The Story of Greece and Rome

by Tony Spawforth

  Sostratus inscription: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 26 (1976), no. 1137.

  ‘no one could compete’: Herodotus 4, 152, 3.

  ‘it is a law among the Etruscans’: Theophrastus fragment 204 cited by Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 12, 517d-e (trans. C. B. Gulick).

  ‘Before the Roman supremacy’: Livy 5, 33, 7–8.

  ‘Hieron [son] of Deinomenes and the Syracusans’ (inscription on Hieron’s helmet): Russell Meiggs and David Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC (Oxford, 1969, revised edn 1988), no. 29.

  Date of battle: Diodorus Siculus 11, 51.

  ‘Romulus and Remus lived’: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1, 79, 11.

  ‘obscure and lowly’: Livy 1, 8, 5–6.

  ‘dregs of Romulus’: Cicero, ad Atticum 2, 1, 8.

  ‘pleading the irresistible force of their passion’: Livy 1, 9, 16.

  ‘mothers of free men’: Livy 1, 9, 14–15.

  ‘filled with wonder’: Livy 1, 1, 8.

  Vulci vase: Munich, Antikensammlungen, 1546.

  ‘no wrong [to the] Latins who are [Roman] subjects’: Polybius 3, 22, 11.

  7 ‘Lord of All Men’?

  ‘Lord of all men’: Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 132, trans. C. D. Adams.

  ‘Leader of the Greeks’: Thucydides 1, 132, 2–3.

  ‘Behold, I will stir up’: Isaiah 13, 18.

  ‘I am Darius, the Great King’: Behistun inscription (DB): § 1–4, trans. Maria Brosius, The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I (London, 2000), p. 30.

  Royal tombs, throne-platform inscriptions: Amélie Kuhrt, The Persian Empire (London, 2007), vol. 2, pp. 483–4.

  ‘richest under the sun’: Diodorus Siculus 17, 70, 2.

  ‘an arena for meditation’: Madawi al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 77–8.

  ‘When they reached the place’ (Asidates): Xenophon, Anabasis 7, 8, 9–16.

  ‘the whole treasure’: Strabo 15, 3, 9.

  USA figures: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/silver/mcs-2012-silve.pdf.

  ‘the retail merchant’: Herodotus 3, 89, 3.

  ‘father of history’: Cicero, Laws 1, 5.

  ‘the more one studies him’: J. L. Lazenby, The Defence of Greece 490–479 BC (Warminster, 1993), p. 15.

  ‘The Persians saw [the Athenians]’: Herodotus 6, 112, 2–3.

  ‘Cynegirus son of Euphorion’: Herodotus 6, 114, 1.

  ‘I do not wish that a man’: Naqš-i Rustam inscription (DNb) § 4, trans. Maria Brosius, The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I (London, 2000), p. 64. See Thomas Harrison in A. Fitzpatrick-McKinley, ed., Assessing Biblical and Classical Sources for the Reconstruction of Persian Influence (Wiesbaden, 2014), pp. 3–11.

  ‘wood-built wall’ oracle: Herodotus 7, 141, 3–4.

  ‘Stranger, go tell’: Herodotus 7, 228, 2.

  ‘display some feat to the king’: Herodotus 8, 89, 2.

  ‘the Persians were akin to him’: Herodotus 8, 136, 1.

  ‘by courage and constant effort’: Herodotus 9, 70, 2.

  ‘that freedom of theirs’: Herodotus 7, 147, 1.

  ‘As it is, to say that the Athenians’: Herodotus 7, 139, 5.

  8 The Same but Different

  ‘in a ghastly graveyard marble’: Nancy Mitford cited in Charlotte Mosley, ed., A Talent to Annoy (London, 1996), p. 107.

  Dining crockery: Ann Steiner, Classical Antiquity, 21 (2002), pp. 347–90; also an unpublished paper on the Tholos pottery which Professor Steiner generously made available to me.

  ‘taking the people into his hetaireia’: Herodotus 5, 66, 2.

