One of the curious facts about the History of Alexander by Kleitarchos is that throughout it the military prowess of the Macedonians is denigrated; they win their battles by chance rather than skill, further the Thessalian cavalry is singled out as the best fighting unit in the main battles. This is puzzling because, as he wrote in Alexandria, his patron was a Macedonian King, whichever Ptolemy it was.
I believe I have a solution to this thanks to N G L Hammond’s ‘Three Historians of Alexander the Great’ now re-issued by Cambridge Classical Studies. Therein he highlights the curious fact that passages, which he attributes to Kleitarchos, emphasise Alexander’s Aeacid ancestry rather than his Temenid lineage. Hammond hints at the solution but shies away from its implications when he says, ‘He wrote perhaps when another Aeacid was making or had made his name, Pyrrhus.’ (THA p92)
Pyrrhus was sent to Ptolemy I as a hostage in 299, he cannot be said to have made a name for himself by then though his deportment impressed his host so much that two years later he sent him back to Epirus to regain the throne and work against Macedon, where Kassander’s death had left a power vacuum, shortly to be filled by Ptolemy’s enemy Demetrios Poliorketes.
It is perhaps to the years following Pyrrhus’ re-establishment that we should date Kleitarchos’ work, tentatively between 294 when Demetrios assumed the throne and 288 when he was ousted from it a telling date may be 291 when Demetrios took Thebes.
Alexander was still a powerful image and it would have been to Pyrrhus’ advantage to stress his consanguinity. The denigration of Macedonian arms and the boosting of Greek valour would play well among the city states. Also the picture of Alexander presented is surely an implied contrast with Demetrios, once a blue-eyed boy now a megalomaniac God-king, the emphasis on hard drinking and prostitutes fits too. The point of the Thais story being that whilst Ptolemy’s hetaira served Greece Demetrios’ whores serve his lust alone. The growing tyranny in Alexander is a warning of what the Macedonians may expect from Demetrios.
Thus Kleitarchos was writing Ptolemaic propaganda to further the progress of Soter’s satellite Pyrrhus and undermine support for Demetrios while simultaneously boosting Greek morale. That it was written quickly would help explain the generally fictitious nature of the narrative, history was to be a tool of politics. That its racy account proved more popular than the more factual offerings should come as no surprise, it is a sad fact that people prefer to be given a bias and then have it reinforced rather than to take the trouble to think for themselves.
Acceptance of this date has implications for the date of Aristoboulos too, since there are Aristoboulan echoes in Curtius and, pace Hammond, it is surely more likely that he found these in the main narrative of his primary source, Kleitarchos than that he dipped into the original for some unimportant points.
Another date with Kleitarchos
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Taphoi
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Hi Agesilaos,
This post is on an interesting topic, but is looking a bit lonely, so let's essay a quick response.
Firstly, although Hammond's Three Historians is a fascinating and ambitious attempt to track down the sources of the Vulgate, it is also flawed. I have had to conclude, for example, that his hypothesis that Diyllus was a significant secondary source for Diodorus 17 is simply wrong. In general, you need to be aware that he is also grinding Tarn's old axe to deprecate Cleitarchus. Whereas Cleitarchus is undoubtedly an imperfect source, he is nowhere near as bad as Hammond suggests, and Arrian is also flawed, though in different ways. Actually there are no perfect ancient sources. Actually there are no perfect modern sources either
An emphasis of Alexander's Aeacid ancestry seems a very tenuous basis to suppose that there was Pyrrhic influence upon Cleitarchus. Actually, Cleitarchus did emphasise Alexander's connections with Heracles, especially in India, and Temenid and Heraclid are almost the same thing in Alexander's case. A much better reason to suspect that Cleitarchus was influenced by Pyrrhus is that he evidently mentioned a Roman Embassy to Alexander in Babylon. The Romans did not really come to prominence in the Greek world until the Pyrrhic victories against them from 280BC. The dating argument from this would be after 280BC (and I now tend to prefer 280-270BC for Cleitarchus for this and several other even more striking reasons.)
Hope this is helpful.
Best wishes,
Andrew
This post is on an interesting topic, but is looking a bit lonely, so let's essay a quick response.
