Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

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Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by Taphoi »

[Moderator's Edit: These posts were split from another thread so that this particular discussion may be more easily found.)
agesilaos wrote:Without re-hashing the whole pyre thread, it must be bourne in mind that the two mentions of the 'Pyra' occur in two separate books, XVII based on Kleitarchos, possibly directly, in which case as a non eye-witness he possibly took his description from Ephippos' pamphlet and Book XVIII which is probably based on Hieronymos of Kardia (possibly via an intermediate source), the fantasist clearly describes a pyre for burning and the tradition based upon his works continued to as evidenced by Polyainos; the probable eye-witness of events in Babylon says it was not built and the structure described by Diodoros would have required the hand of God to both build and then erase completely from the archaeological record.
I once believed that Diodorus switched sources at his book boundaries, but now I know that is not in general true. It is in fact very likely, though not certain, that the switch beween Cleitarchus and Hieronymus is signalled by the geographical digression in Diodorus 18.5. The arguments for this are many and varied, but, in particular, I find it striking that some of the stipulations of the Last Plans in Diodorus 18.4 are also in Curtius 10.1.17-19 (e.g. the campaign against the Carthaginians), where he is clearly following Cleitarchus. Jane Hornblower also reached this same conclusion in her magisterial and unrivalled study of Hieronymus of Cardia pp. 80-97, although for different reasons than me. Therefore the use of pyra by Diodorus is in all probability from Cleitarchus. It is true that this way of using pyra is rather Homeric in its inspiration, but that is not surprising in Cleitarchus, who is very strong on the parallel between Alexander and Achilles.

To answer amyntoros's question about how we know sources are following Cleitarchus: this comes from the einquellenprinzip, the idea that Diodorus uses one source at a time for his Library of History. He therefore preserves a series of earlier historical works in epitome. The Germans who very efficiently and methodically founded quellenforschung (source research in historiography) then asked themselves who Diodorus was epitomising in Book 17. They had assiduously collected named fragments of the works of most of the earlier historians that he might have been epitomising, so they just counted the proportion of those fragments for each earlier author that have a direct parallel in Diodorus 17. Cleitarchus wins easily. That statistical argument, despite being challenged frequently for more than a century, still stands more or less unscathed today and much else has been added to support it. The next step was to note that there is an extreme amount of commonality between Diodorus and Curtius: it is deeply obvious that they had a common source, but Curtius cannot be following Diodorus, because he is both later and more detailed. Similar source studies show unequivocally that the Metz Epitome is virtually pure Cleitarchus (in severe epitome) and that Justin/Trogus is a slightly less direct derivative of Cleitarchus. Plutarch used Cleitarchus, but he mixed in a lot of material from many other sources too.

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Re: The Sphinxes Guarding the Lion Tomb Entrance at Amphipolis

Post by agesilaos »

I once believed that Diodorus switched sources at his book boundaries, but now I know that is not in general true.
Should there not be a grasshopper somewhere here? Or at least a road to Damaskos? :lol:

He does not switch at every boundary but definitely does between XVI and XVII, and XVII and XVIII, every source has the posited campaign in the west, so it is hardly an indicator; Hornblower is, indeed, a fine scholar but that does not make her opinions sacrosanct, nor does it in any way follow that that both uses derive from Kleitarchos; you may chooose to believe it, I have yet to taste of the flesh of that holy lamb.
but that is not surprising in Cleitarchus, who is very strong on the parallel between Alexander and Achilles.
link http://www.alexanderstomb.com/main/clei ... gments.pdf oops your own site; competition find any references to Achilles and Patrokles in the actual fragments...0 a safe bet; looks like wishful thinking.

