The sources to Philip’s Assassination

Plutarch (Reliability A) – Plutarch, c. 46-120 AD, a Greek biographer and author. In addition to his parallel lives he wrote 2 rhetorical compositions on kings which are included in a collection of his literary works entitled Moralia. He became a Roman senator under the empire. A philosophical writer – wrote a series of “Parallel Lives” of famous Greek and Roman figures as examples of moral lifestyles. 40 of these have survived. He had access to the imperial library in Rome. Possibly the most well-read man of Roman antiquity – refers to scores of ancient sources that are now lost. As a biographical writer he was willing to include anecdotal materials that portrayed his subjects in the worst possible light. Some of this material is polemical, that is, it possibly arises from scurrilous tracts written by political adversaries of his subjects. He also relied extensively on the personal memoirs of people such as Sulla, Lucullus, and Caesar, equally though oppositely biased in content. Leaning toward the sensational, Plutarch nevertheless relied on available sources for every thing he wrote. He made nothing up himself and can be considered as reliable as his source material.

Lucius Flavius Arrianus (Rel. A) (c. 95-180 AD), a Greek aristocrat from Bithynia in Asia Minor whose successful career under the emperor Hadrian included a consulship (129) and a governorship of the province of Cappadocia (132-137). A prolific author whose works include philosophical treatises and the history of Alexander (the Anabasis), Arrian wrote histories of Alexander’s successors and of his own native land. Arrian commanded Roman legions, traveled extensively as a Roman official. His history of the campaigns of Alexander the Great was based primarily on the memoirs of King Ptolemy I of Egypt, a Macedonian general who marched with Alexander to India. Very accurate if dry account of Alexander’s campaigns. As a serious Roman military mind he shows almost complete disinterest for the gossip of intrigue surrounding Philip’s assassination. He has little to say about the assassination, as a result. One can assume that his information is reliable, insofar as it goes.

Quintus Curtius Rufus (REL. C) – lived in the 50s AD, in the reign of Claudius. Having witnessed the murderous excesses of Caligula and reprisals of Claudius, he became virulently opposed to the Roman Principate. Rufus chose to write a highly negative history of Alexander that deliberately portrays the young king as a Macedonian Caligula. Rufus deliberately attributes the most negative possible light on every decision and action Alexander took during his career. Although the history picks up after the assassination of Philip (discussion of the assassination is curiously missing in both Rufus and Arrian, apparently lost), in several discussions, particularly speeches he writes for many of the Macedonian principals of the story, refer back frequently to the events of the assassination. Rufus is known to have relied on various fictional and unreliable sources for the Alexander tradition, including Cleitarchus and the so-called “Alexander Romance.” For decades Rufus was given little credence by modern historians. Today, there emerges a growing awareness for the foundation of Rufus’ narrative on lost source materials of however dubious authority. Unlike Plutarch and others who tend to repeat the same stories, obviously arising from a common source, Rufus frequently mentions incidents that are repeated nowhere else. As an authority he should be treated with skepticism, but if he provides information that is nowhere contradicted by more reliable sources, it needs to be taken into account.

Diodorus of Sicily (REL. A) – a contemporary of Julius Caesar writing in the 60s BC. A “universal historian” who tried to write a history of the ancient Greco-Roman world from its earliest times, with particular emphasis on the history of Greco-Roman Sicily, which was his origin. Book 16 deals with Philip, 17 with Alexander. Tendency to confuse details and to crib directly from his sources, but he relied extensively on materials lost to us today. Over all, a fairly reliable source.

Aristotle (REL. A), the philosopher, court physician to Philip II. Born in c. 384 in Stageira. Great philosopher. In 342 he accepted an invitation to teach at the court of Philip, trained young Alexander. He was present at the time of the assassination, an eyewitness. But as an intellectual of such seriousness, he could hardly be bothered with its lurid reasons. When Alexander became king, he moved to Athens. He wrote a number of treatises including the Politics. The most reliable of all the sources.

Polybius of Megalopolis (REL. A) c. 200-117 BC, a major political figure in the late Hellenistic era. He was the son of one of the leaders of the Achaean league and took an active part in Achaean affairs in the era when the Greeks were faced with the problem of adjusting themselves to the realities of Roman over lordship. Deported to Italy in 166 BC as one of 1000 Achaean hostages, he remained in Rome for over a decade, observing the character and institutions of the conquerors of the Mediterranean and winning the friendship of the scions of the roman nobility, particularly Scipio Aemilianus. He wrote a general history of the Mediterranean world in 40 books, covering the years 210-146 BC with a 2 book introduction on antecedent events. Unlike others he did not propose to produce a work of literary art. Equipped with a scientific approach he brought to his subject a combination of political realism, military experience, personal knowledge and a conviction of the organic unity of history. Pragmatic, reliable, he developed a series of theories of historical causation as he progressively modified his interpretation of the Roman rise to power. His mention of the assassination is brief, but reliable.

Justin (REL. D), M. Iunianus Iustinus, a Latin historian generally supposed to have lived in the 2^nd century AD. Nothing is known about the particulars of his life. He made an epitome or selection of extracts from Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus, written under Augustus. This epitome is best described as a history of the world down to the Roman conquest of the East. In making his extracts Justin gave the preference to those facts and passages which he considered particularly interesting. Other events are only mentioned briefly and by way of transition. Chronology is entirely neglected in his work. His description of the assassination is highly colored, probably with details of his own concoction. He loved to embellish a good story for the story’s sake. Probably the least reliable of the available sources, if only because he seems to know far more of the lurid details surrounding the assassination than any of the others. However, he does contain plausible facets to the problem that are mentioned nowhere else.

Pausanias (REL. B), a Greek traveler and geographer of whose life nothing is known, published in AD 174 a Description of Greece in 10 books, intended as a tourist guidebook to Greece and to Greek antiquities. The historical digressions in this work contain useful information. He basically reiterates material drawn from his sources, but read widely.

Athenaeus (REL. B) – probably 5^th cent. AD. Born in Naucratis in Egypt of Greek origin. He migrated to Rome where he poured his antiquarian erudition into an encyclopedic work, the Deipnosophistae (banquet of the philosophers). This learned miscellany is a storehouse of factual information, quotations from earlier authors, and anecdotes on the most varied social and literary topics, with particular emphasis on gastronomy. A complete scatterbrain of a thinker; sometimes it seems as though he was cribbing directly from a book sitting on his lap. Little rhyme or reason to his discussions, essentially streams of consciousness using excerpts from whatever he happened to be reading at the time. But he clearly read widely and records information now lost.