  ‘nébuleuse’: Jean Duma, Les Bourbon-Penthièvre (1678–1893) (Paris, 1995), p. 14.

  ‘Cimon, son of Miltiades’: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 46 (1996), no. 79.

  ‘it was also used to remove’: ?Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 22, 6.

  ‘golden brooches shaped like cicadas’: Thucydides 1, 6, 3–4.

  ‘if anyone else’: Plato, Protagoras 319b-d, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, adjusted.

  Pericles’ ‘ability’ and ‘personal repute’: Thucydides 2, 65, 8.

  ‘works of Pericles’: Plutarch, Pericles 13, 3.

  ‘treat everyone equally’: Thucydides 2, 37, 1.

  ‘poverty’; ‘excellence’: Thucydides 2, 37, 1.

  ‘Great is your glory’: Thucydides 2, 45, 2.

  ‘the name of the good woman’: Plutarch, Moralia 242e.

  ‘Like donkeys’: Tyrtaeus, fragments 6–7 West.

  ‘the most high-spirited’: Thucydides 4, 80, 3.

  Nocturnal bands: Plutarch, Lycurgus 28.

  ‘governed at all times’: Thucydides 4, 80, 3.

  ‘about eight thousand men’: Herodotus 7, 234, 2.

  ‘not even a thousand’: Aristotle, Politics 2, 1270a.

  ‘For among the Spartans’: Polybius 12, 6b, 8.

  ‘from early childhood’: Thucydides 2, 39.

  ‘It has come about that some of the Spartans’: Aristotle, Politics 2, 1270a.

  ‘He (Lycurgus) made it a point of honour’: Xenophon, Spartan Constitution 2, 9.

  ‘most shameful’: Xenophon, Spartan Constitution 2, 13.

  ‘embraces and lying together’: Cicero, On the Republic 4, 2a (trans. David Fott).

  Masks: Jonah Lloyd Rosenberg, ‘The Masks of Orthia: Form, Function and the Origins of Theatre’, Annual of the British School at Athens 110 (2015), pp. 247–61.

  ‘Don’t you see?’: Alcman, Partheneion lines 50–57, trans. Gregory Nagy: http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5294 (accessed 10 January 2017).

  9 ‘Unprecedented Suffering’?

  ‘Mecypernians’: lines 10–16 of Inscriptiones Graecae, vol. 1, 3rd edn, no. 259; translation in Robin Osborne and P. J. Rhodes, eds, Greek Historical Inscriptions 478–404 BC (Oxford, 2017), p. 97.

  ‘on the stage’: Isocrates, On the Peace 82.

  ‘And surely Greece is insulted’: Plutarch, Pericles 12, 2.

  Parthenon payments: see the commentary of Robin Osborne and P. J. Rhodes, eds, Greek Historical Inscriptions 478–404 BC (Oxford, 2017), p. 262.

  ‘For his part, Pericles’: Plutarch, Pericles 12, 3.

  ‘And you have never considered’: Thucydides 1, 70, 1–3.

  Comparison with Troy: Simon Hornblower, The Greek World 479–323 BC, 4th edn (London, 2011), p. 156.

  ‘I detest the Spartans’: Aristophanes, Acharnians lines 509–12.

  ‘You know as well as we do’: Thucydides 5, 89.

  ‘put to death all the grown men’: Thucydides 5, 116, 3–4.

  ‘the most important action’: Thucydides 7, 87, 5.

  ‘a longing for foreign sights’: Thucydides 6, 24, 3. Compare www.quora.com/What-made-you-join-the-military (accessed 14 January 2017).

  ‘exceedingly ambitious of a command’: Thucydides 6, 15, 2.

  ‘who seeks to be admired’: Thucydides 6, 15, 3.

  ‘enthusiasm of the majority’: Thucydides 6, 24, 4.

  ‘more than twenty thousand slaves’: Xenophon, Ways and Means 4, 14.

  ‘corrupted by flattery’: Xenophon, Spartan Constitution 14, 2.

  Cynisca: Palatine Anthology 13.16; Sayings of Spartans, Agesilaus 49 (Apophthegmata Laconica 212b).

