¹ Xerxes' Invasion of Greece (Oxford, 1963), p. 15.

² As C. W Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley, 1983), p. 42, n. 63 points out: ‘No ancient writer could withstand the combined assaults of Wilamowitz, Schwartz, and Jacoby, who made Ephorus the incarnation of all that was objectionable in Greek historiography.’ One could add the oft-quoted judgment of R. W. Macan, Herodotus. The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books, vol. II (London, 1908), pp. 27–8. The only book length study of Ephorus is G. L. Barber, The Historian Ephorus (Cambridge, 1935), but it is considerably out of date.

³ On mistakes in Diodorus, see, for example, A. Andrewes, ‘Diodoros and Ephoros: one source of misunderstanding’, in J. W. Eadie and J. Ober (edd.), The Craft of the Ancient Historian: Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr (Lanham, 1985), pp. 189–97.

⁴ Theopompus of Chios. History and Rhetoric in the Fourth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1994), pp. 42–62.

⁵ C. A. Volquardsen, Untersuchungen Ober die Quellen der griechischen und sizilischen Geschichte bei Diodor XI bis XVI (Kiel, 1868); E. Schwartz, ‘Diodoros’, RE V, I (1907), col. 679; and, more recently, S. Hornblower (ed.), Greek Historiography (Oxford, 1994), pp. 36–8.

⁶ See K. S. Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century(Princeton, 1990); but with the qualifications of P. J. Stylianou, BMCR 2.6 (1991), 388–95.

⁷ Compare FGrH 70, Ephorus F 191 (papyrus fragments) with Diodorus 11.56–62. Ephorus F

⁸ For similarities, see A. Bauer, Die Benutzung Herodots durch Ephoros bei Diodor(Leipzig, 1879); for differences, E. Schwartz, ‘Ephoros’, RE VI, I (1907), col. 15 (repr. in Griechische Geschichtsschreiber[Leipzig, 1959], pp. 3–26) and Macan, op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 66–77

⁹ For example, G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte bis zur Schlacht bei Chaeroneia1,vol. II (Gotha, 1895), p. 685, n. 4 calls it ‘ein Haupstiick seiner Phantasie’; R. W Macan, Herodotus. The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books,vol. I, part 1 (London, 1908), p. 323, remarks: ‘The nightengagement looks like pure fiction’; E. Obst, ‘Der Feldzug des Xerxes’, Klio, Beiheftxii (1913), p. 112, who generally has a high opinion of Ephorus' value, also considers it a ‘Phantasie’; A. R. Barn, Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the West 548–478 B.c.(London, 1962; 2nd edn 1984), pp. 416–17 speaks of ‘Ephoros at his worst’; Hignett, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 15–16, labels it an ‘absurd fiction’; J. F. Lazenby, The Defence of Greece 490–479 B.C.(Warminster, 1993), pp. 7, 142 dismisses it as an ‘absurd story’; N. G. L. Hammond, Historia45 (1996), 8, who follows Obst in thinking that Diodorus provides a valuable corrective to Herodotus, asserts that ‘the night–attack was a fantasy’. The most recent book on the Persian Wars, J. M. Balcer, The Persian Conquest of the Greeks 545–450 EC.(Constance, 1995), does not even mention Ephorus' version

¹⁰ P. Green, Xerxes at Salamis(New York, 1970), p. 139 (repr. as The Greco-Persian Wars[Berkeley, 1996]).

¹¹ Just as the general confusion caused the Athenians to end up fighting with each other, so too the Persians killed one another in ignorance. Compare Thuc. 7.44.7 with Diod. 11.10.2 and note the verbal similarities. Thuc:

¹² See in general Marincola, J., Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 95–117 and 258–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ FGrH 688, T 8 (= Phot. Bibl. 72, 36a) and F 5 (= Diod. 2.32.4). On Ctesias' sources, see R. Drews, The Greek Accounts of Eastern History (Washington, DC, 1973), pp. 103–17 and H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Achaemenid History I: Sources, Structures, Synthesis (Leiden, 1987), pp. 33^45. His reliability as a source of authentic information is succinctly demolished by Burn, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 11–12 and more fully by J. M. Bigwood, ‘Ctesias as historian of the Persian Wars’, Phoenix 32 (1978), 19–41

¹⁴ I have already attempted to defend Ephorus' contemporary, Theopompus of Chios, on this score: Flower, op. cit. (n. 4), pp. 184–210; and postscript to the 1997 paper edition. On Ephorus' motives and methods, see Fornara, op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 43 and 109–12; and Marincola, op. cit. (n. 12), pp. 95–8, 103

¹⁵ FGrH 70 Ephorus, T 17.

