by David Grant
But a more malevolent Alexander did, nevertheless, appear; Cleitarchus may have been influenced by Theopompus’ earlier harsh moralising on the Argead court, as well as the earlier negative Peripatetic-school noises (as proposed by Tarn and others, though we have little actual evidence) that were originally aired from Athens under the protection of Cassander’s shield. For through the period 317-307 BCE, Cassander installed as his administrator (later termed a ‘tyrant’ too) Demetrius of Phalerum, a student of Theophrastus, in a role that was ‘in theory an oligarchy, but in practice a monarchy’. We should note, however, that Stilpo, Cleitarchus’ philosophy teacher, had himself been influenced by Diogenes the Cynic whose movement had little good to say about the Macedonian king.157 It is not impossible that tragic elements of Duris’ Samian Chronicle, if not his later Macedonian-centred history, also infiltrated Cleitarchus’ account, if it was published sufficiently late.158
Besides these influences in circulation, disgruntled veterans and their offspring reared on stories of the campaign sagas, may well have recalled the gradual deterioration in Alexander’s behaviour when the troubled campaign was quagmired in the East. Like many who had taken part in the decade-long invasion and subjugation of the Persian Empire, veterans surely faced the dilemma of wanting to be associated with, and yet disassociated from, select episodes of the story. As time passed, the second generation Ptolemies had nothing to lose from seeing a more tarnished image of Alexander manifest itself, as this in turn highlighted their own ‘benign’ rule, and ‘… not every monarch has an interest in preserving the immaculate purity of their predecessor’s reputation.’159 Thus the compromised, politicised and carefully re-characterised template of what we term the Roman-era Vulgate genre of Alexander was born.
The stature of Cleitarchus’ biography of Alexander – as a conduit between the earlier eyewitness histories and the later Roman-era derivative accounts – helps us address an inconvenient reality: the dividing line between primary sources (eyewitnesses) and the secondary historians who drew from their testimony, is often indistinct. If Ptolemy and Aristobulus were influential on campaign, they were nevertheless writing some decades after the events they were inking on papyrus, and though the ‘real organ of history is memory’, these aged court sources must have leaned on either personal memoirs, hypomnematismoi, or on other already published eyewitness accounts to complete their own books. For we have detailed descriptions (if often contradictory) of the rank-by-rank battle orders, troop numbers, section commanders and the intricate manoeuvres in the rivers, valleys and plains at the Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela and the Hydaspes River, as well as the numerous skirmishes and sieges in mountain passes and ‘unassailable’ rocks of the upper satrapies of the Persian Empire.160
Significantly more military actions had taken place in the Successor Wars, probably before Ptolemy and Aristobulus published, some eclipsing even these in complexity and others in strategic importance to the survival of the Diadokhoi. Whilst Lucian did refer to a collection of letters to and from Ptolemy, suggestive that he maintained communication with Seleucus at least, these veteran luminaries would have wished to consult any surviving logs from the campaign Ephemerides, alongside any extracts they still had of Callisthenes’ history, as far as it went.161 And it didn’t go far; the contradictions between Ptolemy and Aristobulus that Arrian cited are frequent; some are minor and some relate to the most fundamental of detail.162
The earlier published accounts of Onesicritus, Chares and Nearchus were already in circulation, so Ptolemy and Aristobulus would have been able to extract from them, but the result, like Cleitarchus’ book, would have effectively been another syncretism. Moreover, a century ago Eduard Schwartz re-asked a question linked to an observation Polybius had once made:163
For since many events occur at the same time in different places, and one man cannot be in several places at one time, nor is it possible for a single man to have seen with his very own eyes every place in the world and all the peculiar features of different places…164
Pearson more sarcastically added: ‘Indeed, it is hard to imagine how history could have been written at all in ancient times, except by men with great powers of memory.’165 He also doubted Xenophon could have taken notes on the so-called ‘march of the ten thousand’ from which he created his Anabasis (and there are gaps), or that Nearchus could have kept a useful log on his almost fatal sea voyage. The latter seems a little unfair; even the Indus-Hydaspes fleet had a secretary, Evagoras, and surely the sea fleet did too.166 But the relative value of a ‘primary’ source to a ‘secondary’ offspring is not always as clear as the label suggests, rendering the definition of ‘tertiary sources’ even more opaque.
