The battle against Seron, like the confrontation with Apollonius, is described only in I Maccabees (3.13–26). As stated above, II Maccabees refers to this affair as well in the brief summary on Judas Maccabaeus’ exploits at the start of his career, before the battle of Ammaus (8.1–7). The two battles are reported in I Maccabees in the narrative framework of the year 146 which is mentioned in connection with a domestic event, that is, between April 166 and April 165 b.c., and could have taken place any time between the summer of 166 and April 165 b.c. (see p. 200 above).

The description of the ambush for Seron is longer and more detailed than that of the battle that preceded it. The author locates the battle site in a general way, mentions the operational method of the Jewish force, and reports the number of enemy dead and the direction in which the vanquished retreated. At the same time, important details are missing on points dealt with in I Maccabees in regard to the other battles such as the number of Seleucid combatants, their tactical units, the number of soldiers Judas Maccabaeus had, the features of the terrain, and the precise location of the ambush. The author probably did not take part in the battle, but may possibly have had the assistance of an eye-witness account. The book exaggerated both the enemy numbers and Seron's status in the royal army and stressed the small number of the Jewish combatants, although presumably Judas Maccabaeus deliberately chose to use a small force to set the ambush (re verse 16).

In order to determine the exact date of the battle of Ammaus, it is necessary to clarify the time of the start of Antiochus Epiphanes’ great expedition to the eastern satrapies which preceded it. The exact chronology is vital for the reconstruction of the timetable of the various phases of the campaign conducted at Ammaus and its environs, and in its wake for the dating of the Beth Zur battle and the evaluation of its outcome.

In the primary sources the only direct data on the date of the expedition is the statement in I Maccabees that Antiochus Epiphanes set out in the year 147, on the eve of the battle of Ammaus, en route from Antioch to the Upper Satrapies (3.37). As the date relates to an external event, the Macedonian-Syrian version of the Seleucid calendar was the one applied. Thus that year began in autumn 166 b.c. and ended at the beginning of October 165.

The season when the expedition to the Upper Satrapies took place must be postponed to the second half of that year, that is, between the spring and autumn of 165 b.c., and probably to the last quarter, i.e. the summer of 165:

1. (a) Porphyry, quoted by Eusebius, states that Antiochus V served as co-regent together with his father for ‘one year and six months’ (FGrH 260, F32, para. 13).

2. […]

In the winter of 164 b.c., after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes and Lysias’ retreat from Beth Zur, Judas Maccabaeus gained control of Jerusalem. The Temple was purified and the Hasmonaean brothers were now able to help the Jews scattered outside the Judaean Hills region, who were being pressed by their neighbours, the Idumaeans, the Samaritans and the Hellenized settlements in Transjordania and the coastal plain (I Macc. 5). The Seleucid crown passed to Antiochus V Eupator, son of Antiochus Epiphanes, who was just nine years old. The real power at Antioch, however, was wielded by the regent Lysias. That situation made the stability and continuity of the dynasty doubtful, for it was clear that Lysias aspired to the throne. Judas Maccabaeus’ great successes in the expeditions against the neighbours, and the development of his military power on the one hand, and on the other the internal crisis in the Seleucid kingdom, encouraged the Jews to lay siege to the Jerusalem citadel, some time around April 162 b.c. (see the chronological discussion in Appendix K, pp. 543ff.). That step, designed to eradicate the last real symbol of Seleucid power in Judaea, immediately elicited a strong Seleucid reaction, surpassing in quantity and quality all the previous battles against the Hasmonaean brothers.

The Seleucid army invaded the country from the south-west, through Mt Hebron, as had Lysias on his first expedition. They laid siege to Beth Zur, and when it surrendered they proceeded northward toward Jerusalem.

We have seen, then, that the use of writing extends only gradually and at different rates in different areas of Athenian life. The growth of documents in some areas from the early fourth century on does not necessarily pervade all walks of life; nor did it necessarily render oral tradition less accurate or extensive. Oral transmission, therefore, could subsist alongside ‘literacy’, and the two were not nècessarily incompatible. Oral communication was in fact still very important in the fourth century B.C., as our sources show. But how, and in what form, was the past remembered, when so little trust was placed on written record for knowledge of the past? I now turn to oral tradition, its formation, character and workings, in the specific case of ancient Athens. I start with family tradition. For against the wider traditions of the whole community, family tradition is comparatively simple, we have clear and direct evidence for it, and Greek family tradition seems to have suffered almost no interference from writing. It is a clear and apt introduction to some of the problems of oral tradition, the importance of transmission for its character and reliability, and the reasons behind its fluidity. We may see clearly how ideals and beliefs help transform traditions. Since family tradition is the corner-stone to our understanding of Athenian traditions – and to the mechanisms of oral tradition in general – it will be necessary to re-examine the ancient evidence in some detail.

The suggestions of Chapter 3 obviously have some bearing on other early Greek lists. I can only outline some points here which need further development.