¹⁶ FGrH 688, F 13.28. Although Photius‘ epitome of Ctesias’ highly idiosyncratic account of the Persian Wars is extremely jejune, other significant differences are apparent. Ctesias (F 13.27) claimed that Xerxes sent 40,000 soldiers by the mountain path and that they were guided by the two leading men of Trachis, whereas Diodorus (11.8.4–5) implies that the path was revealed by a local Trachinian peasant (‘a certain one of the natives who was familiar with the mountainous area’) and puts the Persian force at 20,000. On the other hand, Photius' bald statement that the Lacedaemonians ‘having been surrounded, all died fighting bravely’ (), is too vague to rule out a night attack.

¹⁷ This was last championed by Obst, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 27–30, who also argues that Herodotus used Dionysius (FrGH 687). The postulated importance of Dionysius is decisively refuted by Hignett, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 13, who doubts that he even lived in the fifth centur

¹⁸ J. A. R. Munro, JHS 22 (1902), 307, n. 22 (tentatively) and W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, vol. II (Oxford, 1928), p. 222, accept Diodorus' figure of 1,000 perioeci. Munro, however, leaves open the possibility that the number of 1,000 was merely inferred from Demaratus‘ advice to Xerxes at Hdt. 7.102. Lazenby, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 134–5, suggests that it is the epitaph which is wrong. Hammond, op. cit., (n. 9), p. 7, accepts Diodorus, but believes that 4,000 is a round number

¹⁹ Contra Hammond, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 12, who asserts: ‘The best explanation is that during the transmission of Herodotus‘ text 1,000 Lacedaemonians have been lost.’ Positing lacunae to account for omissions of detail in our sources is not sound method and there is no grammatical indication that words have dropped out of Herodotus' text at this point

²⁰ Panegyricus 90; Archidamus 99. It should be noted, however, that Isocrates implies that all 1,000 were annihilated and that this suits his rhetorical purpose in both passages.

²¹ Hammond, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 8, following Obst, op. cit. (n. 9); cf. n. 23 below.

²² As Burn, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 416–17 suggests: ’Diodoros names one of these deserters, or rather courageous escapers (all no doubt Greeks); Tyrrhastiadas of Kyme. This is probably historical, the proud memory of the Man who Warned Leonidas being handed down in his family for a century, to reach Ephoros, also of Kyme, Diodoros‘ source.’ See also D. H. Samuel, ‘Cyme and the veracity of Ephorus’, TAPA 99 (1968), 375–88, esp. 381–2, who calls it a local tradition. Neither, however, attributes the night attack to this same local source. Rather, Burn continues, ‘But Diodoros’ account of the rest of the operation represents Ephoros at his worst.'

²³ Barber, op. cit. (n. 2), pp. 121–2 speculates that Ephorus made frequent use of fourth–century Persicaand Atthides.Hammond, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 8–10, contends that Ephorus used an excellent early fifth-century source for his account of Thermopylae, and suggests someone like Damastes, Charon, or Aristophanes of Boeotia. But he also argues that Ephorus abandoned this source for his account of the night attack (Diod 11.9.2.–11.10.4): ‘Instead, he took up an imaginative and flamboyant account with all the features of self-glorification which are characteristic of many a freedom-fighter's ballad.’ In any case, it is doubtful whether any fifth-century historical writer either published before Herodotus or gave a detailed narrative of the Persian Wars: contraR. L. Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his contemporaries’, JHS 116 (1996), 62–87, who maintains, against Jacoby, that some of the so-called ‘local’ historians were known to Herodotus, among whom he includes Charon (but not Damastes). For the standard view that all such historians were later than Herodotus, see F. Jacoby, Abhandlungen zur griechischen Geschichtsschreibung,H. Bloch (ed.), (Leiden, 1956), pp. 16–64; and note S. Hornblower, Thucydides(Baltimore, 1987), p. 19, n. 14.

²⁴ = D. L Page, Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford, 1962), 26/531, whose text is here reproduced

²⁵ For various interpretations, see C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry2(Oxford, 1961), pp. 344–9; A. J. Podlecki, Historia17 (1968), 258–62; E. Degani and G. Burzacchini, Lirici Greci. Antologia(Florence, 1977), pp. 316–22; and J. H. Molyneux, Simonides. A Historical Study(Wauconda, IL, 1992), pp. 185–7 (who gives further bibliography).

