Notion and Kyzikos: the sources compared

Abstract

It has long been seen that there were two distinct versions current in antiquity of the course of events after the late summer of 411, when Thucydides' History comes to its abrupt end. Xenophon's version survives in the original, but the alternative is preserved continuously only in Diodoros' epitome, generally brief and often distorted, and it can now be taken as established that this depends on the work of Ephoros, composed in the middle of the fourth century. For much of the time the two versions are most obviously distinguished by small differences of detail, numbers of ships or of casualties or the like, but often enough the divergence is more radical, and in such cases, down to this century, preference was usually though not invariably given to Xenophon as the contemporary source. Since the publication of the London fragments of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia it has been apparent that Ephoros made use of this work, written by a historian of high quality who was at least nearly contemporary with the events he described; and there has been much controversy over (e.g.) the irreconcilable accounts of Agesilaos' campaign towards Sardis in the summer of 395, in Hell.Oxy. 11 (with Diod. xiv 80) and in Xen. Hell. iii 4.20–4. The publication of the Florentine fragments by Bartoletti in 1949 invited us to compare divergent accounts of the Ionian War.