it is likely that both were aware of Isocrates; lines of reception of Isocratean style, thought, and subject can be drawn.
Isocrates inherited from the influential sophist Gorgias (whether
directly, as a student of his, or not) the practice of modeling words so as to lead the mind of the listener, practicing an almost drug‐like “seduction of the mind” ( psuchago ̄ gia) through the arousal of emotions (see Gorgias’
Encomium of Helen). Isocrates’ style may be found in those of Ephorus and Theopompus, which are much more dramatic than that of Xenophon.
History, one could argue, competed with poetry as an entertaining mode
of teaching when Greek drama passed its creative peak, and history, like rhetoric, made truth claims, as both genres tried to support new forms of political power (Grant 1970: 137). These historians therefore not only
offered a psychology of the motives of individuals, they used their own sense of human nature to shape the behavior of readers for the better.
What one modern commentator, Josh Ober, says about Isocrates’
educational aims could apply to Ephorus and Theopompus as well:
Ultimately, Isocratean rhetorical education is not about the transmission of knowledge, but about the formation of civic identity; thus, in common with Plato (of the Republic) and Aristotle (of the Politics), Isocrates’
understanding of education is deeply political, and so his paideia
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[education/formation] is part and parcel of his politikos logos [political reasoning] … Isocrates is clearly concerned with reorienting and widening the reader/pupil’s existing views on the relationship between culture and politics, especially by integrating Panhellenic and Athenian perspectives – whether or not we accept that the Athenian perspective is necessarily meant to be hegemonic … And the student is surely meant to learn that Isocratean philosophia (rather than its several contemporary rivals) is a uniquely appropriate instrument of cultural integration. The prior civic identity is to be integrated with the wider Panhellenic/Athenian perspective. (Ober 1998: 83–5)
Isocrates’ political aim is exemplified in a famous passage that illustrates one most crucial aspect of the age: a desperate call for Greek unity amid widespread inter‐ polis conflict:
And so far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and in speech that its pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and our city has brought it about that the name “Hellenes” suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and then the title “Hellenes” is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common nature
[ phusis]. (Isoc. 4, 50, Norlin, adapted)
James Porter notes the rhetorical appeal evocative of Athens’ powerful
past and calls to mind its reduced military might after the Peace of
Antalcidas (387 bc):
Hence [Isocrates] must appeal to past military and cultural glories in order to justify present claims – indeed, his evident reuse of themes from Pericles’
funeral oration is part of the same rhetorical strategy, designed as it is to remind fourth‐century pan‐Hellenic readers of Athens’s fifth‐century glory … ϕιλοσοϕία and eloquence were in fact the slogans of Isocrates’
own educational program. (Porter 2006: 383–4)
Ephorus (early fourth century to 327 bc) came from Cyme in Asia
Minor and fostered rhetorical history; he had a high but not overly
ornate style, an Isocratean moralizing tone, and a more academic
approach than an experienced man of state. From his collected frag-
ments ( FGrHist 70 Ephor., BNJ 36 Ephor.; Marincola 2007: 172–4), we know that Ephorus’ virtually nonextant “universal” Histories
( Historiai) in 30 books, used widely by Diodorus, treated events topi-cally ( kata genos, “by type”; T 11) rather than annalistically: the work dealt for example with the geography of the inhabited world (Books
4–5), the early history of the Peloponnese (Book 6), Lydia and Persia
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(Books 8 and 9), the Persian Wars (Book 11), early tyranny in Sicily
(Book 16) and the hegemony of Sparta and Thebes (Books 21–5). As is
typical of later, “universal” works, the treatment expands on details as it approaches current times, so that the last ten books (21–30) covered
less than fifty years (the period 387–340 bc). Ephorus began from the
return of the Heraclaedae (the “Dorian invasion,” FGrHist 70 T 8) and his son Demophilus wrote the last book (T 9). He avoided myth (F 31)
and favored an appeal to Fortune, Tyche, over the divine, which Polybius and others also adopted (see Meister 2004).
