The Bibliotheke, or Historical Library, of Diodorus Siculus, is the longest extant work of Greek history to survive from antiquity. Yet only 15 of the original 40 books survive complete. For the remaining 25 books we have an extensive number of fragments, and while obviously these are no substitute for the original books, they are still of vital importance to ancient historians, containing much information not available from other sources. For instance, it is largely from the fragments that we know about the massive slave revolts that rocked Roman Sicily. Now Duane Roller has provided a fine new translation with extensive notes of the fragments of books 21-40, which originally covered the years from 301 to approximately 60 BCE.
The only previous English translation of these fragments was edited by Francis Walton in the Loeb Classical Library.[1] Roller benefits from the recent French edition in the Budé series edited by Paul Goukowsky.[2] There are three major sources of fragments. The bulk consist of excerpts compiled for several collections under the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century. These generally preserve Diodorus’s own language. There is also a collection of fragments from books 21-26 that was published by David Hoechsel from a now-lost manuscript in 1603. The 9th century Byzantine polymath Photius included lengthy summaries of several sections of Diodorus in his own Bibliotheke. Additional fragments come from a variety of other sources.
Roller’s introduction is brief and to the point. He lays out what little we know about Diodorus, the scope of the Bibliotheke (including the problem of the terminal date), the possible sources for books 21-40, and the sources of the fragments. References to some more basic bibliography might have been welcome in this section—for example, Peter Brunt’s seminal article on the problems with historical fragments[3]—but the essentials are well-conveyed.
The translation of the fragments is very fine, both clear and flowing. More important are the notes on the text, given the nature of the fragments and the wide range of material they cover. Roller’s notes, although they do not reach the level of a full commentary, are extensive, far surpassing Walton’s edition. To give one example, F19 (F9 in Walton) of Book 22 summarizes the actions of the Galatian King Brennos, who attacked Delphi. Roller provides ten notes, which provide: the historical context of the fragment, information about other main source (Pausanias), an explanation of a type of shield mentioned, a discussion of the numbers involved, ethnographic information on the Galatians such as why Brennos may have killed himself, and information on various geographical points and issues. In contrast, Walton has three explanatory notes on the translation: one on a textual issue, one on the numbers involved, and one on the spelling of a name.
However, Roller does not note the textual issues in this passage. I would not expect the notes to a translation to deal with most textual issues, but with this fragment all editors agree that there is a lacuna. Following πολλοὺς στρατιώτας ἀποβαλών, ὡς μὴ ἰσχύσας some text has been lost before ὕστερον εἰς τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐλθὼν. Goukowsky emends to ἰσχῦσαι and translates “il perdit de nombreux soldats si bien qu’il n’eut plus la force de <…>,” with a note suggesting what has been lost. Walton translates “having in this conflict lost many men … as lacking sufficient strength …,” similarly with a note discussing possible fixes. Roller, however, translates “he lost many soldiers and thus was not strong enough when later he went to Greece.” This smooths over the Greek and provides a more readable English text, but some indication of the issue should have been made.
Roller’s concern for readability can also be seen in how he combines fragments from different cover texts which deal with the same event. This is seen in Diodorus’s account of the Sicilian slave wars in book 36 and the Social War in 37. The Byzantine excerptors contain several lengthy fragments from the narratives and alongside them we have the general summary preserved by Photius in his Bibliotheke. Both Walton and Goukowsky present these fragments separately—Goukowsky actually denotes Photius’s narrative as an epitome, outside the numbered fragments. Roller presents a composite version of these sources, which is doubtlessly much easier to follow, but it conceals how different Photius’s summary and the Constantinian excerpts are from one another in terms of detail.
My final concern is with Roller’s numbering of the fragments. When Walton prepared his Loeb he kept the numbering of the fragments established by earlier editors but with an improved arrangement. This resulted in many confusing incongruities—in Walton’s edition for example F10 of Book 28 comes between F12 and F13. Goukowsky, quite reasonably, reordered and renumbered the fragments, and Roller follows his numeration. But virtually any scholarship written prior to 2015 will still be using the numeration in the Loeb edition. Even more recent work is still likely as not to follow the Loeb edition—as of right now for example the text of books 21-40 on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae is still Walton’s. Goukowsky always noted Walton’s numbers alongside his own in the text and provided a concordance of his edition and Walton’s, but Roller does neither, and does not indicate the existence of the older numeration. This can be quite confusing when cross-referencing, especially when Goukowsky ordered the fragments differently—for example, Walton’s Book 37 F30 is placed by Goukowsky as the first fragment of Book 38.
These concerns aside, this is a fine edition. I have already found the notes very helpful in my own research over the past few months, and Roller has done a service to make this very important source for the Hellenistic period and Roman Republic accessible to a wider audience.
Notes
[1] Walton, Francis R. Diodorus Siculus: The Library of History, Books XXI-XXXIII. Harvard University Press, 1957 and Diodorus Siculus: The Library of History, Books XXXIV-XL. Harvard University Press, 1967.
[2] Goukowsky, Paul. Diodore de Sicile. Bibliothèque historique. Fragments. Tome II, Livres XXI-XXVI. Les Belles Lettres, 2006, Diodore de Sicile. Bibliothèque historique. Fragments. Tome III, Livres XXVII-XXXII. Les Belles Lettres, 2012, and Diodore de Sicile. Bibliothèque historique. Fragments. Tome IV, Livres XXXIII-XL. Les Belles Lettres, 2014.
[3] Brunt, P. A. “On Historical Fragments and Epitomes.” Classical Quarterly N.S. 30 (1980): 477-494.