Hi Pankration,
pankration wrote:[Regardless, I will now leave this alone...unless I stumble across something new!
Too late to drop it now, because I already had the following post composed. (Well, you still don’t have to respond, of course.
) Anyway, I hope that you are not offended if I tell you that I anticipated a response that in some way questioned the validity of Curtius. I should explain . . .
Over the years there has been many an occasion when a source has been questioned and criticized specifically because the contents therein displease the Pothosian and/or contradict his opinions of Alexander – and Curtius has always been a prime (although not exclusive) target. This is not to say that one shouldn’t examine all the sources in detail, and questions about their validity or if the ancient author had an agenda are always welcome subjects of debate. However, there’s a fundamental difference between examining the sources with a (hopefully) unbiased historiographical purpose versus dismissing, disregarding, or discrediting certain sources or excerpts because they do not support one’s viewpoint.
Even the wonderful Mary Renault was prone to the above. Well … I probably should say that she was
particularly prone to it, but her incredible command of the English language tends to hide this from the casual reader. I’ll use some of her references to Curtius to demonstrate my point, working from the English hardcover edition of
The Nature of Alexander. On page 106, Curtius is
never trustworthy with atrocity stories. How does she know this? Answer - she doesn’t; she simply doesn’t
want to believe those stories. On page 107 she tells us that
all good historians have rejected Curtius’ story about Betis. In other words, according to Mary, if you believe the story then you are a bad historian! On Page 142 and the trial of Philotas, whom Mary believes to have been guilty (why else, in her opinion, would Alexander have tried and executed him?),
Curtius’ florid artifice makes Philotas’ speech in his defence useless. On page 144, again concerning Philotas, she makes reference to (one of) Curtius’
unreliable purple passages, yet on the same page references Alexander’s letter to Parmenion which, she tells us, Curtius mentions
without comment, explanation or drama, making it deserving of
very serious attention. And, in further contrast, page 119 has the tale of a eunuch fleeing to Darius. Here,
In Curtius … (the episode) … has every indication of having been first supplied by an eyewitness; a vivid and lively raconteur with a courtier’s sense of tact. Hmm, no descriptions of florid artifice on Curtius part when Mary
wants to believe the stories are true!
And so it goes. All of us have some kind of bias depending on how we view Alexander, and sometimes when that bias is obvious to others we are then able to recognize this “selection” of which sources and stories are supposedly to be believed. In these cases, and when attempts to discredit particular authors are included, however unintentionally, I’m wont to step in and say, “Hold on a minute . . .”
Getting back to Dioxippus and your own bias (of sorts) in that you
want to see him as a soldier – As far as Curtius’ reports of the episode are concerned, I see no reason not to believe him. I can see no agenda in Curtius stating that the Macedonians disliked Dioxippus
before the incident of the one man combat. There’s no obvious reflection of Roman tyranny evident in this excerpt, and taken on face value, it doesn’t contradict any of the other sources. Nevertheless this doesn’t mean that you
couldn’t portray Dioxippus as a soldier. You are writing fiction after all, and this necessitates expanding on what we know of particular characters. I would, though, find it more difficult to believe if you put your character in charge of
Macedonian soldiers. But that, again, would be my own opinion.
Best regards,
