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Theopompus and Classical Greek HistoriographyAuthor(s): I. A. F. BruceSource: History and Theory, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1970), pp. 86-109Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2504503

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THEOPOMPUS AND CLASSICAL GREEK HISTORIOGRAPHY

I. A. F. BRUCE

I. INTRODUCTION

Piero Treves, in his article on Greek Historiography in the Oxford Classical

Dictionary (Oxford, 1949), describes Theopompus' history of the age of

Philip as "the crowning achievement of classical and the forerunner of

Hellenistic historiography." The first part of this judgment may well occasion

some surprise, for most of us are likely to agree with R. G. Collingwood

that Herodotus and Thucydides "had no fourth-century successors anything

like equal in stature to themselves."' No substantial part of any of the works

of Theopompus has survived, but there are upward of four hundred refer-ences to him or quotations from his writing made by other ancient authors.2

It is obvious that not even these excerpts are wholly representative, since

they are limited to matters relevant to the purposes of those who quote them,

but they do show beyond doubt that he was an extremely interesting and

noteworthy personality, and they further admit the possibility of a reasonable

attempt to assess the quality and philosophy of his work.3 Not unnaturally

these fragments have been the subject of a considerable modem literature,

but the more comprehensive studies have tended to focus interest on thepolitical convictions or philosophical ideals of the historian.4 In this paper I

1. The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), 29.2. The fragments and testimonia (cited hereafter as F,T) are edited with commen-

tary by F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker II (Berlin 1926-30),no. 115. This title is abbreviated hereafter to F.Gr.Hist.

3. For an introductionto the problem see L. Pearson, "Lost Greek Historians Judgedby their Fragments,"Greece and Rome 12 (1943), 43-56.

4. Not exclusively however; cf. especially the wide-rangingarticle by A. Momigliano,"Studi sulla storiografia greca del IV secolo a.C. 1: Teopompo," Rivista di Filologian.s. 9 (1931), 230-242 and 335-353 (now also in his Terzo contribute alla storia deglistudi classici [Rome, 1966], I, 367-392), to which the present paper owes a good deal.All further citations of Momigliano refer to this article, unless otherwise indicated.Other important studies are: R. Hirzel, "Zur CharakteristikTheopomps," RheinischesMuseum 47 (1892), 359-389; K. von Fritz, "The Historian Theopompus: His PoliticalConvictions and His Conception of Historiography,"American Historical Review 46(1941), 765-787; G. Murray, "Theopompus,or The Cynic as Historian," in his Greek



THEOPOMPUS AND GREEK HISTORIOGRAPHY 87

propose to consider Theopompus' relationship with earlier historians as

regards method and content, and to suggest a sense in which his work may

be called the crowning achievement of classical Greek historiography.

Theopompus was born in Chios in 378/7 or 377/6 B.C. The little ev-idence we have for his life is not always reliable or consistent. However,

Photius5 had information that Theopompus went into exile with his father,

Damasistratus,6 who had been accused of favoring the cause of Sparta, and

was restored at the age of forty-five, after his father's death, by decree of

Alexander the Great. There cannot be much doubt that the reference here is

to the edict of Alexander restoring Chian exiles in 332, the text of which is

preserved in an inscription from Ververato in Chios.7 The purpose of this

edict, made after the recovery of Chios from the Persians by Hegelochus, wasto establish a democratic constitution there and to recall "all the exiles"-

primarily, one must suppose, those sympathetic to democracy who had been

banished by the pro-Persian aristocrats early in 333 when the island was

betrayed to Memnon. If Theopompus was no democrat,8 he was certainly

not pro-Persian either, and could well have taken this opportunity to return

to Chios. Thus we arrive at the date of his birth. Photius further relates that

after Alexander's death Theopompus was driven out of Chios again and

could find a home nowhere until he came to Egypt, where Ptolemy wasminded to do away with him as a troublemaker, but yielded to the inter-

cession of some of his friends. One can hardly conclude from the description

of Ptolemy as king of Egypt that this must have been later than 305. We are

told often enough that Theopompus was a pupil of Isocrates, and a fellow

student of Ephorus. It is not surprising that some anecdotes about their

relationships should have circulated in antiquity, such as that preserved in

the Suda to the effect that Isocrates used to say that Theopompus needed the

curb and Ephorus the spur.9 There is no reliable evidence that Theopompuspersonally attended Isocrates' school, although it is by no means impossible;'0

Studies (Oxford, 1946), 149-170; W. R. Connor, "History without Heroes: Theo-pompus' Treatment of Philip of Macedon," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 8(1967), 133-154.

5. T 2; cf. Jacoby's commentary thereon for further discussion. A recent biograph-ical sketch of Theopompus is to be found in W. R. Connor, Theopompus and Fifth-Century Athens (Washington, 1968), 2-5.

6. Thus T 1 (the Suda), T 10 and F 312 (Pausanias); Photius (T 2) gives the form

Damostratus. The date and circumstancesof the exile are not known.7. M. N. Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions II (Oxford, 1948), no. 192.8. This is usually inferred from the fragments. Contrast now Connor, Theopompus,

3, who argues that Theopompus' return at this time suggests that he was at least anominal democrat.

9. F.Gr.Hist. 70 (Ephorus) T 28a.

10. A direct pupil-teacher relationship is argued, on the basis of literary style, byA. E. Kalischek, De Ephoro et Theopompo Isocratis Discipulis (Miinster dissertation,1913).



88 I. A. F. BRUCE

and in view of the tradition which grew about the Isocratean school, we are

not obliged to believe that it was Isocrates who directed Ephorus to the study

of earlier history and Theopompus to the continuation of Thucydides'

history."Theopompus is the author of three historical works: an epitome of

Herodotus, in two books; the Hellenica, as we usually call it, which in twelve

books took up the history of Greece from the point at which Thucydides'

history ends, and continued beyond the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War

down to the battle of Cnidus in 394; and his magnum opus, the Philippica,

in fifty-eight books, the history of the age of Philip II of Macedonia. He

was obviously a well-read man, and he makes some disparaging remarks in

the Prologue to the Philippica (F 25) about earlier writers, whom he doesnot name. Photius, who provides this information, goes on to say that he

does not think that Theopompus would have dared to mean Herodotus and

Thucydides, since he was much inferior to them in many ways. He suggests

that perhaps Hellanicus and Philistus among the historians, or Gorgias,

Lysias, and other such orators, are the men whom Theopompus has in mind.

There are, in fact, other more compelling reasons to believe that this crit-

icism was not directed at Herodotus or Thucydides. It is very clear, as A.

Momigliano pointed out many years ago, that Herodotus was one of thestrongest influences on the historical writing of Theopompus, who decided

to adopt certain features of Herodotus' approach to history which he ap-

proved and probably admired. Then, Theopompus' Hellenica began at the

point where Thucydides' unfinished work ended. As A.W. Gomme rightly

insisted,'2 the fact that Theopompus, Xenophon, Cratippus (and the Oxy-

rhynchus historian, if he is not Cratippus) all began histories at this point is

more significant than is usually recognized. It is a unique tribute to Thu-

cydides by these fourth-century historians that they refused to attempt tocover the same ground, even to the extent of avoiding such more suitable

starting points as 415 or 413 B.C., and one must conclude that they felt

unable to improve on Thucydides' work. Again, Theopompus inherited from

Thucydides the political or politico-military view of history, and in a man of

Theopompus' intellect we must presume that he did so consciously.