²⁶ Diodorus quotes seven lines of Aristophanes' Peace(603–6, 609–11), two lines from his Acharnians(531–2), and three lines from a play of Eupolis. Diodorus explicitly cites Ephorus as his source for the causes of the Peloponnesian War at 12.41.1. For a non-Diodoran example of Ephorus quoting a poetic text, see Strabo 6.3.3. In the middle of his summary of Ephorus' account of the foundation of Tarentum, Strabo quotes five lines of Tyrtaeus (which it is reasonable to assume that he is also reproducing from Ephorus).

²⁷ See, M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graecf, vol. II (Oxford, 1992), pp. 118–22 and ‘Simonides Redivivus’, ZPE 98 (1993), 1–14; D. Boedeker, ‘Simonides on Plataea: narrative elegy, mythodic history’, ZPE 107 (1995), 217–29; and D. Boedeker and D. Sider (edd.), The New Simonides, Arethusa 29 (1996). The poem was probably several hundred lines long: see West, ‘Simonides Redivivus’, 4

²⁸ For these poems see E. L. Bowie, ‘Early Greek elegy, symposium and public festival’, JHS 1986(106), 13–35

²⁹ For discussion of the testimonia, see Boedeker, ‘Simonides on Plataea’, op. cit. (n. 27), 218–19, 223; and I. Rutherford, ‘The New Simonides: towards a commentary’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (edd.), op. cit. (n. 27), pp. 169–73.

³⁰ On Literary Composition 26 = Page, PMG 38/543

³¹ The peculiar nature of Plutarch's essay On the Malice of Herodotus is well discussed by J. M. Marincola, ‘Plutarch's refutation of Herodotus’, The Ancient World25.2 (1994), 191–203.

³² For Trogus' use of Ephorus, see J. C. Yardley (trans.) and W. Heckel (ed.), Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, Books 11–12: Alexander the Great (Oxford, 1997), pp. 30–4. The accounts of Thermopylae by Diodorus, Trogus, and Plutarch are compared in detail by Hammond, op. cit. (n. 9), who concludes that all three drew on Ephorus

³³ The verb apMvpoui, however, appears elsewhere in Plutarch. Note especially Pelopidas 25.11

³⁴ As does, for example, Burn, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 417–19; Green, op. cit. (n. 10), p. 140; Lazenby, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 144; and A. Keaveney, ‘Persian behaviour and misbehaviour: some Herodotean examples’, Athenaeum 84 (1996), 38–48. Hammond, op. cit., (n. 9), p. 3, on the other hand, attributes this detail to a pro-Theban bias on the part of Ephorus on the grounds that ‘Ephorus was the author who took the most favourable view of the Thebans during their supremacy in the fourth century.’ But Ephorus was candid about Theban shortcomings even during the period of her hegemony (cf. Strabo 9.2.2 = FGrH 70, Ephorus F 119) and he did not conceal the extent of Theban medizing in 479 (cf. Diod. 11.32.2; 11.33.4).

³⁵ See the discussion by D. Boedeker, ‘Heroic historiography: Simonides and Herodotus on Plataea’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (edd.), op. cit. (n. 27), pp. 235–6 and 239. It is unclear whether frr. 15, which begins with the ambiguous words fieaaoi, refers to the Corinthians merely being stationed in the middle of the battle line or actually fighting in that position. For the former interpretation, see W. Luppe, ‘Die Korinther in der Schlacht von Plataiai bei Simonides nach Plutarch’, APh 40 (1994), 21–4. The latter interpretation, however, is supported by Plutarch, who quotes these lines, since he claims (872b-e) that they refute Herodotus' negative portrayal of the Corinthian contribution in the battle: ‘But as for the Corinthians and the position in which they fought the barbarians (rdf iv fjv ipdxovTO rots fiapfidpois) and the consequence which the battle of Plataea had for them, it is possible to learn this from Simonides

³⁶ Contra Hammond, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 9, who thinks that Diodorus has made a careless mistake.

³⁷ History of Greece, vol. IV (London, 1884), p. 439, n. 1.

³⁸ Lazenby, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 142, rejecting Green, op. cit. (n. 10), says that ‘Greek hoplites were not commandos, and such an attack would be quite unparalleled.’ But this ignores not only the krypteia, but also the night battle at Epipolae.