I once believed that people could be relied upon to be consistent ...ho hum. :shock:

edited to say the source crit at the end is something Kerberos might leave round three lamposts but open a new thread to disgust (sic) that ; the three of us agree that Amphipolis cannot contain Hephaistion and there is much new to discuss; so let's move this elsewhere and keep to amph; in a couple of days there will be a new and probably incomplete announcement :evil:
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Re: The Sphinxes Guarding the Lion Tomb Entrance at Amphipolis

Post by Paralus »

agesilaos wrote:... so let's move this elsewhere and keep to amph; in a couple of days there will be a new and probably incomplete announcement :evil:
Agreed: as long as nonsense can be called for exactly what it is.
Taphoi wrote:To answer amyntoros's question about how we know sources are following Cleitarchus: this comes from the einquellenprinzip, the idea that Diodorus uses one source at a time for his Library of History. He therefore preserves a series of earlier historical works in epitome.
Now, just what constitutes "at a time"?? Einquellenprinzip requires that Diodorus utilised a single source for each book or area of history, so we have the notion that he is a "broken mirror" of Ephorus for Greek history of the fourth century (hence the change in book 16). Yet you now claim an epiphany of convenience? And to bolster your claim Hornblower's work is "magisterial and unrivaled" (clearly not listed amongst your "modern re-writes") just as epigrahers are "invention". Hornblower has been seriously challenged in recent years. A monograph based on a non extant monograph will attract same.

You need to catch up on Diororan studies lad.
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Re: The Sphinxes Guarding the Lion Tomb Entrance at Amphipolis

Post by agesilaos »

Naturally, I am an ardent exposer of nonsense, as you know; even my own!

Diodoran Studies do, indeed fluctuate, I am a firm believer in the 'Einquellen Prinzip' myself, though one has to amit that Diodoros does bring something of his own to the table (normally a trite moralising) and occasionally something of his reading leaches through to the matter he is discussing (so whilst following Ctesias in Book II he inserts Kleitarchos' measurements for the walls of Babylon). Even where he appears to contrast figures for armies or casualties, as he does most regularly for Sicilian Matters, it seems to me just as likely that he found the contrast in his source, Timaios, rather than compiling them himself (though he must have read Ephoros, as he clearly stands behind most of the Fourth Century narrative). I would also assert that he drew on Theopompos' 'Philippika' for that reign and all the detailed foreign digressions...but that's a whole new thread, however it is a slow news day.

Amyntoros, whilst I would never knowingly underberate Taphoi, I think he is merely using a shorthand when continually mentioning Kleitarchos, formerly we might have strewn the thread with mentions of the Vulgate as shorthand, Hammond's attempt to demonstrate the artificiality of the term and dismissal wholesale of the 'Cleitarchan Vulgate' has led to a loss of favour for the term, Tophoi is rather retro in ascribing everything to Kleitarchos but as I think he means the whole tradition rather than the actual author (I hope) it should be indulged. Of course if P.Oxy 1748 is taken at face value and Kleitarchos WAS tutor to Ptolemy III Philomator then it is like ascribing the invention of tragedy to Shakespeare and ignoring his sources. On the other hand if Kleitarchos was broadly contemporary with Aristoboulos and Ptolemy his work may fairly be cited as the foundation for tradition of essentially fantastic and moralising accounts which contrast with the 'Court Historians'. Perhaps, there were authors that did further research, but the surviving tradition seems to fall into these two camps, with Plutarch straddling the net.
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Re: The Sphinxes Guarding the Lion Tomb Entrance at Amphipolis

Post by sean_m »

Once you admit that Diodorus could put his own slant on his narrative, and drop in details from his background reading, don't you have to admit that he was writing history from a main source not writing a summary? It is common to write history from a main source, but that is very different from writing an epitome, precisely because in the former one feels free to add details from other sources and put one's own slant on things.

After the books by Francis Pownal and Kenneth Sacks, I don't think its possible to defend the idea that Diodorus just summarized his sources. But I am more familiar with the sources of books 13 and 14 than 17.
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by agesilaos »

No, would be a short answer! But to treat your suggestion with therespect it deserves; no, IMHO, Diodoros does seem to choose a single source for the periods into which he chooses to divide his work, and to a certain extent the boundaries of these sources condition his book boundaries. It would, however be crass in the extreme to deny any authorial input; he is summarising his chosen source but will intrude his own opinions and material from his other reading; it is not an epitome of one universal history, but more valuably, a series of summaries of generally lost historians, though the dependence on surviving writers, like Polybios, allows a clearer assesment of his method, normally to his detriment :P

