In 1949, Wilamowitz' former disciple, Felix Jacoby, showed that the exegetai consisted not of one board but of three and that their function was not what Wilamowitz had conceived it to be.[3] At most, they expatiated on special aspects of sacred law, particularly on matters involving purification, and there is little sign that they possessed, at any stage of their existence, historical records extending beyond their own narrow areas of expertise. Jacoby suggested instead that the first chronicler of Athens was a non-Athenian, active in the late fifth century, called Hellanikos of Lesbos, whose Atthis became the literary model and archetypal historical source of all subsequent chronicles of Athens. Jacoby's essential disagreement with Wilamowitz concerned the identity of the first Atthis and the reasons for which the genre of Atthidography (literally 'Atthis-writing') was perpetuated. On the question of origins, he pointed out that the 'anonymous Atthis of c. 380' is unattested and must, for chronological reasons, exclude Hellanikos from the tradition, notwithstanding plain evidence of an Attic history under his authorship. As to the purpose of the genre, he insisted that an Attic historian wrote not merely for the sake of supplementing earlier accounts with more contemporary narrative but rather to recast traditional material in line with a partisan interest. Kleidemos, he suggested, had democratic leanings, while Androtion was a conservative and Philochoros a moderate; each treated with different political attitudes the same recorded facts.[4]
Jacoby's polemic seemed so powerful that virtually nobody since has taken issue with the creeds which it established. It is true that in recent times, Phillip Harding has questioned the doctrine that the Atthides were politically motivated,[5] and his criticisms have been adopted in a more moderate form by P.J. Rhodes.[6] Yet the most important conclusion of Jacoby's study - namely, that Hellanikos was the first chronicler of Athens - has scarcely been challenged.[7] This is surprising, since the claim rests on highly questionable evidence and, besides, has profound implications for our understanding of the historical tradition underlying not only the chronicles of the fourth and third centuries but also, and perhaps more significantly, the Pentekontaetia of Thucydides. For some modern scholars see Thucydides' Pentekontaetia as a polemical response to Hellanikos' work, and polemical precisely because, they believe, Hellanikos had already provided a detailed (but in Thucydides' view, mistaken) chronology of the period.[8]
Before we begin, it is essential to clarify the relevant critical terminology. 'Chronicler', 'chronographer', and 'annalist' are often applied interchangeably by modern scholars to authors whose narratives are organised according to some salient chronological rubric. An example of this tendency can be found in Mosshammer's otherwise excellent study, entitled The Chronicle of Eusebius and the Greek Chronographic Tradition, which includes within the broad category of 'chronography' works of vastly different character and aim.[9] I shall be using the term 'chronicle' to refer to a genre of historical writing whose purpose was to re-tell the past in a continuous and coherent narrative organised with strict attention to a fixed chronological scheme: this could embrace lists of annual magistrates, athletic victor lists, or any system of temporal reckoning calculated in intervals from a fixed point of reference. 'Chronography', on the other hand, properly designates a field of research whose chief aim is to synchronise different chronological systems and relate them to a single universal standard. The clearest example from antiquity of a 'chronographic' work is the Chronological Canons of Eusebios, which synchronises lists of kings, emperors, priests, magistrates and athletic victors and ties them down to a basic standard of reckoning computed in decennial intervals from the birth of Abraham.[10] 'Chronicle', in the sense in which I have defined it, is best exemplified by the Attic Histories (or Atthides) of Androtion and Philochoros, who lived in the fourth and third centuries respectively.[11] The contents of these works were arranged in strict chronological order, using as their organisational principle a list of eponymous archons originally published in the last third of the fifth century. The Attic History of Hellanikos, while classified as an Atthis by scholiasts and lexicographers of the Hellenistic and Roman periods,[12] is generally thought nowadays to have operated according to a similar rubric. The main question addressed by this paper is precisely whether such an assumption is justified.
'As to the form I give this work, it does not resemble that which the authors who make wars alone their subject have given to their histories, nor that which others who treat of the several forms of government by themselves have adopted, nor is it like the annalistic accounts which the authors of the Atthides have published (for these are single-genred [monoeideis] and soon grow tedious to the reader), but it is a combination of every kind '[23]On the basis of this testimony, Jacoby postulated an equation between Atthis and chronicle and inferred, on the strength of title alone, that the first chronicle of Athens was the Atthis of Hellanikos.[24] Yet it is unclear precisely whom Dionysios meant when referring to "the authors of the Atthides".[25] Thucydides, who gives the first extant allusion to the Atthis of Hellanikos, actually uses the title Attike suggraphe (1.97.2 [discussed in section III below]), and there is no particular reason to think that the local histories of Attica bore a uniform heading.[26] Even if Hellanikos' Attic History was known more commonly as an Atthis by Dionysios' time, we need not suppose that the vague reference to 'the authors of the Atthides' embraced each and every historian whose work had acquired the scholarly designation of Atthis.[27] Indeed, there are Atthides from the third century, like that of the historian Istros, which, as Jacoby acknowledged, cannot have been a chronicle.[28] It is quite conceivable that Dionysios' judgment of the Atthides was governed, perhaps with distorting consequences, by his close acquaintance with the work of Philochoros.[29] The implied equation between Atthis and chronicle looks like a generalisation, employed by Dionysios, above all, for immediate convenience, that of distinguishing his own work from other people's as sharply as possible.[30] We cannot extrapolate from this passage the implication that each and every work bearing the title of Atthiswas composed annalistically.