³⁹ Plato, Laws 633b; Plut., Lye. 28; with E. Levy, ‘La kryptie et ses contradictions’, Ktema 13 (1988), 245–52; N. M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue. Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta (Chapel Hill, 1995), pp. 131–2; and L. Thommen, Lakedaimonion Politeia. Die Entstehung der spartanischen Verfassung (Stuttgart, 1996), pp. 128–9, who argues that the killing of helots was an innovation of the mid fifth century (but that cannot be proved).

⁴⁰ Plut. Alex. 31.5–7; Arr. 3.10; Curt. 4.13.1–10. Although one may doubt whether Parmenio himself ever gave this advice, the anecdote at least shows that a large–scale night attack was a conceivable strategy.

⁴¹ ‘Heracleides of Pontus and the past: fact or fiction’, in I. Worthington (ed.), Ventures into Greek History (Oxford, 1994), pp. 15–27.

⁴² ‘Aeschylus’ Persae and history', in C. Pelling (ed), Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford, 1997), pp. 1–19. Cf. P. Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, trans. A. Szegedy-Maszak (Baltimore, 1986), ch. 5, esp. p. 118.

⁴³ Pelling, op. cit. (n. 42), pp. 2–3, and p. 5, n. 16.

⁴⁴ As first suggested by G. Busolt, RhM 38 (1883), 628. See further, Munro, op. cit. (n. 18), 329–30 and Hignett, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 221–2, who argue that Ephorus' version of Salamis does not rest on independent evidence no longer extant, but is a critical reconstruction of Herodotus based on deductions from Aeschylus. But might Ephorus also have consulted Simonides' lyric poem on Salamis? The differences between the accounts of Diodorus and Herodotus are discussed by Hignett, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 220–2, and Lazenby, op. cit. (n. 9), pp. 184–5 (who gives additional bibliography).

⁴⁵ As noted by H. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus(Cleveland, 1966), p. 263. For the influence of Homer on Herodotus in general, see L. Hiiber, ‘Herodots Homerverstandnis’, in H. Flashar and K. Gaiser (edd.), Synusia: Festgabe fur W. Schadewaldt(Pfullingen, 1965), pp. 29–52; H. Strasburger, ‘Homer und die Geschichtsschreibung, in Studien zur Alten Geschichte,vol. II (Hildesheim and New York, 1982), pp. 1057–97; M. Lang, Herodotean Narrative and Discourse(Cambridge, MA, 1984), pp. 37–51; G. L. Huxley, Herodotus and the Epic(Athens, 1989); H. Erbse, Studien zum Verstandnis Herodots(Berlin, 1992), pp. 122–32; Hornblower, Greek Historiography,op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 65–7; and J. M. Marincola, ’Odysseus and the historians', Histos1 (October, 1996)

⁴⁶ The influence of Homer on narrative patterns and contrasts in Thucydides is well discussed by C. J. Mackie, ‘Homer and Thucydides: Corcyra and Sicily’, CQ 46 (1996), 103–13, who concludes (p. 113): ‘It is by means of such narrative techniques, rather than a wide proliferation of verbal echoes, that the Sicilian venture has an epic feel to it, without being too obviously "Homeric".’ Mackie, however, does not discuss whether Thucydides consciously deviated from his received core of historical ‘facts’ for the sake of creating those patterns.

⁴⁷ FGrH 70, T 20 = Polyb. 12.25f. Polybius goes on to criticize Ephorus' depiction of the battles of Leuctra in 371 and of Mantinea in 362; he makes no mention of Ephorus' Persian War narrative.

⁴⁸ On the problems involved in reconstructing ancient battles, see the still fundamental article by N. Whatley (written in 1920), ‘On the possibility of reconstructing Marathon and other ancient battles’, JHS 84 (1964), 119–39. Note also A. J. Woodman, Rhetoric in Classical Historiography (London, 1988), pp. 15–23 and R. Osborne, Greece in the Making, 1200–479 B.C. (London, 1996), p. 337, who comments about the invasion of 480/79: 'Ignorance of troop

⁴⁹ Macan, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 332. Commenting on this passage, he writes: ‘How was all this remembered? Did the Thebans report it? or Persians? or Greeks on the Persian side? Or stray local onlookers?’

⁵⁰ See P. A. Cartledge, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta (London, 1987) pp. 331–43 and R. Parker, ‘Spartan religion’, in A. Powell (ed.), Classical Sparta: Techniques behind her Success (London, 1988), pp. 152–3. In the next century, the body of Agesilaus was brought home all the way from Libya; apart from the kings, Spartans were always buried in the region where they died (Plut. Ages. 40.4).

