Harding - The Story of Athens

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First published 2008
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2008 Phillip Harding

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ISBN13: 978-1-134-30446-2 ePub ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-33808-5 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-415-33809-3 (pbk)

ISBN10: 0-203-44834-0 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-33808-0 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-33809-7 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-44834-2 (ebk)

When the idea of this work was first broached to me by Richard Stoneman, the suggestion was that it should simply be a translation of all fragments of the Atthidographers, author by author, following the enumeration and using the text of Jacoby in Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. His view was that to have such a collection between two covers would be a useful resource to students and teachers of ancient history. It soon became apparent that this would not be satisfactory. In the first place, whilst budget limitations made it unreasonable to provide a commentary of the scope of Jacobys, some interpretation of the fragments was necessary if they were to be useful. It was decided that this interpretation should be more extensive for the less well-known period of the kings, when the Atthidographers were using, abusing, or manipulating oral traditions in order to provide a pseudo-historical base for Athenian religious, legal, social and administrative practices (or, as some might say, inventing classical Athens). Some of this commentary was so extensive, in fact, that it ended up in appendices. It was felt that commentary on the historical period, when the Atthidographers were chronicling data, could be kept to a minimum, often merely a reference to a more familiar version of the events by Thucydides or the like. Indeed, some fragments that lack a clearly datable context or are simply names have been relegated to an appendix (see ) without commentary.

The second departure from the original concept involves the ordering of the fragments. They are no longer arranged by author, as they were by Jacoby and will be in the revision of his work (the so-called Brills New Jacoby), but by topic and date. The reasons for this are laid out in the Introduction, but in essence it is hoped that this will provide the reader with a more accessible understanding of the nature of the Atthis and, at the same time, make it easier to see where and how the individual authors differed.

Third, though the majority of the translation will be based upon the text that can be found in Jacoby, in some places that text is incorrect and has had to be replaced. This is especially the case with the scholia to Aristophanes and with the papyrus text of Didymos On Demosthenes. The reader will, of course, be alerted whenever the text translated differs from Jacobys.

It is, I suppose, mandatory to explain my practice with regard to the spelling of names. In essence, I have tried to adhere as strictly as possible to the Greek spelling, but have yielded to convention in the case of some really ingrained names, such as Thucydides and Sicily. I do not think the odd departure from the rule will present problems.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank Richard Stoneman for suggesting this idea and for supporting it almost to publication. Also, I want to acknowledge the generosity of Oxford University Press for allowing me to use my translation of the fragments of Androtion from Androtion and the Atthis (Oxford University Press 1994), and of some of the fragments of Philokhoros from Didymos: On Demosthenes (Oxford University Press 2006). But my greatest gratitude must go to Felix Jacoby, who pioneered the understanding of the Atthis and whose work has made this possible.