  ‘eat the full citizens’: Xenophon, Hellenika 3, 3, 6.

  ‘The impact of one single battle’: Aristotle, Politics 2, 1270a.

  10 Examined Lives and Golden Mouths

  ‘many Athenians who reached home safely’: Plutarch, Nicias 29.3 (Syracuse).

  ‘left the theatre abruptly’: Plutarch, Pelopidas 29.

  ‘I grieve, I grieve’: Vienna fragment: translation and musical arrangement in Eric Csapo and William J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (Ann Arbor, MI, 2001), Plate 21A.

  Naples vase: the museum website has photographs and a description in English: http://cir.campania.beniculturali.it/museoarcheolo
giconazionale/thematic-views/image-gallery/RA84/view (accessed 25 January 2018).

  ‘That being agreed’: Aristophanes, Knights, lines 1384–1386 (contrasted translations of Gilbert Murray (1956) and Kenneth Dover (1978)).

  ‘We two have a master’: Aristophanes, Knights, lines 40–49, trans. Jeffrey Henderson.

  ‘train you, if you give them money’: Aristophanes, Clouds, lines 98–9.

  ‘For you yourselves saw’: Plato, Apology 19c.

  ‘For if I did not believe’: Plato, Phaedo 63b-c.

  ‘[pregnant] with things that it is fitting’: Plato, Symposium 209a.1–2, ed. C. J. Rowe.

  ‘For I imagine’: Plato, Symposium 209c.1–5, ed. C. J. Rowe.

  ‘correct kind of boy-loving’: Plato, Symposium 211b.6, ed. C. J. Rowe.

  ‘trying to get hold of truly beautiful things’: Plato, Symposium 218c.6–219a.1, ed. C. J. Rowe.

  ‘in the Academy’: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Life of Plato 3, 9, trans. Mark Joyal and others, Greek and Roman Education: A Sourcebook (London, 2009), p. 110, no. 5.15a.

  ‘I saw a group of boys’: Epicrates, fragment 10 Kassel-Austin, trans. Mark Joyal and others, Greek and Roman Education: A Sourcebook (London, 2009), p. 112, no. 5.17.

  ‘disguising for some considerable time’: Themistius, Oration 33, 295c-d, trans. Mark Joyal and others, Greek and Roman Education: A Sourcebook (London, 2009), pp. 111–12, no. 5.16b.

  ‘he had a lisping voice’: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers: Life of Aristotle 5, 2.

  ‘And generally, the molluscs’: Aristotle, Historia Animalium 544a, 16–22.

  ‘Things do not appear the same’: Aristotle, Rhetoric 2, 1377b30–1378a2 and 1378a 20–2, trans. Terence Irwin and Gail Fine, Aristotle: Selections (Indianapolis, 1995), pp. 534–5.

  Spear butt: Pat Foster, Greek Arms and Armour (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1982), p. 13. See John Ma, ‘Chaironeia 338: Topographies of Commemoration’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 128 (2008), pp. 72–91.

  11 ‘A Brilliant Flash of Lightning’

  ‘Philip used to train’: Polyaenus, Stratagems 4, 2, 10.

  ‘he draws no distinction’: Demosthenes, Philippic 3, 50.

  Inscription about landed estates: Miltiades Hatzopoulos, Une donation du roi Lysimaque (Athens and Paris, 1988).

  ‘[c]areless of what they had’: Theopompus, History of Philip, fragment 225b cited by Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 6, 260d–261a.

  Chaeronea: Polyaenus, Stratagems 2, 1, 9.

  ‘he dispensed with his horse’: Plutarch, Artaxerxes 24, trans. Timothy Duff.

  ‘stormed, plundered’: Plutarch, Alexander 11, 5.

  ‘a brilliant flash of lightning’: Appian, Roman History Preface 10.

  ‘insatiable thirst for extending his possessions’: Arrian 7, 19, 6, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt.

  ‘The wealth of their [i.e. the Arabs’] country’: Arrian 7, 20, 2, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt.

