Paralus wrote:agesilaos wrote: Frequently one wonders if Arrian had any idea what these terms actually meant.
Indeed one does. The impression is that the primary sources used such terminology as a matter of course. Further, given the intended audience, they felt no need to explain in any meaningful way what it all meant.
This seems to be something almost everyone agrees on. I happen to have collected some quotes on this once:
C. PRÉAUX, L’ « empire » d’Alexandre, in Les grands empires (Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin pour l’Histoire Comparative des Institutions 31), Bruxelles 1973, p. 151: “Enfin, pour qui veut faire l’histoire des institutions, le caractère non technique des sources littéraires et leur dédain des termes précis (ex. hyparchos dans Arrien) sont cause d’hésitations que ne peuvent pas toujours lever les sources documentaires contemporaines, trop peu nombreuses ou pratiquement absentes (…)”.
R.S. BAGNALL, The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions Outside Egypt (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 4), Leiden 1976, p. 41: “The attempt to extract technical terminology from Diodorus or almost any ancient historian is a difficult one.” and p. 214 n.1: “It is unfair to the nature and intentions of ancient writers to use them for technical terminology, even in the case of reputable historians like Polybius, for they did not use technical terms with any consistency, and without corroborating evidence it is impossible to tell instances when they do use technical terms from those where they are merely descriptive.”
R. ENGEL, Untersuchungen zum Machtaufstieg des Antigonos I. Monophthalmos. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der frühen Diadochenzeit, Kallmünz (s.d.), p. 24, also remarks “[w]ie großzügig, ja leichtfertig die griechischen Historiografen, nicht zuletzt Diodor, oftmals bloße Titel wie ,Chiliarch’, ‚Epimelet’, ‚Prostates’ oder ‚Stratege’ anwenden und ggf. durch zusätzliche Bestandteile erweitern (...)”.
M.B. HATZOPOULOS, A Century and a Lustrum of Macedonian Studies, AncW 4 (1981), p. 104: “Even in cases where political prejudice was absent, poor information and lack of understanding of Macedonian institutions make those ancient writers too often unreliable witnesses of contemporary Macedonian society.”
R.D. MILNS, A Note on Diodorus and Macedonian Military Terminology in Book XVII, Historia 31 (1982), p. 123: “Diodorus [in book XVII] (…) either is little acquainted with or chooses not to display his knowledge of Macedonian military and courtly technical terminology; and on the occasions when he does mention something which is recognisably ‘Macedonian’ and ‘technical’, it is almost invariably incorrectly used”.
H. HAUBEN, Onesicritus and the Hellenistic “Archikybernesis”, in W. WILL & J. HEINRICHS (edd.), Zu Alexander d.Gr. Festschrift G. Wirth zum 60. Geburtstag am 9.12.86, vol. I, Amsterdam 1987, p. 571: “Moreover, as is generally known, the reliability of such sources in matters of titles and nomenclature is not always above suspicion (...)”.
N.G.L. HAMMOND, in id. & F.W. WALBANK, A History of Macedonia III, Oxford 1988, p. 192 n. 3: “(…)authors like Diodorus and Polyaenus, uninterested in the detail of constitutional procedures (…)”.
The only one who seems to disagree is J. SEIBERT, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Ptolemaios’ I. (Münchener Beiträge zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte 56), München 1969, p. 65: “(…) bei Diodor ist eine exakte Benutzung der staatsrechtlichen Termini der Diadochenzeit zu beobachten”. But he has his own axe to grind and his view clearly is inspired by the need of the
Quellenforscher who can thus attribute every mistake concerning these termini to a change of source.