Dionysios' treatise On Thucydides is also noteworthy.[31] Chapters 5-9 discuss the early historians of Greece, prominent among whom was Hellanikos. At chapter 9, Dionysios makes a clear distinction between those who divided their works topographically (kata topous) and those who employed a chronological method of division (kata chronous), structuring their narratives around lists of kings, priests, Olympiadic victors, or annual magistrates. Importantly, chapters 5-9 are not, as Jacoby himself recognised,[32] devoted exclusively or even principally to annalistic writers, and Dionysios explicitly relegates Hellanikos to the category of those who wrote kata topous:
'He [sc. Thucydides] took neither the places in which events occurred as the basis of division [kata topous], as Herodotus, Hellanikos and some of his other predecessors had done; nor time [kata chronous], as the local historians preferred, dividing their records according to the accession of kings and priests, or by the periods of the Olympiads, or by the appointment of civil magistrates to annual office.'As the passage shows, Dionysios compared the literary methods of Hellanikos with those of Herodotos and did not envisage similarities with historians such as Androtion or Philochorus. This testimony was curiously neglected by Jacoby in his general reconstruction when he assumed on faith that Hellanikos, as author of an Atthis, followed the methods of the later Athenian chroniclers. Yet Hellanikos, at least in Dionysios' estimation, was an historian of quite a different ilk from those who wrote kata chronous. Jacoby's undervaluing of this important passage is evidenced by the fact that it does not appear in his collection of testimonia pertaining to Hellanikos, even though it counterbalances the evidence from the Roman Antiquities and shows that, if Dionysios knew of the Attic History of Hellanikos, he viewed it as quite different in nature and form from the Atthides of the fourth and third centuries.
That 'if' is important. For there is admittedly a problem in the way in which Dionysios sets up his antithesis between those who wrote kata topous and those who wrote kata chronous. Dionysios was of the definite opinion that local histories followed the literary format of chronicles. His assertion, if accurate, must imply that the normal method of composing local history was by correlation with lists of kings, priests or magistrates.[33] If so, we would expect a work whose primary focus was the history and antiquities of Attica, to have been composed annalistically. Dionysios, however, clearly believes that Hellanikos did not compose kata chronous. How, then, if his equation of local history and chronicle is to be taken seriously, are we to reconcile the fact that Hellanikos wrote a local history with the remark which clearly differentiates him from chroniclers?
Two possible solutions come to mind. The first simply is that Dionysios was unfamiliar with Hellanikos' Attic History and based his opinion of Hellanikos on other works of broader scope. The second possibility is that Dionysios had a very restricted notion of 'local history' and was thinking of works, like those of Androtion and Philochoros, which treated the history of a single city in a strict and methodical fashion. If so, it is less problematic than might initially appear that Dionysios classifies Hellanikos with historians such as Herodotus, even if the scope of the Attic History was nothing like as extensive as the work of his better known contemporary. For the essential focus of Dionysios' investigation is narratological method, a consideration by which - if we can trust Dionysios - Hellanikos was far closer to Herodotus than to those of local historians who wrote annalistically. It is a priori likely that Dionysios, by associating local histories with chronicles, indulged in a generalisation whose purpose was to illustrate an overarching principle but which was factually inapplicable to every case in question.
My conclusion is that Dionysios' evidence must be read with extreme caution. Dionysios was doubtless a learned man, whose knowledge of early Greek historiography was evidently extensive, yet, as with the statement in the Roman Antiquities, the rigid categorisations employed in the treatise On Thucydides seem to have been driven by convenience and by a need for definitional clarity, unencumbered by counterexamples We must not, as Jacoby did, place uncritical faith in a single remark from the Roman Antiquities and allow it to govern an entire theory concerning an ancient genre and its defining characteristics. As will (I hope) become clear from my treatment of Thucydides' evidence (section III below), such faith can have fatal consequences for our reading of more contemporary testimony, which, if read without prejudice, indicates that Hellanikos was anything but a chronicler.
'I wrote a history of these years (viz. the Pentekontaetia) and made a digression in my narrative for this reason, that the period under consideration is omitted by all my predecessors, whose narratives pertain either to Greek affairs prior to the Persian Wars or to the Persian Wars themselves. He who touched upon these years in his Attic History, Hellanikos, alluded to them briefly and without precision as to chronology.' (Thuc. 1.97.2.)And in Book V, when accounting for his own narrative technique, he states (5.20.2): 'One must reckon according to seasons and not according to a list of names of local officials or of those who, thanks to some office, mark past events, believing it better. For it is imprecise in showing whether an event occurred at the beginning of the year or in the middle or at the end'.
