Diodorus Siculus
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THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED BY JAMES LOEB, LL.D. EDITED BY E. H. WARMINGTON, m.a., f.b.hist.soc. FORMER EDITORS fT. E. PAGE, C.H., LiTT.D. fE. CAPPS, ph.d., ll.d. tW. H. D. ROUSE, LITT.D. L. A. POST, l.h.d. DIODORUS OF SICILY II 303 DIODOEUS OF SICILY IN TWELVE VOLUMES II BOOKS II {continued) 35-IV, 58 WITH AN EXGLISH TRANSLATION BY C. H. OLDFATHER PROFESSOR OP AKCIENT HISTORY AND LANGUAGES, THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBR.\SKA LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS MOMLXVn First printed 1935 Reprinted 1953, 1961, 1967 y rn 0-4 .^5^7/ Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION TO BOOKS II, 35-IV, 58 . vii BOOK II (continued) 1 BOOK III 85 BOOK IV, 1-58 335 A PARTIAL INDEX OF PROPER NAMES .... 535 MAPS 1. ASIA At end 2. AEGYPTUS-ETHIOPIA „ ; INTRODUCTION Books II, 35-IV, 58 Book II, 35^2 is devoted to a brief description of India which was ultimately derived from Megasthenes. Although Diodorus does not mention this author, his use of him is established by the similarity between his account of India and the Indica of Arrian and the description of that land by Strabo, both of whom avowedly drew their material from that ^vTiter. Megasthenes was in the service of Seleucus Nicator and in connection with embassies to the court of king Sandracottus (Chandragupta) at Patna was in India for some time between 302 and 291 b.c. In his Indica in four Books he was not guilty of the romances of Ctesias, but it is plain that he was imposed upon by inter- preters and guides, as was Herodotus on his visit to Egypt. It cannot be known whether Diodorus used Alegasthenes directly or through a medium his failure to mention his name a single time is a little surprising, if he used him directly.^ The Scythians, the Amazons of Asia Minor, and the Hj'perboreans are then briefly discussed, and Chapters 48-54 are devoted to Sp-ia, Palestine, and Arabia. It is thought that this last section may go * On Megasthenes see now B. C. J. Timmer, Megasthenes en de Indische Maatschappij, Amsterdam, 1930. vii INTRODUCTION back to the Stoic philosopher, Poseidonius of Apameia, especially because of its explanation of the varied colouring of birds and different kinds of animals as being due to the " helpful influence and strength of the sun." The Book closes with a description of a fabulous people Hving in a political Utopia on an island " in the ocean to the south," the account purporting to be the adventure of a certain lambulus, which may indeed be the name of the author of the original tale. The Third Book opens with an account of the Ethiopians on the upper Nile, then describes the working of the gold mines on the border between Egypt and Ethiopia, and includes a long discussion of the Red Sea and the peoples dwelling about it, with some mention of the tribes along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. Much of this material was drawn from the geographer Agatharchides of Cnidus, whose work. On the Red Sea, is preserved to us in the excerpts of Photius. This work of Agatharchides, composed in the latter part of the second century b.c, embraced five Books and is on the whole a sober and fairly trustworthy discussion of that region ; much of it was certainly based upon the stories and accounts of travellers in these parts and on personal observation. With chapter 49 Diodorus turns to Libya and embarks upon the myths of the Libyans about the Gorgons and Amazons, this subject serving to lead him over into Greek mythology, which is the theme of the entire Fourth Book. Since, as Diodorus tells us, Ephorus, and Callis- thenes and Theopompus, contemporaries of Ephorus, had not included the mytlis in their histories, viii INTRODUCTION Diodorus opens the Fourth Book \^ith a defence of his exposition of Greek mythology. The gods were once kings and heroes who have been deified becaiise of the great benefits which they conferred upon mankind; they have been the object of veneration by men of old and we " should not fail to chei-ish and maintain for the gods the pious devotion which has been handed doAvn to us from our fathers " (ch. it is 8. 