What we can suggest from the anthropological studies discussed in Chapter 3.2 is that we could well expect one of the earliest uses of writing to be the recording of lists. Those in the religious sphere (e.g. sacred laws, calendars) might be the first (Ch. 1.1). The aims of such lists might not be the ones we tend to àssume: the initial incentive need not have been preoccupation with dating by officials. Given the continuing use of memory even where written documents did exist (Ch. 1.2), we cannot assume that there must be written lists where there are eponymous officials – especially since eponymous officials are mnemonic aids in themselves. But once lists are started, such dating would be easier (cf. Jeffery (1976), 34–6, and LSAG 59ff. on use of early lists for dating, and below). We have already seen striking examples where documents are not used for the documentary purposes we would expect (Ch. 1.2.2). Nor should we be surprised to find bare lists without any comment at all (Jacoby, Atthis 58f stresses bareness; contrast surprise of ML no. 6, p. 10).

That applies to the keeping of lists with each successive official. But what about the earlier reaches of the lists which correspond to periods before they were kept in writing? There was much room here for speculation and manipulation.

Literacy in ancient Greece

A discussion of oral tradition, and still more of its interaction with written record, seems to raise questions about the extent of literacy. For how can we talk of oral tradition in classical Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries when the written word was so plentiful? What are we suggesting about the level of literacy? It is often loosely assumed that oral tradition dies out when literacy becomes widespread. ‘Oral’ and ‘literate’ are often seen as opposed characteristics. Romantic views of ‘oral society’ convey a seductive picture of an intimate ‘folk-culture’ which is shattered by the insidious arrival of literacy. Behind these views lie certain expectations of literacy and ideas about its use which we are encouraged to take for granted by our sophisticated and highly literate standpoint.

In fact the society of classical Athens was still heavily dependent on the spoken word even in the fourth century B.C. One can still talk plausibly of oral tradition in that century (Chs. 2, 4). Yet the alphabet reached Greece in the eighth century B.C. Many postulate widespread literacy in Athens at least by the fifth century. Other theories assume an extreme picture of Greece as an ‘oral society’, and the extent of ‘literacy’ is accordingly minimized. The two pictures would seem to be incompatible. Yet surely the continuation of certain oral practices into the fourth century suggests first that the reality was a great deal more complex; and secondly that we are thinking about literacy and lack of it in a misleading way, influenced by our own preconceptions about literacy.

Oral tradition in Athens was of the most fluid kind, its transmission casual, and its lifespan usually short. Apart from much earlier oral poetry, the strict mechanisms for accurate transmission found by anthropologists are absent. The same is probably true of the rest of Greece. This means that memory and oral tradition were peculiarly prone to change and selection according to later beliefs and ideals. In evaluating the reliability of oral tradition as evidence, one must therefore ascertain above all the means of transmission and the length of time since the incidents referred to took place. Large vacuums of ignorance and dramatic telescoping of chronology occur only three or four generations back.

Living oral traditions continued to be transmitted alongside the written histories of the classical period, apparently unaffected by them. The Athenian democracy encouraged a new emphasis on the recent past as a source of prestige more important than legendary origins. Family tradition now had to remember the historical period, and it recorded it with greater precision than the wider traditions. But official tradition and ideals fostered an image of Athens' past in the old aristocratic mould, acquiring for the demos an aristocratic legendary ancestry. Combined with certain democratic ideals, this produced a bare and anonymous past, rendering much of Athens' history irrelevant. However, the popular and general polis traditions maintained much more variety and detail. Between them they could produce traditions of some complexity for perhaps three or four generations. Family traditions were also important in preserving individual memories which were not stereotyped.

Greek genealogy is an area where both oral tradition and writing are involved. It is not pure oral tradition untouched by writing but the product both of written coordination and oral tradition. Genealogy and the part of family tradition that recorded legendary and heroic ancestors raise questions rather different from the oral traditions of family history of the last chapter. As shall be argued, it attracted a certain amount of written or literate study. It therefore introduces crucial and particularly interesting problems concerning the influence of writing and written study on oral tradition. More specifically, it bears also on the formation of a written ‘history’ and chronology for early Greece.

With genealogy we are largely shifting our attention back to a more archaic period and set of interests than those dealt with so far and to the very beginnings of written study of the past. Up till now we have been concerned mainly with the late fifth and fourth centuries, the high classical period of Athens and its full radical democracy. But genealogies and their study are redolent of an earlier Greece, that of Pindar, Herodotus and indeed of the earliest prose writers of Greece, the writers of Genealogies (the first, Hecataeus, flourished c. 500 B.C.). This genre of writing appears first in the very late sixth century and was still practised in the late fifth century. The genealogists' writings seem to belong to a world of predominantly aristocratic values, of legendary heroes and Homeric ancestors. They take us back to the very dawn of historiography.

