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The Problem of a History of Messenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

P. Treves
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Extract

At the suggestion of Professor Larsen of Chicago, a young American scholar, Dr. C. A. Roebuck, undertook a few years ago to write ‘A History of Messenia from 369 to 146 B.C.’ (diss. Chicago, 1941, pp. iii-128). It is perhaps too late to review it. And it might seem ungracious to criticise it. Though, in Dr. Roebuck's dissertation there is very little that is objectionable (save, perhaps, a question of approach, which I shall deal with presently, and a few points of detail on which I shall dwell at the end of this brief note). The author's merits are unquestioned.

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Notes
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 64 , November 1944 , pp. 102 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1944

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References

1 This point was already raised by Mr. F. W. Walbank, in his review of DrRoebuck's, treatise (CR, LVI, 1942, pp. 39–40)Google Scholar.

2 Wisely perhaps, Dr. Roebuck refrains from entering into the very complicated auestion of the sources of Pausanias, Bk. IV, but he should not have omitted to mention both Rhianus's poem (which at least testifies to the literary taste of his age and to interest in Messenian affairs) and its elaboration by the Messenian local historian on whom Pausanias drew. Cf. Lenschau, T., Phil., XCI, 1936, pp. 292 ff.Google Scholar, and the very stimulating, though obviously exaggerated, remarks of Ziegler, K., Das hellenistische Epos (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 16 ff.Google Scholar, 22. DrKroymann's, J. second treatise on the source-criticism of Pausanias(Pausanias u. Rhianos, Quellenuntersuchungen z. IV Buch des Pausanias; Berlin, Junker & Dünnhaupt, 1943)Google Scholar I regret that I know only from Charlier's, F. review, Étud. class., XII, 1944, p. 365Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Larsen's excellent comments, CP XXXIX, 1944, p. 157. His judgment is significantly similar to that of Ephorus, (Diod., XI, 64, 3)Google Scholar, on which see Kolbe, W., Hermes, LXXII, 1937, p. 269Google Scholar.

4 It is unfortunate that the evidence of Euripides's Cresphontes should not have been mentioned by L. R. Shero, who has most successfully maintained the theory of the existence of a Messenian national tradition prior to 369 B.C. (cf. TAPA LXIX, 1938, pp. 502 ff., 511)Google Scholar. It is equally regrettable that, although he mentions both Euripides's lost play (p. 28, n. 4) and Professor Shero's paper, Dr. Roebuck should nevertheless side with the sceptics. On the tragedy of Cresphontes, cf. the illuminating comments of Ed. Schwartz, , Hermes, XLIII (1899), pp. 448–9Google Scholar; and Wilamowitz, , Textgesch. d. griech. Lyriker (Abh. Göttingen, N.F. IV, 3, 1900), pp. 99–100Google Scholar. It is highly significant that Euripides's Cresphontes seems to have been produced at the time of the Athenian expedition against Pylos (cf. Pohlenz, M., Griech. Trag., 1930, II, p. 108)Google Scholar.

5 Alcidamas's chronology recently worked out by Walberer, G. (Isokrates u. Alkidamas, diss. Hamburg, 1938, pp. 47 ff.)Google Scholar, who fails, however, to record the rivalry between him and Isocrates over the Messenian case (duly mentioned by Dr. Roebuck, p. 43, n. 77), makes it, I fear, impossible to describe him as ‘a writer of the fifth century’ (so Sir R. Livingstone, Plato and Modern Education; Rede Lecture for 1944; C.U.P., p. 14; precisely on the evidence of Alcidamas's Μεσσηνιακὸς λόγος).

