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INTRODUCTION 1 Wilamowitz: cited per litt. by the Egyptologist Heinrich Schäfer, Von ägyptischer Kunst, 3d ed. (Leipzig, 1930), 350–351: “V. Wilamowitz mir schrieb, ‘. . . er . . . überhaupt ein so miserabler Skribent ist.’” Schwartz 1903, col. 663: “D.’s Compilation—ein Werk Diodorus Siculus is known to few people today apart from ancient historians , and even they, for the most part, consult his text rather than read it. This may explain why the one fact virtually all classicists think they know about him—that he is a mere slavish copyist only as good as his source—has remained for so long unchallenged dogma. There can be few ancient authors who have elicited such scorn and opprobrium from the academic world. Wilamowitz dismissed Diodorus as a “miserable scribbler.” Schwartz, in his article for Pauly-Wissowa, called theBibliotheke a mere compilation, adding that “one could not describe his book as a work.” For Wilhelm Soltau, Diodorus was “a man who inspires little confidence, a flat and foolish pen-pusher.” A. D. Nock termed the introductory proem to the whole work, where Diodorus lays out his historiographical aims in detail, the work of “a small man with pretensions.” Even today, a large majority of scholars concurs in finding this hapless author mechanically dependent on his sources (see, e.g., Jane Hornblower’s 1981 monograph on Hieronymus of Cardia, and Bizière’s 1975 edition of Book 19). An extreme example of this de haut en bas treatment of Diodorus as a copyist stupid to the point of mindlessness, dependent on one source at a time, never reading an available great original when an inferior derivative was to hand, is provided by Stylianou’s recent (1998) commentary on Book 15. Here the object of his research is pilloried as “a mere epitomizer and an incompetent one at that,” guilty of “empty and inept rhetoric,” “slipshod methods,” “incompetence, lack of care, and ignorance,” endless muddles and blunders. A very English variant is that of Tarn, who observes, with supercilious disdain, “He was not a competent historian, but that he naturally did not recognize; he is rather stupid, but honestly in earnest; he writes what he thinks is history.”1 2 diodorus siculus kann man das Buch nicht nennen . . .”; Soltau 1889, 368, “Zwar ein wenig vertrauenerweckender Mann, ein schaler thörichter Scribent . . .”; A. D. Nock, JRS 49 (1959): 5 (⫽ Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World [Oxford, 1972], vol. 2, 860); Hornblower 1981, 28; Bizière 1975, ix; Stylianou 1998, 49, 139, 15, 137, 136, 138 (see also his review of Sacks, in BMCR 02.06.19); Tarn 1948, 2:63. 2 Anti-Diodoran skeptics have taken this as sufficient reason not to believe any of them, apparently on the grounds that if he really was the Dummkopf they paint him to be, he must by definition also have been a chronic liar, an assertion the logic of which eludes me. 3 See R. Helm, Eusebius Werke: Siebenter Band: Die Chronik des Hieronymus, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1956), 1:155: “Diodorus Siculus Graecae scriptor historiae clarus habetur.” 4 No. D 1152 Adler s.v. DiÒdvrow: g°gone d¢ §p‹ t«n xrÒnvn AÈgoÊstou Ka¤sarow ka‹§pãnv. The Augustan assumption is encouraged by Sacks’ odd belief (1990, 164) that here§pãnv, “earlier,” means its opposite, “later,” thus compounding the error. This is the ancient author who provides us with our only surviving connected narrative of events from the Persian Wars to Alexander’s Successors, without whom our knowledge of ancient Sicilian history would be virtually nonexistent, and whose chronological system is mainly responsible for the solidity of the Athenian archon list. The contrast is piquant and revealing. An unprejudiced examination of Diodorus in fact tells us a good deal, not only about ancient history and historiography, but also about the habits and assumptions of modern historians. diodorus siculus: life and background Who was Diodorus Siculus, and what did he think he was trying to accomplish ? As so often in antiquity, virtually everything we know about this enigmatic universal historian derives from statements in his own work.2 There are only two external references to Diodorus that I know of, and both raise more problems than they solve. First we have St. Jerome, who in his version of Eusebius’ Chronicle, for the year 49 b.c.e., states that “Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian, is [now] regarded as famous.”3 The other, equally brief, reference is in the Suda...

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