II. THEOPOMPUS' FIRST APPROACH TO HISTORY

It seems natural to assume that the Epitome of Herodotus would have been

the earliest of Theopompus' historical works. Momigliano, however, ad-

vanced the interesting thesis that it was composed after the Hellenica and

11. F.Gr.Hist. 70 (Ephorus) T 3a. The source is Photius.12. More Essays in Greek History and Literature (Oxford, 1962), 126-128.




before the Philippica.13It is true that one can hardly claim to discern in the

fragments of the Hellenica the Herodotean influence which appears quite

distinctly in the Philippica; and even if we reply that not enough of the

Hellenica survives for anything very significant to be discernible, we mayadmit that the character of the Hellenica was probably rather different from

that of the Philippica. It must have been almost inevitable that a contin-

uator of Thucydides, at least to begin with, should have been considerably

influenced by the Thucydidean method. A particularly clear example of

such influence upon two other continuators is the chronological arrangement

of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia and of books I and II of Xenophon's Hellenica.

There is not, then, any objection to the view that only the Philippica displays

the choice of the Ionian historic as a form, but I find it hard to believe thatonly after writing the Hellenica did Theopompus epitomize Herodotus to

concentrate for himself the features of Herodotean historiography which

exceeded the more confined bounds of Thucydides' work. If it was from

Herodotus that Theopompus got his wide horizons, his curiosity about the

marvelous, his love of anecdotes, and his tendency to digress from his

theme; or, rather, if it was from his study of Herodotus that he conceived of

these as the stuff of historiography, their appearance only in his more

mature work can be attributed, as, of course, Momigliano recognized, toother causes than the date of composition of the Epitome. The kinds of

political problem which Theopompus, as a successor to Thucydides, was

obliged to face were alien to the work of Herodotus, and it is readily under-

standable that in first turning to the history of the late fifth century and early

fourth century he should have been more inclined to look for guidance to the

more politically minded of his predecessors. The Hellenica may not, in any

case, have been devoid of the influence of Herodotus. It seems possible, on

the basis of Photius' quotation from the Prologue to the Philippica (F 25),that Theopompus himself called his Hellenica "The Deeds of the Greeks and

Barbarians," a phrase which is highly reminiscent of the opening sentence

of Herodotus' history. Whatever the actual title of the work may have been,

such a description of its content would clearly place Theopompus in the

Herodotean tradition of universal, as opposed to exclusively Greek, history.

It may be, however, that by this phrase Theopompus meant to designate

both his Hellenica and his Epitome.

If the Epitome was indeed the earliest historical composition of Theo-pompus, what was its purpose? The idea that it was intended to be the first

part of a trilogy, to be followed by the history of Thucydides and Theo-

pompus' Hellenica, is none too convincing. Momigliano pointed out that an

13. Momigliano did not press the point, but thought it easier to understandthe pur-

pose of the Epitome if this was the time of its composition.



90 I. A. F. BRUCE

epitome for its own sake would be absurd, in view of the fame of Herodotus,

and that epitomes as academic exercises were a later phenomenon. In seeking

an answer to the question we may begin with the observation of F. Jacoby'4

that the Epitome, Thucydides' history, the Hellenica, and the Philippicatogether make up a kind of general history of the Greek world. Now, the

Philippica, we know, was not envisaged when Theopompus began to write

the Hellenica. The decision to write the Philippica was in fact a change of

plan, and it is perfectly possible that the decision to write a continuation of

Thucydides was an earlier change of plan. There are two acceptable reasons

why Theopompus may have made a fresh start with the year 411: the

realization that he could not rewrite the history of the Peloponnesian War

with any hope of success, and the fact that he probably thought he couldimprove on the example of Xenophon.'5 My suggestion is that when Theo-

pompus first turned his attention to history, his intention was not unlike that

of Ephorus, to write a universal history from an early period until his own

day.

How, then, would he have set about such a task? He inherited from

Thucydides, who in this respect was a disciple of Herodotus, the belief that

history should in large measure be based upon oral testimony and oral tradi-

tion, a view of history that was maintained by all the political historiansof both Greece and Rome.16 This general dependence upon oral tradition is

evident not only in the writing of contemporary history, but also in the

history of the more distant past. Even when there were documents available

to Greek and Roman historians, the sort of documents which we might call

primary sources, they preferred to go for their information to earlier writers

of history whose work was founded directly or indirectly on oral tradition.

For Theopompus, attempting to write an historical account of the Greek

world before the formation of the Delian League, or even before the Pelopon-nesian War, there were in any case no such documents, or very few, in exis-

tence. He would naturally have looked for some literary authority whose work

was nearly enough contemporary with the events it described to have been

based upon oral tradition. Now, in addition to the oral testimony of eye-wit-

nesses, participants, persons who had heard the accounts of eye-witnesses, and

the like, oral tradition preserved a good deal of information about the past

which we should call myth. Some of it is so obviously myth that it had to be

rejected by serious historians of antiquity, who recognized it for what it was.

14. F.Gr.Hist. II B (Kommentar), 354.15. Cf. the suggestions of E. Schwartz (Hermes 44 [1909], 492) and E. Meyer, Theo-

pomps Hellenika (Halle, 1909), 145.16. See the discussion by A. Momigliano of "Historiographyon Written Tradition

and Historiographyon Oral Tradition" n his Studies in Historiography (London, 1966),ch. XI.




Some of it we should consider to be myth because it rests on no demon-

strably reliable evidence, but was not so considered by many serious Greeks

because it looks like genuine history and was, as genuine history was, pre-

served by oral tradition. Thus, for instance, Theopompus (F 59, F 103,F 384), like both Herodotus (1.67; 4.103; 7.159) and Thucydides (1.9),

treats Agamemnon as an historical character. It is in the asides on the origins

of places or names that the acceptance of mythical figures is most evident,

for example in F 63, where Theopompus attributes the name of the Amphic-

tyonic Council to Amphictyon, the son of Deucalion, just as Thucydides

(1.3.2) accepts another of Deucalion's sons, Hellen, as the originator of the

names Hellas and Hellenes. Pseudo-genealogies too had a fascination for

Greek historians,17and certainly for Theopompus - as witness the supposedeleven generations tracing the lineage of Caranus, founder of the Macedonian

dynasty, back to Heracles (F 393), or the statement of the tradition that

Olympias, the mother of Alexander, was descended from Pyrrhus, the son of

Achilles, and Helenus, the son of Priam (F 355).

Diodorus18says that Ephorus and Theopompus did not include the ancient

mythology. The fact that Ephorus accepted no traditional material relating to

the time before the return of the Heracleidae does not, of course, mean that

he fully understood or followed the astute observations of Thucydides onthe nature of such tradition. But Thucydidean criticism was probably none-

theless responsible for Ephorus' having progressed some distance toward such

an understanding.19Harpocration quotes Ephorus as saying that those who

give the most detailed information about contemporary events are the most

trustworthy, but those who give similar detail about the ancient past are least

trustworthy.20 This seems to indicate an appreciation of the distinction be-

tween what we might call the heroic past and the historical past, a distinction

which had certainly been recognized by Herodotus too. Now, we shouldinterpret Diodorus' remark, as it relates to Theopompus, in the same

manner.21 Theopompus, of course, had a reputation for being a clever

mythologos (T 26b; F 75c), and plenty of space in the Philippica was de-

voted to digressions on mythical subjects, including a large part of the eighth

book which was apparently published separately at some later date with the

title Thaumasia (F 75b) or Mirabilia. But these were digressions from an

17. Cf. Herodotus 1.7 for the acceptance of Phrygian and Persian pseudo-genealogiesfor early Lydian history. See the discussion of K. M. T. Chrimes, "Herodotus and theReconstruction of History," Journal of Hellenic Studies 50 (1930), 89-98.

18. Diodorus 4.1.3; F.Gr.Hist. 70 (Ephorus) T 8 and 115 (Theopompus) T 12.19. See Jacoby, F.Gr.Hist. II C (Kommentar), 25. Cf. further G. L. Barber, The

Historian Ephorus (Cambridge, 1935), 22 and Appendix 2.20. F.Gr.Hist. 70 (Ephorus) F 9.21. Contrast the works of his contemporaries Zoilus and Anaximenes (F.Gr.Hist.

nos. 71, 72).