Taking 5.20.2 as a point of comparison, Jacoby explained 1.97.2 as an objection to the method of dating by archons. Since the passage in Book V criticises local dating schemes as inaccurate, he argued that the charge against Hellanikos in Book I must, thanks to verbal similarity, have entailed the particular chronological method which he adopted - namely, an annalistic scheme arranged by archontic years.[35] Yet, in spite of Jacoby's claims, the two passages can only be compared in the broadest sense, namely that in each case Thucydides contrasts other people's lack of chronological precision with his own chronological precision. But the contexts in which these contrasts operate are quite different. Thucydides at 5.20.2 commends his year datings on the merits of the chronological precision which they afforded. 1.97, on the other hand, justifies a narrative of the years intervening the repulse of Xerxes and the attack on Plataia in 431 on the grounds that the period in question had been treated by no previous historian, with the partial exception of Hellanikos, whose account had been anything but complete or systematic. Surely Thucydides was not complaining that Hellanikos had failed to clarify whether events occurred in the months of Hekatombaion, Metageitnion or Skirophorion. The point, clearly, is that Thucydides was filling a gap: nothing comparable to a systematic narrative of these years, much less one which employed a careful chronological format, had ever yet been undertaken. 1.97.2 does not represent a polemic against archon-dating, nor is it obvious that, in writing the Pentekontaetia, Thucydides set up a chronological scheme rivalling that of a predecessor. The phrase tois chronois ouk akribos most naturally means not that Hellanikos had got his dates wrong or even that he used a parochial dating scheme but rather that, in alluding to contemporary events, he paid no consistent attention to chronology.[36]
Notwithstanding 1.97.2, as here interpreted, many scholars since Jacoby have assumed that the Pentekontaetia of Thucydides presupposes an annalistic account of Athenian history. Most noteworthy among them is Schreiner, who, in a recent monograph, contends that chapters 89-117 of the first book of Thucydides' History were designed to rectify dates provided by Hellanikos in the Atthis.[37] Mosshammer, too, accepts the notion of an 'Hellanikan' or 'Atthidographic' chronology but he is more skeptical than Schreiner as to its historical value.[38] Each, however, makes a test case of Thuc. 1.93, which, they argue, implies the existence of a previous annalistic source.
The context is the construction of the Peiraieus under the direction of Themistokles. Thucydides states (section 3) that the Peiraieus project was begun epi tes ekenou arches hes kat' eniauton Athenaiois erxe), which at first sight (and as in fact I accept) alludes to the year of Themistokles' archonship - that is, 493/2 according to the archon list.[39] The context of the passage, however, is the early 470s, following the defeat of the Persians at Salamis and the tribute assessment of Aristeides. Many have been disposed to doubt that the building project could have been begun before the time of Marathon, only to be abandoned and resumed nearly two decades later.[40] Thus Gomme argued that 1.93.3 alludes not to the annual archonship but to some more recent magistracy which Themistokles must have held over a period of years.[41] His arguments were developed by Fornara,[42] who pointed out that the vulgate edition of Eusebios' Chronicle dates the construction of Peiraieus to the Olympiad 480-476. Mosshammer observed that the Armenian edition of Eusebios dates the project's inception to the year 497/6 and argued that the original entry in Eusebios' text, now lost, must have been both 493/2, the year of Themistokles' archonship, and 480-476. Eusebios' sources, he contended, evince two traditions, the first of which originated with Hellanikos, who, on the basis of the archon list, naively dated the project to 493/2, the second with Thucydides, who, as Gomme and Fornara reckoned, dated it to a later period when Themistokles supposedly held some kind of extraordinary magistracy. Thucydides, on Mosshammer's view, implicitly corrects an annalistic source which assigned the project's inception to the year 493/2.[43]
Schreiner, in contrast, while agreeing that Thucydides presupposes Hellanikos, held not only that the date of the naval project implied at 1.93.3 is the year of Themistokles' archonship but that the ultimate provenance of this information is the Atthis of Hellanikos.[44] Two problems arise from this reading: (1) Thucydides also alludes to the shipbuilding programme in 1.14.3 and this allusion is consistent with a date of 483/2 and shows that Thucydides, or the source on which he drew, dated the naval project later than Themistokles' archonship;[45] (2) the arguments advanced by Themistokles must have been delivered prior to the construction of the harbour and, if 1.93.3 belongs to the context of the 470s, seem to imply that construction was begun at that time.[46] Schreiner circumvented the first difficulty by supposing that Thucydides drew on two contradictory traditions, one of which influenced the History of Herodotos and deliberately suppressed Themistokles' achievements in the period before Marathon, the other of which, relying on sources friendly to Themistokles, emphasised his political prominence in the 490s and found expression in Hellanikos' Atthis. Thucydides, he argued, not fully appreciating the discrepancy, passively reproduced both traditions. In response to the second difficulty, he re-arranged the standard punctuation so that the arguments put into Themistokles' mouth at 1.93.3 belong not to the 470s but to the year of his archonship.[47]
