In the last few years there has been a welcome rush of books dedicated, in part or in full, to the study of the oft-maligned late Hellenistic writer Diodorus Siculus. There is a growing sense that Diodorus deserves analysis as an author in his own right. As the two books under review here demonstrate – in quite different ways albeit with considerable focus in both cases on the early books of the Bibliotheke – this author is an important source for our understanding both of the world he lived in and the literary culture of which he was a part.

S.’s new book focuses on those parts of the Bibliotheke that relate to ‘Persian’ history, by which S. means ‘the vicissitudes of all empires or reigns of which, one way or another, either real, alleged, or implicated, the area of Persis and/or Iranian tribes was/were a part’ (p. 3). The book offers a translation of these parts of Diodorus’ text alongside four discussion chapters and full indexes, including Classical authors, modern authors and a general index. The book argues for a more positive view of Diodorus’ capacity as an author, if not necessarily a historian, and for an appreciation of the importance of aretê to Diodorus’ world view. This is clearly stated in the conclusion, where S. contends that he does ‘not view [Diodorus’ Bibliotheke] as a proper history in the first place, but as a work in which history has become a tool to teach his audience the merits of a life of aretē’ (p. 545). Diodorus is argued to be a ‘teacher of morality, essentially using Clio as his handmaiden’ (p. 10).

The introduction offers a summary of Diodorus’ biography, such as it remains to us, the nature of the Bibliotheke, an analysis of Diodorus’ method, his views and an overview of the Bibliotheke’s structure. Perhaps most useful to those less familiar with the survival of Diodorus’ text is the discussion of the manuscript tradition of the Bibliotheke. The first chapter is an exhaustive study of Diodorus’ potential sources for each book of the Bibliotheke. Here S. argues that Diodorus could have used a multitude of sources for each book (what S. calls the ‘potential, probable and established sources’ [p. 81]), and that attempts to pinpoint a single author for each book are misguided. The chapter displays an impressive range of scholarship, and S. demonstrates a command of the literature on Diodorus’ sources. For those coming to Diodorus for the first time, this chapter provides a thorough discussion of the sources that may underpin Diodorus’ text. While I have great sympathy for S.’s argument that Diodorus may have combined different sources and even added his own material, the chapter would have benefited from detailed examples of this practice.

These two introductory chapters are followed by a translation of Diodorus’ text where it pertains to Persia, as defined by S. in his introduction. This translation is accompanied by explanatory footnotes that fall short of a full commentary (as S. notes on p. ix), but that aim to provide the reader with ‘clarification, elaboration, and/or additional literature to get a wider (sometimes a better) perspective on the story as Diodorus relates it to us’ (p. ix). With some reservations, noted below, these footnotes achieve their purpose, offering largely up-to-date bibliography and guidance to readers where Diodorus is mistaken. Many footnotes provide useful insights into S.’s choices regarding his translation. The translation reads well, although issue could be taken with individual choices, notably the decision to translate barbaroi with specific names of peoples, as S. discusses at p. 7 n. 15, while aretê is left transliterated. The text is structured around the reigns of kings or dynasties, and these reigns are grouped into larger chronological units, which reflect S.’s authorial choices. The first unit, ‘Ancient History: Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Medes’, is followed by a Hellenised division of Persian history: ‘The Persians and the Greek Wars’ covers the reigns of Cyrus the Great to Xerxes I; ‘Revolt and Sedition’ covers Artaxerxes I to Artaxerxes III; ‘Alexander the Great Defeats Darius III’; ‘From Persepolis to Babylon’, covers Alexander's campaigns against Bessus and into India; ‘The Period of the Diadochs: the Rift Opens’ covers 323/2–318/7; ‘The Period of the Diadochs: the Rift Deepens’ covers 317/16–311/10; and finally ‘The Vicissitudes of the Diadoch Kingdoms: the Final Years of Diodorus’ Persian Account’ covers 311/10 to the period after 280 bce. These chronological units do not correspond exactly to Diodorus’ own divisions, and so some of them include material ranging across many of Diodorus’ books. While this is useful for the fact that it collects the disparate material on individual monarchs under one heading, it does atomise some of Diodorus’ text and the structure of his narrative as a whole.