⁵¹ Diodorus (11.30.1–4) puts the battle at night, implies that the picked Athenians were Aristides' personal bodyguard, and makes no mention of the fight over the corpse.

⁵² Cf. W. Aly, Volksmarchen, Sage undNovelle bei Herodot undseinen Zeitgenossen (Gottingen, 1921), p. 150. Herodotus writes as follows at 6.113.2–114: Note in particular that the word axfrXaaTov appears only in these two passages in all of Classical Greek literature. An army in hot pursuit of a fleeing enemy would not have called out for fire (which, I suppose, they would have had to fetch from the Persian camp), nor in the confusion would anyone have noticed exactly how Cynegirus had been killed, but the Homeric touches lend an heroic aura to these events and Herodotus' audience would have been attuned to this literary device. In other words, Herodotus is not fabricating details as much as he is endowing events with greater dignity in a way which his contemporary audience would have both recognized and appreciated

⁵³ A similar point is made by Lazenby, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 143.

⁵⁴ S. Marinatos, Thermopylae. An Historical and Archaeological Guide (Athens, 1951), pp. 61–9.

⁵⁵ Ibid., pp. 61–5 and fig. 21. The results of his excavations were reported in JHS 59 (1939), 199–200 (by C. M. Robertson) and in AJA 43 (1939), 699–700 (by E. P. Blegen), and by Marinatos himself, ‘Forschungen in Thermopylai’, Bericht iiber den VI Intemationalen Kongress fur Archaologie, Berlin 21–26 August 1939(Berlin, 1940), pp. 333–41. These arrowheads are indisputably Persian: see Burn, op. cit, (n. 9), p. 420; A. M. Snodgrass, Arms and Armour of the Greeks(Ithaca, 1967), pp. 98–100; and M. C. Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century RC: a Study in Cultural Receptivity(Cambridge, 1997), p. 41

⁵⁶ Hammond, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 8, argues that the camp of Xerxes lay some five miles away by the then course of the Spercheius river and that the Spartans could not have fought their way back to ‘the hillock’ during daylight over open country. We should bear in mind, however, that the Persian encampment will have covered a very large area (Hdt. 7.201 is vague about its location), even if their army was much smaller than Herodotus thought. Green, op. cit. (n. 10), p. 126 suggests that ‘the Persians pitched camp near Trachis, between the Spercheius and the Asopus rivers, probably occupying Anthela at the same time’; that might be close enough to make it feasible for a night attack to be followed by a dawn retreat.

⁵⁷ ‘The Demi of Attica’, in Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature 1 (London, 1829),

⁵⁸ Studies in Greek History(Oxford, 1973), pp. 176–7. As Hammond points out (p. 177, n. 1), this important find by Leake was missed by W. K. Pritchett, ‘Marathon’, University of California Publications in Classical Archaeology4 (Berkeley, 1960), pp. 137–75, who otherwise is very familiar with Leake's writings

⁵⁹ Marinatos, Thermopylae, op. cit. (n. 54), pp. 65–7

⁶⁰ Ibid., p. 67.

⁶¹ J. L. Moles, ‘Truth and untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides’, in C. Gill and T. P Wiseman (edd.), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter, 1993), pp. 88–121 concludes his essay with these words: ‘the relationship of ancient historiography to external reality is shifting, ambiguous, multifaceted, messy: in those respects at least, like life itself.

⁶² See n. 40 above.

⁶³ 63 The observation about Old Comedy I owe to K. J. Dover, Times Literary Supplement (April 12,1995), 8.

⁶⁴ Thucydides (1.10.3; 1.21.1) recognized the exaggeration and inaccuracy inherent in poetic accounts of the past: see Boedeker, ‘Simonides on Plataea’, op. cit. (n. 27), pp. 226–9. This is true despite the Homeric allusions in his narrative, for which see Mackie, op. cit. (n. 46). The one place where Thucydides felt the need to rely on poetry is in the Archaeologia, where he is at pains to extract conclusions from Homer. But that is not his usual method; as C. B. R. Pelling, ‘Truth and fiction in Plutarch's Lives’,in D. A. Russell (ed.), Antonine Literature(Oxford, 1990), pp. 30–1 points out: ‘It is unthinkable, for instance, that he would use Euripides as evidence for Athenian war-weariness, or exploit Aristophanes on Cleon; with harder history, that was not his way.’

⁶⁵ I would like to thank Harriet Flower, Judith Mossman, Ann Steiner, and especially Christopher Pelling for their assistance with this paper.