ABSTRACT
The two main sources for this period of Greek history are Thucydides (1.102-15.1; AE39 pp. 25-28, AE64 p. 39 – all references in this chapter are to Thucydides unless otherwise stated) and Diodorus (11.71-12.7). Thucydides’ narrative is very sketchy due to the fact that it is part of his digression on the so-called ‘Pentecontaetia’ (‘The Fifty-Years’), which is in itself a brief and highly selective account of Athens’ rise to power between the Persian War (480-479) and the Peloponnesian War (431-404). Although it can be reasonably assumed that most of the events are recorded in chronological sequence, Thucydides gives no specific dates; instead he makes use of phrases such as ‘after this’, ‘soon after’, ‘about the same time’ and ‘in the third year’. Furthermore, he makes no attempt to explain the foreign policy options available to the Athenians and the reasons for their choice at different times in the war. Instead, Thucydides has given us an account of Athenian military campaigns – recording some very important ones briefly (e.g. the battle of Oenophyta) but other less important ones in detail (e.g. the defeat of the Corinthians at Megara) – and thus leaving it to the modern historian to attempt to deduce Athenian foreign policy from these campaigns. The other major weakness is the omission of important events, such as the transfer of the Delian League treasury to Athens; the pro-Persian allied revolts in the eastern Aegean during the 450s and 440s; the (formal or informal) peace with Persia in 449; and the intensification of Athenian control over their allies, all of which had an important bearing upon or reflected Athenian foreign policy. Diodorus’ account is more detailed than Thucydides, but is mainly
derived from Thucydides because Diodorus, writing in the first century BC, almost certainly based his work on the history of Ephorus, who wrote in the fourth century and used Thucydides as his main source for the period 478-411. The greater amount of detail in Diodorus may be due either to Ephorus using another source, such as Hellanicus whose history of this
period was criticized by Thucydides (1.97.2), or to the tendency of Ephorus to enlarge and embroider his account of events for dramatic and proAthenian purposes. It is for that reason that events recorded in Diodorus but not in Thucydides, such as Athenian victories and two-day battles, should be treated with great caution, especially since Diodorus can even contradict Thucydides about events that both historians recorded: for example, the Athenian defeat at the battle of Halieis (1.105.1; AE39 p. 26) is portrayed as an Athenian victory (Diodorus 11.78.1-2); and Cimon’s death before the great battle of Cyprus in c.450 against the Persians (1.112.4; AE39 p. 28) is postponed until after the Athenian victory in order to glorify Cimon’s achievements (Diodorus 12.3-4).
