Diodorus Siculus and the World of the Late Roman Republic

Bibliographic Data

ID3525079
AuthorsDavid J Devore (0000-0002-3641-2387, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume48
Issue4
Pages564-566
Publication date2018-02-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-1953 • E-ISSN: 1530-9169
PublisherMIT Press - Journals (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1162/jinh_r_01214
OpenAlexW2790378040
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited1

The dominant agenda for scholarship about ancient Greek and Roman historical writing has long been the explication of historians’ contributions to debates in their respective contemporary contexts. This basically New-Historicist trend has percolated beyond the canonical ancient historians to lesser-known thinkers such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Cassius Dio, Herodian, and the subject of Muntz’s monograph, Diodorus of Sicily. Diodorus, active from Caesar’s rise to power until Octavian’s, wrote one known text, the Historical Library, a forty-volume history of which about one-half of the text survives. A history of the Mediterranean and surrounding regions from human origins to Caesar, the Library is the quintessential work that scholars often consult but rarely read. Since the later nineteenth century, positivist historians deployed source criticism (Quellenforschung) to pronounce Diodorus a scissors-and-paste compiler of narratives conveniently close to their areas of interest (chiefly classical Greece). More cogent work since 1990—by Sacks, Yarrow, Sulimani, and others—has read Diodorus as an independent, creative witness to the first century b.c.1 Despite painstaking research and original text, Muntz joins this tradition emphatically, representing Diodorus as “constantly attempting to engage in the intellectual debates of his time” yet “shut off from the normal avenues of power” (26).Muntz makes a wise methodological choice to explicate the first three books of Diodorus’ Library. Not only do these books survive in full, thus circumventing classicists’ perennial problem of making inferences from decontextualized fragments; these books also present the geographies, mythographies, ethnographies, and histories of “barbarian” lands (Egypt, Persia, Libya, Arabia, and India). Muntz notes astutely that the common denominator of these peoples is that Romans had not yet conquered them by Diodorus’ day (53). By contrast, the Library describes subject peoples at junctures when Greeks and Romans encountered them. Equally shrewd are Muntz’s comparisons between Diodorus and other authors. Muntz uses Quellenforschung sparingly but effectively, discussing Diodorus’ sources only where attested independently and highlighting Diodorus’ divergences from these sources (21–25, 36–49, 73–83). Far more commonality emerges when Muntz reads Diodorus alongside contemporary writers, particularly Cicero, Lucretius, and Varro (for example, 86–88, 125–131, 172–189, 210–214). Muntz shows convincingly that Diodorus’ distinctive positions on human origins, the nature of myth, deification of rulers, and monarchical virtues (especially clemency) were the stuff of vigorous debate among contemporary Roman elites at the time. Muntz’s findings even imply that, in his combination of acceptance of Rome’s sovereignty over the Mediterranean, exploitable knowledge of surrounding peoples, and stress on monarchical ethics, Diodorus set the agenda for Roman imperial historiography.This is not to say that Muntz should have the last word on Diodorus, especially regarding his status as an outsider. In fact, Muntz’s fundamental premise rests on an argument from silence—the lack of evidence that Diodorus had a patron. But was Diodorus a “true outsider” (2)? The fact that many other late-Republican intellectuals explicitly claimed connections with Roman patrons, whereas none of the extant sources indicates that Diodorus did so, may suggest otherwise (7–9). Yet, even though the late Republican period in Rome is among the better-documented contexts of ancient Mediterranean history, it nonetheless has numerous documentary lacunae. Crucially, at least half of Diodorus’ Library, including the prefaces to most of his volumes and most of his near-contemporary narratives—passages likely to reveal his social networks—is missing. Diodorus also had the means to travel and reside at length in Egypt and Rome and to acquire and produce books, a rare and expensive commodity in Mediterranean antiquity. Unlike, say, a recent Ph.D.’s struggles to secure a tenure-track job, Diodorus’ struggle for recognition (if such it was) surely remained insulated within the circles of wealthy Mediterranean elites. This consideration may well underscore how elusive the framing of an ancient historian’s activity is, but it does not obviate Muntz’s keen insights into an important Greek historian’s intellectual significance

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Barbarian · Historiography · Literature · Narrative · Power (physics · Scholarship · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy

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