Theopompus and Classical Greek Historiography

Abstract

Piero Treves, in his article on Greek Historiography in Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1949), describes Theopompus' history of age of Philip as the crowning achievement of classical and forerunner of Hellenistic historiography. The first part of this judgment may well occasion some surprise, for most of us are likely to agree with R. G. Collingwood that Herodotus and Thucydides had no fourth-century successors anything like equal in stature to themselves.' No substantial part of any of works of Theopompus has survived, but there are upward of four hundred references to him or quotations from his writing made by other ancient authors.2 It is obvious that not even these excerpts are wholly representative, since they are limited to matters relevant to purposes of those who quote them, but they do show beyond doubt that he was an extremely interesting and noteworthy personality, and they further admit possibility of a reasonable attempt to assess quality and philosophy of his work.3 Not unnaturally these fragments have been subject of a considerable modem literature, but more comprehensive studies have tended to focus interest on political convictions or philosophical ideals of historian.4 In this paper I