Firstly, although Hammond's Three Historians is a fascinating and ambitious attempt to track down the sources of the Vulgate, it is also flawed. I have had to conclude, for example, that his hypothesis that Diyllus was a significant secondary source for Diodorus 17 is simply wrong. In general, you need to be aware that he is also grinding Tarn's old axe to deprecate Cleitarchus. Whereas Cleitarchus is undoubtedly an imperfect source, he is nowhere near as bad as Hammond suggests, and Arrian is also flawed, though in different ways. Actually there are no perfect ancient sources. Actually there are no perfect modern sources either
An emphasis of Alexander's Aeacid ancestry seems a very tenuous basis to suppose that there was Pyrrhic influence upon Cleitarchus. Actually, Cleitarchus did emphasise Alexander's connections with Heracles, especially in India, and Temenid and Heraclid are almost the same thing in Alexander's case. A much better reason to suspect that Cleitarchus was influenced by Pyrrhus is that he evidently mentioned a Roman Embassy to Alexander in Babylon. The Romans did not really come to prominence in the Greek world until the Pyrrhic victories against them from 280BC. The dating argument from this would be after 280BC (and I now tend to prefer 280-270BC for Cleitarchus for this and several other even more striking reasons.)
Hope this is helpful.
Best wishes,
Andrew
Last edited by Taphoi on Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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marcus
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I totally agree. "Three Historians" was written in the time before Cleitarchus was re-assessed and, although there's no way of knowing whether Hammond would have revised his opinion had he lived longer (or even whether he did before he died), he does represent the "old" view of the ancient sources.Taphoi wrote:Firstly, although Hammond's Three Historians is a fascinating and ambitious attempt to track down the sources of the Vulgate, it is also flawed. I have had to conclude, for example, that his hypothesis that Diyllus was a significant secondary source for Diodorus 17 is simply wrong. In general, you need to be aware that he is also grinding Tarn's old axe to deprecate Cleitarchus. Whereas Cleitarchus is undoubtedly an imperfect source, he is nowhere near as bad as Hammond suggests, and Arrian is also flawed, though in different ways. Actually there are no perfect ancient sources. Actually there are no perfect modern sources either
ATB
I am no acolyte of Hammond, nor any other authority, but there does have to be a context for a Macedonian sponsored writer belittling Macedonian arms, talking up the Thessalians and putting undue emphasis on Alexander’s maternal descent.
The evidence is necessarily scanty, we are after all dealing with a lost work. But taking the Aeacid link first;
1) Justin 11 iii 1, ‘On his way he had offered encouragement to the Thessalians and reminded them of the services rendered to them by his father Philip and of his kinship with them on his mother’s side because of her descent from the Aeacidae.’
2) Justin 11 iv 5, ‘Cleadas even appealed to the king’s personal devotion to Hercules, who was born in their city and from whom the clan of the Aeacidae traced its descent, and to the fact that his father Philip had spent his boyhood in Thebes.’
3) Justin 12 xv 1,’After three days Alexander felt that his death was certain and he declared that he could recognise the fate that had overtaken the house of his forefathers, for most of the Aeacidae were dead by their thirtieth year.’
4) Justin 12 xvi 3, ‘Her renown derived from her descent from the Aeacidae, a family dating to the earliest times, and from the fact that her father, her brother, her husband and all her ancestors had been kings; but not one of their names conferred greater distinction on her than her son’s.’
5) Diodorus 17 I 5 ‘On his father’s side Alexander was a descendent of Herakles and on his mother’s he could claim the blood of the Aeacidae…’
Point 1) contrasts with Diodorus 17 iv 1 ‘First he dealt with the Thessalians, reminding them of his ancient kinship with them through Herakles…’ despite 2) the Aeacidae did not claim descent from Herakles but from Achilles, the Thessalloi were Heraklids just like the Argaeadae so the emphasis in Justin is on the distaff side despite a perfectly good relationship in the paternal line; this is significant because Ancient Greece was patriarchal at this period.
Point 2) contains the error mentioned above, and it is certainly not beyond Justin’s incompetence to confuse the Argaeadae and the Aeacidae, as suggested by Heckel in his commentary. However, the error may just as easily be one of compression as of substitution, with the relationship to the Aeacidae having dropped out or the error may have been in Trogus’ source.
