Help with some time-lines & locations, please

[ruthaki]

I'm just putting together the time-lines of political events from late 319 BC (after Antipater's death) to 310 when Roxana and her son were murdered. I note that in 318, Polyperchon's navy was defeated at Megalopoulos and Byzantium. The only Megalopoulos I can locate is in the Peloponnese (actually I drove by there last summer) and it's inland, far from the sea. I see in the notes it was connected politically at one time with Macedonia. Was there another place by this name on the seacoast, possible in Asia Minor???Does anyone know exactly when in 317 that Eumenes was put to death>???I have a possible date of a marriage between Kassandros and Thessaloniki as 317(after he moved his troops into Macedon). Apparantly Thessaloniki city was founded then. Is this a near-enough or correct date?I've just spent a few hours putting this time-line together and it gets frustrating when there are contradictory dates so I was hoping some of you knowlegable people could help out. Thanks.

[jona]

Maybe you can use the following link:
http://www.livius.org/di-dn/diadochi/ch ... Babylonian Chronicle 10 may also be useful:
http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/ ... .htmlBrian Bosworth has, in his book *The Legacy of Alexander*, also a chronological table, but some elements are contradicted by the new readings of Chronicle 10.Jona

[ruthaki]

Thanks, Jona. I'll check these out. ruthaki

[ruthaki]

Thanks, Jonas, the time-lines were excellent and Enjoyed reading your articles. I also did more research on the founding of Thessaloniki and now I have two more dates 315 and 316. Do I just go 'eeney-meeney-miney-moh'? Or does anyone out there know for sure???

[ScottOden]

Hi Ruth,The way I do it, when I have conflicting dates, is to find a source I feel I can trust and use the date they prefer. For my first book, set in ancient Egypt, my benchmark source was the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, followed by Oxford's Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. When I ran across conflicting data, I would check these and proceed accordingly. Good luck!Scott Oden

[ruthaki]

I agree, Scott. So I am just going with the most likely date or the one repeated most often. I do have Antipater's death happening a couple of months earlier than recorded in one of the time-lines but I don't see that as a huge discrepency because who really knows??? How much of it is guessed at?? Thanks

[jona]

"So I am just going with the most likely date or the one repeated most often."I am afraid this is not a good approach. The date repated most often is most likely to be an old date, based on uncorroborated reading of Greek sources, which are usually based on slightly inaccurate calendars. Besides, our main author, Diodorus, plays a literary game (below). We now have new data, the Astronomical diaries, published after 1988. These dates are not likely to be "repeated most often", but are the best we have. I believe that 10 June and 13 June are still the most repeated date for Alexander's death, but, as has recently been shown, 11 June happens to be correct.If you look at a more larger scale, things become really nasty. There is a direct conflict between Chronicle 10 and Diodorus (= Hieronymus), our main source. Chronicle 10 goes back to the Astronomical diaries, which were never written more than a month after the events themselves. They are merely recordings of facts. I accept the chronicle (published in 1975, currently restudied, still to be republished) as more reliable than Hieronymus and Diodorus, who were, as historians, also narrators with artistic agendas.Accepting Chronicle 10 suggests that the period between the spring of 322 and the first months of 320 was relatively quiet. Events mentioned by Diodorus in this period, are dated by the chronicler to the year 320, which was full of events. (He does not always mention them, but he implies them when he dates the death of Perdiccas later than Diodorus seems to do. Chronicle 10 also mentions Triparadeisos and Seleucus' arrival in Babylon in 320.)I have the impression that Diodorus did not like this uneven arrangement of events, and antedated several events to make his narrative more smooth. In any case, Diodorus date of the death of Perdiccas in the summer of 321, accepted by Bosworth, is simply wrong.There is no easy solution to the chronological problems, I am afraid.Jona

[susan]

It's rather like reading Arab and American news-sites about events in Iraq - they're often completely different, because they're using events to bolster their main argument so the actual details aren't as important. Besides, I don't think that the ancient world had the same modern interest in news as it happens day by day - by the time it got to them it was old news, and the trend of events was more important than the detail. Certainly Plutarch is very muddled, and the rest seem very cautious of giving dates - it's just 'something happened' and then 'later something else happened'. This is why the Chronicles must be invaluable as they didn't have any other aim. It's rather like the Anglo-Saxon chronicles and I think it's great that they are now available.Susan

[ruthaki]

Thanks for your comments and advice. My main concern is having things happen in time frames that are reasonably correct. I'm writing a 'historical fiction novel'of events but I want it to be as correct as possible. For instance, I have Antipater's death in the early summer rather than autumn. But is an actual date is mentioned in the histories? Who really knows exactly when he died except it was in a certain year? But I needed to know approximately when Kassandros would have married Thessaloniki and later established the city in her name. And also it was invaluable, Jona, looking at the time-lines of the Diodochi wars to see what exactly was going on during those periods of history because they have to be at least mentioned in the story to built up to the finale (end of the dynasty).