I have not read Pownal or Sacks, though, though I am guessing they are about Ephoros, please post the titles; I am about to embark on M B Hatzopoloulis' tome on the Antigonid army, in French, which might take some time to report upon but reading more than one book is the closest I'll come to group sex :shock: I am reading your MA thesis too and finding it very interesting (which is, of course, cryptic for ' I agree with what you say'). Welcome to the forum.
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

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I tend more to Sean's view. Recent scholarship on Diodorus has focused more on the Sicilian's purposes (thematic) and methods. "The Germans who very efficiently and methodically founded quellenforschung" created an approach to Diodorus that, to this day, is difficult to shift. For near a century this near doctrinal approach saw a very singular quest not only for the the sources of Diodorus but also their 'restoration' in as far as such could be done. Diodorus, himself, was discarded as being of no consequence other than that he fortuitously preserved a "mirror" of these lost works. This near religious mindset and doctrinal approach reaches its zenith for books 11 to 16 and, more so, 18-20 which are attributed to Ephorus and Hieronymus of Cardia respectively. The latter has been (correctly) described as the "Hieronyman Industry" where, for the most part, the Diadochi narrative is a direct summary of the Cardian's work (though some voices posit a intermediary).

Hieronymus was long a part of the Antigonid entourage and as such was viewed in antiquity as biased in his treatment of them. Those positing a direct use have always had to deal with the many passages laudatory of Ptolemy and critical (sometimes harshly) of Antigonos. Ingenious schemes have been devised to explain this away, none more so that Lane-Fox's recent suggestion at ASCS 34. This sees Hieronymus captured at Ipsus in 301 and thus being forced to write encomiastic passages about his captor during his stay. Far simpler is that Diodorus used an intermediary history based in large part on Hieronymus which included other material or, shock-horror, Diodorus added material form another source.
Taphoi wrote:I once believed that Diodorus switched sources at his book boundaries, but now I know that is not in general true. It is in fact very likely, though not certain, that the switch beween Cleitarchus and Hieronymus is signalled by the geographical digression in Diodorus 18.5. The arguments for this are many and varied, but, in particular, I find it striking that some of the stipulations of the Last Plans in Diodorus 18.4 are also in Curtius 10.1.17-19 (e.g. the campaign against the Carthaginians), where he is clearly following Cleitarchus.
A 'Damascan road' moment I'm sure and a convenient one at that. As has been pointed out, the western campaign is hardly any such indicator and seems to have had wide currency in antiquity. The sheer numbers of Macedonian ships operating in the immediate period after Alexander's death attest to a building programme in the west.The severe summary of Diodorus (prior to the last plans) of the Babylonian Settlement matches in detail (that which he includes) the other sources even if he places some matters in a slightly different order. The satrapal appointment lists (with minor discrepancies) also agree. The 'Damascan road' enlightenment must have this all go back to Cleitarchus. I'm not so certain he was so deeply interested in the boring detail of an official list of satrapal appointments.

Diodorus, alone, includes these plans. Now,aside from Curtius, all that we have are summaries and Curtius, who had finished his discussion, makes no mention of the last plans in the settlement. Photius is the most severely contracted and Diodorus is similar (on the plays leading to the settlement) while Justin is slightly more verbose. In creating such summaries matters are, necessarily, left out rather than included. The decision to cut comes down to the summariser. Diodorus, while cutting much of the detail of the politics of the Settlement, chose not to cut the last plans. The alternative is that he has found another source, not used by the others, from which to insert these plans and their rejection. The former is far more likely.

The noting, in these last plans, of Hephaistion's "pyre", does not have to go back to Cleitarchus - no matter the nonsensical 'argument' deployed earlier. Diodorus, in his book 17 description, is clear that the funeral was held for Hephaistion and that the pyre - all seven levels of it - was completed. When we turn to book 18, we find that this edifice is yet to be completed. As has been argued on another thread, such a construction was not to be completed in months. By the time of Alexander's death it is questionable whether any meaningful headway had been made. Aelian (VH VII.8) has been trotted out to prove that this pyre was actually completed and set alight but Aelian was well aware of another tradition where it was not. The mention, within the last plans, in book 18 comes from the source for that book and not Cleitarchus. It was, like some of the others listed, not complete and, like those, it was canned.

