Citation style
Luke Pitcher: Rezension von: Giovanni Parmeggiani (ed.): Between
Thucydides and Polybius. The Golden Age of Greek Historiography,
Cambridge, MA / London: Harvard University Press 2014, in
sehepunkte 16 (2016), Nr. 5 [15.05.2016],
URL:http://www.sehepunkte.de/2016/05/26063.html
First published: http://www.sehepunkte.de/2016/05/26063.html
copyright
This article may be downloaded and/or used within the private
copying exemption. Any further use without permission of the rights
owner shall be subject to legal licences (§§ 44a-63a UrhG / German
Copyright Act).
sehepunkte 16 (2016), Nr. 5
Giovanni Parmeggiani (ed.): Between
Thucydides and Polybius
This volume arises from conferences at the Universities of Harvard and
Bologna in 2007. Its sub-title is a little misleading, though not
perniciously so. Historiography is certainly central to most of its
contributions. One notes Riccardo Vattuone on Theopompus, Cinzia
Bearzot on the Hellenica of Xenophon, and Giovanni Parmeggiani, Nino
Luraghi, and John Tully on Ephorus.
On the other hand, the scope of this collection is wider than the narrative
histories of the period between Thucydides and Polybius. John
Marincola's treatment of Isocrates notes that its subject "... never wrote
history, and [...] states clearly that although histories are justly praised
he did not use his talents in that direction" (41). Roberto Nicolai's
chapter, significantly titled "At the Boundary of Historiography:
Xenophon and his Corpus", sets out to read Xenophon's works beside
each other, the Agesilaus , the Cyropaedia , and the Memorabilia no less
than the Hellenica . Sarah Ferrario focusses upon the epigraphy of
Leuctra at Thebes (270) and Aigospotamoi at Delphi (275) as much as
upon the colonial ambitions of the Anabasis (282). When Giovanni
Parmeggiani's Introduction speaks in terms "of fourth-century
historiography and of fourth-century literature that dealt more generally
with the past " (6, my italics), his formulation more accurately
characterizes the emphases of the collected work.
In this rich and various volume, two recurrent themes stand out. The first
is a bracing scepticism towards tralatitious interpretations of fourth
century literature, especially where those interpretations were formed
upon inadequate data or without due regard to the distorting lenses of
the testimonia . The insight that quoting authorities may have their own
agenda in quotation was not, pace Parmeggiani (2), originated in 1997. [
1 ] "Cover-text", as a term, has had little traction in Anglophone
scholarship, and its sister-metaphor "diaphragm" has found no place in
French letters. But the insight has certainly impressed itself upon more
people since the millennium and the present volume puts it to very good
use. Its contributions question a slew of lazy assumptions about the
fragmentary historians between Thucydides and Polybius - and, for the
most part, rightly so.
Ephorus is the principal beneficiary of this scepticism about the scholarly
consensus. Nino Luraghi demonstrates that one should not be too
confident in assuming that we know exactly what reality lay behind
Diodorus' claim that Ephorus began his work with the Return of the
Heraclidae (133-7). John Tully shows that previous scholars (including,
mea culpa , the present reviewer) accepted rather uncritically the idea
that Ephorus was the first to write "Universal History" - and, indeed,
questions the robustness of "Universal History" as a concept (162-5). The
same spirit informs other contributions and other authors. Christopher
Tuplin, in a meticulous survey, puts paid to the idea that the Persian
Empire was widely perceived as decadent and vulnerable in the decades
before its fall; John Marincola demolishes some hitherto prevailing
interpretations of Isocrates on history; and Rosalind Thomas makes an
excellent case for the dynamism and multifariousness of " polis
history" (242) against the rather reductive account of Jacoby. One might
well say that the most positive contribution of this volume - and it is a
considerable one - lies in its stringent negativity.
This is not, however, the whole story. The other recurrent theme of the
volume, as implied by the slight disjunction between title and contents, is
the need to consider the historiography of the fourth century in the
larger context of different sorts of literature (and epigraphy and material
culture) that dealt with the past in this period. As well as Roberto
Nicolai's synoptic look at Xenophon and John Marincola on Isocrates,
whom we have already noted, Lucio Bertelli looks at Aristotle and his
epistemological machinery for understanding the past. Jonas Grethlein's
The Greeks and Their Past: Poetry, Oratory and History in the Fifth
Century BCE (Cambridge, 2010) claimed that "The rise of Greek
historiography as well as, compared to other times, the richer textual
transmission has made the fifth century BCE the most attractive choice"
of period for looking at ancient Greek ways of processing the past (4).
This volume shows that an equally good case, and perhaps a stronger
one, could be made for the fourth century instead.
The collection is not altogether without its flaws. Critical as it is of some
scholarly orthodoxies, it occasionally swallows some others without,
perhaps, sufficient justification or acknowledgment. Xenophon, for some
reason, is the main casualty of this. It is not, pace Nicolai and Plutarch,
straightforwardly clear that "Themistogenes of Syracuse" was a
pseudonym for Xenophon (67 - contrast BNJ 108) and the lack of
apologetic intent in the Anabasis should ideally be argued rather than
asserted (67 n23); such an intent would not, in any event, necessarily
invalidate Nicolai's other points about Xenophon and genre. Despite the
volume's general insistence on the individual agenda of quoting
authorities, there are times when the awareness of such agenda wavers.
Diodorus may indeed have said that Epaminondas was "by his [very]
character a planner of great things and grasping for eternal glory" (272,
Diodorus 15.66.1), but we should be aware that the number of people
whom Diodorus presents as having a conscious eye on their own eternal
glory, from Osiris at 1.17.2, Ninus at 2.3.1, and Semiramis at 2.7.2
onwards, is rather large. We may therefore suspect that in the portrayal
of Epaminondas we find a characteristic preoccupation of the historian
rather than an authentic insight into the thinking of the historical agent.
These, however, are isolated issues. This is a thought-provoking and
consistently interesting collection. It deserves consideration by anyone
interested in the treatment of the past in the literature of the Greek
world between Thucydides and Polybius.
Note :
[ 1 ] Cf. my remarks at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007-08-62.html .