Point 3) is interesting because the only premature death among the Aeacidae would have been Achilles’ early death amongst the Argaeadae would be more frequent but the stress is on the Aeacid link. As it is in 4) and 5) although these are less unusual in that the context is the maternal line the choice of Justin/Trogus source to stress it is significant, Diodorus is less telling but merely demonstrates that the relationship was noted in his source. We can attribute the lack of parallel mentions due to Diodorus selection of material. The Aeacidae were a footnote in history by the first century BC so he dropped the references as superfluous. This makes Trogus inclusion of them all the more telling, since their lack of contemporary relevance must mean that he found them in his source. That this source was Kleitarchos is not in any great dispute.
The evidence is slender to the point of waifishness but a concatenation of these indications can build a hypothetical context. The Aeacid prominence can only be explained by the relevance of the Aeacidae when Kleitarchos was writing, since the only important Aeacid is Pyrrhus he must have written during his career. Just when is illuminated by the other aspects of his story which encourage me to place it during Pyrrhus' rivalry with Demetrios, when this slant would have bite.
I am well aware of the modern trend to see the vulgate as of equal value to Arrian and have accepted it before, however I now prefer to see its relevance as purely supplementary and then only on minor points and possibly the Persian side of things; although even here there are more echoes of Herodotus than enough to make the little grey cells suspicious.
The picture is further developed when contra Hammond, one detects Aristoboulos as behind Curtius' main source, Kleitarchos, and not as a source himself. Since he was writing in Kassandriea he would have been under Demetrios if my tentative dating for Kleitarchos were right. We know that he was known as 'kolax' the flattterer, and criticised as such. Plutarch also tells us that the successors sought to emulate Alexander but succeeeded only in copying the outward mannerisms, except for Pyrrhus who embodied his true spirit, might not Demetrius have commissioned Aristoboulos' positive History intending to profit from the identification of himself with Alexander?
The Aristoboulan influences occur late in Curtius so I would not say that Kleitarchos wrote to correct or even in response to Aristoboulos' work merely that upon its appearence he lifted some topographical details and the odd story for verisimilitude.
Both Histories would be part of the propaganda war of this period of sitzkrieg, with the black propaganda, as so often, proving the more seductive.
Ptolemy, himself would then have written to boost his own role but also to undo the damage he had done to Alexander's reputation. He failed.
This seems to give a reasonable context for each author and explain certain characteristics of each rather than the old 'three men sit down to write which order do they do it in?' question.
That Arrian found much in Aristoboulos and Ptolemy that was in agreement says much for Aristoboulos' integrity, he did not need to exagerate Alexander's virtues too much. It is also, perhaps significant that the one instance quoted of his flattery concerns drinking, something that touched Demetrios as much as Alexander. Instructive too is Pythagoras' predicting Antigonos' death at Ipsos, thus making it pre-ordained and no fault of Demetrios' impetuosity.
It would be nice to hear Taphoi's 'more compelling reasons for placing him 280-270, close to my former thinking when he, I think was favouring an early date c310 as Bosworth does. Giving up cherished ideas is essential if one is to progress towards the truth in history. A J P Taylor once described himself as 'A man with strong opinions weakly held.' So let's go for a civilised debate with the minimum of condescension and abuse, sine ira et studio.
The evidence is necessarily scanty, we are after all dealing with a lost work. But taking the Aeacid link first;
1) Justin 11 iii 1, ‘On his way he had offered encouragement to the Thessalians and reminded them of the services rendered to them by his father Philip and of his kinship with them on his mother’s side because of her descent from the Aeacidae.’
2) Justin 11 iv 5, ‘Cleadas even appealed to the king’s personal devotion to Hercules, who was born in their city and from whom the clan of the Aeacidae traced its descent, and to the fact that his father Philip had spent his boyhood in Thebes.’
3) Justin 12 xv 1,’After three days Alexander felt that his death was certain and he declared that he could recognise the fate that had overtaken the house of his forefathers, for most of the Aeacidae were dead by their thirtieth year.’
4) Justin 12 xvi 3, ‘Her renown derived from her descent from the Aeacidae, a family dating to the earliest times, and from the fact that her father, her brother, her husband and all her ancestors had been kings; but not one of their names conferred greater distinction on her than her son’s.’
