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J. BoNCQUET, Diodorus Siculus (II 1-34) over Mesopotamii/. Een historische commentaar. (Verhandel. v.d. Kon. Acad. v. Wet., Lett. en Schone Kunsten van Belgie. Kl. d. Lett.,J. 49 (1987) Nr. 122). Brussel, Paleis der Acade­ mien, 1987. 243 p. Pr. BFr. 1050. The ancient Greek literature on Mesopotamia, unlike that on Egypt, is rather meagre and does not reflect a more than superficial knowledge of the indigenous culture and traditions. Mesopotamia did not only much less stir the imagination of the Greeks, but it also remained for them, in a literal sense, a marginal area. This was already the case with Herodotus, notwithstanding all speculations on lost Assyrian logoi. Ctesias attempted to fill the gap-and more than that-, but much of his extensive work has been lost or excerp­ ted in Antiquity itself. Later, the historians of Alexander were in a position to provide much more actual information on Mesopotamia, but their attention was still held by the actual historical event of Alexander's continuing march against Persia rather than by the environment where it occurred. This clearly can be deduced from Strabo's description of Mesopotamia, which is mainly based on the works by the historians of Alexander and by the way contains information that ultimately derived from Herodotus (or his source). The tradition that was based on Ctesias has been preserved in the works of Diodorus Siculus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Eusebius, Photius, Aelianus, and fragmentarily by Plutarch, Pliny, and others. Since long it has been commonly assumed that Diodorus' account of the early history of Mesopotamia was nearly entirely an uncritical excerpt from Ctesias. Recently, however, this one-sided view has been challenged and it is observed that the "Quellenlage" of Diodorus' chapters on Mesopotamia is rather complicated. It is, thus, somewhat disappointing that this commentary actually remains restricted to a commentary on Ctesias and leaves the con­ tributions by Diodorus himself or by others mostly unconsidered. This way of approach, besides, does not reduce the problem how to give a meaningful historical commentary on the romanesque stories of the legendary personalities of Ninus, Semiramis and Sar­ danapalus. It seems, moreover, that Ctesias apart from his tendency to exaggerate figures-of measures of constructions as well as of mobilised masses of people-, was well acquainted with various indigenous (Babylonian) traditions and generally has given a reliable account of them, such as he understood what he was told.

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Here in particular the specialist knowledge of the a~yriologist is required to disentangle which genuine traditions those may have been, and how they were interpreted by the Greeks. These questions, however, are hardly answered by this book. Of course, attempts have been made to connect the legendary per­ sonalities of the Greek tradition with historical ones or with indigenous religious or mythological figures-and these attempts are faithfully recorded by the author-, but their results remain hypothetical. Besides, the method mostly used in this respect is that of looking for similar sounding names and other similarities that very well can be accidental. One extreme example is the suggestion in respect of6.2, that the name of the Bactrian prince Oxyartes had been inspired by that of the prophet Zoroaster, of whom Ctesias 'probably' had heard (see alsop. 133; p. 134, n. 599: AJA should be JEA). Anyhow, this reviewer is rather sceptical about the results of reasonings of this kind. It is, besides, remarkable that much literature which is adduced on these questions is rather old. Some­ times it is definitely outdated. One cannot today, e.g., seriously discuss the theories of Frazer's Golden Bough! (p. 126) In some degree, however, the author here is the victim of the aim of the commentary. At each place or passage he mentions both modern interpretations and parallel texts from Antiquity. The former entails the risk that the commentary degenerates into an annotated bibliography (e.g. on p. 135), the latter, that the importance of late sources easily is being overestimated (e.g. on p. 62; 97; 133). When in this respect Flavius Josephus can be referred to, one should realise very well that he disposed of the indigenous Jewish tradition that was independent of the Greek one (p. 159; cfr p. 203: the Book of Esther). Although the author always begins with a general discussion of the various chapters and subjects, he does not escape from shattering the contents of recent scholarly discussions. Thus the commentary on account of Babylon and the excavations of Babylon mainly reproduces a recent article by J. M. Bigwood (AJAH 3 [1978], 32-52), that in my opinion as such gives a better understanding of the value of Ctesias as an historical source than this commentary in its present form. Thus also the convincing arguments of a previous article by Bigwood on the relation of Diodorus Siculus and Ctesias are dispersed and buried by references to older literature (e.g. p. 38; p. 95: Assyrios and Syrios and the question of the geographical names). Moreover, Diodorus did use other sources besides Ctesias.