The purpose of this volume is to provide students and scholars with a selection of documents in translation intended to supplement standard histories dealing with the Hellenistic period from 300 to 30 BC (unless otherwise noted, all dates are BC).

The criteria for the selection of the texts translated are essentially the same as those for the other volumes in the series. Passages from authors readily available in English translation have been avoided except in those cases where they provide the only or best evidence for events or trends too important to be omitted. A few texts are drawn from secondary sources, some of which, such as the Suda or Photius' Bibliotheca, date from the Byzantine period, but contain information derived from earlier sources or fragments – quotations or summaries – of the works of now lost historians. The primary source for the latter is F. Jacoby's incomplete Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, which contains collections of the fragments of over eight hundred lost Greek historians together with a critical commentary on them in German (except for the two volumes which deal with the historians of Athens). The majority of the documents translated in this volume consist, however, of contemporary non-literary epigraphical and papyrological texts.

Pillar base containing an elegiac dedication and five Delphic maxims. Ai Khanum, Afghanistan. Limestone base, epigram in elegiac pentameters. On the basis of the lettering dated to the first half of the third century.

A

These wise (words) of ancient men are set up, / utterances of famous men, in holy Pytho. / Whence Klearchos, having copied them carefully, / set them up, shining from afar, in the sanctuary of Kineas.

B

As a child, be orderly. | As a youth, be self-controlled. | As an adult, be just. | As an old man, be of good counsel. ∥ When dying, be without sorrow.

Bilingual inscription of Aśoka. Kandahar, Afghanistan, 258. Greek inscription of fourteen lines accompanied by an Aramaic text of eight lines carved on living rock and containing material similar to the Major Rock Edicts of the Buddhist Maurya ruler Aśoka.

The Greeks in Baktria

Ephesos honors Nikagoras, son of Aristarchos, from Rhodes, ambassador of Demetrios Poliorketes and Seleukos. Ephesos, 300/299. Wall block from the temple of Artemis.

Resolved by the Boule and the People. Philainetos, son of Philophron, introduced the motion. Since | Nikagoras, son of Aristarchos, a Rhodian, having been sent by the kings, Demetrios | and Seleukos (I), to both the Ephesian people and the other Greeks | and having been brought before the People, spoke about the relationship existing ∥ between them and about the good will which they continue to have for | the Greeks, and (since) he renewed the friendship which he previously had | with the city, it has been resolved by the Boule and the People | that they praise Nikagoras for the good will which he continues to have for the | kings and the People and crown him with a gold wreath ∥ and announce (it) at the Ephesia in the theatre. They shall also grant citizenship to him | [on an equal] and like (basis) just as to the other benefactors, and he shall also have | a front seat at the contests and the right of import and export both in war | [and in] peace and exemption from taxation for whatever he imports or exports {or} to his own home | [and the right of access to] the Boule and People immediately after the sacred business.

The purpose of this volume is to supplement the standard and easily accessible sources of the history of the Greek world in the fourth century BC.

It is not surprising that a large proportion of the documents translated here are inscriptions from Athens, for the Athenians of the fourth century, at least while they governed themselves democratically, continued their fifth-century practice of publishing all their public business (peace treaties, laws, casualty-lists, accounts, etc.) on marble stelai. But by the end of the fifth century this practice had become widespread in the Greek world, even in states that were not democratic. So the student will find inscriptions from Delphi, Boeotia, Tegea, Cyrene, Samos, Skepsis, Olynthus and several other places. Down to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 I was able to use the selection in M.N. Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions, vol. 2, though it occasionally needed to be supplemented by recent finds (e.g. nos. 8, 9 and 45). For the period after 323 the selection is entirely my own.

Inscriptions are primary sources of information, but their interpretation often depends upon a narrative account. We have, of course, the extant histories of Xenophon and Diodorus, but there were many other historical works, written in the fourth century or later, that pertained to the fourth century. On the one hand there was the Universal History of Ephorus of Cyme, upon which Diodorus drew.

Greek and Roman history has always been in an ambivalent position in American higher education, having to find a home either in a Department of History or in a Department of Classics, and in both it is usually regarded as marginal. Moreover, in a History Department the subject tends to be taught without regard to the fact that the nature of the evidence is, on the whole, very different from that for American, English, or French history, while in a Classics Department it tends to be viewed as a ‘philological’ subject and taught by methods appropriate to Greek and Latin authors. Even on the undergraduate level the difference may be important, but on the graduate level, where future teachers and scholars, who are to engage in original research, are trained, it becomes quite clear that neither of these solutions is adequate.

One problem is the standard of proficiency that should be required in Greek and Latin – both difficult languages, necessitating years of study; and few students start the study, even of Latin, let alone Greek, before they come to college. The editors recognize that for the student aiming at a Ph.D. in the subject and at advancing present knowledge of it there can be no substitute for a thorough training in the two languages. Nevertheless, they believe that it is possible to extend serious instruction at a high level to graduate students aiming at reaching the M.A. level and to make them into competent teachers.