Some minor methodological points could be explained more clearly in the opening chapter. One of these concerns chronology. On pp. 14–15 S. describes Diodorus’ chronological ‘pegs’, the third of which was the Roman magistrate list. S. notes that Diodorus’ list does not always match that provided by the Varronian chronology, and that he will comment on the difference between the two. Yet, as S. concedes at p. 15 n. 29, Livy's chronology is often the most accurate for early Roman history. This would be a better comparison to Diodorus’ chronology than the problematic Varronian chronology. Before 300 bc Varro's chronology is demonstrably incorrect, as it notably includes invented dictator years and an extended anarchy in Roman politics before the Licinio-Sextian laws. The effect of this, to give one example, is that Diodorus’ list of military tribunes is described by S. as ‘nine years ahead of the Varronian chronology’ (p. 245 n. 198). S. does not explain that Varro's chronology is inflated at this point and that the difference between Diodorus’ chronology and the Varronian chronology is much smaller (see also p. 264 n. 273 for a similar issue). Given the complexity of the problems surrounding the Varronian chronology it would be clearer to relate Diodorus’ attempts at chronological markers to Livy's statements where possible, leaving aside the Varronian chronology, or explaining the problems with the Varronian list more fully in the introduction.

In other places the exclusion of non-‘Persian’ history means that narratorial comments are cut out where they do not speak directly to the defined topic. For example, 11.11.1–6, in which Diodorus eulogises the Lacedaemonians who fell at Thermopylae, is left out; yet at p. 541 the same passage is referenced as one of the few ‘elements of dichotomy between “East” and “West” in the Bibliotheca’. The absence of the eulogy in the translation is a frustration, especially since S. is making the point here that the praise of the Lacedaemonians is one of the few passages in the Bibliotheke that may have been discriminatory against foreigners. This covers a more general concern that much of Diodorus’ methodological interventions and reflections on the moral implications of his work come in the proems to the Bibliotheke’s 40 books. They are therefore excluded from the translation because they do not relate directly to Persian material. While S. does show that much of Diodorus’ moral vision can be found implicitly throughout the text, these proems form a vital part of the Bibliotheke’s framework. A fuller demonstration of how these authorial comments relate to the Persian material would be helpful in order to strengthen S.’s argument that Diodorus ‘attributes a significant role to the Persian world’ (p. 544) in his analysis of aretê in the Bibliotheke.

Despite these reservations, S. has provided a useful introduction to many issues surrounding Diodorus, and the collected translation of Diodorus’ Persian history does show the extent to which his authorial choices shaped the material in the Bibliotheke, even if some of the arguments deserve more space.

M.’s book on Diodorus, a revised version of his 2008 Ph.D., takes a different approach to S.’s, but it pushes towards many similar conclusions regarding Diodorus as an author. The book is a closely argued case for Diodorus as a product of his own time and as an active commentator on it. Over seven chapters M. contends that the first three books of Diodorus’ Bibliotheke used the ethnography of ‘barbarians’ to engage in the debates of his own day concerning civilisation, ruler cult, monarchy and the contemporary changes to Roman society.

Chapter 1 introduces Diodorus as an author interested in commenting on his own times and also considers the state of scholarship on the Bibliotheke. The first point is adeptly demonstrated through analysis of how Diodorus’ description of the Egyptian calendar can be understood as part of the contemporary debate about Caesar's introduction into Rome of a 365¼-day calendar and a second discussion of how Diodorus’ emphasis on clemency (ἐπιείκεια) throughout the Bibliotheke, including the first three books, can be connected to Caesar's famous clemency during the civil war. M. then approaches Diodorus’ methodology through a detailed study of his sources for the first three books of the Bibliotheke and argues that Diodorus was using multiple sources at the same time and synthesising them into a new coherent whole. M. concludes that ‘we need to remember that selection and summarization themselves are creative acts’ (p. 26).

In the second chapter M. turns to the organisation of the Bibliotheke and tackles the problem of how Diodorus incorporated mythological history, the chronology of which could not be easily synchronised with Greek history. M. argues that Diodorus’ choices in his first three books are instructive for how he conceived of his project as a whole. For M., the first three books, which describe those regions of the world that contemporary Rome had not yet conquered, function as a commentary on the limits of Roman power and also on the potential for future conquest. He further argues that Diodorus’ later books were structured in order to use the sequence of Rome's conquests to discuss the history of those peoples excluded from the first three books, and that this explains why the Celtic ethnography is in Book 5: once Caesar's campaigns in Gaul and Britain were excluded from the Bibliotheke, these ethnographies were moved to a less suitable, but at least plausible, location. Chapter 3 furthers the argument that Diodorus’ first three books reflect contemporary concerns, this time through an analysis of how Diodorus describes the origins of civilisation. Here M. shows that Diodorus’ interest in the importance of fear and necessity in the progress of civilisation can be connected to contemporary debates concerning the causes of the Roman Republic's decline.