5) Diodorus 17 I 5 ‘On his father’s side Alexander was a descendent of Herakles and on his mother’s he could claim the blood of the Aeacidae…’
Point 1) contrasts with Diodorus 17 iv 1 ‘First he dealt with the Thessalians, reminding them of his ancient kinship with them through Herakles…’ despite 2) the Aeacidae did not claim descent from Herakles but from Achilles, the Thessalloi were Heraklids just like the Argaeadae so the emphasis in Justin is on the distaff side despite a perfectly good relationship in the paternal line; this is significant because Ancient Greece was patriarchal at this period.
Point 2) contains the error mentioned above, and it is certainly not beyond Justin’s incompetence to confuse the Argaeadae and the Aeacidae, as suggested by Heckel in his commentary. However, the error may just as easily be one of compression as of substitution, with the relationship to the Aeacidae having dropped out or the error may have been in Trogus’ source.
Point 3) is interesting because the only premature death among the Aeacidae would have been Achilles’ early death amongst the Argaeadae would be more frequent but the stress is on the Aeacid link. As it is in 4) and 5) although these are less unusual in that the context is the maternal line the choice of Justin/Trogus source to stress it is significant, Diodorus is less telling but merely demonstrates that the relationship was noted in his source. We can attribute the lack of parallel mentions due to Diodorus selection of material. The Aeacidae were a footnote in history by the first century BC so he dropped the references as superfluous. This makes Trogus inclusion of them all the more telling, since their lack of contemporary relevance must mean that he found them in his source. That this source was Kleitarchos is not in any great dispute.
The evidence is slender to the point of waifishness but a concatenation of these indications can build a hypothetical context. The Aeacid prominence can only be explained by the relevance of the Aeacidae when Kleitarchos was writing, since the only important Aeacid is Pyrrhus he must have written during his career. Just when is illuminated by the other aspects of his story which encourage me to place it during Pyrrhus' rivalry with Demetrios, when this slant would have bite.
I am well aware of the modern trend to see the vulgate as of equal value to Arrian and have accepted it before, however I now prefer to see its relevance as purely supplementary and then only on minor points and possibly the Persian side of things; although even here there are more echoes of Herodotus than enough to make the little grey cells suspicious.
The picture is further developed when contra Hammond, one detects Aristoboulos as behind Curtius' main source, Kleitarchos, and not as a source himself. Since he was writing in Kassandriea he would have been under Demetrios if my tentative dating for Kleitarchos were right. We know that he was known as 'kolax' the flattterer, and criticised as such. Plutarch also tells us that the successors sought to emulate Alexander but succeeeded only in copying the outward mannerisms, except for Pyrrhus who embodied his true spirit, might not Demetrius have commissioned Aristoboulos' positive History intending to profit from the identification of himself with Alexander?
The Aristoboulan influences occur late in Curtius so I would not say that Kleitarchos wrote to correct or even in response to Aristoboulos' work merely that upon its appearence he lifted some topographical details and the odd story for verisimilitude.
Both Histories would be part of the propaganda war of this period of sitzkrieg, with the black propaganda, as so often, proving the more seductive.
Ptolemy, himself would then have written to boost his own role but also to undo the damage he had done to Alexander's reputation. He failed.
This seems to give a reasonable context for each author and explain certain characteristics of each rather than the old 'three men sit down to write which order do they do it in?' question.
That Arrian found much in Aristoboulos and Ptolemy that was in agreement says much for Aristoboulos' integrity, he did not need to exagerate Alexander's virtues too much. It is also, perhaps significant that the one instance quoted of his flattery concerns drinking, something that touched Demetrios as much as Alexander. Instructive too is Pythagoras' predicting Antigonos' death at Ipsos, thus making it pre-ordained and no fault of Demetrios' impetuosity.
It would be nice to hear Taphoi's 'more compelling reasons for placing him 280-270, close to my former thinking when he, I think was favouring an early date c310 as Bosworth does. Giving up cherished ideas is essential if one is to progress towards the truth in history. A J P Taylor once described himself as 'A man with strong opinions weakly held.' So let's go for a civilised debate with the minimum of condescension and abuse, sine ira et studio.
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Taphoi
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Hi Agesilaos,
It is absolutely right that Cleitarchus emphasised both Alexander's descent from Heracles (and therefore Zeus) on his father's side and his descent from Achilles on his mother's side. He probably did so because Alexander had done so. Alexander had probably done so, because his family had traditionally promulgated these questionable genealogies for their propaganda value. It is not an accident that Macedonian coins had Zeus on one side and Heracles on the other.