92 I. A. F. BRUCE

essentially contemporary narrative; they were not attempts to reconstruct

from myth a history of very early Greece. Myths could be used for such a

purpose, and some writers did so use them, but there is no evidence that

Theopompus did so, and his Epitome of Herodotus, I think, may actuallysuggest that he did not.22 Once we give Theopompus (and Ephorus) credit

for rejecting the more implausible myths, the myths which a thoughtful man

could not accept as a factual record of the past, we see that there were not

many sources left. Abandoning the period for which there were, in effect, no

sources, to what could Theopompus turn? The history of Herodotus would

seem an obvious choice. What better way to begin a universal history than

by summarizing Herodotus? After Theopompus changed his original plan

and decided not to treat again the years described by Thucydides, the Epit-ome of Herodotus was left as an independent work, of which all that sur-

vives is a statement in the Suda (T 1) that Theopompus was its author and

that it contained two books, and four references to it in ancient lexica as

authority for the use of particular words (F 1-4). This, then, is a hypothesis

about the composition of the Epitome.

Polybius, in a passage which seems to derive from something Theopompus

himself wrote in the Prologue to the Philippica,3 reproaches Theopompus

for having abandoned his plan of writing a history of Greece in continua-tion of Thucydides' history when he was approaching the battle of Leuctra,

and for having turned then to a history of Philip. "Approaching the battle of

Leuctra (371 B.C.)" cannot be stretched to mean the battle of Cnidus (394

B.C.) where the Hellenica as published came to an end, and clearly Polybius

did not have the Hellenica before him when he wrote this passage. It is

likely, then, that he obtained his information about "approaching the battle

of Leuctra" from the Prologue to the Philippica (the alternative is a bad

lapse of memory), and we may therefore deduce that Theopompus was stillworking on the Hellenica when he decided to write the Philippica, and at

this point either published as much as he had worked into a final form (i.e.,

down to the battle of Cnidus) or had previously published the part which

was to become the complete Hellenica and now abandoned the idea of

continuing further the work for which he had already produced notes or a

narrative down to the mid-370's. It is perhaps more likely that this was the

occasion of the publication of the history as far as the battle of Cnidus; for

if he was inclined to publish in installments, we should expect more of theHellenica to have been published by the time he was working on the period

22. On the use of myth by historians see A. E. Wardman, "Myth in Greek Histori-ography,"Historia 9 (1960), 403-413. Cf. also M. I. Finley, "Myth, Memory, and His-tory," History and Theory 4 (1965), 281-302.

23. T 19; Polybius 8.13.3. A little earlier, at 8.11.1, Polybius states that he is quot-ing from the prologue to the Philippica.




immediately before the battle of Leuctra. He could not have been prompted

to change his plan and write about Philip until Philip really became a signif-

icant power in Greece, say 346 B.C. at the earliest. It is probable, then, that

the Hellenica was published after 346, one scrap of evidence (T 7) maysuggest that it was already published in 343/2, and it is generally agreed

that the work cannot have been begun earlier than about 350.24

The scale of Theopompus' Hellenica seems to have been greater than even

Thucydides' history, averaging about one and a half years per book. If

Theopompus was indeed following the example of Xenophon, he was greatly

enlarging upon Xenophon's work. There are nineteen fragments in Jacoby's

collection which are specifically assigned to the Hellenica by the ancient

authors who cite them. They contain traces of narrative of various identi-fiable episodes of political and military history, evidence of attention to

geographical detail in supplying the names of places which were probably

not the scene of major events, one or two indications of minor digressions,

and a favorable character sketch of the Spartan, Lysander, which presumably

was written in the context of the mention of his death in battle in 395.

Theopompus, in common with the other continuators of Thucydides, seems

not to have understood the significance of Thucydides' choice of subject. It

is clear25 that Thucydides would have ended with the defeat of Athens in404, yet Theopompus, Xenophon, and the Oxyrhynchus historian all carried

the story far beyond that point. At least for Theopompus, who began to

write half a century after the end of the Peloponnesian War, the original

intention can not have been merely to complete Thucydides' unfinished

work. Nor can one easily argue that Theopompus had some special theme of

his own which accounted for the choice of the period contained in his

Hellenica. Since he was apparently still working on his Hellenica and treating

the years which preceded the battle of Leuctra when he decided to discon-tinue the project in favor of a history of Philip, any conviction that the

battle of Cnidus was a decisive event with which his published Hellenica

might suitably end can only have dawned upon him after its composition.

I think it most probable that Theopompus was doing nothing more profound

than writing a general history of Greece, or of Greeks and barbarians, either

to improve upon the Hellenica of Xenophon, or with no terminal date in

mind. In other words, the Hellenica was to be a continuation of the universal

history he had contemplated earlier, but, like others before him, he hadconcluded that there was little purpose in trying to emulate Thucydides, and

that 411 was therefore the best year with which to make a start -and for

24. See the discussions of E. Meyer, Theopomps Hellenika, 142; F. Jacoby, F.Gr.Hist. II B (Kommentar), 355; A. Momigliano, in Rivista di Filologia n.s. 13 (1935),188.

25. Thuc. 5.26.1.



94 I. A. F. BRUCE

Theopompus,a new start. The scarcityof references to the Hellenica by

laterwriterssuggests hat it did not contain as many pieces of curiousinfor-

mation as did the Philippica.It is a fair guessthat it was also a less success-

ful work as history, and did not become (as the Philippicaprobably did,and certainlyoughtto have, become), a standardwork providing or manyyearsto the educatedpublicits view of the historyof the period.

III. THE AGE OF PHILIP

It is, obviously, n the more numerous ragmentsof the Philippicathat wemust look for stronger races of the relationshipbetweenTheopompusand

his predecessors.There was a proem (F 24-27) in which he introduced

himselfat some length and withoutconspicuousmodesty,and expressedhis

contemptfor some earlier writerswhom he did not name. Here he also

gave his famous reason for undertakinga history of Philip that Europehad never producedsuch a man as Philip, the son of Amyntas an ex-

planationwhich, with the other prefatoryremarks,might well have fittedinto an introductory ection after the mannerof the opening twenty-three

chapters of Thucydides'first book. The significanceof this remark aboutPhilip has been a matterof some dispute.Polybiustook it at face value toimply a certainadmirationof Philip, and, given the circumstances n which

Theopompusembarkedupon his Philippica,there is every reason to takethe same view as Polybius.A. Momigliano26ried to define the reasonsforand the natureof such admiration,and attachedspecial importance o theuse of the term"Europe." socrateshad developeda conceptof Europe,stillin essentialsGreek,but having to embrace a wider scene than that of theGreekstates, since Philip was its most prominent igureand potentially heleaderwho couldrecoverparts of Asia from the Persianking. Theopompus,in Momigliano's iew, firstsaw Philip as the man who could createa strongand enlargedEuropeanstate, by which action he would be the savior ofGreece;but differedfrom Isocratesin acceptingthe Persianking'sright toAsia. Until the battle of Chaeroneathis vision of Theopompusproved infact to be the programof Philip.Theopompusadmired his politicalcapacityof Philip,but Philipwas a man of whose private conductTheopompus, heausteremoralistand admirerof Antisthenes he Cynic,stronglydisapproved.Hence the apparentcontradictions n Theopompus'presentationof Philip.Momiglianofurthersaw Theopompus' deal of Europe as a development

26. Besides the article cited in fn. 4, Momigliano further developed his views onTheopompus' concept of Europe in "L'Europa come concetto politico presso Isocratee gli Isocratei,"Rivista di Filologia n.s. 11 (1933), 477-487 (Terzo contributo I, 489-497), and on Theopompus' assessment of Philip in "La valutazione di Filippo il Mace-done in Giustino," Rendiconti Istituto Loinbardo 66 (1933), 983-996.