We also know that he wrote prefaces for each book and universal
content (Plb. 5.33.2). Polybius, his later rival, was critical of Ephorus, calling his descriptions of land battles deficient; but sea battles he considered successful, for what his sniping is worth (Plb. 4.20 5–6; 12.25f;
21.10–11). This was a criticism born out by analysis of Ephorus’ sea
battles in Diodorus (Meister 1990: 89). Ephorus’ theme was laudably
that of a universal history of Greece, the first great one undertaken. As we saw above, Isocrates had embraced the notion – though not the
reality – of pan‐Hellenism in an age when the Greek world was shrinking through closer communication and aspirations of political unity: “I have become a leader of those arguments urging Greeks to concord with one
another against the barbarians” (Isoc. 12, 12.13). Ephorus embraced
pan‐Hellenism, yet he never linked the stories of the Greeks to one
another, simply listing events and achievements polis by polis. “Ephorus was rather the founder of national history and already displayed … that fatal characteristic of national history, patriotic bias,” cautions Arnaldo Momigliano, continuing:
Ephorus started the fashion that has lasted into our day of ‘books made into books,’ that is, of compilation. Not by chance does the genre of historical epitome – or summary – make its first appearance with Ephorus’
contemporary, Theopompus, who abbreviated Herodotus to two books.
(Momigliano 1978: 11)
K. Meister labels Ephorus a “Schreibtischgelehrter,” “a desk scholar”
(Meister 1990: 89; (and see Plb. 12.25f on his bookishness). With
Ephorus, historical writing becomes more academic and less driven by
investigative reportage or personal autopsy than in the works of Herodotus and Thucydides – historia, “inquiry,” thus takes on a new meaning (Schepens 1977: 95–118). For example, his account describing Miltiades’
siege of Paros, “the wealthiest of the Cyclades” in 489 ( FGrHist 70 F 63) may be derived from Hellanicus; Ctesias’ Persica and Egyptian sources
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may have provided the material for what is now Fragment 65. Ephorus
quoted not only historians, but also Homer (e.g., in F 12), other poets, orators, and inscriptions as they served his need. His authorship of the shorter treatises On Style and On Inventions supports the picture of a studious scholar. Yet a studious approach to history should not be seen pejoratively: direct observation and interview of participants puts serious limitations on the scope of a narrative. Ephorus himself comments that,
“if historians could be present at all events as they happen, this would be the best experience”; he sees autopsy as a valuable but often impossible ideal (Schepens 1970: 163–82). Thus he may have questioned eye-
witnesses or used his own experiences to fill in material on recent years in the last books. His importance today is real, but is felt obliquely, through the prism mostly of Diodorus, who paraphrased him in Books 11–15.<
br />
Ephorus gives us the only continuous account of Greek history from 480
to 340 bc and is a precursor of academic historians – notably, among
ancients, Polybius and Diodorus.
