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DRACONTIUS (LD 3.279–95) AND THE SOURCE OF THE THERMOPYLAE NYKTOMACHIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2014

Jeffrey Murray
Jeffrey Murray*
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
*
jeffrey.murray@uct.ac.za
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Extract

The account of the Battle of Thermopylae found in Diodorus Siculus (11.8.4–10.4) is remarkably different from the more commonly known Herodotean version of events (7.201–33). Most strikingly, his account includes details of a night raid on the Persian camp made by Leonidas and his men. Diodorus’ principal source for this section of the narrative, historians generally agree, was Ephorus of Cyme (c. 405–330 b.c.). This tradition was later taken up also by Justin (2.11.12–18) and Plutarch (De malignitate Herodoti 866a). But who was Ephorus’ source? Many believe that Ephorus simply made it up. However, Michael Flower, in a discussion of Ephorus and his sources, rightly I think, dismisses this verdict on a number of accounts. Firstly, he questions the willingness of Ephorus’ audience to accept this novel version without Ephorus providing a suitable source for it. Secondly, he points out that scholars have never conclusively demonstrated that Ephorus simply fabricated the events that he related. Instead, dismissing the Greek physician Ctesias of Cnidus (‘It could not have come from Ctesias’), who was active during the last decades of the fifth and early part of the fourth century b.c., Flower argues for the possibility that the lyric poetry of Simonides of Ceos was Ephorus’ source. It is the argument of this paper that Flower dismisses Ctesias as a source for the Thermopylae nyktomachia too quickly, and that by combining information found in Dracontius (De laudibus Dei 3.279–95) and Tertullian (Apologeticum 9.6) it is probable to conclude that Ctesias is indeed the source for this alternative tradition.

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Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 399 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

The account of the Battle of Thermopylae found in Diodorus Siculus (11.8.4–10.4) is remarkably different from the more commonly known Herodotean version of events (7.201–33). Most strikingly, his account includes details of a night raid on the Persian camp made by Leonidas and his men. Diodorus’ principal source for this section of the narrative, historians generally agree, was Ephorus of Cyme (c. 405–330 b.c.).Footnote 1 This tradition was later taken up also by Justin (2.11.12–18) and Plutarch (De malignitate Herodoti 866a).Footnote 2 But who was Ephorus’ source? Many believe that Ephorus simply made it up.Footnote 3 However, Michael Flower, in a discussion of Ephorus and his sources, rightly I think, dismisses this verdict on a number of accounts.Footnote 4 Firstly, he questions the willingness of Ephorus’ audience to accept this novel version without Ephorus providing a suitable source for it. Secondly, he points out that scholars have never conclusively demonstrated that Ephorus simply fabricated the events that he related. Instead, dismissing the Greek physician Ctesias of Cnidus (‘It could not have come from Ctesias’Footnote 5), who was active during the last decades of the fifth and early part of the fourth century b.c., Flower argues for the possibility that the lyric poetry of Simonides of Ceos was Ephorus’ source.Footnote 6 It is the argument of this paper that Flower dismisses Ctesias as a source for the Thermopylae nyktomachia too quickly, and that by combining information found in Dracontius (De laudibus Dei 3.279–95) and Tertullian (Apologeticum 9.6) it is probable to conclude that Ctesias is indeed the source for this alternative tradition.

Blossius Aemilius Dracontius, the fifth-century a.d. Christian North African poet, includes in a catalogue of classical exempla in the final book of his biblical epic, De laudibus Dei (LD), a version of Leonidas’ night attack on the Persian camp (3.279–95). Dracontius’ version is consistent with the Diodorus/Justin/Plutarch tradition, and includes in its concluding lines a reflection on the morality of Persian patricide in light of the description in the preceding lines detailing friends and family killing one another rather than their enemies in the confusion associated with warfare in the dark:

Ausa Leonidae nocturnaque bella legantur.
Castra inimica petens invasit nocte silenti
et fuit una cohors tantum munita tenebris.
Nox erat umbo viris, manus haec confisa periclis,
spe mortis praesumpta suae; qui luce repulsa
millenos petiere viros spernendo salutem.
Invadunt populos, obscura strage cruentant;
dum nescit quemcumque ferit quicumque repugnat,
obtruncat socium, carum prosternit amicum,
amputat ignarus fratrem iugulatque propinquum.
Dum pater obscura defendi nocte putatur
sic ibi procubuit nati pietate peremptus;
viveret et vitam longo produceret aevo,
ni sobolem genitor nimiae pietatis haberet.
Foedera naturae rumpuntur crimine sancto
nec reor esse nefas Persis occidere patres
quos sua iura probant thalamis asciscere matres.   (LD 3.279–95)Footnote 7

In Dracontius’ dubious logic, patricide cannot be a sin (nefas) amongst the Persians because their laws already allow them to marry their own mothers. It is not Dracontius’ judgement of morality, nor his version of events that are of interest here, however, but rather the linking, in his mind at least, of the Thermopylae nyktomachia with this cultural anecdote. For among the other ancient authors who mention this Persian practice is Tertullian, who in the Apologeticum claims Ctesias as his source, Persas cum suis matribus misceri Ctesias refert (9.16).Footnote 8 On the basis of Tertullian's identification of Ctesias as his source for this custom and the juxtaposition by Dracontius of the nyktomachia with the Persian law allowing men to marry their own mothers, it is certainly reasonable to claim that Ctesias then is a probable source for the night attack of the Persian camp made by the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae.Footnote 9

