amyntoros wrote: Dismissing the work of a specialist in a field as "guesswork" is an insult and isn't any way to bolster one's own argument. In fact it cheapens it.
Agreed. Worse, as I remarked above, is the use of "invention" to demean the work of that same specialist. The logical conclusion is that trained epigraphists, when reconstructing damaged inscriptions, are engaged in complete “invention”. This is tantamount to a physiotherapist dismissing a finding of cancer by an oncologist. Again, I would quote Ersnt Badian:
As every working historian knows, there is a peculiar brand of historical fiction created by those (most often primarily historians, not epigraphists) who build far-ranging historical theories on words or phrases which their epigraphist predecessors have inserted - meaning no harm, and often exempli gratia - between square brackets in a fragmentary text. The epigraphic facts will be admitted, sometimes even discussed, with the conclusion that the supplement is "necessary" or "inevitable". As every epigraphist knows, and some historians as well, such a statement, especially in non-stoichedon texts and non-formulaic phrases, is often a warning that the wish has been father to the thought, and that scrutiny is needed.
The difference here, though, is that the “epigraphic facts” are completely ignored – dismissed out of hand with terms such as “unbounded gap” and trite, self-serving ‘reconstructions’ (if such they may be called). The text, as Agesilaos (and
Edson) has pointed out, is far from “non-formulaic”. It is, in fact, very formulaic and it is within that tight formula that the epigraphist,
Edson, has worked in contrast to the amateur historian.
The wish here is most certainly father to the thought. The wish being that Olympias is the occupant of the Amphipolis tomb and the thought being to deny any association of Olympias with Pydna. This has come through throughout this thread (and / or the other on the subject) with the ardent desire to bend the primary literary source (Diodorus) to the notion that Cassander trailed Olympias along with him as he went on to take Amphipolis. Just as ardent has been the desire to demonstrate that “powerful” persons wanted to give the queen a magnificent burial and, so, “there is nothing surprising about Olympias occupying this tomb from a political point of view”. That literary evidence does not support either of these speculations and is, in fact, antithetical to it, as has been pointed out by more than just myself.
Diod. 17.118.2:
Cassander, however, is plainly disclosed by his own actions as a bitter enemy to Alexander's policies. He murdered Olympias and threw out her body without burial, and with great enthusiasm restored Thebes, which had been destroyed by Alexander.
Paus. 9.7.2:
My own view is that in building Thebes Cassander was mainly influenced by hatred of Alexander. He destroyed the whole house of Alexander to the bitter end. Olympias he threw to the exasperated Macedonians to be stoned to death; and the sons of Alexander, Heracles by Barsina and Alexander by Roxana, he killed by poison.
In the wake of Cassander’s murder and disposal of Olympias, he married Thessalonice, the daughter of Philip and Nicesipolis of Pherae. This was plainly a political marriage as the sources make clear. What is not clear is why Thessalonice, recently betrothed to the cynical, murderous Cassander, would be carrying any torches for the dead Olympias or, for that matter, the barbarian wife and son of her half-brother who her eventual sons would supplant in line for the throne.
Until firm evidence comes to light Olympias, along with others, remains a fringe candidate for the Amphipolis site. Arguing a "Clietarchan high degree of probability" based on bending source material and dismissing possible counter evidence presented by an epigraphist as “invention” and “guesswork” does little to advance that cause. Again, I wonder just what the reaction to this epigraphic evidence will have been had it been found in connection with the Amphipolis dig. A “Cleitarchan high degree of probability” I’m sure.