In these circumstances the Roman expression, rem ad triarios redisse, comes fittingly to mind. It broadly translates as ‘it has come to the third rank’ and it came to suggest a military last-resort situation. A legacy of the Etruscans and the reforms of Camillus (ca. 446-365 BCE), the class-based ranks within the Roman legion positioned the inexperienced hastati in the front row in battle, the more heavily armed principes in the second row, and the veteran triarii behind them on whom the first ranks would fall back if unable to break the enemy line.167 It was a system that served Rome well until faced with less conventional generals like Hannibal. In attempting to break the secrets of the primary sources, Quellenforschung is often similarly challenged as so little early material survived. Secondary sources are thin on the ground, and it is often left to the tertiary sources – the thrice or more removed historians – to defend a story; so figuratively speaking, Quellenforschung is often relying on the texts of the triarii too.
The consequences of this are not always disastrous, for we are also faced with the myopic symptoms of long-sighted historical perspective, an apparent contradiction in terms explained by Hornblower’s comment: ‘Proximity as well as distance, can distort the vision.’168 Historians in the thick of things might be compromised by their direct involvement. In contrast, later historians, and even coetaneous writers compiling from the ‘privileged’ position of ‘reflective’ distance and even exile, often provided a more holistic and balanced narrative, if not entirely free from bias. Xenophon, Thucydides and Hieronymus, as well as the Greek Sicilian historian Timaeus and Polybius who followed them, all commenced or completed their historical writing in forced absentia.169
Exile, by definition, obliged the authors to live in the sphere of an opposite, or at least neutral, regime, and Plutarch provided insight into its result: ‘…ostracism was not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this disfranchisement.’170 Thucydides, who had been banished from Athens, was sufficiently self-aware to explain:
It was also my fate to be an exile from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; and being present with both parties, and more especially the Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, I had leisure to observe affairs more closely.171
Here again ‘distance’ (though we do not know to where he journeyed, potentially amongst Athenian allies and enemies) apparently enabled ‘closer’ observation. Thucydides’ own failure to relieve Amphipolis when under assault by the Spartan Brasidas in 424/423 BCE, and his two decades of expulsion that followed, made him question life deeply; his prose has been described as retaining a ‘bitter austere gravity’ with a ‘ruthless, condensed brooding astringency’ born of that displacement.172 Xenophon, similarly exiled from Athens, went further in a quest for (the façade of) neutrality, for there is evidence that he originally published the Anabasis under the nom de plume ‘Themistogenes of Syracuse’ to provide the allusion of impartiality to events he himself participated in or orchestrated.173
Should we therefore value refugee reportage over that of the statesman-historian who dispossessed him of his home? And do we credit the account of the embattled general with more authenticity than the narrative of the civilian onlooker? Which primary is ‘prime’ mater
ial and which is primed by the threat of war, ‘the continuation of politics by other means’, according to Von Clausewitz?174 The answer to the last question if of course both, and these questions bring us back to Alexandria in the vibrant and dangerous years that saw the insoluble and permanent dyes of Alexander’s first blueprints stain papyrus.
A layout of Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphos, showing the Pharos lighthouse centre top. According to Philo, the city was laid out in five major quarters: the Brucheion or royal quarter; the gymnasium quarter; the Soma; the Museion quarter; and Rhacotis, in an overall grid layout of the city. To the south of the canal lay Lake Mareotis. From K Baedeker Egypt, handbook for travellers. pt. 1. Lower Egypt, with the Fayum and the peninsula of Sinai, 1885. From Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). http://hdl.handle.net/1911/9303.
