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6
Diversity and Innovation in the
Hellenistic Era
The Hellenistic libraries at Alexandria, Pergamum, and elsewhere
developed first in the third century bc, to house the explosion of texts in all genres under the aegis of Hellenistic monarchs. Most famously the
Library of Alexandria, begun under Ptolemies, afforded a new accessi-
bility to written evidence and hence new methods of historical research.
In Central Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, the Hellenistic age –
conventionally placed between 323 and 146 bc, in the wake of Alexander
the Great – not only opened up new political vistas, but also inspired a rich variety of forms of history, not least the diverse biographical treatments of Alexander himself by his contemporaries, Callisthenes, Cleitarchus,
Ptolemy, and Aristobulus. The last two were the main sources for the later work of Alexander’s second‐century ad chronicler Arrian. Biography
became a robust genre and an industry in itself, overlapping with the
encomium and of particular use for political propaganda and rhetorical
training. Simultaneously, in the Greek West (Magna Graecia) both politics and historical narrative took very different turns, culminating in the distinctive and influential works of Timaeus and Polybius. What all these
works had in common was that their forms and perspectives were a very
close response to the realities of power of their times and were in dialogue with the narrative approaches of earlier historians.
The expansion of political horizons required an expansion of explana-
tions, and the contemporary growth of technical and academic–philosophical schools and libraries promoted more encyclopedic approaches to events.
Despite this richness of innovation, historiography did not become rooted in the educational canons of the day, and no list of “classic” historians was produced by contemporaries (the way lists of dramatists were issued).
Greek Historiography, First Edition. Thomas F. Scanlon.
© 2015 Thomas F. Scanlon. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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What the genre gained in innovation, it lost in cultural importance,
perhaps because political instability and economic hardships do not generally favor or encourage robust historical writing. Ethnography was
given a new life and later played a large part in the writings of Strabo and Pausanias. The nascent genre of the novel had affinities with the historical recording of both individual lives and diverse peoples, or we might say that the age demanded diverse views of people shaped through dramatic
and engaging narratives in both historical and fictional texts. Above all other forms, “universal history” was the invention of the Hellenistic historians, who derived the concept directly from the Roman unification of the “inhabited world” ( ge ̄ oikoumene ̄), a historical phenomenon pursued notably by Timaeus and Polybius (Liddell and Fear 2010). The work of
the Alexander historians was clearly another crucial new form arising in this era.
The Early Historians of Alexander
With the assassination of Philip II of Macedon in 336 bc began the
spectacular career of Alexander, which progressed until his death in 323
bc. He razed the rebellious Thebes, then took on the Persian empire,
India, and Egypt, giving rise to a great wave of Alexander historians in his wake. We will discuss later, under historians of the Roman era, Arrian’s much later Alexander history, the Anabasis of Alexander (second century ad) – the only extant complete account of Alexander’s campaigns
aside from Book 17 of Diodorus Siculus. Arrian’s account relied upon
narratives of writers who lived and worked in Alexander’s own time,
primarily Ptolemy son of Lagus and Aristobulus (see Arrian 1.1.1;
also Cartledge 2010: xv–xx and Baynham 2010: 325–3
2.) Yet another of
the Alexander historians writing contemporary accounts, Callisthenes of Olynthus, was his official historian, “embedded” in the army. His status and his story make him stand out from the cluster of other eyewitness
writers – including Chares of Mytilene, Alexander’s bureaucratic assistant/
chamberlain; Eumenes of Cardia, his personal secretary and keeper of the general’s journals; and Nearchus of Crete, a fellow student of Aristotle at Alexander’s Macedonian court, later admiral of Alexander’s fleet and
author of a rich account on the campaigns in India and Iran (Cartledge
2010: xv–xvii; Pearson 1960).
Callisthenes was a relative of Alexander who tutored him back in
Mieza, Macedonia, in the late 340s bc. Together with Aristotle, who was a cousin of his mother, Callisthenes co‐authored a list of Pythian victors
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and Pythian agonothetes (presidents of the games), evidencing an interest in documentation and chronology. An inscription at Delphi honored the
co‐authors’ efforts ( Syll. 3, no. 275). Callisthenes then wrote a History of Greece in ten books covering 387–356 bc – thus overlapping the well-trod ground of Xenophon’s Hellenica, Ephorus’ Hellenica, and Theopompus’ Philippica. Only a few fragments of Callisthenes’ Deeds of Alexander are extant ( FGrHist 124 F 14 and 28–38). Fragment 14 (Str.
