsaretrueofsuchmen,forthough
they existed long ago, they are recalled by all as though they were
alive today.
d.s. 10, fr. 12
Il y a guère de mauvais témoins. Un récit très imparfait peut renfer-
mer des renseignements utiles.... Un témoignage ne forme pas un
tout indivisible qu’il faille déclarer véridique ou faux. Pour en faire
la critique, il convient de la décomposer en ses éléments, qui seront
éprouvés, l’un après l’autre.
marc bloch
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
Diodorus Siculus: Life and Background 2
TheBibliotheke I: Composition, Antecedents, Influences 7
TheBibliotheke II: Aims, Achievements, Criticism 23
The Persian Wars and the Pentekontaetia 34
Translation and Commentary, Diodorus SiculusBibliotheke
Book 11: 480–451 b.c.e. 49
Translation and Commentary, Diodorus SiculusBibliotheke
Book 12.1.1–12.37.1: 450–431 b.c.e. 177
Appendix A: The Terminal Date of theBibliotheke 237
Appendix B: Athenian Losses in the Egyptian Campaign 242
Maps (all by Bill Nelson) 245
1. Mainland Greece 245
2. Asia Minor and the Eastern Mediterranean 246
3. Sicily 247
4. Magna Graecia and the Adriatic 248
5. Thermopylai 249
6. Salamis and the Bay of Eleusis 250
7. Plataia and Kithairon 251
8. The Egyptian Delta 252
Chronological Table 253
Bibliography 275
Index 289
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PREFACE
My acquaintance with Diodorus goes back half a century, and involves a
most improbable prophecy. While writing my first published book—an ex-
cruciatingly naïve account of my recent travels in Italy and Sicily—I found
myself getting interested in that early Sicilian nationalist Ducetius. To find
out more about him, I turned to Diodorus, as anyone must who studies the
ancient history of Sicily. When my book appeared it was, to my considerable
surprise, picked out by Harold Nicolson as the subject of a lead review in the
LondonObserver.This, I very soon realized, was in order to let Nicolson play
with it, as cat with mouse, and exercise his cultured irony at my expense. Still,
column-inches, good or bad, measure publicity—something my publisher
was quick to point out—so I couldn’t really complain. The acme of damning
with faint praise was reached by Nicolson in his final sentence, where, mag-
nanimously, he assured his readers that one day this neophyte author would
“write a commentary on Diodorus Siculus that would delight us all.” Since
I happened to remember—and so, I’m sure, did Nicolson—that Macaulay
had described Diodorus as a “stupid, credulous, prosing old ass,” I wasn’t con-
vinced that this was an unalloyed compliment. But it certainly stuck in my
mind. In the fullness of time—and fifty years on can surely be so described—
it looks as though Nicolson’s improbable forecast may, at long last, be coming
true. The commentary, at least, is materializing. How many people it delights
will, of course, be quite another matter.
For a great deal of my career as a professional classicist, I—like so many of my
colleagues—looked on Diodorus as a merepis aller fallback, only as good as
his source of the moment. While there is undoubtedly a certain amount of
truth in this popular thumbnail evaluation, it is very far from the whole pic-
ture, as I discovered when I began to investigate him more closely, as a neces-
sary preliminary to my projected commentary on Herodotos. What struck
mefirst,andmostpowerfully,wastheviolent,contemptuous,andoftenseem-