In the fourth chapter, M. shows that Diodorus’ decision to include mythological material in his Bibliotheke marks him out as a product of his time, but especially as an author connected to contemporary trends in Roman historical thought. The principal contention of this chapter is that Diodorus broke with ‘longstanding Greek historiographical attitudes towards myth’ (p. 125) by including extensive coverage of mythological material and by considering at length where the myths of different nations became history. By engaging in this kind of work, Diodorus was closer to his Roman contemporaries, and especially Livy. Chapter 5, the longest chapter of the book, develops an aspect of Diodorus’ inclusion of mythological material by considering the connection between the deified ‘culture bringers’ described in Diodorus’ first three books and the figures who were later considered divine, notably Alexander and Caesar. M. contextualises Diodorus’ depiction of the deification of ‘culture bringers’ in the contemporary debates amongst Romans concerning the relationship between powerful men and the divine, with an extended consideration of Cicero's reflections on the deification of humans. M. argues persuasively that Diodorus’ depiction of Caesar's exploits as a ‘culture bringer’ to Gaul and the British Islands and his re-foundation of Corinth put Caesar firmly into the ranks of mortals who deserved deification, such as those discussed in the first three books. In this way M. shows that Diodorus’ depiction of deified ‘culture bringers’ is an element of a contemporary debate in Rome, in which Diodorus was taking part.

In Chapter 6 M. shows that Diodorus’ interest in Rome's moral decline, demonstrated by a passage from Book 37 of the Bibliotheke, puts him in the company of contemporary Roman writers such as Sallust and Livy. M. further argues that Diodorus’ description of Egyptian and Assyrian monarchy is intended to be an oblique suggestion to Rome of how a successful monarchy could be constructed, with Egypt especially offering a counter to many contemporary Roman concerns about the excessive isolation and power of kings. Chapter 7 then tackles the issue of when or if Diodorus published his work, connecting this closely to the death of Caesar and the advent of renewed civil wars following his assassination. M. concludes that Diodorus’ efforts to engage with contemporary Roman debates about ruler cult, civilisation and kingship, and his praise for Egypt, may have made publication of the Bibliotheke awkward for Diodorus after Caesar's death and during the backlash in Rome against Egypt in the 30s bc.

The book ranges widely across the ideas and themes contained in Diodorus’ first three books, and M. successfully connects the different strands of argument across several chapters, in some cases setting up important points in early chapters that are explored later in full. An example of the successful interconnections between chapters can be found between the book's first and last chapters. M. starts the book with a reconsideration of Diodorus’ historical context, his life and his use of sources, all well-worn topics. The chapter lays important foundations for the subsequent discussion of the Bibliotheke and sets out concisely M.’s position. M. introduces Diodorus’ life and contextualises him in relation to other ‘provincial intellectuals’ (p. 6). Here he notes that Diodorus was unusual amongst his provincial colleagues in his isolation from Rome, a point that bears fruit in Chapter 7 (‘The Roman Civil Wars and the Bibliotheke’). There M. contends that Diodorus’ publication of the Bibliotheke was adversely affected by the renewed civil wars after Caesar's assassination. On M.’s reading, the first three books were going to be Diodorus’ initial attempts to gain patronage, and they connected closely to the world that Caesar was creating: to this end they included ‘praise of monarchy and deified rulers’ (p. 232). M. argues that after Caesar's death, this kind of work would be poorly received, and he suggests that Diodorus would have been forced to reconsider how he published his work. The argument gains weight on the basis of the book's introductory chapter, and M.’s thesis concerning Diodorus’ publication strategy and the difficulties in bringing this about is broadly convincing.

This is a persuasive work that places Diodorus firmly into his historical context; the corollary to this is that Diodorus is argued to be a writer and historian in his own right, and one worth studying for his own sake. There is a strong emphasis on Rome throughout the work, and it could be argued that inspiration for Diodorus’ choices could be found in the wider contemporary situation – he was, after all, a universal historian, and his lessons may well have been intended for a universal audience. Nonetheless, M.’s work is an important contribution to the study of Diodorus and Hellenistic historiography, and is sure to be a starting point for much work to come.