17.43; Plu. Alex. 27) relates Alexander’s visit to the Egyptian oracle at Ammon and how he was saved in his trek across the waterless and dust-blown desert by a miraculous rainfall and the guidance of crows, which
suggests an allowance of the intervention of fortune, if not some divine providence. The passage also recounts the miracle of a long‐silent oracle of Apollo among the Branchidae speaking again, and that of dried‐up
springs flowing again in the same area – all supposed signs of Alexander’s descent from Zeus. Another fragment recounts how the waves of the sea
withdrew before the majesty of Alexander ( FGrHist 124 F 31). So we have suggestions that Callisthenes presented Alexander’s power as being rooted in some supernatural force – a sharp departure from the accounts of prior historians, conditioned of course by the extraordinary successes of Alexander’s campaigns and by popular views of his heroic, semi‐divine status. The turn to mystical causation may have also arisen from similar tales attached to Near Eastern and Egyptian rulers with whom Alexander
vied to win popular favor. Callisthenes’ predilection for supernatural causation is also suggested by Fragment 28 (Strabo 13.1.13), which indicates his interest in King Adrastus’ being the first to found a temple of Nemesis.
The more sober Polybius seriously questions the account of the battle at the Cilician Gates, namely the numbers of cavalry and the strategies
deployed (Plb. 12.17–22 = FGrHist 124 F 35), which Polybius ascribes to Callisthenes’ ignorance about the art of war. In the end, as the dramatic tale goes, Callisthenes refused to bow down in prostration ( proskune ̄ sis) before Alexander, and shortly after he was charged with conspiracy and
executed (324 bc; though Chares, to vindicate Alexander, says that he
died a natural death while in prison). This made Callisthenes into a kind of martyr to later authors and political groups. Being a court historian is clearly a different calling from that of the many predecessors we have surveyed, yet it portends a new relationship of the writer to the political potentate in years to come, especially in the Roman era.
Ptolemy son of Lagus (later Ptolemy Soter, “the Savior”) was a fellow
student of Aristotle at Mieza, a bodyguard of Alexander, a skilled military man, and eventually a marshal of Alexander’s empire when the ruler died.
Ptolemy chose Egypt as his portion of the Hellenistic empire divided after
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Alexander’s death – a land where he had success in the expedition to the oracle of Ammon Zeus. In 306 bc Ptolemy assumed the title of pharaoh,
to forestall rival successors, and reigned until his death as an old man in 285 bc. It was in those later years that he composed his memoir of
Alexander’s campaigns, which was not surprisingly seen by Arrian to be
reliable in its military detail and observations. For example, Ptolemy is critical of rivals like Perdiccas (Arr. An. 1.8.1), and he attributes Alexander’s finding his way to Ammon to some hissing snakes of Zeus
that pointed the route (Arr. An. 3.3.5). His Alexander History was written likely within the four decades after the leader’s death. Ptolemy was an artful self‐publicist and an Egyptian ruler who used coinage and the tomb of Alexander to ensure his own reflected glory and to foster the cultural renaissance of Alexandria. The remains of Ptolemy’s work show astute
and lively (at times gruesome) accounts: Greeks in pursuit of Darius ride over the corpses of fallen foes to bridge ditches (Arr. An. 2.11.8); the story of Callisthenes’ conspiracy against Alexander is upheld, and the
conspirator is later tortured on the rack and hanged (Arr. An. 4.14.1, 3 =
FGrHist 138 F 16, 17); an arrow pierces Alexander’s breastplate and enters the lung, letting out hissing air and blood from the wound (Arr.
An. 6.10.1–2 = FGrHist 138 F 25). Ptolemy’s accounts of his own battle and that of Alexander in Western India seem clear and vivid (Arr. An.