5) ; if their deeds appear superhuman because they are measured by the weakness of the men of Diodorus' day. Much of this material was drawn directly from Dionysius of Mitylene who hved in Alexandria in the second century B.C. and composed, doubtless vnth the aid of the library in that city and certainly with considerable indulgence in the romantic, his Kyklos, a kind of encyclopaedia of mythology, which included accounts of the Argonauts, Dionysus, the Amazons, events connected -with, the Trojan War, and all this he described with such devotion and assiduity that he was given the nick- name Skytobrachion (" of the leathern arm "). It is generally held that for his account of Heracles Diodorus took generously from a Praise of Heracles by Matris of Thebes,^ who is otherwise unkno^^Ti and composed his encomium with vigorous rhetorical nourishes, taking care to mention every maiden ravished by Heracles and her child, in order to establish Heraclean ancestry for the numerous families in the Greek world which raised such a claim. But here and there, when he touched the western Mediterranean, Diodorus used Timaeus of Tauromenium, who, an exile in Athens for the best * Cp. E. Holzer, Matris, ein Beitrag zur Qicdlenkritik DiodoTS, Program Tubingen, 1881. ix INTRODUCTION fifty years of his life, completed, not long before his death about 250 b.c. and almost altogether from Uterary sources, a history of Sicily and the western Mediterranean in thirty-eight Books. Any attempt to continue further the quest for the sources of Diodorus in this section of his work must run into the sands. THE LIBRARY OF HISTORY OF DIODORUS OF SICILY BOOK II AIOAOPOY TOT SIKEAinTOT BIBAIOeHKHS I2T0PIKHS BIBA02 AEYTEPA 35. *H TOLVVV ^IvSlktj TerpdirXevpo's ovaa rip axT^P-O-TL, TTjv fX€V TTpos OLVaToXas vevovaav TrXevpav Kal rrjv Trpog ^ piea-qfji^pLav r] pLeyaXr] TTepLex^L OdXarra, ttjv he rrpos rag apKrovs to 'H/xaiSov opos hietpyei rrjs YjKvOias, riv KaroiKOvai Tcov TdKvdwv ol TTpoaayopevopevoL Sa/<:af rrjV Se rerdprrjv ^ Trpos Svaiav earpappeviqv hLeiXrifjyev 6 'Ivoo? irpooayopevcpevos 7TOTap,6s, pceyiaTOS cov 2 raJv TTavrcov perd top JSelXov. to Se peyeOos TTJs oXrjg ^IvhiKTJs (f)acrLv VTrdp^^LV (ztto /xev dvaroXdJv Trpos Svacv Siapvpicov oKTaKiaxt-Xicov araSiojv, drro Se tcov dpKTOJV npog pLea-qp^ptav TpiopLvpiajv Sloxi-Xlcov. Tr^XiKauTf] S ovaa to pieyedos SoKet tov Koapov p.dXiaTa Trepiex^iv Tov Twv 6epLva)v rpoTTCov kvkXov, Kai TToXXaxjj p-kv irr' aKpag ttjs 'IrStKT^s" tSei^ eoTiv aaKLOVs ovras Tous yvd>p.ovag, vvktos Se rd? dpKTOvs * rT]v TTpos Bekker : Trpos D, rrjv Trpos ttjv Vulgate. * Tijv after rerdprT^v omitted by D, Bekker, Vogel. ^ The Indian Ocean. THE LIBRARY OF HISTORY OF DIODORUS OF SICILY BOOK II 35. Now India is four-sided in shape and the side which faces east and that which faces south are em- braced by the Great Sea,^ while that which faces north is separated by the Emodus range of mountains from that part of Scythia which is inhabited by the Scythians known as the Sacae ; and the fourth side, which is turned towards the west, is marked off by the river known as the Indus, which is the largest of all streams after the Nile. As for its magnitude, India as a whole, they say, extends from east to west twenty-eight thousand stades, and from north to south thirty-two thousand. And because it is of such magnitude, it is believed to take in a greater extent of the sun's course in summer ^ than any other part of the world, and in many places at the Cape of India the gnomons of sundials may be seen which do not cast a shadow, while at night the Bears are * Lit. " of the summer turnings " of the sun, i.e., the course which the sun seems to traverse in the heavens from the solstice on June 22 to the equinox in September, corresponding to the part of the earth lying between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator. 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