from an earlier ideal of panhellenism, which he thought was central to the

Hellenica, and implied that Theopompus admired Lysander and his work

because he had given promise of the kind of political reconstruction which

the historian later hoped for from Philip. The Spartan empire whichLysander engineered was a political experiment in the face of danger from

Persia, a danger which Thucydides had not recognized. So while Momigliano

rightly saw that by making political questions the real theme of his histories

Theopompus was following in Thucydides' footsteps, he saw also a strong

reaction against Thucydides' view of the Greek world. The experiences of the

fourth century led Theopompus to a broader view of Greek affairs and to

greater concern with personalities than Thucydides had shown, and he found

in Herodotus, with his contrast between Greek and barbarian, an ideal, in asimple form, which was again vital in the fourth century, and an interest in

personalities and peoples again appropriate in Theopompus' own times. Yet

Theopompus' histories were more sophisticated than Herodotus' because, in

Momigliano's view, both the Hellenica and the Philippica were essentially

works of political persuasion, and in this he saw a mark of Isocratean influ-

ence.

W.R. Connor27 has recently taken issue with Momigliano and others by

insisting that Theopompus advocated no political program and in no senseadmired Philip. It is true, as Connor points out, that the extant fragments

do not reveal any firm political stand on Theopompus' part, and the

process of the composition of the Hellenica, if I understand it correctly, does

not suggest that Theopompus had so positive a theme in it as Momigliano

argues. Connor is quite right to insist that Theopompus' praise of Lysander's

personal qualities does not imply approval of his political work, but it is then

rather inconsistent to deny that Theopompus could have approved of Philip's

program because he is so severely critical of Philip's immoral conduct.Connor argues that Theopompus' statement about Philip in the prologue is

deliberately ambiguous, and he suggests, drawing parallels from other frag-

ments, that the term "such" has pejorative overtones. Philip was chosen as

the subject of the work because he was the central fact of fourth-century

history. Connor sees the Philippica as a history in which the main focus is on

personal morality, and Philip, a man of great vices who is politically a great

success, symbolizes what is wrong with the age. Not all of Theopompus'

contemporaries, however, saw Philip as the central fact of the age, and laterPolybius (8.13.4; T 19) thought Theopompus had been wrong to make the

history of Greece subordinate to that of Philip rather than vice versa. It is,

I believe, the great merit of Theopompus to have appreciated the unprece-

dented significance of Philip, and this accounts for the political character of

27. Connor, "History Without Heroes."



96 I. A. F. BRUCE

the Philippica and the scale of its narrative in a way in which the theory of

a biographical history with emphasis on personal morality does not. In sum,

Theopompus' view of Philip must have been along the general lines drawn by

Momigliano, if the details can only be conjectured.

IV. THE FORM OF THE PHILIPPICA

The arrangement of the Philippica was wholly unlike that of Thucydides'

history. Material was grouped by subject and not in an annalistic frame-

work.28 The annalistic scheme had presented difficulties enough for Thu-

cydides, in that the need to synchronize events in different theaters of the

war destroyed the continuity of the narrative of each one. In the Philippica,

with its much wider scope, any attempt at a strictly chronological diairesis

would have been disastrous in the eyes of anyone with a strong stylistic con-

sciousness. In outline the arrangement was, to be sure, broadly chronological,

especially in the narration of Philip's campaigns; but there are clear enough

indications of grouping events by subject - not only in the major digres-

sions, such as that on the Persian empire from ca. 394 to 344 (books 11-

19), but also, for example, in books 45-50 where the fragments (F 213-

227) seem to concern Philip's activities in Thrace from 342 to 339, and

books 51-54 which apparently covered events in Greece during these years

and then took up the story of Philip himself and the battle of Chaeronea.

The framework of the Hellenica too was broadly chronological, but there is

no indication that even there Theopompus was attracted by the Thucydidean

system.29 The form of the Philippica was in fact that of Herodotus' history,

and in view of what Dionysius of Halicarnassus called the polymnorphon

(T 20a) of the work and of its beingessentially

akind of koine historia,there can be no doubt that this was the right form to choose.

The Philippica contained some lengthy digressions, which Jacoby30thought

could be justified up to a point if we regard Theopompus as the successor of

Herodotus. The digressions on Persian history (books 11-19), Asia Minor

(books 35-38), and the history of Sicily (books 39-43) bear a certain

resemblance, of course, to the Aegyptiaca or Scythiaca of Herodotus, but the

explanation of their presence must be different. In the case of H-erodotus, I

believe theexplanation lies in the process of composition: that the historianfirst set out to write what J.E. Powell called the "Persian history" or what

28. Cf. F. Jacoby, F.Gr.Hist. II B (Kommentar), 358-359.29. Indeed it may be asserted that he did not adopt the Thucydidean division of ma-

terial by summers and winters on the evidence of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (de Thuc.9), who says that no subsequent historian did so. Dionysius, however, appears to haveoverlooked (or, less probably, to have been ignorant of) the Oxyrhynchushistorian.

30. Atthis (Oxford, 1949), 141.




M.I. Finley has more recently called "a periodos on an unprecedented

scale."31 Whatever its precise form, the original work concerned the bar-

barian world, and a "Persian history" researched by a man who clearly

inherited from Hecataeus a strong geographical and ethnographical interestwould inevitably have contained substantial accounts of the peoples made

subject to the Persian king. It was the decision to work this material into

a larger history, that of the Persian Wars, that produces the appearance of

long digressions. The explanation of Theopompus' use of such digressions,

however, must lie in his conception of historiography, and there can be little

doubt that he was influenced in the formation of it by the published history

of Herodotus. It can be argued very well that an extensive knowledge of

Egypt, for example, is essential background for an understanding of thegrowth of Persian imperial power, and likewise that knowledge of the history

of the Persian empire is needed before one can appreciate the magnitude of

Philip's work and designs. Theopompus must have reached some such con-

clusion in deciding what the scope of his work was to be, and his conclusion

represents a different view of the history of Philip from that taken by

Philip V of Macedonia, who, as Photius records (T 31), expunged the

irrelevant digressions and found that only sixteen books remained.32 Theo-

pompus' digression on Asia Minor may perhaps be explained in a similarmanner, while that on Sicily may be more of an indication that the Philippica

was really a universal history. The digressions on the Athenian demagogues

(book 10) and on aspects of Athenian foreign relations in both the fifth and

fourth centuries (book 25) are more difficult to understand -the difficulty,

of course, is that we cannot tell how they were introduced or woven into

the whole work33 and probably all that can be said is that they indicate

a tendency to digress, an interest in political history, and an inclination to

be skeptical of popular belief or even documented statements about pastevents or public figures. Of a different character again is the excursus in

book 8 on Thaumasia or Marvels. In it there appeared references to the

31. J. E. Powell, The History of Herodotus (Cambridge, 1939); M. I. Finley, The

Greek Historians (London, 1959).

32. It is worth observing that this is not only evidence of the broad range of subject

matter in the Philippica, but also of the scale on which the activities of Philip were

presented. Sixteen books on Philip himself would suggest that his military campaigns

were described in at least as much detail as Thucydides' treatment of the PeloponnesianWar.

33. H. T. Wade-Gery (American Journal of Philology 59 [1938], 132) argues that

the excursus on the demagogues of Athens was motivated by discussion of the comp-

trollershipof Eubulus, which Theopompus thought the culmination of a centuryor more

of Athenian demagogy. But whether Theopompus' theme was the "vicious" system of

using state revenues for the pleasures of the poor, as Wade-Gery suggests, or the ways

in which Athenian democracy had frustrated hopes of Greek unity (Momigliano, op.

cit. in fn. 4 above) is matter for speculation.



