The Bibliotheke of Diodoros is the longest extant Greek history, one of the major sources for antiquity. Book 19 covers the fighting among Alexander the Great’s successors from 317–311 and is by far the most important source for this period. This is the most detailed commentary in English on a book of Diodoros since Stylianou’s 1998 commentary on Book 15.1 Stylianou’s commentary came at the end of a long line of Quellenforschung, which in its more extreme forms reduced Diodoros to a mechanical epitomator through whom it was possible to get at his much better but now lost sources. Many of the assumptions behind this scholarship have been challenged, beginning with Palm’s demonstration of the consistency of Diodoros’s language regardless of the presumed source2 and a series of articles by Rubincam showing the care Diodoros took in the organization of his massive work.3 Other scholarship, beginning with Sacks, has begun to explore Diodoros as an historian in his own right with his own agenda, as opposed to just an author to be consulted for historical information.4

Meeus at times rests uneasily between these branches of scholarship, accepting that we need to treat Diodoros seriously as having an agenda and interests of his own, particularly a strong moralizing approach and an interest in abrupt change. But at the same time Meeus is often dismissive of scholarship that seeks new approaches to understanding Diodoros. He also complains about scholarship questioning how much we can say about Diodoros’s sources given the extremely limited evidence for any given point of the Bibliotheke, declaring that “the corollary would be that Diodoros did not use any source” (p. 58 n. 205).

But Meeus’s own detailed analysis of the possible sources for book 19 is similarly negative. He finds limited evidence in the extant fragments of Hieronymos (the most commonly asserted source), Douris, Diyollos, and Hekataios that any were Diodoros’s source and reasons to reject all four as well. One concern is that Meeus assumes that the overall presentation of major figures must be from Diodoros’s source. Since Diodoros is generally negative about Antigonos, his source cannot be Hieronymos who spent much of his life in Antigonid service. But this rules out the possibility that Diodoros himself may be responsible for the more negative presentation, in keeping with his moralizing tendencies.

Meeus also does not believe that Diodoros was capable of collating or using multiple sources at the same time. His argument for this is essentially that it goes against Diodoros’s methodology elsewhere. Certainly some scholars such as Parker continue to argue this,5 but others such as Occhipinti are finding more complex source usage in Diodoros.6 Meeus prefers a different solution, an intermediate source that has done what he believes Diodoros cannot, combining information from multiple sources or changing the perspective. He proposes Agatharchides of Knidos, but his chief evidence is a single passage, 19.45, which contains a few phrases also found in portions of Diodoros that are probably based on Agatharchides. To his credit, Meeus acknowledges that this evidence is quite slender.

The commentary itself is one of many strengths and some weaknesses. Historical issues, technical questions, and textual problems are all well covered (although given the number of figures involved an index of names would have been helpful). One particular strong point is Meeus’s discussion of the chronological problems. Diodoros’s own method of dating and the lack of other sources have created numerous issues and Meeus does well cutting through the fog. He argues convincingly for an eclectic chronology for the period, but is good at acknowledging the limitations of the evidence and the uncertainty that remains. Generally, Meeus avoids the extreme scorn earlier commentators expressed towards Diodoros, although at times annoyance at him for not writing the type of history Meeus wants slips through. At 19.33-34, for example, Diodoros digresses on the custom of Indian widows joining their husbands in death, which Meeus declares “can hardly be considered crucial” (p. 260). But despite this complaint Meeus devotes almost ten pages to analyzing Diodoros’s mention of this custom, although he does not develop the interesting intratextual connections he makes to figures like Olympias.

Meeus’s command of the vast bibliography is impressive, although it sometimes becomes a substitute for commentary. On p. 131 for instance Meeus identifies the famous Silver Shields as the same unit as the hypaspistai under Alexander. 14 modern scholars are cited for this, along with 4 arguing for an alternative explanation, but Meeus does not explain what the hypaspistai were or why they should be equated with the Silver Shields.

Another particular strength is the attention to Diodoros’s language. Meeus makes extensive use of the Thesaurae Linguae Graecae, which vastly simplifies tracking words and phrases across Diodoros and Greek literature in general. Meeus amply confirms the conclusions of Palm on Diodoros’s linguistic style and is able to demonstrate that vocabulary and phrasing sometimes attributed to his source in fact occurs throughout the Bibliotheke and does not provide evidence for the use of a specific author. Similarly, recognizing Diodoros’s language can help interpret certain passages, such as the generic phrases and tropes Meeus identifies in Diodoros’s battle narratives.

However, sometimes large numbers of textual citations become a replacement for commentary and analysis. For example, on p. 180 Meeus highlights Diodoros’s frequent use of the adverb paradoksos (120 times) and then gives citations of 28 of those instances, followed by citations of 16 instances of the adjective, and several examples of synonyms. But from this Meeus merely concludes that Diodoros was fond of unexpected events and was able to put his own spin on his work, leaving many avenues unexplored. What types of unexpected events does Diodoros generally highlight? How are they connected with his larger moral program? How does this emphasis on the unexpected fit in with other trends in Hellenistic historiography and thought, such as paradoxography? Meeus notes that Polybios uses similar language, although much less frequently, but takes this no further. And this is the chief weakness of the commentary: as excellent as it is for the history of the Diadochoi, it pays far less attention to the historiography of Diodoros. Reading this commentary one would scarcely realize that Diodoros was writing during one of the most intellectually fervent periods of antiquity, the Late Roman Republic, which was also a time of rival warlords fighting for control of a vast empire with rebellious soldiers (a connection Diodoros’s near-contemporary Nepos makes in his life of Eumenes). Meeus thus divorces Diodoros from his own context, and while that may be less important for reconstructing the history of the Diadochoi, it leaves many angles of this historian unexplored. Similarly, Meeus’s decision to ignore the sections of book 19 which do not deal with the Diadochoi, including the preface, means that Diodoros’s larger project of universal history is sidestepped.

Of course no commentary can cover everything, and if Meeus is unconcerned with some of these broader issues about Diodoros, that does not at all detract from the great value of his book to anyone working on the Diadochoi.

Notes:
1 P. Stylianou, A Historical Commentary on Diodorus Siculus, Book 15, Oxford 1998.
2 J. Palm, Über Sprache und Stil des Diodoros von Sizilien, Lund 1955.
3 C. Rubincam, Did Diodorus Siculus Take Over Cross-References in His Sources?, in: American Journal of Philology 119 (1998), pp. 67–87.
4 K. Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, Princeton 1990.
5 V. Parker, Ephoros (70) in: Brill’s New Jacoby, Leiden 2011.
6. E. Occhipinti, The Hellenica Oxyrhynchia and Historiography: New Research Perspectives, Leiden 2016.