We tend to take literacy and its prestige for granted. We regard higher literacy rates as desirable, lack of literacy a sign of backwardness, but without thinking carefully about either the character or advantages of literacy, or the nature of its supposed converse, communication by word of mouth. In the study of the past, the written word is elevated above the oral, the written document generally much preferred as evidence to oral tradition, and written sources given more attention than oral ones, even when the written sources actually derive from oral communication. The reasons for this elevation are, one suspects, more a matter of inherited assumptions and beliefs than of individual thought about the nature of the written word (whose application is in fact exceedingly complex). A strong tradition of historiography and political thought has seen literacy as essential to civilization and liberal democracy. As Gibbon put it, ‘the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of savages, incapable of knowledge or reflection’ – a belief which recurs today, though expressed differently. Nineteenthcentury political theorists (and indeed modern ones) could not conceive of liberal democracy without widespread literacy. Since classical Athens was seen as the epitome of both civilization and democracy, it followed that Athenian citizens were highly literate.

Greater understanding of oral communication and tradition are in some ways now modifying these assumptions of the superiority of literacy. Oral communication and oral tradition have more positive associations, and the term ‘orality’ has been coined to avoid the obvious negative connotations of ‘illiteracy’.

We can now turn to the more general traditions of the whole community or city-state, the polis traditions of the fifth and fourth centuries. Compared to family tradition and its transmission, the general polis traditions are exceedingly complex. Yet, these are the traditions which must have formed the usual view or memory of the past, the Greek equivalent of ‘national’ history. How did a city-state remember or create a picture of its own past from oral tradition alone? Were there official traditions and official ‘memory men’ such as we meet in anthropological studies? How were any general traditions transmitted at all and by what groups of people?

In fact, as with family tradition, the wider oral traditions in Athens seem particularly fluid also, and it is questionable how far it had an ‘official tradition’ at all. The same is probably true of many other Greek city-states. Against the complexity of the general polis traditions and of any general oral traditions, to which I shall return in the next chapter, I concentrate here on the Athenian epitaphios or public funeral speech, which comes nearest to an ‘official tradition’. It forms an extreme example of Athenian polis tradition and is most illuminating for oral tradition and the way it is formed. As for the complicated web of popular tradition, individuals' knowledge and the polis traditions of the assembly, Chapter 4.1 discusses some of the general problems, introducing certain important characteristics of these polis traditions, mainly as a background to the official tradition; and briefly discusses the form and character of the epitaphios.

The traditions of Athens' ‘liberation’ from the Peisistratid tyranny in the late sixth century are perhaps the best known, indeed most notorious, of her oral traditions. We have already touched on them from the perspective of family tradition (Ch.. 2.4.2 and 2.4.3). In this chapter, I shall re-examine the whole complex of traditions in various sectors of Athens and over the course of two hundred years. They may be treated as a case study for the character, development and processes of oral tradition in Athens.

So far we have concentrated on a single type of tradition at a time, yet as we have seen also, traditions and memories affect each other: no memory is totally independent. Different types of tradition may complement, reinforce or contradict each other. What, then, was the overall picture provided by the various traditions? What kind of complexity were Thucydides or Herodotus faced with when trying to enquire about the past? If we are to understand the overall character, mechanisms and development of oral tradition, rather than individual examples or groups, we must confront a whole body of related traditions and their gradual changes – in short, the fluid and ever-shifting spectrum of memories which made up Athens' images of its past.

The ‘expulsion of the tyrants’ in the late sixth century was an important part of family tradition and defence. It was also crucial to the polis as a whole: the ‘liberation of Athens’ which supposedly brought back the democracy was one of the most admired parts of Athens' history.

The conception of ‘sacred history’ used here and defined in Chapter 1 above is an attempt to render explicit and precise what is implicit in Augustine's view. It will be clear that this conception is both very closely related to, and not exactly identical with Cullmann's notion of ‘salvation history’ (Heilsgeschichte). The vital difference is that Augustine's conception presupposes a clear distinction between ‘history’ as what has happened (‘the past’) and ‘history’ as the record of what has happened. In the phrase ‘sacred history’, ‘history’ is used in the second of these senses, and ‘sacred history’ is defined by the special character of the record. This special character derives from the privileged status of the writers and of their interpretative judgement on the events recorded by them. This is the ‘prophetic’ quality of inspiration in the biblical canon (see Appendix A).

Cullmann does not make the distinction between the two senses of ‘history’ presupposed in the Augustinian conception of ‘sacred history’: i.e. that as past events, there is nothing distinctive about any part of history in virtue of which some history is ‘sacred’, whereas, understood as ‘record’, some history is ‘sacred’ in virtue of the distinctive status of its authorship and the authors' distinctive judgement on their past. In so far as Cullmann's language allows us to guess, ‘history’ (Geschichte) as used in the phrase ‘salvation history’ (Heilsgeschichte) seems to mean ‘what has happened’ rather than its record. Thus he writes: ‘Salvation history itself continues but only as the unfolding of the Christ event.