While recognising that the punctuation of ancient texts is problematic, I cannot agree with Schreiner on the implications of this passage for Hellanikos and for his supposed influence on Thucydides. My essential disagreement concerns the hypothesis of an annalistic source behind 1.93.3 and the suggested reasons why the passage seems to conflict with 1.14.2. Granted, 1.14.2 must relate to the 480s, not least because the construction of the Athenian fleet seems to anticipate Salamis. On the other hand, we need to look closely at the context to understand why Thucydides presents his material as he does. At 1.13-14, he lists a succession of Greek thalassocracies, all of which, rather strikingly, are synchronised with Achaemenid reigns: in the time of Kyros the leading naval power in Greece was the Ionians, in the time of Kambyses Polykrates of Samos, in the time of Dareios the Sicilians and Kerkyraians, and in the time of Xerxes the Aiginetans, who were supplanted by the Athenians. Whether Thucydides produced these synchronisms himself or drew on a chronographic source, there can be little doubt that the chronological parallels are artificial and reflect an attempt to present history in neat and tidy terms. Though I do not dispute Thucydides' assignment of the origins of Athenian naval power to the late 480s after the suppression of Aigina, I believe that his chronology stems not from informed historical research but from a tidy-minded and largely unhistorical chronographic schema. At 1.93.3, meanwhile, the assignment of the Peiraieus project to the year of Themistokles' archonship (which, I believe, must be the meaning of arches hes kat' eniauton Athenaiois erxe)[48] is dictated not by authoritative chronological data but by Thucydides' characterisation of Themistokles as a farsighted statesman, a theme which recurs throughout the Pentakontaetia and culminates in the obituary of Themistocles at 1.138. The verbal plays on arche cannot be coincidental:[49] the Athenian arche ('empire') is echoed in the arche ('archonship') of Themistokles, which is seen as the arche ('beginning') of Athenian might. Thucydides, I suggest, dates the inception of the Peiraieus project as he does not because he drew on an annalistic source but because of a preconceived notion that Themistokles, the farsighted statesman, had long foreseen the advantages which such a location would confer. Historically, the assignment of the project to the year of his archonship may or may not be questionable, but artistically and linguistically it harmonises with the context and was chosen for that very reason. Importantly, we need not introduce Hellanikos, or any hypothetical pre-Thucydidean annalist, into the equation. Thucydides' narrative is wholly explicable on its own merits.
[2] U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin 1893), vol. II, 260-90. [Return to text]
[3] F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Athens (Oxford 1949), ch. 1. [Return to text]
[4] op. cit. ch. 2. [Return to text]
[5] P. Harding, 'Androtion's view of Solon's Seisachtheia', Phoenix 28 (1974) 282-9; id., 'Atthis and Politeia', Historia 26 (1977) 148-60; id., Androtion and the Atthis (Oxford 1994), passim. [Return to text]
[6] P.J. Rhodes, 'The Atthidographers', in H. Verdin, G. Schepens, E. de Keyer (edd.), Purposes of History (Louvain 1981) 73-81, 111-23. [Return to text]
[7] R.J. Lenardon ('Thucydides and Hellanikos', in G.S. Shrimpton and D.J. McCarger (edd.), Classical Contributions in Honour of M.F. McGregor (New York 1981) 59-70 has suggested that Hellanikos did not give dates for the Pentekontaetia. More recently, D.L. Toye ('Dionysios of Halicarnassos on the first Greek historians', AJP 116 (1995) 279-302) has argued that Hellanikos was not a chronicler of any description. Toye bases his objections to Jacoby on a crucial passage of Dionysios (Thuc. 5-7), which I myself discuss in section II of the present paper. For other recent expressions of skepticism over Jacoby's model see W.K. Pritchett, Greek Archives, Cults and Topography (Amsterdam 1996) 42-48, J.P. Sickinger, Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens (Chapel Hill and London 1999) 179, and Marincola's article cited in n. [25] below. [Return to text]
