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The Date of Timoleon's Crossing to Italy and the Comet of 361 B.C.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In the year of Eubulus' archonship at Athens (345/4), Timoleon the Corinthian, who had been chosen by his fellow citizens to command at Syracuse, prepared for his expedition to Sicily. He hired seven hundred mercenaries and having put his soldiers aboard four triremes and three fast sailing ships departed from Corinth. Following the coastal route he picked up three further ships from the Leucadians and Corcyreans and then with ten ships in all crossed the Ionian gulf to Italy. Thus far Diodorus Siculus 16. 66. 1–2. In the course of the crossing, Diodorus continues (66. 3), a peculiar and miraculous event befell Timoleon, with the supernatural order coming to the support of his enterprise and foreshadowing his eventual fame and the glory of his achievements. I now quote Diodorus' own words: δι' ὂλης γρ τς νυκτς προηγεῖτο λαμπάς καιομένη κατ τν οὐρανόν μέχρι οὖ συνέβη τν στόλον εἰς τν Ἰταλίαν καταπλεσαι In translation: ‘throughout the whole night he was preceded by a torch that blazed in the sky until the flotilla reached land in Italy’. No more than a single night would, of course, have been required in order to accomplish the crossing of the gulf, with Timoleon presumably heading from Corcyra for the Iapygian promontory as was normal procedure in such transits. Diodorus goes on (66. 4–5) to recount that Timoleon, who had been informed in Corinth that Demeter and Persephone would accompany him on his voyage, recognized the actual assistance of the two goddesses, dedicated his best ship to them and named it Sacred vessel of Demeter and Kore. After diplomatic activity at Metapontum and Rhegium Timoleon proceeded from Italy to Sicily, where he landed at Tauromenium (66. 5–68. 7) still in the year of Eubulus.
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References
1 See, for example, Thucydides 6. 30. 1 and 6. 44. 1. The further Thucydidean passages 1. 36. 2 and 1. 44. 3 suggest that Timoleon's route was conventional in every respect.
2 In view of συμπαραθέουσα its ordinary sense (for which see, for example, [Aristotle], de mundo 395a 25, where the subject is a lightning bolt) has to be accorded to κατασκήπτειν. At Aristotle, Hist. Anim. 553b30 and at [Aristotle], Problemata 906a37 the verb is applied oddly to the rainbow. For γ-κατασκήπτειν applied to a bolide, see Zonaras (probably echoing Cassius Dio), 8. 17.
3 Although not, strangely, to Hammond, at CQ 32 (1938), 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See note 1 above.
5 See Talbert, R. J. A., Timoleon and the Revival of Greek Sicily (Cambridge, 1974), 22–38Google Scholar.
6 Talbert, , op. cit. 37Google Scholar toys with the candidacy of Athanis but concludes rightly that the counter-indications are intimidating.
7 See Polybius, 12. 24. 5.
8 So Barrett, A. A., Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 72 (1978), 87–8Google Scholar. Barrett, unfortunately, seems to have been unaware of the content of Plutarch, , Timoleon 8Google Scholar.
9 In poetry, of course, one may find both lampas and fax used of such conventional heavenly bodies as the sun (see, for example, Parmenides, , DK 28B10. 2–3Google Scholar; Lucretius 5. 976; and Seneca, , Thyestes 835)Google Scholar and moon (see, for example, Ennius, , Annales 16Google Scholar. 401–2 Warmington; and Horace, , Carmina 4. 6. 38Google Scholar). Fax can also be applied to lightning (see, for example, Accius, , Epinausimache 308–9Google Scholar Warmington; and Valerius Flaccus 1. 568 and 4. 670).
10 See, for example, [Aristotle, ], de mundo 395b 11–17Google Scholar; Cicero, , de haruspicum responsis 39Google Scholar Lucretius 2. 206 and 5. 1191; Frontinus, , Strategemeta 1. 12. 6Google Scholar; and, especially, Pliny, , HN 2. 96Google Scholar.
11 For example, the fax ardens in caelo that figures among the prodigia for 137 B.C. at Julius Obsequens 24 can be identified as a comet on the basis of Chinese records, for which see Yoke, Ho Peng, Vistas in Astronomy 5 (1962), 145Google Scholar.
12 See Achilles, (astronomus), introductio in Aratum 28Google Scholar.
13 A good collection of graphic eye-witness accounts, old and recent, of meteor showers, that may be compared with the description in Plutarch is to be found in Brown, Peter Lancaster, Comets, Meteorites and Men (London, 1973), 202–16Google Scholar. Identification of the phenomena described by Timaeus as an auroral display, for which see, for example, Stothers, R., Isis 70 (1979), 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, can be safely dismissed. Very active aurorae only develop gradually in the wake of other forms and auroral displays do not commence in the region of the zenith. If one were, nevertheless, to persist with an auroral hypothesis one would be forced, counter to the principle of parsimony, to admit the coincidence of an aurora and a spectacular fireball.
14 See above with note 10.
15 See especially Beloch, K. J., Griechische Geschichte (2nd ed.Berlin and Leipzig, 1922), iii, part 2, 380–5Google Scholarand Talbert, , op. cit. 41–51Google Scholar.
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21 See Ho Peng Yoke, 143.