Questions on Callisthenes' History of Alexander

[amyntoros]

With all this talk about possible plagiarism, may I ask (again) if someone with a greater knowledge of military strategies and tactics could examine Polybius' piece on Callisthenes' report of the battle of Issus and compare it to Ptolemy's report in Arrian?
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... /home.html

The above is the home page for Polybius. Click on Chapter 12 and then scroll down to 5.17.22 "Incapacity of Callisthenes in writing of Military Matters." I think it would be extremely interesting to find out if there *are* similarities. I'm sure by now many are wondering why I don't do this myself but I'm afraid I might make an unconvincing mess of it because of my lack of knowledge on such matters. Pretty please. . . anyone? Best regards, Amyntoros

[marcus]

I'd love to help, but I know that I really won't have time to do a proper comparison study for you ... unless you can wait until, oh, Christmas?But if anyone else is up for the challenge ...ATBMarcus

[agesilaos]

I am on Polybios' case: the royal I refferred to was Fergie wasn't there some fuss over her 'budgie the helicopter' ? And Princees Michael of Das Kent; I really don't follow the royals but there seems to be a distant twinkling of a half forgotten notion...My point about the wholesale transcription of Kallisthenes by Ptolemy rather than his use of him lies in the terminology used in Arrian books I and II where the Macedonian phalanx is consistently termed 'hoplites' this is Greek not Macedonian usage. It could be that Arrian started using the Greek and then became enthusiastic over the Macedonian terms but that would imply a strange composition and it seems clear that Arrian read his sources and the other versions and then sat down to write rather than writing ad hoc and adding logoi. It is also apparent that he had a feeble grasp of what the technical terms meant, since they are never explained in the sources who understood them perfectly well, he does not explain them because he does not know what they mean he copies them slavishly to appear erudite; which would mean that 'hoplite' is Ptolemy's usage and he can only have adopted that by copying Kallisthenes. It is possible that his history was not the work of one sitting but that he started early in his reign and then took the task more seriously during his retirement or he was disatisfied with the opening and lazily copied the campaign down to Telmessos from Kallisthenes too worn out to do otherwise. Anyway, there are a plethora of possibilities depending on ones attitude to Ptolemy, Arrian or /and Kallisthenes.

[marcus]

Hi Karl,Oh, "Budgie the Helicopter" - yes, I see what you mean. However, I don't think that plagiarism was the issue ... it was just ridiculous! :-)All the bestMarcus

[TWATE]

KIAORA KO WATI TOKU INGOA CAN U POST SOME GOOD SOCIAL STUDIE QUESTIONS IN THE NET ABOUT ALEXANDER THE GREAT?

[TWATE]

KIAORA KO WATI TOKU INGOA CAN U POST SOME GOOD SOCIAL STUDIE QUESTIONS IN THE NET ABOUT ALEXANDER THE GREAT?