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Theopompus (or Cratippus), Hellenica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. E. Underhill
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Extract

‘Since the discovery of the ῾Αθηναίων Πολιτεία in 1890’ the learned editors of the Oxyrhynchus papyri tell us, ‘Egypt has not produced any historical papyrus at all comparable in importance to these portions of a lost Greek historian, obviously of the first rank, dealing in minute detail with the events of the Greek world in the years 396 and 395 B.C.’ Drs. Grenfell and Hunt are indeed to be congratulated first on having made so great a discovery—a piece of luck which their long and arduous labours, systematically and scientifically conducted, have so richly deserved—and secondly they are still more to be congratulated on the success with which they have pieced together and deciphered the text and illumined their interpretation with clearly written and closely argued introduction and notes. They have not contented themselves, as they well might have done, merely with arranging and deciphering the text—a work demanding the greatest patience and the most exact scholarship—but they have boldly tackled, and with great acumen, the difficult question of the authorship of the work and many historical problems raised both by the fragmentary nature of the text itself and by comparison of its statements with those of other extant authorities.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , November 1908, pp. 277 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1908

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References

1 i. 16.

2 In iii. 9 I would supply in the lacuna ἐπιόντος (or τούτου) δὲ τοῦ θέρους (1) on the analogy of Thucydides and Xenophon and (2) because the parts of ὄδε, ἤδε, τόδε seem never to be used in P, or at any rate not in such temporal phrases.

3 Cf. p. 208.

4 Cf. pp. 208, 210 and my introduction to Xenophon, Hellenica, pp. l—lv.

5 i. 21.

6 ii. 1. 10; xiv. 14.

7 i. 36.

8 xi. 16–21.

9 Cf. xiv. 63–70.

10 Cf. Xen., Hell. iii. 2. 12Google Scholar.

11 Conon entered the Persian king's service at the beginning of 397 or a little earlier (cf. Diod. xiv. 39; Ctesias, 631). Whether he was commander-in-chief or nominally subject to a Persian commander, is perhaps rendered doubtful by the papyrus iii. 11. Cf. the editors' note ad loc.

12 Paneg. 142.

13 Xen., Hell. iii. 4. 2Google Scholar.

14 Col. iii. 23.

15 vi. 7. 6.

16 Justin (vi. 2. 11) alone of extant authorities alludes to this mutiny.

17 It is noticeable that both Beloch ii. 149 and Meyer put the arrival of the Phoenician fleet in the spring of 395.

18 iii. 23.

19 Cf. the Spartan accusation against Ismenias, Xen. Hell. v. 2. 35.

20 P. 204.

21 Polyaenus i. 48. 3. Κόνων Φαρναβάζψ συμμαχῶν ᾿Αγησιλάου τὴν ᾿Ασίαν πορθοῦντος ἔπεισε τὸν Πέρσην χρυσίον πέμψαι τοῖς δημαγωγοῖς τῶν πόλεων τῆς ῾Ελλάδος οἴ λαβόντες πείσουσι τὰς πατρίδας ἐκφέρειν τὸν πρὸς Λακεδαιμονίους πόλεμον. οἱ μὲν δεκασθέντες ἔπεισαν καὶ συνέστη πόλεμος Κορινθιακός οἱ δὲ Σπαρτιᾶται τὸν ᾿Αγησίλαον ἐκ τῆς ᾿Ασίας ἀνεκαλέσαντο

22 P. 122.

23 A slight argument in favour of a very short period is the oblivion into which P apparently fell: posterity may have felt that he treated the history of eight or nine years in too long and tedious a fashion to be worth reading, cf. infr. p. 290.

24 Pp. 122, 134.

25 P. 127.

26 P. 139.

27 Walker, E. M., Class. Rev. xxii. p. 88Google Scholar.

28 Pp. 126, 127.

29 Τοῦτον [i.e. Hagnias] καὶ τοὺς συμπρεσ βευτὰς αὐτοῦ φησὶν ᾿Ανδροτίων ἐν πέμπτῳ τῆς ᾿Ατθίδος καὶ Φιλόχορος, ὡς ἑάλωσάν τε καὶ ἀπέθανον ὑπὀ Λακεδαιμονίων

30 Pp. 127–139.

31 Cf. de Sanctis, l.c. p. 9.

32 ap. Euseb., Praep. Evang. x. 3, p. 465Google Scholar.

33 It is perhaps noticeable that Stephanus in his nine other citations from definite books of the Hellenica adds the word ῾Ελληνικῶν but in quoting from the Philippica seems frequently to omit Φιλιππικῶν after the number of the book.

34 Pp. 131 sqq.

35 Photius, Cod. 176.

36 Mr.Walker, (Klio, viii. p. 364)Google Scholar in discussing the relation of (a) Pausanias, Polyaenus and Justin, and (b) Nepos and Plutarch to P arrives at the remarkable result that the three former, who exhibit agreement with P, are the writers generally ‘supposed to be dependent on Ephorus and independent of Theopompus’; while the two latter, who fail to exhibit a single point of contact with P, are ‘the two writers whose use of Theopompus has been most generally admitted.’

37 L.c. 10.

38 Plut. l.c. 10.

39 Cf. esp. xviii. 32.

40 Cf. p. 137.

41 P. 142.

42 Cols. i. 25–ii. 35, xiv. 10–16. Cf. xv. 11–14.

43 P. 283.

44 P. 139.

45 Dr.Wilcken, U. (Hermes, xliii. pp. 477sqq.)Google Scholar, following up a suggestion of Dr. Wilamowitz, proposes to fill the lacuna in vi. 45 with ὃ[ παρὰ τὴν Mεσωγίδα ῤέων ἀπὸ Κελαι]νω̑ν παρὰ τὴν Μεσωγίδα ῥέων ἀπὸ Κελαι]νῶν and regards it as the passage mentioned by Strabo xiii. 629. But the words παρὰ τὴν Μεσωγίδα contain fifteen letters, where the editors think that there is only room for ten, so that I cannot consider Dr. Wilcken's suggestion as very plausible, and fully concur with the judgment expressed in the editors' note on the passage. ‘We attach little weight to the general resemblance between vi. 44–vii. 4 and Strabo's allusion to Theopompus as an argument for the identification of the latter author with P.’