OBSCURUM PER OBSCURIUS: THE BIRTH OF AN ALEXANDRIAN LITERARY MONOPOLY
The conflicts that frequently appear in the extant accounts, many of them relating to names, numbers, and relative chronology, suggest that neither Callisthenes’ official account nor the Ephemerides from which the Journal was supposedly extracted, survived to the Roman period, except in fragments and through second or third-hand testimonia. If they had survived, no contradictory reporting should ever have appeared, for together they would have provided a near perfect campaign log, whilst any archetypal inaccuracies would have been uniformly carried forward.175 Further, and to quote Robinson’s 1953 study of the source problem: ‘Since agreement ends with the arrest of Callisthenes, however, it is evident that historians had the facts of the expedition through Callisthenes, and not directly from the Ephemerides.’ Relating to the troubled reporting post-327 BCE, Robinson went on to conclude: ‘Therefore the Ephemerides for both the first and second divisions [his way of carving up campaign chronology] were probably lost before any account except that of Callisthenes was written.’176
The conclusion to be drawn here is that the books of the Alexandrian and possibly Cassandreian-influenced historians – Ptolemy, Aristobulus and Cleitarchus – dominated the Roman-era perceptions of Alexander, and, in turn, the Roman-era derivatives are the basis of the interpretations we make today. One result is that modern scholars believe (to quote Pearson) that: ‘The history of events after his [Alexander’s] death is intelligible only on the assumption that he made no Will.’177 Yet that contention falls apart if we are prepared to accept that those blueprint histories were specifically fashioned to give credence, or serve obeisance, to claims of intestacy and Alexander’s failure to clarify his succession.
If Ptolemy and Aristobulus were at the foundation of Arrian’s court-sourced biography (as Arrian himself stated on his opening page), and if Cleitarchus’ book substantially templated the Vulgate-genre accounts, our suggestion of an ‘Alexandrian’ monopoly seems to hold. The combined tradition carried forward by these three historians became a robust pesticide on the tenuous roots of any mention of a succession attempt by Alexander; it was a Hellenistic literary inheritance tax that foiled his estate planning. And this is our suggested publication order for these three influential books: Ptolemy first, then Aristobulus, and lastly Cleitarchus, a discussion not without contention and discord.
We do not have space here to cite the full extent of previous arguments and they are in any case inconclusive, but a few serve to illustrate the disparity of opinion.178 Gustav Droysen’s 1833 biography of Alexander employed newly developing critical methods at work on the ‘great men’ of history and in 1877 he proposed that Cleitarchus’ book had been in circulation before those of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, a view later backed up by Eduard Schwartz.179 The ‘early’ view was broadly supported by a 1921 article by Felix Jacoby proposing a date of ca. 300 BCE, with Helmut Berve, whose 1926 Das Alexanderrei auf prosopographischer provided additional prosopographic perspective on the command structures within the Macedonian army, following suit. Since then many scholars have concurred, believing Cleitarchus published within twenty years of Alexander’s death.180
In contrast, Tarn saw the order as Aristobulus, then Ptolemy, with Cleitarchus writing last, after Ptolemy’s death and possibly as late as 260 BCE. Tarn further believed Cleitarchus had little later impact on the Vulgate genre and on Curtius in particular, whose principal source therefore remained obscurum per obscurius.181 Like Tarn, Pearson argued that Cleitarchus used Aristobulus as a source, while other scholars have proposed publication in instalments, so straddling the dating divide. Hammond, for example, proposed Ptolemy circulated his account between 320 to 295 BCE, with chapter-packets being issued at intervals (as did Livy three centuries later), though the earlier end of this dating conflicts with Arrian’s claim that Ptolemy was a ‘king’ when he published, for this suggests a terminus post quem of 305 BCE.182
Although the geographical arguments, titular dissections, and acquaintance evidences that underpin the chronology debate each fall short of ‘proof’, the mantra for those concluding Cleitarchus published first is his report of the alleged heroics of Ptolemy in a gruesome battle against a city of the Mallians in India when Alexander found himself alone inside the city wall.183 The episode was treated rather vocally by both Arrian and Curtius who both went to the trouble of uncharacteristically describing Cleitarchus, and also Timagenes who wrote later in Alexandria (he was captured by Romans ca. 55 BCE), as ‘careless’ and ‘gullible’, when on the whole he forgave source discrepancies, and more so if they were inclined to flatter Alexander.184