A parallel instance is the (in)famous "Exiles Decree". This is reported in Diodorus (17.109.1-2) where he describes the decree. In book 18 he mentions the decree again, this time in connection with the Lamian War. As Joseph Roisman writes: “it is highly unlikely that Diodorus, after reporting on the decree in book 17, decided to add his own explanation of it in book 18” (Alexander’s Veterans, Texas 2012, 13). The explanation – particularly the motives of Alexander – comes from his source and does not appear in Curtius. It seems that the source for Curtius' Babylonian Settlement and the Exile's Decree did not mention the last plans or Alexander's motives respectively. Diodorus' source did.
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by Taphoi »

I too would not assert the einquellenprinzip in its purest form: that Diodorus merely parroted the earlier histories. He did add some things, such as his own visit to Alexandria in Book 17. Also agesilaos is right that he can be seen to have distorted his originals through comparison with their fagments, especially because he is abbreviating them very severely (and perhaps because he was not looking at their texts as he compiled his own). Cleitarchus is abbreviated down to something between a sixth and a tenth of its original length in Book 17, so distortions are inevitable just from the process of epitomising so severely. Also Diodorus inevitably puts a certain spin on his sources, because he frequently understood them imperfectly.
Having been through the whole of Curtius and Diodorus, I now know that there is no irreconcilable disparity between the two accounts at all and the commonalities number in the hundreds and occur evenly throughout their entire works. All the famous disparities, such as Abdalonymus being the King of Tyre in Diodorus, are reflections of clumsiness in Diodorus's method, which his ancient transcribers tried to correct with equal clumsiness. I now regard Curtius as essentially a Latin translation and abridgement of Cleitarchus (with a bit of moralising and in-line footnoting thrown in by the translator here and there). Other differences between the two surviving texts are explained by the fact that Diodorus was looking to produce a connected history of events (so he neglected speeches and digressions), whereas Curtius was especially interested in the rhetoric and the cynicism of Cleitarchus's style (so he preserved speeches at almost their full length).
It is pretty certain that Diodorus and Curtius are entirely independent of each other and the degree of commonality between Diodorus and Curtius requires that any significant secondary source was selected by both of them and that they independently both chose to use Cleitarchus and then both chose to use the other source in the same pattern of alternations. That is of course quite impossible. Therefore indeed they are both simply epitomes of Cleitarchus with very high confidence. That the Vulgate source is indeed Cleitarchus is true with good confidence from the argument regarding the fragments. However, Cleitarchus himself wrote in the period 280-250BC, after most of the primary sources had appeared, with the exception of Ptolemy, who I think was published in a sanitised form after his death (probably by Philadelphus). Consequently, the term Vulgate might be deemed to capture the sense that Cleitarchus evidently made use of a wide variety of primary accounts with the explicit exception of Ptolemy. My take on how the surviving sources are derived from the primary sources is shown below. Thus for example, it is quite possible that Diodorus is using Ephippus for Hephaestion's funeral, but because Cleitarchus used Ephippus rather than because the einquellenprinzip is breached.
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

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Taphoi wrote:It is pretty certain that Diodorus and Curtius are entirely independent of each other and the degree of commonality between Diodorus and Curtius requires that any significant secondary source was selected by both of them and that they independently both chose to use Cleitarchus and then both chose to use the other source in the same pattern of alternations. That is of course quite impossible. Therefore indeed they are both simply epitomes of Cleitarchus with very high confidence.
Of course. And so what of any discrepancies?
Taphoi wrote:All the famous disparities, such as Abdalonymus being the King of Tyre in Diodorus, are reflections of clumsiness in Diodorus's method, which his ancient transcribers tried to correct with equal clumsiness.
Ahh, of course: any and all disparities are down to the sedulously clumsy Sicilian. Back to the Germans yet again. I'm not waiting on you providing the many instances where Diodorus' "ancient transcribers" attempted corrections with equal clumsiness.