98 I. A. F. BRUCE

Zoroastrian doctrine of immortality held by the Magi (F 64), the belief in

the ultimate destruction of Areimanius, or Hades, by Oromazes, after which

people will be happy and neither have need of food nor cast any shadow

(F 65), the strange tale of Epimenides, the Cretan, who slept for fifty-sevenyears (F 67, 68, 69), and the remarkable prophetic powers of Pherecydes

of Syros (F 71). The most famous excerpt from this book, however, is the

story of the Meropes (F 75), a fictitious people who live beyond Ocean (in

which Europe, Asia, and Libya are islands). Theopompus has here passed

from tales about wonders in strange, but real, lands to utopianism, but while

it may not be easy to understand the motivation of such a digression from

his history, there is not, I think, much doubt that he had a serious philo-

sophical purpose for it, and that it is, in fact, a didactic myth in Platonicstyle.35

V. THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHICAL TRADITION

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (T 20a, F 26) praised Theopompus for the

effort and expense put into the collection of his material; he became himself

an eye-witness of many things and had personal contact with many leading

men: generals, demagogues, and philosophers. In other words, Theopompus

was a great traveller, at least in the Greek world, as he himself reminded his

readers (F 25),36 and his histories reveal the traveller's interests: the origins

of peoples, the foundation of cities, the lives of kings, bizarre customs, and

marvelous and improbable tales (T 20a). Many of his details, however, may

have come to his notice not in the course of his travels, but in the writings of

earlier travellers, since his geographical comments sometimes occur in the

forms of the Hecataean tradition, for example in the association of an un-

familiar place with a familiar myth. While Theopompus' apparent conviction

that travelling to meet the figures of contemporary history or to inspect im-

portant sites was part of an historian's duty may reflect Thucydides' em-

phasis on eye-witness testimony (and, perhaps, his insight into the

importance of topography for history when describing events at sites he

34. Details of the story in English can most conveniently be found in B. E. Perry,The Ancient Romances (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 341f., n.22, and T. S. Brown,

Onesicritus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949), 64f.35. See the full discussion by I. Lana, "L'Utopia di Teopompo," Paideia 6 (1951),

3-22; cf. E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman (4th ed., Hildesheim, 1960), 219ff.36. He boasted that there was no Greek city of any consequence which he had not

visited and in which he had not secured fame for himself by the delivery of his epi-deictic speeches. Consideringhis own estimate that he had composed over twenty thou-sand lines of such rhetorical works, there may indeed be some foundation to the tra-dition preservedby Quintilian 10.1.74 (T 21) that he was converted late from the studyof rhetoric to that of history.




knew at firsthand, such as Amphipolis), there can be little doubt that his

more general interest in geography and ethnography derives from the works

of Hecataeus and Herodotus.38

Hecataeus' Periegesis was not an exclusively geographical work. There aresigns in the fragments that he indulged a taste for mythography-perhaps,

as Lionel Pearson has suggested,39 n connection with places where not much

purely geographical description was required. These signs appear in two

forms: interest in the etymology of place-names, or in the origin of places,

and observations on local phenomena or mirabilia. The same traits are

evident in the fragments of Theopompus. For example, he offers an explana-

tion of the name of the Ionian Sea: it derives from an Illyrian called Ionius,

once a king in those parts (F 128). Among his comments on local curi-osities, Theopompus observes40 that around Bisaltia there are hares which

have two livers, and that the Veneti at the sowing season send gifts of barley

cakes kneaded with honey and oil to the jackdaws, in order to placate them

and dissuade them from digging up the fruits of Demeter from the soil.

Similarly, Stephanus of Byzantium names Theopompus as his source for the

following entry (F 112): "Andeira; a city in the Troad. In it there is a kind

of stone which, when burned, turns into iron. Then, when heated in a furnace

with a certain kind of earth, it produces drops of false silver (zinc). Then,when mixed with copper, it becomes mountain-copper (brass)."

Although Theopompus was almost certainly acquainted with the Periegesis

of Hecataeus, his interest in this kind of detail should probably be considered

primarily a mark of the Herodotean influence on his work. It is an interest

not only in unfamiliar places, but more importantly in the customs of

peoples. Thus we are told (F 215) that the Arcadians "at their banquets

welcome both masters and slaves, and they prepare one table for all, and

set the same food in the midst for all, and mix the same bowl for all." Againwe read (F 113) that "whenever the Great King visits any of his subjects,

they spend twenty talents on his dinner, and sometimes thirty, and some

even spend much more. For just as the tribute has from ancient times been

imposed on each of the cities according to their size, so too has the royal

dinner." We learn from Theopompus that the kings of Paeonia made drinking

cups from the horns of their cattle, overlaying the rims with silver or gold,

37. Cf. Thuc. 5.6.38. It is important, however, to note that the traditional forms of geographical de-

scription are not altogether absent from Thucydides' history, when he writes of a placeof which he has no firsthandknowledge. Occasionally the geographical comment itselfis irrelevant, or has appended to it a brief ethnographical or mythological note. Forexamples see L. Pearson, "Thucydidesand the Geographical Tradition,"Classical Quar-terly 33 (1939), 48-54.

39. Early lonian Historians (Oxford, 1939), 51.40. F 126 (Athenaeus and Stephanus of Byzantium); F 274 (Antigonus and Aelian).



100 I. A. F. BRUCE

because the cattle there had horns so big that they could hold three or four

choes (F 38), and that the Getae entered into peace negotiations holding

citharas and playing on them (F 216). If these excerpts concern trivia,

they do indicate the same kind of interests as prompted much of Herodotus'sociological information - the marriage customs of the Babylonians, the

burial rites of the Scythians, or the way the Ethiopians chose their king.41

There are indications that Theopompus did produce some serious ethnog-

raphy. Strabo quotes him (F 382) as saying that there were fourteen ethne

of Epirotes, and goes on to explain that the Chaones and the Molossi were

the most famous because they had once ruled over all Epirus, the Chaones

earlier and the Molossi later. The prominence of the Molossi is accounted for

partly because the oracle at Dodona was in their territory. It is possible thatall of this information derives from Theopompus. Some of the fragments

reveal the work of a competent social historian. There is an attempt to

account for the xenelasia at Sparta - it had originated once when there

happened to be a shortage of food (F 178) -and there are sober state-

ments on the condition and origin of the Helots at Sparta and the Penestae

in Thessaly (F 13, 122).

VI. GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY

It was Herodotus who first recognized the importance of geographical de-

scription for the study of history. Most of the (some one hundred and

twenty) fragments of Theopompus cited by the lexicographers for geograph-

ical names give little clue as to whether they contained much real geograph-

ical description, and, if so, whether it was really relevant to the history. His

numerous recorded references to cities or villages testify either to the great

detail of his historical narrative or to his propensity to digress from the main

theme, using some of the forms of the geographical tradition. But in one case

in which we know that Theopompus did provide some purely geographical

description, a description of the valley of Tempe, both his description and

the historical context are highly reminiscent of a similar passage in Herod-

otus. Theon, the Alexandrian rhetorician, says that in Philippica book 9

there is a description of Tempe in Thessaly, which lies between two large

mountains, Ossa and Olympus, and through it runs the Peneus into which all

the rivers of Thessaly flow (F 78). This passage from Theopompus has been

preserved in substance because it was reproduced by Aelian in his Varia

41. Some of Theopompus' detail may actually have been borrowed from Herodotus.F 45 reads as follows: Hesychius, s.v. hippake (mare's milk cheese): "Scythian foodfrom mare's milk; some speak of mare'swhey, which the Scythiansuse. It is drunk and,when curdled, it is eaten, as Theopompus writes in book 3." Herodotus (4.2) describeshow the mares were milked and how the Scythians processed the milk.