[8] The idea that Thucydides wrote the Pentekontaetia in response to Hellanikos' Atthis has been stated in varying degrees by (e.g.): J. Scharf, 'Noch einmal Ithome', Historia 3 (1954) 155; A.W. Gomme, An Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford 1945-1981) vol. I, 6, n. 3; J. de Romilly, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism (Oxford 1963) 35; R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford 1972) 445; A. Andrewes, An Historical Commentary on Thucydides, vol. V, 381; H.I. Immerwahr, 'Historiography', in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, (Cambridge 1985) vol. I, 443; E. Badian, From Plataea to Potidaea (Baltimore 1993) 76-8; J.H. Schreiner, Hellanikos, Thukydides and the Era of Kimon (Arrhus 1998). For a different, more organically literary, perspective see P.A. Stadter, 'The form and content of Thucydides' Pentecontaetia (1.89-117)', GRBS 34 (1993) 35-73, and T. Rood, Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation (Oxford 1998) 225-48, for both of whom the allusion to Hellanicus, while integral, is of strictly secondary importance to the general explanatory function of the Pentecontaetia. More detailed argument on similar lines can be found in J. Moles, 'Narrative Problems in Thucydides I' (forthcoming on HISTOS). Jacoby, for his part, while convinced that Hellanikos presented a detailed chronology of these years, held that the main contents of Thucydides' Pentekontaetia had already taken shape by the time Hellanikos published the Atthis. The issue necessarily involves the relative dating of Thucydides and Hellanicus, a question on which scholars sharply disagree (cf. n. [14]). [Return to text]
[9] A.A. Mosshammer, The Chronicle of Eusebius and the Greek Chronographic Tradition(Lewisburg 1979), esp. ch. II. [Return to text]
[10] For a good summary of the very complex problems surrounding the transmission of Eusebios cf. Mosshammer, op. cit. ch. 1. [Return to text]
[11] Cf. n. [4]. Jacoby's discussion of Androtion and Philochoros can be found in FGrHist IIIb (Suppl. vol. I) 85-106 and 220-55. For Hellanikos, cf. op. cit. 1-21. [Return to text]
[12] FGrHist 323a FF 3-12. [Return to text]
[13] FGrHist 323a FF 25, 26. The fragments are quoted by schol. RV Ar. Ran 694 and schol. V. Ar. Ran. 720. [Return to text]
[14] Dating Hellanikos is extraordinarily difficult, as all the evidence conflicts (cf. Gell. N.A.15.23; vit. Eur. p. 2, 5 Schwartz; Euseb. ap. Hieron. Chron. ol. 70.1; Sud. s.v. Hellanikos). A terminus ante quem is supplied by Thucydides (1.97.2), who alludes to the Attike xuggraphe of Hellanikos (in a famous passage of the Pentekontaetia which I myself discuss more fully in part III of the present paper). The value of this terminus is diminished by the fact that we do not know precisely when Thucydides composed this portion of the History and there is of course a scholarly controversy as to whether the Pentekontaetia was itself a later insertion. But three main possibilities arise: (1) the allusion to Hellanikos at 1.97.2 is a later insertion into the text, the main portion of which was composed before the publication of the Atthis: cf. K. Ziegler, 'Der Ursprung der Excurse im Thukydides', RM 78 (1929) 66 n. 2; Jacoby, op. cit. 95; F.E. Adcock, 'Thucydides in book I', JHS 71 (1951) 11; O. Lendle, 'Die Auseinandersetzung des Thukydides mit Hellanikos', in H. Herter (ed.), Thukydides (Darmstadt 1968) 678; H.D. Westlake, Essays on the Greek Historians and Greek History (Manchester 1969) 42; G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London 1972) 315; (2) 1.97.2 is integral to Thucydides' text and the Pentekontaetia was composed in response to the Atthis of Hellanikos: cf. Schreiner (op. cit. n. [8]); (3) the two fragments attributed to Hellanikos by the scholiasts on Aristophanes' Frogs are bogus, and Hellanikos, as the chronographic testimonia imply, published the Atthissometime prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War: cf. D.L. Toye (art. cit. n. [7]), who argues that Dion. Hal. de Thuc. 5-7 contains reliable dates and that Hellanikos was active before 430. (1) seems unlikely, as the allusion to Hellanikos at 1.97.2 fits naturally into the context of Thucydides' statement of purpose: he wrote the Pentekontaetia precisely because no author before him, with the possible exception of Hellanikos, treated the events of this period (see my discussion in Part III of the present paper). (3) is superficially attractive in that it avoids intricate questions concerning the composition of Thucydides' History but relies on the unprovable and hazardous assumption that FF 25 and 26 have suffered false attribution. On balance, I am prepared to accept (2), though for reasons completely different from those of Schreiner. Though Thucydides states at the outset (1.1) that he began writing the History at the outbreak of war, one has to suppose from passages which reveal knowledge of later events (e.g. 2.65.11-12; 5.22) that the History was subject to continuous revision before its completion was cut short by Thucydides' death sometime after 403. The Pentekontaetia was, in my view, composed relatively late and incorporated by Thucydides into his narrative at a late stage.
