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Phalaecus and Timoleon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. D. Westlake
H. D. Westlake
Affiliation:
King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
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Extract

To his narrative of the Sacred War Diodorus appends an excursus on the fate of the Phocian leaders, describing at some length the adventures of Phalaecus and his mercenaries after their departure from Thermopylae (xvi. 61–3). The object of this excursus, whose substance probably derives from Demophilus, is to illustrate the terrible consequences of temple-robbery, but to modern scholars the story is interesting chiefly for its portrayal of the difficulties and hardships experienced by mercenary commanders. It does not appear to have been noticed that at the same time Diodorus unconsciously throws some light upon the mission of Timoleon to Sicily.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 34 , Issue 1-2 , April 1940 , pp. 44 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1940

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References

1 Hammond, , C.Q. xxxi (1938), pp. 82–5.Google Scholar

2 Parke, , Greek Mercenary Soldiers, pp. 140–2.Google Scholar

3 Pickard-Cambridge, , C.A.H. vi, p. 240Google Scholar, does not explain his unusual view that Phalaecus was killed towards the end of 346, i.e. a few months after the surrender at Thermopylae.

4 xix. 59. The date corresponds to 18th July (Glotz, , Histoire grecque, iii, p. 295).Google Scholar

5 Beloch, , Gr. Gesch. iii. 1, p. 541Google Scholar; Glotz, , op. cit., p. 323Google Scholar. Pickard-Cambridge, , op. cit., pp. 240 and 248Google Scholar, assigns this event to 343, associating the destruction of the mercenaries with the successful coup of the Elean oligarchs; but it is more likely that they perished in a subsequent attack by democratic exiles.

6 Beloch, , op. cit., p. 510Google Scholar; Lenschau, , R.E. xix, col. 1613.Google Scholar

7 Beloch, , op. cit., p. 595, n. 1Google Scholar; Hackforth, , C.A.H. vi, p. 300Google Scholar. Glotz, , op. cit., p. 417, assigns it to 343.Google Scholar

1 Envoys perhaps left Leontini in the spring (Hackforth, , op. cit., p. 285).Google Scholar

2 Diod. 78. 3–4, 82. 2: Plut. 30. 7–8. Plutarch, who exaggerates the piety of Timoleon, is forced, to excuse the enlistment of men guilty of sacrilege by the plea that no others were available. But there can scarcely have been a shortage of mercenaries in a brief period of widespread peace, and in the following year, when Phalaecus was already in Crete with most of his company, a much larger force was collected, apparently without difficulty. The Corinthians had been nominally allies of Phocis in the Sacred War and can have been little influenced by religious scruples.

3 Hicetas in his letter to the Corinthians stressed the cost of the expedition (Plut. 7. 5).

4 Diod. 69. 4; Plut. 16. 3. The ten ships seem to have been all triremes, whereas the seven of Timoleon had included three smaller vessels (Diod. 66. 2).