Historia.42The context was Philip's march into Thessaly in 353 or 352 B.C.

Herodotus similarly, if less expansively, described Tempe in the context of

Xerxes' approach to Thessaly and the Greek change of strategy in the

matter of where to face the Persian invasion.43 Another fragment (F 385)suggests that Theopompus not only provided some sound geographical detail,

but understood the importance of such detail for the military historian.

Strabo names Theopompus as his source for the following facts: Parapotamii

is about forty stades distant from Chaeronea and forms the boundary of the

territories of the Ambryseans, the Panopeans, and the Daulians. It is situated

on a moderately high hill at the pass which leads from Boeotia into Phocis,

between Parnassus and the mountain Hadylius. The stretch of land left be-

tween these mountains is about five stades long, and is divided by the riverCephissus, which affords a narrow passage on each side. The river has its

source in Lilaea, a Phocian city, and it flows into Lake Copais. Strabo adds

that this pass was fought over in the Phocian War, since it affords the only

entry into Phocis. Whether or not this last point derived from Theopompus,

it is likely that Theopompus did make some such point, for if his context

was not the Phocian War it would probably have been the battle of

Chaeronea.44

VII. THE MYTHOGRAPHIC AND CHRONOGRAPHIC TRADITIONS

Stories about peoples and their countries of the kind that were recorded by

Hecataeus, Herodotus, and Theopompus appeared also in the ethnographical

works of Hellanicus.45 Theopompus was, of course, familiar with the works

of Hellanicus, for Strabo reports his boast (F 381) that he would tell stories

([tlOoi)better than Herodotus, Ctesias, Hellanicus, and the writers of

Indica.46 It is not clear what kind of iAOouTheopompus had in mind; per-

haps he was referring to his excursus on mirabilia.S In any case, the com-

42. Aelian's description of Tempe was first attributed to Theopompus by R. H. E.

Wichers, Theopompi Chii Fragmenta (Leiden, 1829), and now appears as F 80 in

Jacoby's edition.

43. Cf. Herodotus 7.128.1; 129.2; 173.1.

44. Jacoby (F.Gr.Hist. II B, [Kommentar], 400) suggests both possible contexts.

45. I refer to the fragments of such works as the Aegyptiaca and Persica of Hellan-

icus (F.Gr.Hist. 4), but we may note here too that Hellanicus was the author of awork variously cited as Foundations of Peoples and Cities, Concerning Peoples, and

Names of Peoples (F. Gr. Hist. 4 F 66-70).

46. We do not know which Indica, other than those of Ctesias, were published be-

fore Theopompus completed the Philippica. Ctesias' Persica could have provided little

information that was not available to Theopompus elsewhere, and was probably not

used by him as a source.

47. Cf. E. Rohde, Rheinisches Museum 48 (1893), 110, = Kleine Schrif en II (Tu-

bingen, 1901), 9.



102 I. A. F. BRUCE

parison could have been with the ethnography of Hellanicus or with his more

purely mythographic works, like the Phoronis and the Deucalioneia, the

fragments of which concern the genealogies, migrations, and deeds of the

descendants of Phoroneus and Deucalion. Theopompus, of course, frequentlydigressed to include such mythological material when it could be related to

the scene or to the personages of his narrative, but essentially Hellanicus

was recreating from myth a coherent account of the ancestral families of

primitive Greece, and this is precisely what Theopompus determined not to

do when choosing the subjects of his historical research.

There were also the chronographic works of Hellanicus, in particular the

Atthis, with which Theopompus would surely have been acquainted. Photius

may well have been right in suggesting that Hellanicus was one of the earlierwriters of whom Theopompus spoke with some disdain (F 25), and some

of Theopompus' comments on the history of Athens in the fifth century

could conceivably have been intended to take issue with Hellanicus, as has

been thought of Thucydides' digression on the Pisistratids. However this

may be, Hellanicus' attempts to introduce a chronological system are a

notable contribution to the development of historiography; and if at first they

were somewhat rough, we should remember that even Thucydides shows

little evidence of being able to provide exact dating in his survey of thePentecontaetia. The appearance that Hellanicus dated the grant of limited

citizenship to the Athenian slaves who fought at Arginusae48 and the minting

of gold coinage49 by the archon-year (Antigenes: 407/6 B.C.) represents,

if the appearance is reality, as I think it is, an important step forward. In

recent discussions of the fragments of Theopompus relating to the Athenian

demagogues, it has been suggested50 that he gave a chronology of the suc-

cession of popular leaders and possibly calculated the years of prostasia by

archon-years. At a wild guess the chronology of the fifth-century demagoguesmight be borrowed from Hellanicus, but obviously in general chronological

arrangement the histories of Theopompus have nothing in common with

the Atthides which we may take to have been the descendants of Hellanicus'

chronographic works.

On the whole Theopompus was probably careless about exact dating when

faced by two discordant sources, and this may account for some of the

chronological problems raised by the fragments relating to the fifth century.

An example of the difficulty of obtaining accurate chronological informationin antiquity is provided by F 279, in which Theopompus states that Per-

diccas, the fifth-century Macedonian king, reigned for thirty-five years.

48. F.Gr.Hist. 4 (Hellanicus) F 171.49. F.Gr.Hist. 4 (Hellanicus) F 172.50. Cf. W. R. Connor, Theopompus and Fifth-Century Athens, 48f., 61f., 160 n.37,

and A. E. Raubitschek,Phoenix 9 (1955), 125.




Athenaeus, who preserves this fragment, adds that Nicomedes of Acanthus,

Anaximenes, Hieronymus, Marsyas, and Philochorus all gave a figure, too,

ranging from twenty-three years to forty-one, and only Philochorus and

Marsyas were in agreement, the Atthidographer having consulted the latestnational source, the Macedonica of Marsyas.51 About all we can say is that

Theopompus did offer such information, even for the remoter past, and it

may be of some interest to note in passing that he placed Homer five

hundred years after the Trojan War (F 205), in broad agreement with

Herodotus (2.53.2; 2.145.4). Unfortunately we know virtually nothing about

the chronology of Theopompus' contemporary history, other than that the

structural framework of the Philippica did not ensure the kind of accuracy in

dating which Thucydides had achieved.

VIII. CONTEMPORARY HISTORY AND POLITICAL HISTORY

Though the basic form of the Philippica was Herodotean, with its grouping

of events by subject, with its digressions, long and short, with its geography

and ethnography and its encyclopedic range of interest, some of the most

important features of the work suggest the influence of Thucydides. The deci-

sion to write a contemporary history, that is primarily of events of Theo-

pompus' own lifetime, a decision taken from the conviction that these events

(or, in Theopompus' words, their leading actor) were of unprecedented

importance,52and the emphasis, despite the digressions, and indeed in some

of them, on political history, probably owe more to the example of Thu-

cydides than to anything else. Contemporary history was history about which

relatively reliable information could be obtained in great detail. The politics

ofTheopompus' day, however, were,

asJacoby

hasrightly remarked,53morecomplex than in the fifth century, and while Theopompus was certainly less

objective than Thucydides and seems to have adopted in his judgments a

political standpoint, the complexities of the age no less than the scarcity of

the fragments make it very hard to determine exactly what that standpoint

was.54

51. Cf. Jacoby, F.Gr.Hist., commentary on 328 (Philochorus) F 126.52. Theopompus' study of earlier history, in preparing his Epitome of Herodotus

and his Hellenica, would have enabled him, as an already experienced historian, torecognize the real significance of Philip. We may compare the hypothesis that Thu-cydides had made a special study of earlier history before the Peloponnesian War brokeout as an explanation of his immediate grasp of its unparalleled significance. (Attrib-

uted to G. T. Griffith by N. G. L. Hammond, "The Composition of Thucydides' His-

tory," Classical Quarterly 34 [1940], 150 n.l.)53. Atthis, 129f.