It is only fair to add that some literary interpreters of Thucydides hold that the allusion to Hellanikos is integral, yet relatively trivial as an explanation for Thucydides' composition of the Pentekontaetia: see e.g. Stadter, Rood and Moles (as cited in n. [8]); while disagreeing with Jacoby in this respect, for Jacoby held that the allusion to Hellanikos must reflect a late revision of the text, they agree with him in holding that the Pentecontaetia was not written as a 'response'. [Return to text]
[15] cf. n. [13]. '... and immediately they are Plataians and, instead of slaves, masters.] Hellanikos states that those slaves who had fought on the [Athenian] side were freed and, being enrolled on the citizen register as Plataians, enjoyed equal citizenship with them, explaining the events of the archonship of Antigenes which preceded that of Kallias.' [Return to text]
[16] cf. n. [13] '... both to the old coin and the new gold one]. The year before, in the archonship of Antigenes, Hellanikos says that they struck gold coinage. And Philochoros [says] that the coin was made from golden Nikai.' [Return to text]
[17] I anticipate the objection that the only two fragments pertaining to the historical period do indeed supply dates and that Hellanikos must have dated events on a more regular basis for events subsequent to the Persian Wars. I do not wish to deny that Hellanikos gave dates or even that he did so with fair frequency in dealing with more contemporary history. The real question is whether the form of his narrative was annalistic. Unfortunately, the distribution of the fragments give no indication as to how the Atthis was organised. It is just as likely as not that Hellanikos alluded to more contemporary events in passing and that whatever dates he supplied were scattered haphazardly throughout the work. If my interpretation of Thuc. 1.97.2 is justified (cf. part III of this paper), Hellanikos only touched upon his own age and devoted no particular portion of the Atthis to contemporary events. Furthermore, had he provided a systematic chronology of the Pentekontaetia, we would have expected a different kind of response from Thucydides and we would also have expected more frequent citation of Hellanikos from later historians and scholars. [Return to text]
[18] FGrHist 323a F 7. Harpokr. s.v. 'Andokides in the speech On the Peace, if genuine. The Springs is a place in Megara, as Hellanikos states in the fourth [or second??] book of the Atthis'. [Return to text]
[19] FGrHist 323a FF 5, 6, 8. Cf. FGrHist IIIb (Suppl. Vol. I), pp. 27-31. There is, on the strength of the citations alone, no special reason to suppose that the fragments come from annalistic entries. Jacoby's assignment of the fragments to the years mentioned is wholly a priori. [Return to text]
[20] FGrHist IIIb (Suppl. vol. I), pp. 12, 30-31. For doubts about Jacoby's emendation, cf. already K. von Fritz, Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung (Berlin 1967) 499. [Return to text]
[21] Note, for example, Harpokration's attribution of a twelfth book (ib') to Androtion (FGrHist324 F 33), where the context, viz. the foundation of Ennea Hodoi, must belong to the second book (b') of the Atthis. Numerical corruptions of this kind, however, are easy to detect. It is less obvious that an entire word like deuteroi should be lost, only to be replaced by its first letter (d), subsequently interpreted as a numeral. [Return to text]
[22] cf. n. [17]. The wording of the scholion to Ar. Ran. 694 (F 25) might, indeed, indicate an annalistic entry for the archonship of Antigenes (407/6). Yet it is not clear that the dating comes from Hellanikos rather than the scholiast himself. As far as we can tell, Hellanikos is cited for his allusion to the enrolment of the freed slaves on the citizen register, and the participial phrase introduced by diexion may be a scholastic gloss. The matter cannot be decided with any certainty, one reason why we cannot base our understanding of Hellanikos on decontextualised citations. [Return to text]
[23] Cary's Loeb translation, except that I have translated monoeideis by 'single-genred' rather than 'monotonous', which fails to convey the essential point. [Return to text]
[24] Jacoby, op. cit. (n. [3]) 86-7. [Return to text]
[25] Certainly, Jacoby's claim (op. cit., n. [3] 79) that 'the Atthides were felt to constitute a unity as to their contents, and as to their form, if not a species in itself, still a group (subspecies)' correctly represents Dionysios' implication but it is precisely the implications of that implication that I am here disputing. Indeed, if the title Atthis originated with the Pinakes of Kallimachos, as Jacoby insists (op. cit. 84), one would expect it to represent not a rigid generic category so much as an expression of bibliographic convenience applicable to works sharing loosely recognisable characteristics. On the misrepresentations inherent in the rigid application of generic terminology as an analytical tool, cf. J. Marincola's important paper 'Genre, literary convention and innovation' (forthcoming in C.S. Kraus (ed.), The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (Leiden 1999), which engages thoroughly with all aspects of Jacoby's reconstruction of Greek historiography. I am grateful to Professor Marincola for making an advance text of this paper available to me. [Return to text]
[26] Thus, for example, the Atthis of Kleidemos (FGrHist 323) is frequently cited under the title of Protogonia (cf. FF 5a, 7); that this must be the same work as the Atthis is demonstrated by the citations of Athenaios (Deipn. 14.79 p. 660ab; 14.80 p.660de; 10.26 p. 425e). [Return to text]