  ‘observations from Babylon’: Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo 2, 12.

  ‘myrrh was burnt’: Ephippus fragment 5 = Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 12, 538a.

  Alexander dresses as Artemis: Ephippus fragment 5 = Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 12, 537e-f. I first offered my reinterpretation of this alleged transvestism in an online journal (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/histos/HISTOS62012.html, accessed 25 January 2018): ‘The pamphleteer Ephippus, King Alexander and the Persian royal hunt’, Histos, 6 (2012), pp. 169–213.

  ‘there is nothing left for the king than to become a god’: Isocrates, Letters 3, 5.

  12 Game of Thrones, or the World after Alexander

  ‘When a child’: Ai-Khanoum inscription: M. M. Austin, The Hellenistic World, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2006), no. 192.

  ‘Those who till the soil’: Aristotle, Politics 7, 1330a, 25.

  ‘And the city contains’: Strabo 17, 1, 8.

  ‘The Museum is also a part’: Strabo 17, 1, 8.

  ‘Seeing at once’: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dinarchus 1, trans. Gladys Shoesmith.

  ‘Herophilus and Erasistratus’: Cornelius Celsus, On medicine, Proem 23–24, translated in James Longrigg, ed., Greek Medicine: From the Heroic to the Hellenistic Age: A Source Book (London, 1998), no. VII, 2.

  ‘They have treated me with contempt’: M. M. Austin, The Hellenistic World, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2006), no. 245 (dated around 255 BC).

  ‘the Macedonians who hold Alexandria in Egypt’: Livy 38, 17, 10 (invented speech of a Roman general supposedly in 189 BC).

  ‘Ptolemy was in love’: Pausanias 1, 7, 1.

  ‘and of his sister’: M. M. Austin, The Hellenistic World, 2nd edn (Cambridge 2006), no. 61 (dated between 268 and 265 BC).

  ‘well done and fitting’: William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2, lines 320–321.

  Pergamene altar: Andreas Scholl in Carlos Picón and Seán Hemingway, eds, Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World (New Haven and London, 2016), pp. 44–53.

  ‘every male they put to the sword’: Pausanias 10, 22, 2.

  ‘gentleman’s agreement’: R. T. Pritchard, ‘Cicero and the Lex Hieronica,’ Historia 19 (1970), p. 357.

  ‘engines accommodated to all the purposes’: Plutarch, Lucullus 14, 9.

  ‘stronger and firmer’: Pausanias 6, 12, 3–4.

  ‘He passed most of his life’: Plutarch, Marcellus, 14, 9.

  13 ‘Senatus Populusque Romanus’

  Inscriptions for the Scipios and Paulla Cornelia: Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae nos 1, 4 and 10.

  ‘Have you brought forth children’: Plutarch, Caius Gracchus 4, 6.

  The head of the statue of the so-called Togato Barberini, although ancient, is a modern addition according to the museum website: http://www.centralemontemartini.org (accessed 23 January 2018: click on ‘Collezioni’, then on ‘Tutte le Opere’, then on ‘Togato Barberini’).

  Caesar’s portrait: see http://museoarcheologico.piemonte.beniculturali.it. (accessed 22 February 2017). Discussion in John Pollini, From Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient Rome (Norman, OK, 2012), pp. 51–2.

  ‘they withdrew to the Sacred Mount’: Livy 2, 32, 2–4.

  ‘equalized the rights of all’: Livy, 3, 34, 3.

  ‘If he has broken a bone’ and other extracts from the Twelve Tables: M. H. Crawford, Roman Statutes II (London, 1996), pp. 607 (Tabula I, 14), 681–2 (Tabula VIII, 3), 707 (Tabula X, 4).

  ‘even now they are the fountain-head’: Livy 3, 34, 6.

  ‘Naevius long ago’: Pseudoasconius in T. Stangl, Ciceronis Orationum Scholiastae (Vienna and Leipzig, 1912), p. 215.

  ‘no one could say for certain’: Polybius 6, 11.

  ‘masters of everything’: Polybius 6, 12.

