ABSTRACT
Diodorus’ narrative of Sicily at this time is in some ways more helpful to us than that of ucydides, who has little to say about the west in his very succinct narrative of 480-430, the Pentekontaetia, although Athenian activity and diplomacy there made it arguably very relevant to his theme of Athenian growth and the fear thereby generated at Sparta. Even in the narrative proper, ucydides’ accounts of Athenian involvement in Sicily and Italy are spare: ghting is episodically described at intervals from 3. 86-90 to the end of the book, and there is more western material at 4. 24-5, 58-65
and 5.4-5; but this would make better sense to us if he had given us more of the Pentekontaetia earlier. Perhaps he wanted to minimize direct handling of Sicily for the moment, so as to make more impact with it in Book 6.6 Even there, he does not immediately disclose all he knows. In his introduction to the Athenian expedition of 415-413, he seems to want to explain his view that the Athenians were biting o more than they could chew, and so we get the so-called Sikelika (6. 2-5). A dierent historian might have given us at this point some account of Sicilian civilization and resources, some description of the fortications of Syracuse, the temples (an index of prosperity) of Akragas, or the revenues derived from the subjugated interior; something, in fact, like Herodotus Book 2, about Egypt, which introduced the invasion by the Persian king Kambyses. Instead, we get from ucydides a list of founders and foundation dates for the various Sicilian cities, and even this probably owes something to Antiochos of Syracuse, an older contemporary of ucydides. But this unexpectedly ‘antiquarian’ introduction is really nothing of the sort, but makes good contemporary sense when we recall that the Athenian expedition is more than once spoken of as an attempted act of colonization (see most explicitly 6. 23. 2 in the mouth of Nikias). e colonial theme also reminds us how important to Greeks were the ‘kinship’ links established through colonization (above p. 13 and below, p. 78) and prepares us for the rich colonial material towards the end of the two-book narrative of the expedition (see 7. 57-8), when he lists the allies on each side before the nal sea battle. So the Sikelika makes sense, if seen on ucydides’ own terms: it sets out the variety of the settlements of Sicily – Greek and non-Greek, Ionian and Dorian – and introduces the very important ‘colonial’ theme of the two books.7