4.24.1–25.4 and 5.14.5–15.2 = FGrHist 138 F 18 and F 20). A doubtful anecdote in Ptolemy says that Alexander’s mother urged him to show
mercy on a hill tribe, the Uxians (Ouxioi), dwelling in the passes to Persia (Arr. 3.17.6 = FGrHist 138 F 12). But it is more likely that Ptolemy here omits a more plausible account, whereby defeating the disorganized
tribesmen was more trouble than Ptolemy admits, and the story of the
mother’s plea may be transferred from another campaign (see the note on Arrian’s Anabasis 3.17.6 in Baynham 2010: 128). Ptolemy may not be thoroughly reliable, but his strength is in his military analysis and vivid account of events witnessed firsthand, which no doubt enhanced the narrative of Arrian and others.
Aristobulus of Cassandria, a non‐Macedonian, settled in Macedonia
only after Alexander’s death and possibly started writing only when in his eighties (Luc. Macr. 22), working from his own notes and memories and the texts of other authors. He was by profession an engineer or an
architect, and possibly an interior designer, who for example was ordered by Alexander in 324 bc to restore the tomb of King Cyrus the Great in
Pasargadae, Southern Iran (Arr. An. 6.29.4–11 = FGrHist 139 F51). His pro‐Alexander bias is pronounced, and he was later labeled a “flatterer”
by other Greek writers, for instance when he described Alexander’s
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drinking as mainly social. Apart from Arrian, Aristobulus’ work was used by Strabo, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, and Athenaeus. His account played up Alexander’s skills and virtues, for example his solving of the Gordian knot by using intelligence and not brute force (Arr. An. 2.3.7). Here are a few more examples. According to Aristobulus, Cleitus died entirely
through his own fault and was not a victim of Alexander’s drunken anger (Arr. An. 4.8.9). Alexander returned to a drinking party only when urged by an inspired woman, thus avoiding a conspiracy (Arr. An. 4.13.3–6).
Callisthenes was not executed by Alexander but died of an illness (Arr.
An. 4.14.3; see Baynham 2010: 328). It was the fault of Alexander’s subordinate commanders, who did not follow orders, that the army was
ambushed by Scythians in Sogdiana near the Indian Caucasus (Arr. An.
4.6.1–2). Aristobulus, like Callisthenes, recounts how the ravens guided the army across the Sahara dessert to Ammon’s oracle (Arr. An. 3.3.6).
He tells of the devotion of a Hindu Brahman at Taxila, who join
ed
Alexander’s expedition and whom the great leader admired for seeming
to have much greater self‐control ( phane ̄ nai d’enkratesteron makrō i) (Strabo 15.1.61). A grueling march through Gedrosia, near the Indian
Gulf, is marked by desperate hunger, thirst, and rough terrain, all of
which the leader overcomes by enduring even more than his men (refusing to drink water), finally leading them to safety (Arr. An. 6.23–6 = FGrH
139 F 49). An incident of drink and luxurious celebration at Carmania
near the Persian Gulf is omitted by Aristobulus, who recounts only a
victory sacrifice there (Arr. An. 6.28.2–4 = FGrH 139 F 49–50). Rather than erupting in anger, Alexander is favorably impressed by the honesty of a seer who comes across a portent of Alexander’s imminent death
(Arr. An. 7.18.1–5= FGrH 139 F 54). The only fragment from this author that reflects overtly on the power politics of Alexander is one in which the leader, in Strabo’s quotation or paraphrase,
contemplated gaining possession of this country [Arabia] … The pretext
for the war, says Aristobulus, was that the Arabians were the only people who did not send their ambassadors to Alexander; but the true reason was his grasping to be lord of all … [after considering their worship of two deities] he supposed that, after his conquests, they would worship him as a third, if he permitted them to enjoy their former national independence.
(Str. 16.1.11)
Obviously the rationalization would also allow Alexander to forego war
against these peoples. No other comment by Aristobulus on imperial
ambition is preserved or can be assumed to have been made, but the
Greek for “grasping” ( oregomenon) may reflect an oblique criticism
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(assuming that this is Aristobulus’ wording). It is a favorite term for Thucydides to mark the Athenians’ grasp to extend their power after their victory at Pylos (Th. 4.17.4, 21.2, 41.4; 6.10.5). In sum, Aristobulus
consistently points up the innate endurance, strategic skill, and virtuous temperance of Alexander, which has some assistance from divine signs.
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