The interpretation born of this critique is that when Ptolemy stated in his own book that he was not present at the battle (as he apparently did), he was making a deliberate, and thus later, correction to Cleitarchus, whose account placed Ptolemy in the thick of the fighting and saving the king’s life; this was supposedly (just one version of) how Ptolemy gained the title Soter, ‘Saviour’. But if that correction, or even the total wording of the polemic against Cleitarchus, originated with Ptolemy, we would have expected Arrian and Curtius to be more specific on its origin; had they not, their own mirror critique would have appeared a rather obvious and unimaginative plagiarisation. Moreover, as Tarn pointed out: ‘Ptolemy never contradicted anybody; things he believed to be wrong he usually omitted altogether…’185 And clearly Ptolemy could not have been including Timagenes in any rebuttal, for his Universal History was a product of a much later and begrudging Augustan Rome.186
A reverse interpretation seems more valid. Curtius and Arrian knew all about conflicting accounts; Arrian recounted numerous other discrepancies in a matter-of-fact way.187 Here, however, their parallel chastisement of Cleitarchus indicates Ptolemy had published his version of events first in which he claimed to have been absent from the battle. That would have been, as they voiced, a careless and egregious contradiction for Cleitarchus (and later Timagenes) to have made. It further suggests that there existed in the Roman era an unambiguous certainty on the publication order, which argues for a gap of some years between Cleitarchus’ and Ptolemy’s publication dates. But it does confirm Cleitarchus’ desire to eulogise the memory of the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
In this interpretation it follows that Curtius must have read Ptolemy’s book to have criticised Cleitarchus in this way (which argues for his Vulgate archetyping), and it is also highly suggestive that Arrian read Curtius (who we believe published, more or less, a century before him) and he thought the didactic value of Curtius’ criticism too good to pass up, for their wording is unique and strikingly similar.188 The campaigns in India and the voyage down the Hydaspes-Indus were nothing short of wholesale slaughter and so not easily captured by Nearchus, Onesicritus, Ptolemy and Aristobulus – the court sources at the heart of policy decisions or complicit in some way in their implementation. As Curtius’ account and Arrian’s narrative remain in close agreement on major place names here, it does suggest to their parallel (self-admitted) use of Cleitarchus at this point, for he had garnered testimony that originated outside court sources – campaign veterans, for example –
and that filled their reporting gaps.189
A final, though rather cynical, possibility does need voicing: Ptolemy was present at the battle but he felt the whole Mallian affair, like the earlier reported massacre of the Branchidae in Sogdia (or Sogdiana), was too gruesome to be a part of, when, as even Arrian reported, many unarmed men were slaughtered and ‘neither women, nor children were spared’. So Ptolemy spirited himself away on an expedition elsewhere.190 That would have additionally exonerated him from failing to protect Alexander, for other accounts had claimed it was the future Bodyguard, Peucestas (or Leonnatus) in his role as one of the hyperaspisantes who reportedly held a shield above his fallen king.191 Somewhat suspiciously, Ptolemy did provide a most detailed description of Alexander’s wound which issued ‘both blood and breath’, but perhaps Critobulus (or Critodemus), the attending physician, recorded his work patching up his king; the description points to a lung piercing and yet it is at odds with other statements in which the arrow lodged in Alexander’s breastbone.192
One unnamed writer used by Arrian claimed that Perdiccas, prominent among the king’s Bodyguards, cut out the arrow blade; the source is unlikely to have been Cleitarchus, for reading between the lines of Curtius’ closing narrative of events at Babylon, it appears Cleitarchus was rather hostile to Perdiccas who had by then assumed the role of the king’s chiliarchos (chiliarch, here denoting second-in-command), in contrast to his laudatory treatment of Ptolemy.193
