Sacred War; or of asserting the conclusion of peace between Athens and Philip in 340, after the failure of his attack on Perinthus and Byzantium? Amongst the subjects which are omitted is the Peace of Philocrates. For the earlier chapters, which bring the narrative down to the outbreak of the Sacred War, Ephorus, as in the previous book, is Diodorus’ main source. His source for the rest of the book, i.e. for the greater part of Philip’s reign, cannot be determined. It is generally agreed that it is not the Philippica of Theopompus.
For the reign of Alexander our earliest extant authority is Diodorus, who belongs to the age of Augustus. Of the others, Q. Curtius Rufus, who wrote in Latin, lived in the reign of the emperor Claudius, Arrian and Plutarch in the 2nd century A.D. Yet Alexander’s reign is one of the best known periods of ancient history. Historians of Alexander’s reign. The Peloponnesian War and the twenty years of Roman history which begin with 63 B.C. are the only two periods which we can be said to know more fully or for which we have more trustworthy evidence. For there is no period of ancient history which was recorded by a larger number of contemporary writers, or for which better or more abundant materials were available. Of the writers actually contemporary with Alexander there were five of importance—Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Callisthenes, Onesicritus and Nearchus; and all of them occupied positions which afforded exceptional opportunities of ascertaining the facts. Four of them were officers in Alexander’s service. Ptolemy, the future king of Egypt, was one of the somatophylaces (we may, perhaps, regard them as corresponding to Napoleon’s marshals); Aristobulus was also an officer of high rank (see Arrian, Anab. vi. 29. 10); Nearchus was admiral of the fleet which surveyed the Indus and the Persian Gulf, and Onesicritus was one of his subordinates. The fifth, Callisthenes, a pupil of Aristotle, accompanied Alexander on his march down to his death in 327 and was admitted to the circle of his intimate friends. A sixth historian, Cleitarchus, was possibly also a contemporary; at any rate he is not more than a generation later. These writers had at their command a mass of official documents, such as the βασίλειοι ἐφημερίδες—the Gazette and Court Circular combined—edited and published after Alexander’s death by his secretary, Eumenes of Cardia; the σταθμοί, or records of the marches of the armies, which were carefully measured at the time; and the official reports on the conquered provinces. That these documents were made use of by the historians is proved by the references to them which are to be found in Arrian, Plutarch and Strabo; e.g. Arrian, Anab. vii. 25 and 26, and Plutarch, Alexander 76 (quotation from the βασίλειοι ἐφημερίδες); Strabo xv. 723 (reference to the σταθμοί), ii. 69 (reports drawn up on the various provinces). We have, in addition, in Plutarch numerous quotations from Alexander’s correspondence with his mother, Olympias, and with his officers. The contemporary historians may be roughly divided into two groups. On the one hand there are Ptolemy and Aristobulus, who, except in a single instance, are free from all suspicion of deliberate invention. On the other hand, there are Callisthenes, Onesicritus and Cleitarchus, whose tendency is rhetorical. Nearchus appears to have allowed full scope to his imagination in dealing with the wonders of India, but to have been otherwise veracious. Of the extant writers Arrian (q.v.) is incomparably the most valuable. His merits are twofold. As the commander of Roman legions and the author of a work on tactics, he combined a practical with a theoretical knowledge of the military art, while the writers whom he follows in the Anabasis are the two most worthy of credit, Ptolemy and Aristobulus. We may well hesitate to call in question the authority of writers who exhibit an agreement which it would be difficult to parallel elsewhere in the case of two independent historians. It may be inferred from Arrian’s references to them that there were only eleven cases in all in which he found discrepancies between them. The most serious drawback which can be alleged against them is an inevitable bias in Alexander’s favour. It would be only natural that they should pass over in silence the worst blots on their great commander’s fame. Next in value to the Anabasis comes Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, the merits of which, however, are not to be gauged by the influence which it has exercised upon literature. The Life is a valuable supplement to the Anabasis, partly because Plutarch, as he is writing biography rather than history (for his conception of the difference between the two see the famous preface, Life of Alexander, ch. i.), is concerned to record all that will throw light upon Alexander’s character (e.g. his epigrammatic sayings and quotations from his letters); partly because he tells us much about his early life, before he became king, while Arrian tells us nothing. It is unfortunate that Plutarch writes in an uncritical spirit; it is hardly less unfortunate that he should have formed no clear conception and drawn no consistent picture of Alexander’s character. Book xvii. of Diodorus and the Historiae Alexandri of Curtius Rufus are thoroughly rhetorical in spirit. It is probable that in both cases the ultimate source is the work of Clitarchus.
It is towards the end of the 5th century that a fresh source of information becomes available in the speeches of the orators, the earliest of whom is Antiphon (d. 411 B.C.). Lysias is of great importance for the history of the Thirty (see the speeches against Eratosthenes and Agoratus), and a good deal may be gathered from Andocides with regard The orators. to the last years of the 5th and the opening years of the next century. At the other end of this period Lycurgus, Hyperides and Dinarchus throw light upon the time of Philip and Alexander. The three, however, who are of most importance to the historian are Isocrates, Aeschines and Demosthenes. Isocrates (q.v.), whose long life (436–338) more than spans the interval between the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and Isocrates. the triumph of Macedon at Chaeronea, is one of the most characteristic figures in the Greek world of his day. To comprehend that world the study of Isocrates is indispensable; for in an age dominated by rhetoric he is the prince of rhetoricians. It is difficult for a modern reader to do him justice, so alien is his spirit and the spirit of his age from ours. It must be allowed that he is frequently monotonous and prolix; at the same time it must not be forgotten that, as the most famous representative of rhetoric, he was read from one end of the Greek world to the other. He was the friend of Evagoras and Archidamus, of Dionysius and Philip; he was the master of Aeschines and Lycurgus amongst orators and of Ephorus and Theopompus amongst historians. No other contemporary writer has left so indelible a stamp upon the style and the sentiment of his generation. It is a commonplace that Isocrates is the apostle of Panhellenism. It is not so generally recognized that he is the prophet of Hellenism. A passage in the Panegyricus (§ 50 ὥστε τὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὄνομα μήκετι τοῦ γένους ἀλλὰ τῆς διανοίας δοκεῖν εἶναι καὶ μᾶλλον Ἕλληνας καλεῖσθαι τοὺς τῆς παιδεύσεως τῆς ἡμετέρας ἤ τοὺς τῆς κοινῆς φύσεως μετέχοντας) is the key to the history of the next three centuries. Doubtless he had no conception of the extent to which the East was to be hellenized. He was, however, the first to recognize that it would be hellenized by the diffusion of Greek culture rather than of Greek blood. His Panhellenism was the outcome of his recognition of the new forces and tendencies which were at work in the midst of a new generation. When Greek culture was becoming more and more international, the exaggeration of the principle of autonomy in the Greek political system was becoming more and more absurd. He had sufficient insight to be aware that the price paid for this autonomy was the domination of Persia; a domination which meant the servitude of the Greek states across the Aegean and the demoralization of Greek political life at home. His Panhellenism led him to a more liberal view of the distinction between what was Greek and what was not than was possible to the intenser patriotism of a Demosthenes. In his later orations he has the courage not only to pronounce that the day of Athens as a first-rate power is past, but to see in Philip the needful leader in the crusade against Persia. The earliest and greatest of his political orations is the Panegyricus, published in 380 B.C., midway between the peace of Antalcidas and Leuctra. It is his apologia for Panhellenism. To the period of the Social War belong the De pace (355 B.C.) and the Areopagiticus (354 B.C.),