[27] Jacoby, op. cit. (n. [3]) 1. The term 'Atthidographer', as coined by Jacoby, comports a judgment not only of fact but of value: as opposed to an antiquarian, who dealt with the history of Athens in a neutral, 'scholarly' fashion, an Atthidographer recorded history with a vested political interest. For a full exposition of Jacoby's view, cf. op. cit. (n. [3]) 71-9. The seven as it were 'canonical' Atthidographers, in turn, are: Hellanikos (FGrHist 323a), Kleidemos (FGrHist323), Androtion (FGrHist 324), Phanodemos (FGrHist 325), Melanthios (FGrHist 326), Demon (FGrHist 327), and Philochoros (FGrHist 328). [Return to text]
[28] FGrHist 334. For Jacoby's remarks, cf. op. cit. (n. [3]) 81-2; FGrHist IIIb (Suppl. vol. I), pp. 618-627, esp. 624-5. [Return to text]
[29] Of all later authors who cite Philochoros, Dionysios of Halikarnassos is by far the most accurate and reliable. That Dionysios had first-hand access to Philochoros' Atthis is clear from his verbatim quotations; cf. FGrHist 328 FF 49-51 (Dion. Hal. ad Amm. 9). Philochoros' is the only Atthis which Dionysios cites, and it is even possible (albeit unprovable) that he based his understanding of the less well-known Atthides, including that of Hellanikos, on secondary information. [Return to text]
[30] Jacoby, in his analysis of this passage, supposed that, because Attic chronicles fell under the generic heading of Atthides, all Atthides must, by definition, have been chronicles. A logical leap of this kind is quite unwarranted. Dionysios at most implies that some authors of Atthides (he does not specify who) wrote annalistically. Whether he regarded Hellanikos as a chronicler is quite uncertain from the context. [Return to text]
[31] Cf. Toye (art. cit. n. [7]), but I hope to improve on his arguments (cf. also n. [14] above). [Return to text]
[32] op. cit. (n.3), p. 178: 'For Ionia as for Athens, direct attestations of, or proofs for, the pre-literary keeping of a chronicle are lacking, even for a chronicle in the modest form of annotations in the lists of eponymous officials. The famous passage in Dionysios of Halikarnassos, which is ever and again quoted in this context, is not such an attestation: Dionysios (or his source Theophrastos) is dealing not with local chronicles alone or even primarily, but with the earliest historical writings generally, which means for him with books that are, or seem to be, earlier than Herodotos and Thukydides. According to him the activity of these earliest historians consists in collecting and publishing the material existing in some places. This material ... consists in hosai diesoizonto para tois epichoriois mnemai kata ethne te kai kata poleis, ei t' en hierois ei t' en bebelois apokeimenai graphai, tautas eis ten koinen hapanton gnosin exenegkein, hoias parelabon, mete prostithentes autais ti mete aphairountas. En hais kai muthoi tines enesan apo tou pollou pepisteumenoi chronou kai theatrikai tines peripeteiai polu to elithion echein tois nun dokousai. What Dionysios describes here obviously is the composing of literary local chronicles each beginning with the foundation of a city and treating the 'archaeology' in particular in detail, viz. Horoi and Atthides, etc.'
Jacoby's analysis of the passage is, to my mind, very strange. Though his aim is to refute the view of Laqueur ('Lokalchronik', RE 13, 1927, cols. 1083ff.) that the History of Herodotos presupposes a series of 'preliterary' chronicles, he adduces a passage which, if anything, appears to support the very view under attack, viz. that the first historians drew upon certain graphai maintained en hierois and en bebelois. More importantly for our purposes, he appears to contradict himself by stating, at one moment, that Dionysios 'is dealing not with local chronicles alone or even primarily' and, at the next, that the subject under consideration is 'the composing of literary chronicles'. [Return to text]
[33] Diod. 1.26.5; Censorinus Deor. Nat. 19.6; Hesych. s.v. horographoi; Etymol. Magn. s.v. horos. The only source which might at first sight be taken to imply an identity between horoi and local histories is the Etymologicum Magnum, but a close reading does not warrant such an interpretation. At most, the lexicographer states that horoi were local histories written annalistically, not that all local histories fell under this designation. Diodoros, Censorinus and Hesychios say nothing of local histories, merely that horoi were antiquated names for chronicles. Taken together, the evidence implies that horoi constitute a sub-species of topokai historiai, not that the two categories were equivalent. Jacoby was aware of this in his article entitled 'Ueber die Entwicklung der griechischen Historiographie' (republished by H. Bloch in Abhandlungen zur griechsichen Geschichtsschreibung von Felix Jacoby (Leiden 1956) 49, n. 89 [where the above testimonia are cited]), but still assumed that the local historians of Greece who succeeded Herodotos were chroniclers (art. cit. in Bloch, op. cit., 49-59). Cf. the astute remarks of Toye (art. cit. n. [7] 285). [Return to text]
[34] Section 5: 'Herodotos of Halikarnassos carried his choice of subject-matter to greater and more estimable heights, electing to write the history not of one city or tribe but to draw together in a single narrative the many and varied affairs of Europe and Asia, etc.' [Return to text]