I would not say that Arrian and the Cleitarchan Vulgate are equal. I would say they are significantly complementary.
I have previously said that the published arguments on the date of Cleitarchus seemed finely balanced, but that I found the reasons favouring an early publication date more convincing. However, my recent investigations of Cleitarchus have revealed compelling new reasons to suspect a date a couple of decades into the third century BC. I can't go into this now, but some of the results of my investigations are published on the Cleitarchus pages on my website.
Best wishes,
Andrew
It is absolutely right that Cleitarchus emphasised both Alexander's descent from Heracles (and therefore Zeus) on his father's side and his descent from Achilles on his mother's side. He probably did so because Alexander had done so. Alexander had probably done so, because his family had traditionally promulgated these questionable genealogies for their propaganda value. It is not an accident that Macedonian coins had Zeus on one side and Heracles on the other.
I would not say that Arrian and the Cleitarchan Vulgate are equal. I would say they are significantly complementary.
I have previously said that the published arguments on the date of Cleitarchus seemed finely balanced, but that I found the reasons favouring an early publication date more convincing. However, my recent investigations of Cleitarchus have revealed compelling new reasons to suspect a date a couple of decades into the third century BC. I can't go into this now, but some of the results of my investigations are published on the Cleitarchus pages on my website.
Best wishes,
Andrew
What you say is correct but Justin isn't stressing descent from Achilles rather from Aeacus albeit that the are of the same line.
Whether the two traditions are complementary or not is coloured by ones attitude to Kleitarchos; if his version was essentially propagandist as I am suggesting then much of his detail can be discounted as having no more force than historical fiction. I don't believe the additional reinforcements in Curtius come from Kleitarchos, rather from that author's excerpting of Ptolemy, whom he seems to have read (hence his comment 'haud dubie de suiae gloriae non detractor' - certainly no gainsayer of his own glory).
I am not sure the Roman embassy is not something of an illusion, it rests only on Pliny and in a passage that dates Keitarchos to before 314! I think the old polymath was a bit confused. None of the Kleitarchan authors mention it and despite Bosworth I think it just as likely that all that were mentioned were Italian embassies and later Aristus and co used that peg to make one Roman and Alexander prophesy their future greatness.
Whether the two traditions are complementary or not is coloured by ones attitude to Kleitarchos; if his version was essentially propagandist as I am suggesting then much of his detail can be discounted as having no more force than historical fiction. I don't believe the additional reinforcements in Curtius come from Kleitarchos, rather from that author's excerpting of Ptolemy, whom he seems to have read (hence his comment 'haud dubie de suiae gloriae non detractor' - certainly no gainsayer of his own glory).
I am not sure the Roman embassy is not something of an illusion, it rests only on Pliny and in a passage that dates Keitarchos to before 314! I think the old polymath was a bit confused. None of the Kleitarchan authors mention it and despite Bosworth I think it just as likely that all that were mentioned were Italian embassies and later Aristus and co used that peg to make one Roman and Alexander prophesy their future greatness.
Some very interesting thoughts there, Agesilaos. I cannot engage with all of it, but I thought it might be interesting to point out that there still was some interest in Aiakid descent in the first century. Charles Edson has published a first century inscription from near Pydna of someone claiming Aiakid descent ('The Tomb of Olympias', Hesperia 18 (1949), 84-95 at 85-87, available on JStor). Thus, we should at least not conclude that such lines of descent had become completely irrelevant, but it is, of course, another question what this could have to do with Trogus. It is always difficult to analyse such problems as what we have in Justin is a summary of Trogus' summary of Kleitarchos and Diodoros also provides only a summary. These summaries are, in spite of the hopes of 19th-century-Quellenforscher, to a large extent determined by their authors, and it is very hazardous to say that any element must certainly come from the source, unless there are conclusive arguments for doing so.
best wishes,
abm
best wishes,
abm
That is interesting, but as you imply, my great great etc grandad may be of importance to me, so I put it on an inscription but I doubt anyone else would care very much. I shall certainly get hold of a copy of that article, though, one I cannot remember seeing in any bibliographies.
I agree too with your analysis of where we stand vis a vis Klietarchos, but we cannot just give up; everything can only be hypothesis but some will stand up better than others, one hopes and just how the so-called Vulgate relates to the 'official' history depends fundamentally on our perception of Kleitarchos' aims and abilities.