  ‘in general every rumour’: ?Quintus Cicero, Commentariolum Petitionis, trans. D. W. Taylor and J. Murrell as A Short Guide to Electioneering (London, 1974), p. 5 (17).

  ‘Respecting the residents’: Livy 38, 36, 7–9.

  ‘What was the ruin of Sparta’: Tacitus, Annals 11, 24.

  Lucius Aurelius Hermia tombstone: British Museum 1867,0508.55, viewable online, with the curator’s translation of the Latin: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=465522&partId=1 (accessed 25 January 2018).

  ‘Since there were still a very large number’: Appian, Civil War 1, 120.

  Cicero’s ‘knightly’ status: Pro Murena 17.

  ‘not made yesterday’: Ovid, Tristia 4, poem 10, line 8.

  ‘reared on blood’: Ovid, Amores 3, 8, 10.

  ‘For I conceive that what in other nations’: Polybius 6, 56.

  ‘And new religious fears’: Livy 30, 2, 9–13.

  ‘In my opinion their object is to use it’: Polybius 6, 56.

  ‘The whole distinction of real and unreal’: William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 2 (New York, 1890), p. 290, cited by Henk Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward R
eadings in Greek Theology (Leiden, 2011), p. 470.

  14 Boots on the Ground

  Grad hoard: Jana Horvat, ‘The Hoard of Roman Republican Weapons from Grad near Šmihel’, Arheološki vestnik 53 (2002), pp. 117–92.

  ‘takes a cudgel’: Polybius 6, 37.

  ‘it sometimes happens that’: Polybius 6, 37.

  ‘It was customary for the fetial’: Livy 1, 32, 13.

  ‘would hurl his spear’: Livy 1, 32, 14.

  ‘Have you never read of the citizen’: Pliny, Letters 2, 3, 8.

  ‘First the consuls’: Livy 9, 6, 1–2.

  ‘There is scarce any other Roman victory’: Livy 9, 15, 8.

  ‘the acts of the people, relative to alliances’: Suetonius, Vespasian 8, 5.

  ‘Let there be peace’: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 6, 95.

  ‘suitable places . . . bulwark of empire’: Cicero, De lege agraria 2, 73.

  ‘and hoping that he might repeat that victory’: Pausanias 1, 12, 2.

  ‘These may be barbarians’: Plutarch, Pyrrhus 16, 5.

  ‘the longest, most continuous’: Polybius 1, 63.

  Rams: see Francesca Olivero, ‘Bronze rams of the Egadi battle,’ Skyllis 109 (2012), pp. 117–24; Jonathan Prag, ‘Bronze rostra from the Egadi islands off NW Sicily: the Latin inscriptions’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 27 (2014), pp. 33–59.

  ‘He practised and drilled his crews’: Polybius 1, 59.

  ‘saw that the Carthaginians’: Polybius 1, 10.

  ‘theft’: Polybius 3, 30, 4.

  ‘To reckless courage . . . no religious scruple’: Livy 21, 5–9.

  ‘or even by himself’: Polybius 18, 32.

  ‘When [the Greeks] were tired of shouting’: Plutarch, Flamininus 11.1.

  Seaenoci inscription (Latin text): L’Année Épigraphique 624 (2006).

  ‘The Aetolians, after some further observations’: Polybius 20, 9 with Álvaro M. Moreno Leoni, Histos 8 (2014), pp. 146–79, reasserting the traditional interpretation.

  ‘The people of the Aetolians’: Livy 38, 11, 2.

  ‘There was intense competition’: Sallust, Bellum Catilinum 7.6.

  ‘The records have been vitiated’: Livy 8, 40, 4.

  ‘commended’: Livy 35, 10, 4.

  ‘triumphed’: Livy 35, 10, 5.

  ‘The amount of money exhibited’: Plutarch, Flamininus 14.

  ‘I, Manius Acilius son of Gaius’: for Glabrio’s base see Dylan Bloy, ‘Greek war booty at Luna and the afterlife of Manius Acilius Glabrio’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 43/44 (1998/9), pp. 49–61.