This book is an overdue complement to the book by L.I.C. Pearson (The Greek Historians of the West: Timaeus and his Predecessors [1987]) which, as the title indicates, mainly focuses on developments in historiography up to and including Timaeus. Moreover, B. considers Timaeus from a different perspective than Pearson.
The first introduction to the works of Timaeus may well have been, for many, the fiery attacks on him by Polybius (12.3.1–16.14). Unfortunately, of the works by Timaeus (c. 350–c. 260 b.c.), like the works by all historians writing between Xenophon's Hellenica and Josephus' Jewish Wars, if they have not been lost completely, only fragments survive. It is, therefore, very much to the point that B. permeates his work with the issue ‘how to study a fragmentary historian’ (also the title of the first chapter).
To assess lost works, one needs to recontextualise the fragments in order to remove any distorting effects that may have entered during the process of incorporation of the original text into another author's work. Reading that work (the cover-text in B.'s words) more fully may well help to enhance our understanding of the fragments of, or comments on, a lost author, even more so because Jacoby's compilations in the most common collection of lost authors, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (FGrHist: 1923–1958), are sometimes too summary. Jacoby's Fragmente are now gradually being superseded by Brill's New Jacoby (BNJ: see below), but the main tenor largely remains intact. The fragments are, moreover, coloured by Jacoby's ‘conception[s] of the development of Greek historiography’ (p. 11). Another risk is that we might follow the conclusions of its editor too hastily, without considering the proper context of the cover-text: Delatte's claim regarding Timaeus on Pythagoras is a good example of such a situation (pp. 151–2).
Chapter 4, ‘The Distorting Lens: Polybius and Timaeus’, is also part of B.'s methodological introduction to the study of fragments. It underlines the importance of closely reading the cover-text, here Polybius (notably Book 12), to reveal the hidden (and frequently not so hidden) clues regarding Polybius' disposition towards Timaeus. Polybius shows himself as clearly critical of Timaeus, and also (wilfully) distorts his work, if only to usurp, in Timaeus' stead, the latter's position as historian of Rome and to portray himself as the ideal historian. In this process, he successfully creates a picture of Timaeus as an ‘armchair historian’, a picture that has stuck until the present day (pp. 69–72). B. rightly argues that Polybius' polemic against Timaeus may very well distort our picture of the latter – unless we scrutinise the cover-text as thoroughly as Timaeus' own (alleged) contributions. By doing so we may notice the polemical character of Polybius' twelfth book.
In Chapter 6 B. (re)turns to ‘Polemical Invective and the Hellenistic Historian's Craft’. He considers both polemical invective and scholarly research as two major elements of intellectual life in Athens (where Timaeus resided for c. 50 years as an exile from Sicily) in this period. Timaeus frequently applies the figure of polemical invective, perhaps – if we are to believe B. – in scholarly debate, notably against Aristotle and the Peripatetics, though he does attack other people as well. In spite of his criticism regarding Aristotle and his school, Timaeus did copy an Aristotelian feature, sc. the collection, study and use of documents. These he apparently used in various ways, thereby earning himself the reputation of ‘armchair historian’.
Chapter 8, ‘“Just like a schoolboy”: Timaeus and his speeches’, continues the thread woven in Chapter 6. Even though they are literary products, not historical documents, speeches were a pivotal element in ancient historical writing, if only to show the author's rhetorical skill. As for Timaeus' use of speeches, our main information derives again from Polybius and, to a lesser extent, from Plutarch. Here, too, Polybius' judgement does much to damage Timaeus' reputation among modern historians, even though, as B. rightly argues, the practices of Timaeus did not differ very much from those of mainstream Greek historians: ‘in this case, it is Polybius who represents the exception’ (p. 174), viz. for his plea for an account that mirrors as faithfully as possible what has actually been said. However, as B. argues, criticising Timaeus' use of speeches enabled Polybius to continue his polemic in the ‘need to destroy his predecessor's reputation’ (p. 180).
In Chapter 9, B. turns to a more general issue: ‘Generic Choices: the Shape of Timaeus’ Histories'. In this chapter B. discusses genre as a ‘strategy of literary composition’ (p. 202), utilising a model put forward by J. Marincola (‘Genre, Convention, and Innovation in Greco-Roman Historiography’, in C.S. Kraus [ed.], The Limits of Historiography: Genre & Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts [1999], pp. 281–324) that is more suited to studying particularly fragmentary historians than Jacoby's rigid model of five genres.
According to B., nearly three-quarters of Timaeus' fragments are non-narrative in character. It led Jacoby to describe Timaeus as an antiquarian, but B. doubts that the fragments are representative of the entire work. Nevertheless, labels, simplistic as they may be, once assigned, tend to stick, as Champion's entry in the BNJ appears to show (C.B. Champion, ‘Timaios (566)’ in I. Worthington [ed.], BNJ, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brill-s-new-jacoby/timaios-566-a566). B. believes, though, that Timaeus' subject matter shows that he was a real writer of history who was ‘consciously creating a complex narrative structure’ (p. 228).
Timaeus' almost Herodotean approach, as B. sees it, leads to the final chapter (before the conclusion), ‘Herodotean Historiography in the Hellenistic Age’. Here B. argues that ‘[i]t is important not to view Hellenistic historians as simply choosing between two mutually exclusive ways [viz. the Herodotean and the Thucydidean] of writing history’ (p. 233). Similarities between the approach of writing history by Herodotus and by Timaeus, mainly expressed in terms of narrative structure and subject matter, have nevertheless been highlighted by several modern scholars. Regrettably other Hellenistic historians than Timaeus are dealt with poorly by B.: there is some attention to Duris of Samos (pp. 247–55), but other Hellenistic authors – apart from Polybius – are hardly mentioned, if at all. In this respect I find the title of B.'s book misleading.
Regarding the comprehensive subject of the study of fragmentary historians, B.'s remark: ‘I do not wish to argue that Timaeus, Duris, or any other lost author was as “good” a historian as Herodotus or Thucydides. Without their full works, there is no way to tell. But I do insist that the remains of the Hellenistic historians must be re-contextualized and carefully analyzed on their own terms, without the preconceptions of nineteenth-century positivism’ (p. 255), is a fitting conclusion that I fully support and would like to be applied to fragmentary historians of all periods.
Throughout the book B., though he shows himself occasionally critical of Timaeus, is more often extremely forgiving towards him, for example regarding Timaeus' fragments relating Thucydides' exile and burial place, Timaeus' invective against Aristotle and his discussion of speeches in Timaeus' work, certainly compared with B.'s overall treatment of Polybius. B. paints a different picture of Timaeus than, for example, Pearson or Champion (in his ‘Biographical Essay’, op. cit.), but his view is certainly well documented. Moreover, though I do not share all of B.'s eulogies of Timaeus' virtues, his methodological approach is sound and worth applying in the study of all fragmentarily preserved classical authors. In particular, his alternative, based upon Marincola, to the division of classical authors into genres as advocated inter alios by Jacoby, is very appealing. If only for these pages (pp. 202–9), this book deserves to be read and studied by all working in the field of ancient Greek historiography.