None of this - including the nice diagram - has any bearing on the source(s) for book 18 nor the examples given earlier. Best to ignore eh?
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by agesilaos »

I now regard Curtius as essentially a Latin translation and abridgement of Cleitarchus (with a bit of moralising and in-line footnoting thrown in by the translator here and there).
And that demonstrates the level of your understanding, unfortunately. Curtius is the most complex of the sources; he clearly draws on Ptolemy for large chunks of his work, as can be demonstrated by the close affinity of his narrative and that of Arrian; he uses Hegesias for the action at Gaza. He completely reworks the story of Charidemos to make it parallel that of Demaratos in Herodotos, he would be unique among rhetorical historians if he did not compose his own speeches, in fact he seems to have been the secondary source most likely to re-model his sources.

Curtius has a structure based on Livy, which he cannot have found in Kleitarchos, he also has echoes of Roman history and practices which may be his own re-interpretations or may just have conditioned his choice of material.

To consider this source as ‘essentially a Latin translation and abridgement of Cleitarchus’ is simplistic beyond belief; one might think material was thin for a ‘reconstruction’ and someone felt the need to shoehorn Curtius into this passive transmitter; I don’t think it is an interpretation that will garner much support.
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by sean_m »

agesilaos wrote:No, would be a short answer! But to treat your suggestion with the respect it deserves; no, IMHO, Diodoros does seem to choose a single source for the periods into which he chooses to divide his work, and to a certain extent the boundaries of these sources condition his book boundaries. It would, however be crass in the extreme to deny any authorial input; he is summarising his chosen source but will intrude his own opinions and material from his other reading; it is not an epitome of one universal history, but more valuably, a series of summaries of generally lost historians, though the dependence on surviving writers, like Polybios, allows a clearer assesment of his method, normally to his detriment :P
Fair enough; there is certainly evidence that he worked from three main histories and a chronicle at a time, and that he often followed them very closely. The important thing is that one acknowledges that he could include things from his wider reading or change them to fit his goals, since it makes reasoning about his sources less certain but more credible.
agesilaos wrote:I have not read Pownal or Sacks, though, though I am guessing they are about Ephoros, please post the titles; I am about to embark on M B Hatzopoloulis' tome on the Antigonid army, in French, which might take some time to report upon but reading more than one book is the closest I'll come to group sex :shock: I am reading your MA thesis too and finding it very interesting (which is, of course, cryptic for ' I agree with what you say'). Welcome to the forum.
I'm sorry that I didn't give a longer citation, but you sound pretty well read.

Pownall is Francis Pownall, “Lessons from the Past: The Moral Use of History in Fourth-Century Prose” (University of Michigan Press, 2004) and focuses on Ephorus, arguing that he was one of a group of aristocrats who wrote to criticize democracy.

Sacks is Kenneth Sacks, “Diodorus Siculus and the First Century” (Princeton University Press, 1990) and argues that Diodorus's own time, location, and personality visibly influenced his work. I think that he has sections on the prologue and the table of contents and the Roman histories in the lost books.

There does seem to be a lot of scholarship on Hellenistic warfare in French! Diodorquellenforschung seems to be mostly in Italian these days, even if the German classics are still important. Anglophone writers seem disillusioned with the method. Of course, for books 11-15, knowing that Ephorus is probably behind a passage does not always help, because Ephorus and the nameless chronicler used earlier sources, some of which would still have been available to Diororus.

I am glad that you like the MA thesis. I hope to revise and expand it one day ... every so often I find a reference I missed, or a source which affects my view. Maybe between Xenophon's Greek perspective, and the Babylonian perspective of the cuneiform sources, and the Egyptian perspective of the documents from there, it will be possible to get a balanced picture of war in the Achaemenid empire.
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by Taphoi »

agesilaos wrote:Curtius is the most complex of the sources; he clearly draws on Ptolemy for large chunks of his work, as can be demonstrated by the close affinity of his narrative and that of Arrian; he uses Hegesias for the action at Gaza. He completely reworks the story of Charidemos to make it parallel that of Demaratos in Herodotos, he would be unique among rhetorical historians if he did not compose his own speeches, in fact he seems to have been the secondary source most likely to re-model his sources.

Curtius has a structure based on Livy, which he cannot have found in Kleitarchos, he also has echoes of Roman history and practices which may be his own re-interpretations or may just have conditioned his choice of material.