[35] FGrHist 323a (Suppl. Vol. I) 16-18. For Jacoby, the critique of Hellanikos was trivial in the sense that only his method, not the substance of his narrative, came under attack. The view recently maintained by Schreiner (cf. n. [8]) that Thucydides attacked Hellanikos' actual chronology was not entertained by Jacoby, who believed that the main portion of the Pentekontaetia was composed prior to the publication of Hellanikos' Atthis (cf. n. [14]). Jacoby's reading of this passage was based on that of G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte bis zur Schlacht bei Chaeroneia, III.1: Die Pentekontaetie (Gotha 1893) 153, who argued that Thucydides took issue not with Hellanikos' dates but with his chronological method. Similar views have been held by A.A. Mosshammer, 'Themistocles' archonship in the chronographic tradition', Hermes103 (1975) 234, and M. Buonocore, 'L'impostazione cronologica della pentecontaetia tucididea.', in Settima miscellanea greca e romana , 59-75. Cf. also the opinions of Westlake (op. cit. n. [14] 42; O. Luschnat, 'Thukydides der Historiker', RE Suppl. 12, 1971, cols. 1085-1354; P.A. Stadter, 'The form and content of Thucydides' pentecontaetia', GRBS 34 (1993) 64. [Return to text]
[36] This is a reading which Schreiner (op. cit. n. [8] 13-16) fails to consider because he, like Jacoby before him, is locked into the assumption, based on their interpretation of Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.8.3, that the Atthides followed a narrow set of formal criteria and that Hellanikos, the first 'Atthidographer', laid down a chronological 'schedule' which influenced all subsequent accounts. [Return to text]
[37] Cf. n. [8]. [Return to text]
[38] art. cit. n. [35]; op. cit. n. [9], esp. ch. II. [Return to text]
[39] Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.49.1. Among those who accept that Themistokles was eponymous archon in 493/2 are: R.J. Lenardon, 'The archonship of Themistokles, 493/2', Historia 5 (1956) 401-19; D.M. Lewis, 'Themistokles' archonship', Historia 22 (1973) 757-8; W.W. Dickie, 'Thucydides 1.93.3', Historia 22 (1973) 758-9; R. Develin, Athenian Officials 684-321 B.C.(Cambridge 1989) 55. [Return to text]
[40] Though there are those who believe that it was: cf. Lenardon, art. cit. n. 42; M. Ostwald, The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vol. IV, 343-4. [Return to text]
[41] Gomme 261-2. [Return to text]
[42] C.W. Fornara, 'Themistocles' archonship', Historia 20 (1971) 534-40. [Return to text]
[43] art. cit. 36. Moshammer's view has been followed by M.H. Chambers, 'Themistocles and the Piraeus', Studies Presented to Sterling Dow on his Eightieth Birthday (1984), 43-50. Cf. also the remarks of A.J. Podlecki, The Life of Themistocles (Montreal and London 1975) 195. [Return to text]
[44] 'Thucydides 1.93 and Themistokles during the 490s', SO 46 (1969). [Return to text]
[45] The date of 483/2 for the shipbuilding programme is supplied by AP 22.7. That Thucydides conceived of the project as occurring between Marathon and Salamis is clear from the sequence of his narrative at 1.14.3: 'For these were the last fleets in Greece worthy of note before the expedition of Xerxes. For the Aiginetans and the Athenians, and some others, possessed small ones, and these comprised mostly pentekonters; and sometime after that Themistokles persuaded the Athenians, when they were fighting the Aiginetans, and while the barbarian was expected, to build ships with which they also fought; and these did not yet have fittings throughout'. [Return to text]
[46] Thuc. 1.93.3: 'Themistokles persuaded them [viz. the Athenians] to build the rest of the Peiraieus (for part of it had been begun earlier during his magistracy which he held among the Athenians for a year, thinking that the place was good, having three natural harbours, and that, once they had become sea-worthy, a great opportunity would present itself to acquire power (for he was the first to speak of the sea, how it should be seized), and immediately began preparing the empire.' I quote here the passage as punctuated by H.S. Jones in the OCT. If the clause huperkto erxe is inserted within parentheses, as Jones has it, the subject of nomizon becomes Themistokles, viz. the subject of the main clause introduced by the verb epeise. [Return to text]
[47] Schreiner proposed that a semi-colon be placed after oikodomein and that the parentheses be removed from the clause huperkto erxe. The participial phrase introduced by nomizon then depends not on epeise (which belongs to the 470s) but on huperkto, whose context is 493/2, and Themistokles becomes the subject of huperkto, with autou as object. Still, I can see neither historical nor syntactical force in Schreiner's interpretation. Historically, I see no reason why Themistokles should not have pointed out to the Athenians the geographical advantages of Peiraieus as a potential harbour after work had already been begun. After all, Thucydides is quite explicit that Themistokles had to persuade the Athenians to complete their unfinished work: why should he not have laid emphasis on its geographical assets? Syntactically, Schreiner's punctuation cannot work: Themistokles cannot be the implied subject of huperkto because of keinou. Huperkto must be an impersonal pluperfect passive. [Return to text]
[48] Cf. the clinching arguments of Lewis and Dickie (n. [39]). [Return to text]
[49] John Moles' forthcoming paper (n. [14]) explores the implications of these and other verbal plays in the Pentekontaetia for the interpretation of 'the truest cause' (1.23.6). [Return to text]
[50] Androtion's is the first Atthis which, thanks to the disposition of the fragments, can be recognised as a chronicle with any certainty. [Return to text]
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