54. In addition to the articles listed in fn.4 above, there are interesting discussions

relevant to Theopompus' political convictions by the following: D. E. W. Wormell,



104 T.A. F. BRUCE

Unhappily t is impossible o make a fair assessmentof Theopompusas acontemporarypolitical historian.The authorswho cite him by name mostfrequently,Athenaeus and Stephanusof Byzantium,were not interested n

political history. The authors who did use Theopompusas a source forpolitical history, authors such as Diodorus, Nepos, Plutarch, and various

scholiasts,only rarelymentionedhim by name as their authority, ometimes

only to indicatethattheirsources differedon a point of detail.The extentoftheir debt to Theopompus,andthus the natureof Theopompus'reatmentofa particular pisode,can only be ascertained and then only tentatively)byclose scrutinyof the texts of these authorsfor hints of passageswhich mayderivelargely from the Philippica.55n fact there do not seem to be many

such passages of any length, and a crediblereason has been suggestedbyH.D. Westlake:56hat laterhistorianswere deterredby the sheerbulk of thePhilippica rom making as full use of it as they mighthave done. The partsof the workwhich seemed moremanageable,and were in consequencemostfrequentlyconsulted,were the digressions,such as the review of Sicilianhistory and the survey of the Athenian demagogues.The digressionsonAthenshave, in fact, producedthe fragmentswhichmost attract the atten-tion of modern students of Greek political history. Most recently W.R.

Connor in his Theopompus and Fifth-Century Athens has shown the im-portance of detailed,scholarlystudy of these fragmentsas a means of iso-latingwhat is reallyknownaboutTheopompus' reatmentof the period andof clearingaway ill-groundedhypothesesand presumed acts about it. Onlythen can one compareTheopompuswithotherwritersabout the sameperiodand assess his value as an historicalsource. Connor suggests that Theo-

pompus' worth is not in the exactnessof his details, still less in the objec-tivity of his judgments, but in his ability to recreate the feeling of

controversyand partialitywhich characterizedAthenian political life, andthus to give us a more vivid glimpseof fifth-centuryAthens. But in thesefragments,we must remember,Theopompuswas writingaboutthe past, andso we do not see in them anythingof Theopompusas a contemporary is-

"The Literary Tradition Concerning Hermias of Atarneus," Yale Classical Studies 5(1935), 57-92, at 66-74; K. von Fritz, "ConservativeReaction and One Man Rule inAncient Greece," Political Science Quarterly 56 (1941), 51-83, at 80-83; F. Carrata,"Culturagreca e unit macedone nella politica di Filippo II," Pubblicazioni della Fa-

colta di Lettere e Filosofia 1,3 (Turin, 1949), 3-45, esp. 3-8.55. A particularlypersuasive study of this kind is N.G.L. Hammond's "The Sources

of Diodorus Siculus XVI - (ii) The Sicilian Narrative,"Classical Quarterly 32 (1938),137-151, in which he demonstrated that Diodorus excerpted Theopompus' Sicilian di-gression for the sections of book 16 which dealt with Sicilian affairs down to 343/2B.C., at which point Theopompus' Sicilian narrative ended. See further the study of"The Sicilian Books of Theopompus'Philippica"by H. D. Westlake, Historia 2 (1954),288-307.

56. Westlake, "Sicilian Books," 288.




torian. If Theopompus seems in several of them to have disagreed with other

historians, or with the evidence of inscriptions, we cannot conclude that he

regularly did, for sometimes the disagreement is itself the reason for the

citation of him by name. When he seems to be contradicted by extant fifth-century documents, such as ostraca, or by. Thucydides, or even by Philo-

chorus, no one is likely to believe that the testimony of Theopompus is to be

preferred. The famous fragments (F 153, 154) in which Theopompus

alleged that the Athenians had falsely reported the Hellenic oath before the

battle of Plataea, the treaty between Athens and Persia, and the true char-

acter of the battle of Marathon, indicate, obviously, a spirit of skepticism.57

The one argument of Theopompus to be preserved here, that the inscription

purporting to record the terms of the peace with Persia was a later forgerybecause it was inscribed in the Ionic characters not introduced at Athens

until 403/2 B.C., indicates also critical use of an epigraphic source. But if

the critical approach, which on these three matters may have been justified,

was inspired by Thucydides, Theopompus clearly could not control his own

prejudices, as the wild concluding remark of F 153 shows: "and all the other

respects in which the city of Athens distorts history and deceives the Greeks."

Fragments such as this do not inspire confidence in the sobriety of Theo-

pompus' judgments, and others suggest a certain carelessness in his searchfor or choice of source material; some of them, indeed, are thought by some

scholars to contain deliberate and malicious distortions of the truth. Yet the

evidence of a few controversial fragments relating to fifth-century history is

not sufficient to prejudge Theopompus the contemporary historian as un-

reliable.58

The essentially political and military character of at least some of the

books is shown by the summary of contents of the forty-seventh book in

Rylands Papyri 1.19 (F 217): "the beginning of the Athenian war againstPhilip; the siege of Perinthus and Byzantium; . . . of the Thracians called

Tetrachorites; the capture by force of the Thracian city Angissus by Anti-

pater; the things Philip wrote to Antipater and Parmenio who were in the

region of the Tetrachorites . . ." Polybius (38.6.2-4) gives a similar list of

subjects which appear to have been the contents of book 1 of the Philippica.

They are: Thessalian affairs and the exploits of Alexander of Pherae; the

projects of the Spartans in the Peloponnese and of the Athenians; events in

Macedonia and Illyria; the expedition of Iphicrates to Egypt; the unlawful

57. But it may be worth reminding ourselves, in the words of Marc Bloch, that"skepticismon principle is neither a more estimable nor a more productive intellectualattitude than the credulity with which it is frequently blended in the simpler minds."(The Historian's Craft, transl. P. Putnam [New York, 1953], 79f.)

58. As does G. E. M. de Sainte Croix in introducing a discussion of F 30, "The Al-leged Secret Pact between Athens and Philip II concerning Amphipolis and Pydna,"Classical Quarterly n.s. 13 (1963), at 114.



106 I. A. F. BRUCE

acts of Clearchus n Pontus; and how Bardyllis, the king of Illyria, and

Cersobleptes, he king of Thrace, acquiredtheir kingdoms.59Most of thefragmentswhich concern the militaryand politicalhistoryof Philip'sreign

are so brief that they tell us only the same kind of information;hat Theo-

pompus gave an account, now lost, of a particularepisode. There are,however,sufficient ragmentsof this sort from which to establisha skeleton

list of contentsof the whole of the Philippica,60and to concludefromit that

despite the miscellanyof incidental information he work was basically apolitical history. How Theopompusas an historian of the contemporarypolitical and militaryscene measuredup to the standards et by Thucydideswe are in no positionto judge.