I would never put forward these thoughts as anything but a theory, and a pretty loose one at that, but if we can identify common features in the writers we know used Kleitarchos and then imagine an historical context for them, it might be a way to unlock the question of his, and hence their, value.
Anything else that may be typiical of ought not to skew the conclusion. It would be interesting to see what other people think are the common features of the Vulgate; there is no reason to accept Hammond's analysis in toto a communal mind might perhaps be less prone to finding what it is looking for and more likely to uncover what is there.
I may not be a 19th century German but I do enjoy a bit of Quellenforschnung, no doubt Gordon brown will outlaw it if he finds out people enjoy it. Hoch der Kaiser!
I agree too with your analysis of where we stand vis a vis Klietarchos, but we cannot just give up; everything can only be hypothesis but some will stand up better than others, one hopes and just how the so-called Vulgate relates to the 'official' history depends fundamentally on our perception of Kleitarchos' aims and abilities.
I would never put forward these thoughts as anything but a theory, and a pretty loose one at that, but if we can identify common features in the writers we know used Kleitarchos and then imagine an historical context for them, it might be a way to unlock the question of his, and hence their, value.
Anything else that may be typiical of ought not to skew the conclusion. It would be interesting to see what other people think are the common features of the Vulgate; there is no reason to accept Hammond's analysis in toto a communal mind might perhaps be less prone to finding what it is looking for and more likely to uncover what is there.
I may not be a 19th century German but I do enjoy a bit of Quellenforschnung, no doubt Gordon brown will outlaw it if he finds out people enjoy it. Hoch der Kaiser!
And I re-agree with you. I have no problems with Quellenforschung at all, but we should take heed not to be as naive about it as many 19th century scholars were (and many of later ages as well), and the temptation to see things as more certain than they are is always there; I have often felt it too. Your theory seems rather plausible to me, but I do not know enough about Kleitarchos to pretend that my judgement would have any value at all.agesilaos wrote:I agree too with your analysis of where we stand vis a vis Klietarchos, but we cannot just give up; everything can only be hypothesis but some will stand up better than others, one hopes and just how the so-called Vulgate relates to the 'official' history depends fundamentally on our perception of Kleitarchos' aims and abilities.
I would never put forward these thoughts as anything but a theory, and a pretty loose one at that, but if we can identify common features in the writers we know used Kleitarchos and then imagine an historical context for them, it might be a way to unlock the question of his, and hence their, value.
What we absolutely need is a decent and thorough commentary on Diodorus XVII with sufficient attention to this problem, and thus also to the author using the source. Worthington is working on one, but he his working so many things that I am afraid it will not be finished and published soon.
Another point has just occured whilst writing a reply to the Waldemar Heckel thread; a persistent thread in the Kleitarchan corpus is the 'world-wide Empire'; now this seems to have been the Antigonid agenda and is demonstrated by Demetrius' purple cloak embroidered with the universe.
Again, there are frequent stories in which adversaries criticise Alexander's Empire building and have the better of the exchanges, one thinks of the Pirate in Alexandria, or the Scythian envoys. To my mind these read better as criticism of Demetrius' constant war-mongering than Alexander's conquests.
Again, there are frequent stories in which adversaries criticise Alexander's Empire building and have the better of the exchanges, one thinks of the Pirate in Alexandria, or the Scythian envoys. To my mind these read better as criticism of Demetrius' constant war-mongering than Alexander's conquests.
The theme of the world-wide empire is a very interesting one, but I am not so sure that it necessarily was Antigonid propaganda. The view that only the Antigonids aimed at gaining control of Alexander's entire empire seems a misconception to me. I would say that all Successors, including Ptolemy, had the same aim. Bosworth's article in Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction is a very interesting contribution to this matter. Maybe such elements in the tradition as the pirate anecdote criticise the method of acquiring the empire rather than the goal in itself. Alternatively, it might also be something that originated in the philosophical schools rather than with one of the early historians.
Budé is rather like Loeb, but it usually has a more elaborate introduction, more notes and a fuller critical apparatus, though not as full the Teubner's.
Budé is rather like Loeb, but it usually has a more elaborate introduction, more notes and a fuller critical apparatus, though not as full the Teubner's.