To consider this source as ‘essentially a Latin translation and abridgement of Cleitarchus’ is simplistic beyond belief; one might think material was thin for a ‘reconstruction’ and someone felt the need to shoehorn Curtius into this passive transmitter; I don’t think it is an interpretation that will garner much support.
Curtius makes reference to Ptolemy once in the context of his participation in the rescue of Alexander at the Mallian town. Several writers make this point. I think it was a scholium on texts of Cleitarchus in the early Roman period. The cases where Curtius precisely matches Arrian are few and mainly associated with cases where Arrian drew stories from the Vulgate. In general Curtius is the antithesis of Arrian, being lively and colourful where Arrian is measured and dull.

It is Cleitarchus who probably used Hegesias. However, this instance is not completely clear cut, so I left Hegesias out of my diagram.

Livy has a structure based on Cleitarchus. All the early Roman writers (Cicero etc) read Cleitarchus. That is why he is at the core of the Vulgate tradition.

To consider Curtius as essentially a translation of Cleitarchus is accurate I assure you. Why would it be anything else, when Curtius the rhetorician was interested in the rhetoric? If he changed the rhetoric his focus on the speeches would have been pointless. It is too full an abridgement (about 2/3 the length of Cleitarchus) for him to have needed to change the wording much. Why would a Latin translator who was interested in Cleitarchus's rhetoric be a "passive transmitter". Translation is a skill in its own right. You deprecate all translators by such language.

Best wishes,
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by agesilaos »

Words fail me... no, words of less than four letters, fail me :evil:
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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by amyntoros »

There's a new post from sean-m hiding before Taphoi's last post. I only just approved it - sorry for the delay. Sean, as far as I know this should be the last post needing approval.

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Re: Cleitarchus (and others?) in Diodorus

Post by Paralus »

agesilaos wrote:Words fail me... no, words of less than four letters, fail me :evil:
Let me help with a classic of the English slang tradition: bollocks. Although, having re read the post in question, adequate words are hard to find I grant you.

Reducing Curtius' work to a simple abridged Latin translation of Cleitarchus is about as nonsensical as establishing Cleitarchus as a source via Diodorus' use pyra. Curtius clearly reworked his source(s) to suit his creative purposes; he was no simple translating transcriber as is proposed. This is the sort of stuff that can readily be claimed when the original work is unavailable to correct it. Thus Hornblower's assertion that Hieronymus' "account can be retrieved with satisfying fullness from Diodorus Nooks 18-20". This based on 16 fragments and 13 testimonia and that Diodorus is a reliable mirror of the account.

But back to the "Latin translator". According to this simplistic and self serving "theory', Curtius merely abridged and translated Cleitarchus' account to produce his work. Leaving aside the evidence for his recasting and molding of his source(s), his comprehension and / or translating abilities seem, on occasion, rather poor as a glance at his Gaugamela description shows. Diodorus describes the Macedonian cavalry dispositions on the right followed by the hypaspists (argyraspides) and the rest of the infantry line with Craterus commanding the last 'battalion' on the left followed by the various left wing cavalry. Our Latin translator also has the cavalry of the right and then "the phalanx" behind which were the hypaspists and four of the other 'battalions'. On the left Craterus is named as the commander of the Peloponnesian cavalry - his phalanx unit makes no appearance. No matter how one explains this away it does not, in any fashion, cohere with Diodorus.

Further, although both Diodorus and Curtius describe a Scythian raid on the baggage only Curtius decides to have Menidas and Aretes ride to the baggage to do battle with them. Curtius says that Aretes' horse are "sarissophoroi". It is the only time he uses the word in his extant text. Arrian uses sarisaphoroi three times and other time refers to the same troops as "prodromoi" - very plausibly and reasonably ascribed to Aristobulous and Ptolemy respectively by Bosworth. Diodorus does not use it that I am aware of. This, a term describing a particular Macedonian cavalry subset, is rather more significant than the alley-cat common pyra. Just who might Curtius be "translating" here? But I forget: these differences are certainly due to the "clumsy" Sicilian or his even clumsier transmitters.
Paralus
Ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας, ὦ κακαὶ κεφαλαί, τοὺς μετὰ Φιλίππου καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τὰ ὅλα κατειργασμένους;
Wicked men, you sin against your fathers, who conquered the whole world under Philip and Alexander.

Academia.edu
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