It is, however, very interestingto note that Theopompusmade use of

speeches,apparentlyn Thucydideanmanner.Didymus, n commentson twodifferentorationsof Demosthenes,quotesa few lines of two speecheswhich

Theopompusinserted in his account of the conclusion of the Peace ofPhilocrates.One (F 164) contains arguments n favor of the peace, pur-porting o be spoken by Philocrates, he other (F 166) arguments gainst he

peace spokenby Aristophon.The texts read as follows: Philocrates:"Con-sider,then, that thereis no opportunityo be contentious,or for the affairsof the city to be in good order,but many greatdangerssurroundus. For weknow that the Boeotians and Megariansare unfavorablydisposed towardus, that some of the Peloponnesiansare turning their attention to the

Thebans,and others to the Spartans,and that the Chiansand Rhodiansandtheir allies are of hostiledispositiontowardour city but are having discus-sions withPhilip aboutfriendship."Aristophon:"Butreflectthat we shouldbe doing the most cowardlyof all things if we were to accept the peace,giving up claim to Amphipolis,we who inhabit the largest of the Greek

cities, who have the most allies, who have acquired hree hundredtriremesand who receiverevenuesof almostfour hundred alents. Sincewe actuallyhave these things,who would not censureus if through ear of Macedonianpower we should make any concession contrary to our right?"Thus setspeeches were used to present the conflictingattitudeswhich were givenexpression in the Athenian debate on Philocrates'proposal.Although thepassagesquotedby Didymusare both fairly completestatementsof the op-posing positions,they look to me more like parts of longer speeches

thansummariescompletein themselves; hat is to say that the whole speecheswouldhave been similar n form and length, as well as in theiroccasion, tothe speechesemployedby Thucydidesn his history.

59. Polybius does not state explicitly that this is the content of Philippica 1, but seeJacoby, F.Gr.Hist. II B (Kommentar), 360-361, on F 28.

60. See Jacoby, F.Gr.Hist. II B (Kommentar), 359.




IX. PSYCHOLOGY AND BIOGRAPHY

Thucydides, according to Collingwood,61s the father of psychological

history,and Theopompus s sometimesconsideredto have been a psycho-

logical historian.62The differencebetweenthe two historians n this respect

is, however,an importantone. Thucydides, n his observations f the psycho-

logical consequencesof the plague at Athens, or the reaction to the news of

the Siciliandisaster,or the effect of the Corcyraean ivil war on the behavior

of the people, showshimself to be a perceptiveanalyst of humannature;his

approach s that of the scientist,objectivelyseeking to discernpsychological

laws from carefulstudy of particularcases. Theopompus,on the contrary,

insofar as he shows an interest in psychology, is concernedwith individual

behavior,and while it has been suggested hat he did develop psychological

theoriesof a sort,63he is too passionate n his moralposition and too sub-

jectivein his judgments o be considered cientific n his approach.The psy-

chological aspectof Theopompus'history is, in fact, its biographicalaspect.

This interestin biography s not only exemplified n the choice of a man,

Philip,as the centralsubjectof his majorwork,and in the remarkshe makes

about Philip's character and personal behavior, but also in the personal

commentwhich appears n so manyof the fragmentsaboutother characters.

We might conjecture hat the biographical lementwas in part inspired by

Xenophon, whose emphasis on a greatpersonalityappears not only in the

Anabasis, the Cyropaedia, and the Agesilaus, but also in the second half of

the Hellenica where the history of Greece is presented as revolving around

the deeds of its leading actor, Agesilaus.Theopompus'knowledgeof Xeno-

phon's work can hardlybe doubted, especially n view of Porphyry's hargethat he plagiarized rom Xenophon'sHellenica (F 21). But Theopompus'

interest is more than mere curiosity about the anecdotes that circulated

aboutthe lives, deeds, and wordsof famousmen; it is somethingmuch more

personal, a concern about their strength or weakness in the face of the

temptationsof physical pleasure,and this concernis so clearlyderivedfrom

a strong sense of personal morality that Theopompusdoes not hesitate to

pronouncehis ownverdictof praise, or, more frequently,of censure.

61. The Idea of History, 29.

62. See especially the discussion by A. von Mess, "Die Anfinge der Biographie undder psychologischen Geschichtsschreibung n der griechischen Literatur. 1. Theopomp,"

Rheinisches Museum 70 (1915), 337-357.

63. E.g., "The man most skilled in the arts of corruption is the man who achieves

the greatest success." W. R. Connor, "History Without Heroes," 146.



108 I. A. F. BRUCE

X. CONCLUSIONS

The development of Greek historiography which we recognize fromHecataeus to Thucydides did not seem to Theopompus to be wholly an

advance in the right direction, if indeed he was aware of it at all. When the

geographical and genealogical species of research which characterized the

work of Hecataeus had been combined by a unifying theme into what we

might call history, in the first four books of Herodotus, geography and the

ethnology which accompanied it remained very prominent elements. In

Herodotus' history of the Persian Wars and in Thucydides' history of the

Peloponnesian War the ethnological elements tend to disappear as the authorconcentrates upon an historically ascertainable chain of events within a

recent and restricted period of time. But the earlier elements return to prom-

inence in the pages of Theopompus. We do not have to conclude that Theo-

pompus was one of those who missed "the domain of fable" in Thucydides'

work and consequently preferred the tradition of, say, Hellanicus, but he did

consider geography and ethnology to be worthy objects of his curiosity, and

he certainly did not hesitate to enliven his narrative with digressions of a

mythological and romantic nature. If these features of his work are to beexplained in part by the attraction which Herodotus clearly held for him,

they must also be the product of Theopompus' own personality, for he had

a powerful personality which persistently obtrudes itself, whether in the

engaging inability to refrain from repeating a good story or in the rhetorical

vigor with which he confidently rejects the views of others or pronounces

moral judgment on his characters.

In comparing Theopompus with his predecessors, and especially with

Herodotus and Thucydides, it is essential that we remember the vital fact,obscured by the loss of Theopompus' histories, that his work was eight or

nine times greater in volume than that of either of them. To some extent this

scale was the result of Theopompus' concept of historiography, in that he is

in part the successor to most of the earlier varieties of historical research

(in the widest sense). In his digressions he is at times a mythographer and

antiquarian in the tradition of Hellanicus and of Hecataeus' Genealogies.

Throughout his work we find traces of the Hecataean geographical tradition,

and the ethnography which sprang from it and appeared in the ethnograph-ical works of Hellanicus. Indeed, in a sense the Philippica was the first

Macedonica. The geographical and ethnographical elements in Theopompus'

histories probably derived in the main from Herodotus, who had added to

them important new elements, and these also appear in the works of Theo-

pompus. Thus the Philippica, and probably the Hellenica too in some degree,

are universal histories, like that of Ephorus, anticipating the broader view of




the world which the conquests of Alexander were to give to Hellenistic

historiography. Herodotus was at the same time the forerunner of the

"Hellenica" as an historical form, and much of Theopompus' vast output

falls into that category. Again, if we can rightly judge the content of books20-30 of the Philippica, or books 45-50, they may have been in themselves

monographs on particular wars on something like Thucydidean scale. In

concentrating on the contemporary world in his greatest work, Theopompus

shows a certain understanding of the real insight of Herodotus and Thu-

cydides into the nature of historical research, but he maintains such encyclo-

pedic interests that he can not restrict his work in scope or, consequently, in

scale. He incorporates something from all the earlier species of historiog-

raphy, with perhaps only one exception, that of horography, chronographichistories of individual cities; but even the Atthis of Hellanicus may have been

a source for his digressions on fifth-century Athens. In one sense, then, the

massive work of Theopompus was the culmination of classical historiography,

in his attempt to combine all its elements into one great history. To all these

earlier features Theopompus added new dimensions of his own, and in these

we see him as the forerunner of Hellenistic historiography. His long digres-

sions on earlier history required the "scissors-and-paste" technique of the

later writers of world history. To the mythography he added utopianism andphilosophy; to the biography he added moral judgments and moral instruc-

tion. Just as he anticipated the Hellenistic view of an enlarged world, so his

interest in foreign peoples and customs, and in mirabilia, anticipated the

revival of these interests resulting from the expeditions of Alexander, espe-

cially the Indian expedition. And yet, while Theopompus was in many re-

spects a successor to both Herodotus and Thucydides, and was also an

innovator in his own right, his innovations were not, as those made by

Herodotus and Thucydides had been, significant contributions to the advance-

ment of sound principles of historiography.

Memorial University of Newfoundland

bruce theopompusclassicalgreekhistoriography 1970

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