References

1 Stylianou, P.J., A Historical Commentary on Diodorus Siculus Book 15 (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar, 49: ‘As far as the Greek and Persian narratives of Books 11–15 (16) are concerned there is very wide agreement that Diodorus epitomized Ephorus. This was firmly established long ago and requires no detailed argumentation’; cf. e.g. Volquardsen, C.A., Untersuchungen über die Quellen der griechischen und sizilischen Geschichte bei Diodor XI bis XVI (Kiel, 1868)Google Scholar; E. Schwartz, RE 5.663–704; Hornblower, S. (ed.), Greek Historiography (Oxford, 1994), 36–8.Google Scholar

2 See Hammond, N.G.L., ‘Sparta at Thermopylae’, Historia 45 (1996), 1–20Google Scholar for a summary of this tradition. Cf. also Orosius 2.9.7–10, who draws on Justin, and see Fear, A.T., Orosius. Seven Books of History against the Pagans (Liverpool, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 88.

3 See Flower, M.A., ‘Simonides, Ephorus, and Herodotus on the Battle of Thermopylae’, CQ 48 (1998), 365–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 366 (esp. n. 9): ‘The communis opinio is that Ephorus simply made up the night attack whole cloth.’

4 Flower (n. 3).

5 Ibid. 367; in his footnote (n. 16), Flower is rather more guarded. Commenting on Photius’ epitome of Ctesias, he states, ‘Photius’ bald statement that the Lacedaemonians “having been surrounded, all died fighting bravely” … is too vague to rule out a night attack’.

6 Ibid. 369–79. By suggesting Simonides, Flower goes a step further than Hammond (n. 2), 5–8, who identifies two sources for Ephorus’ Thermopylae campaign, one which he labels simply as ‘X’ and a separate source for the nyktomachia (Diod. Sic. 11.9.2–10.4), based on the change in style, which he describes as ‘bombastic and rhetorical’ (p. 8). On this second source, Hammond writes, ‘[t]he obvious explanation of the difference in style is that Diodorus’ and Justin's immediate source, Ephorus, abandoned X at 11.9.2 and 2.11.11. Instead, he took up an imaginative and flamboyant account with all the features of self-glorification which are characteristic of many a freedom-fighter's ballad’ (p. 8). On Ephorus’ sources, including Ctesias, see Barber, G.L., The Historian Ephorus (Cambridge, 1935), 113–37Google Scholar; Parker, V., ‘The historian Ephorus: his selection of sources’, Antichthon 38 (2004), 29–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; in particular Parker comments, ‘[b]ut I fail to note any influence of Ctesias in Ephorus’ account of the Persian Wars themselves …’ (p. 33). For Ctesias’ surviving account of Thermopylae whether in epitome and/or fragments as well as commentary upon them, see A. Nichols, ‘The complete fragments of Ctesias of Cnidus: translation and commentary with an introduction’ (Diss., University of Florida, 2008), 31–3, 94, 173–4; Lenfant, D. (ed.), Ctésias de Cnide. La Perse, L'Inde, Autres Fragments (Paris, 2004)Google Scholar, XCI–XCII; Llewellyn-Jones, L. and Robson, J. (ed. and tr.), Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient (London and New York, 2010)Google Scholar, 89, 183; Stronk, J.P. (ed. and tr.), Ctesias’ Persian History Part I: Introduction, Text, and Translation (Düsseldorf, 2010), 332–3.Google Scholar

7 For the text of Dracontius, I have used Moussy, Claude (ed. and tr.), Dracontius: Oeuvres II (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar. Apart from Moussy's ‘notes complémentaires’ I know of no commentary on Book 3 in any language. For a discussion of this passage, and its literary texture, see Simons, R., Dracontius und der Mythos: Christliche Weltsicht und pagane Kultur in der ausgehenden Spätantike (Munich and Leipzig, 2005), 120–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Cf. Tert. Ad nat. 1.16: plane Persae, <C>tesias edit, tam scientes quam non horrentes cum <ma>tribus libere f<ac>iunt (Borleffs, J.W.Ph., CCSL I [Brepols, 1954])Google Scholar. Stronk (n. 6), 192 is unconvinced that Tertullian's reference is to a specific description in the Persica. On the actual practice among the Persians, see Nichols (n. 6), 200–1; cf. also Hdt. 3.31; Xanthus of Lydia (FGrHist 765 F 31); Strabo 15.3.20; Curt. 8.2.19; Catull. 90.3–4; Min. Fel. 31.3. According to Asheri, David et al. (edd.), A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV (Oxford, 2007)Google Scholar, 430, marriage between blood-relatives is much praised in the Avesta.

9 I would like to thank Elke Steinmeyer and David Wardle, as well as CQ's anonymous reader, for their assistance in the preparation of this paper.