In a part of Ephorus’ preface it is said that music ( mousike ̄) is to be avoided, as it deceives and beguiles humans ( FGrHist 70 T 8), an idea that resonates with Plato and may represent Ephorus’ move to distance
himself from the rhetorical, sophistic mode of Gorgias, Isocrates, and
Duris. In any case, it distances him from mime ̄ sis and its attendant emotions. So in subject matter generally Ephorus supported a didactic
agenda that prized reason (avoidance or rationalization of myth), valor, and the virtues wherever they were found, for example in the “barbarian”
nomadic Scythians. Ephorus praised the legendary Anacharsis (sixth
century bc?) as their culture hero, one of the Seven Sages, and the supposed inventor of the bellows, the two‐fluke anchor, and the potter’s
wheel (F 42 = Strabo 7.3.9). The nomads are presented to the Greeks as
models of the noble savage who “surpassed all others in justice” and “are unmatched in battle against external foes and invincible, possessing
nothing for which they will serve as slaves” (F 42; see Pownall 2004:
126–8). These virtues resonate with those praised in Spartans, their concord ( homonoia), manly courage ( andreia), and the absence of greed and luxury ( FGrHist 70 F 149; Pownall 2004: 130). On the other hand, the historian overtly accuses Pericles of starting the Peloponnesian War in order to divert attention from his embezzlement of Athenian finances:
“he decided it would benefit himself to involve the city in a great war; for in this way he supposed he could escape an exact account of the money
on account of the turmoil and the distractions and fears for the city”
( FGrHist 70 F 196 = D.S. 12.38). This motivation seems to derive from comedy or from an anti‐Periclean tradition, but it is interesting to see a
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self‐serving counterpoint to Thucydides’ great leader figure (Pownall
2004: 134). Notably, causation for Ephorus resides in the individual; this is here in sharp contrast to Thucydides’ analysis of the complex factors of national character that led to the Peloponnesian War. Also, ironically, the
“fears” ( phobous) and chaos among Athenians are to be contrasted with Thucydides’ identification of Spartan fear of Athenian growth as the
truest cause of the war (Th. 1.23), and Ephorus’ Periclean logos (“reason”
or “account”) is not the general’s prescient reason or his accounting of resources highlighted in Thucydides, but the others’ accounting of
Pericles’ ill‐gotten gains. Ephorus does at times acknowledge collective sources of causation, but in several fragments he attaches root causes to individuals, for example Anacharsis is a force for good among Scythians and Lycurgus among the Spartans ( FGrHist 70 F 118 and F 149)
(Pownall 2004: 130). Power, for Ephorus, was held in succession by a
series of state hegemonies – the Theban after the Spartan – though we
have no certain big picture of his schema (Pownall 2004: 131–2;
Wickersham 1994: 119–24). Each people had its characteristic occupa-
tions: for the Athenians, that was naval power ( nautike ̄ n dunamin), for Thessalians, experience in horses, for Boeotians, concern with exercise, and for Ephorus’ home Cyrenians, knowledge of chariots ( FGrHist 70 F
97). Pericles also uses his Athenians’ superiority in “naval power” as an incentive, to encourage them to enter war (F 196.51, 68; cf. Th. 2.13).
Fragments contrast examples of individual or collective vices and virtues, reflecting rather conventional morality and not indicating any sophisticated view of human nature, but certainly linking restraint of the appetites and adherence to unity as key human strengths for gaining, maintaining, or
losing power. Ephorus seems not to reflect pro‐Athenian bias; but per-
haps he resembled Xenophon with his pro‐Spartan slant.
Theopompus of Chios (378/7–c. 320 bc) was supposedly banned
from Chios as a youth, together with his father, for a pro‐Spartan attitude ( FGrHist 115 Theopomp. T 2), then allowed to return in 333/2 bc on the intervention of Alexander the Great. Subsequently he was exiled again when Alexander died and he settled at the court of Ptolemy I, where
friends saved him from being executed as a “troublemaker” ( poluprag-mona). The itinerant author says: “there is no important place of the Greeks nor any city of worth that I did not visit, and though giving
performances of speeches I did not leave behind any great fame or
memory of my own excellence” (F 25). That experience may have driven
him to seek his fame in historical writing.