6 Mythology and mythical evidence, of course, counted as much as recorded, factual, historical evidence, for the value of both was taken to be the same. This point needs no further elaboration after its brilliant treatment by Bickermann, E., Speusipps Brief (Ber. sächs. Akad., LXXX, 1928, Heft 3), pp. 42 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 Archid., 105, is as much an echo of Tyrtaeus (frgg. 6–7 D., ll. 14–15, 18) as Archid., 57, suggested by Ed. Schwartz, loc. cit., p. 438, n. 3, and Phil., XCII (1937), p. 23Google Scholar, n. 5. For an admirable survey of the influence of the Messenian tradition on the Athenian literature of the fourth century, see Schwartz, , Phil., 1937, pp. 22 ff.Google Scholar; on Plato's Laws, Vourveris, K. J., Platon u. d. Barbaren (Athens, 1938), pp. 20–1Google Scholar. Dr. G. J. D. Aalder's Prolegomena to his Commentary on Plato's, Laws, Bk. IIIGoogle Scholar (Hetderde boek van Plato's Leges; Amsterdam, Paris, 1943) I know only from De Strycker's, É. review in Étud. class., XII (1944), pp. 362–3Google Scholar.

8 Of course, I do not mean to say that the story of the origins of Epirus (so fully and ably treated by Robert, L., Hellenica, I, 1940, pp. 100 ff.)Google Scholar was ‘invented’ by Pyrrhus's court-historian Proxenos. Indeed, it goes back—in its earliest stages—to Pindar, (Nem., VII, 38 ff.Google Scholar; cf. Wilamowitz, , Pindaros, 1922, p. 167, n. 2Google Scholar; Cross, G. N., Epirus, 1932, pp. 7 ff.)Google Scholar and Euripides, (Andr., 1243 ff.)Google Scholar. But these very passages prove that already in the eighties and thirties of the fifth century (Professor D. S. Robertson's theory that the Andromache was written in 418–7 B.C. and ‘performed in Molossia’—CR XXXVII, 1923, pp. 58–60Google Scholar—seems to me to have been successfully refuted (by implication) by, e.g., Rostagni, A., Riv. Fil., N.S., V, 1927, pp. 328–9Google Scholar; Méridier, L., éd. Budé Eur., II, 1927, pp. 100 ff.Google Scholar, and Pohlenz, M., Griech. Trag., II, p. 84Google Scholar; who unanimously date the play to the middle or last years of the Archidamian War, and make it more or less contemporary with Aristophanes's Acharnians) what the Molossian Court circles were solely concerned with was to stress by means of a Homeric or post-Homeric pedigree the Greek character and traditions of the royal family. To that effect they sought, and received, the support of their friends and well-wishers both in Pindar's Boeotia and in Athens. Proxenos gave the final and most systematic version of this Molossian stuff, which is therefore as unlike the Messenian lore as anything could be. The latter rests, in fact, on the recollections of a common struggle and on the proud share in a common heritage, whereas the story of Epirus, far from being the saga or the semi-historical record of a people, is the fictitious retrojection into the past of the claims and achievements of the kings of Molossia. This also justifies my contention above that it is an impossible task to write the history proper of Epirus and its people. Further proof is afforded by the treatment it underwent at the hands of modern scholars, who either regarded it (so Klotzsch) as a chapter in the general history of Greece and Macedon from Philip II to the successors of Alexander the Great, or as ‘a study in Greek constitutional development’ (so Nilsson, Cross, and Accame).

9 The relevant evidence was collected, and admirably commented upon, by Jacoby, F., F.Gr.Hist., II BD, pp. 417–18Google Scholar (comm. on Callisthenes, frg. 8; F.Gr.Hist., No. 124).

10 This theory (as I have shown in Étud. class., 1940, pp. 278 ff.Google Scholar, and will endeavour to prove in greater detail in a forthcoming paper on the party background of the young Demosthenes) seems to me to rest on no other ground than Professor W. Jaeger's authority (Demosthenes; Berkeley, 1938, pp. 56 ff., 68 ff., 83 ff. = German ed.; Berlin, 1939; pp. 57 ff., 70 ff., 83 ff.). Bloch, H. accepts it (Athen. Stud. W. S. Ferguson, 1940, p. 342, n. 3)Google Scholarin toto, but I cannot help feeling that it has already been brilliantly disproved by M. Paul Cloché in several of his writings on Demosthenes (cf., “especially Démosthènes, 1937, p. 50Google Scholar). It is only fair to add that Professor Jaeger's later pronouncements (e.g., Athen. Stud., p. 447; Paideia, II, pp. 390–1Google Scholar, Eng. ed.) are hardly reconcilable with his former contentions, though he still holds them (cf. Paideia, III, pp. 269 ff.)Google Scholar.