The tradition making him a student of Isocrates is to be doubted, but
Theopompus was evidently an active orator, composing some 20,000 lines
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(about 600 pages in a modern edition) of speeches (F 25), perhaps
delivered in his travels. Among his pamphlets, again possibly delivered in different cities, are the nonextant Encomium of Philip, Advice to Alexander, and Invective against Plato and his School (T 7, 48; F 259). Dionysius of Halicarnassus has an appraisal of him that may echo the author’s preface in claims of achievement and that certainly offers a contrast to the bookish image of Ephorus:
Moreover, he was an eyewitness of many events, and came into contact
with many leading men and generals of his day, whether popular leaders or more cultivated persons … For he did not (as some do) consider the
recording of his researches as a pastime, but as the one thing most necessary
[ anagkaiotaton] in life … He has related the foundation of nations, described the establishment of cities, portrayed royal lives and peculiar customs, and incorporated in his work everything strange and wonderful
found on any land or sea. (D.H. Pomp. 6 = FGrHist 115 T 20, Roberts, adapted)
On “wonders” ( thaumasia) he was a sort of heir to Herodotus, and devoted one book (8) of his Hellenica to those phenomena. But the chief impression from Dionysius’ summary is that he led an active, engaged
life, like the great earlier historians and unlike Ephorus. He significantly spent time at the court of Philip II in Macedon ( FGrHist 115 T 7), which led him to write the Philippica around the king as a central figure.
Theopompus is said to have written 150,000 lines of historical works
(4,500 pages) on “the deeds of Greeks and barbarians down to his own
day.” He was known among the ancients as a supremely rhetorical
historian, with verbal flourish and dramatic structures. His writing is often seen as harsh, ill tempered, and lively, with passages of “pungency and energy” (so Dionysius; see his testimonial in T 20). Yet our most reliable evidence is limited to 83 direct quotations for 598 lines of text, 412 of which come from Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae, whose aim was to parade sensational, extravagant, licentious, and bizarre anecdotes (Flower 1994: 8). Exegetes beware!
Theopompus’ Hellenica begins from 411 bc, Thucydides’ endpoint, and goes to the battle of Cnidus in 394 bc, which ended Sparta’s hegemony ( FGrHist 115 T 13 and 14), though we know little more from its 18
fragments. The work was probably written in the period from the 350s to the 340s, when the author was in his late twenties (Flower 1994: 27–8) –
impressively early, especially if it followed his activities as an orator and traveler, but feasible for a busy life that ended in his late fifties.
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Polybius feels that Theopompus should have stayed with the Hellenica, a
nd not shifted to a work centered on a single man:
Having set himself the task of writing the history of Greece from the point at which Thucydides leaves off, just when he was approaching the battle of Leuctra and the most brilliant period of Greek history, he abandoned Greece and her efforts, and changing his plan decided to write the history of Philip.
Surely it would have been much more dignified and fairer to include Philip’s achievements in the history of Greece than to include the history of Greece in that of Philip. For not even a man preoccupied by his devotion to royalty would, if he had the power and had found a suitable occasion, have hesitated to transfer the leading part and title of his work to Greece; and no one in his sound senses who had begun to write the history of Greece and had made
some progress in it would have exchanged this for the more pompous biography of a king. What can it have been which forced Theopompus to over-
look such flagrant inconsistencies, if it were not that in writing the one history his motive was to do good, in writing that of Philip to further his own interests? Possibly indeed as regards this error in changing the scheme of the work he might have found something to say for himself, if anyone had questioned him, but as for the foul language he uses about Philip’s friends I think he would hardly have been able to defend himself, but would have
admitted that he sinned gravely against propriety. (Plb. 8.11.3–8, Paton) Theopompus’ Philippica, also scantly preserved but with over 370
fragments, focuses on Philip of Macedon (360–338 bc). Theopompus
may have undertaken the subject in 346 bc, when Philip had his first real successes in Greece, and may have published it between Philip’s death in 336 bc and his expulsion from Chios in 323 bc (Flower 1994: 31–2).
Polybius takes Theopompus to task for moral hypocrisy in flattering
Philip, whose court was actually characterized by flagrant immorality:
For after announcing that he was going to write about a king richly
endowed by nature with every quality that makes for virtue, he charges him with everything that is shameful and atrocious. So that either this author must be a liar and a flatterer in the prefatory remarks at the outset of his history, or he is entirely foolish and childish in his assertions about particulars, imagining that by senseless and far‐fetched abuse he will insure his own credit and gain acceptance for his laudatory estimate of Philip. (Plb. 8.13.1, Paton)
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