For Theopompus, beginning the Hellenica where Thucydides left off was not an attempt to pay homage to the historiographical tradition or to the authority of a prematurely interrupted source, but a way to undermine the meaning of 404 BCE as a historical threshold. As a writer of Greek History, he saw in Lysander’s victory a concise and clear beginning that extended the war in the following decade up to Sparta’s eventual defeat. Only someone who had seen Philip II at Corinth in 337/6 BCE could take such a long-term view and give a different interpretation not only to the fifth century and the relationships between Greece and Persia but also to the eastern perspective of Agesilaus and Lysander. The choice of embedding his Greek History into the events of Philip’s times, a choice that would displease Polybius (T 19; F 27), was a profound statement about the autonomy of the polis and the new era that had begun, rather than a sign of regret of the sort that lies behind the event (i.e. the Battle of Mantinea) that Xenophon used to close and contain the narrative of his Hellenica.

Greek historiography acquired the features of a specific genre through a deepening of its technical characteristics and a corresponding need for an all-abiding commitment. Theopompus was not arguing against Thucydides (or Herodotus); he was trying, rather, to ‘assimilate’ them. His claim about the primacy of the fourth century, which astonishes Photius, has to do in fact with the extension of the field of research, the vastness of the civilized world, and the obligation to draw on disparate sources. And this expansion of the field of history stems from the dilation of the inhabited Greek world. I shall not address here whether or not Ephorus and Theopompus did in fact accomplish their task, but the significance of Theopompus’ proemial claims should not be ascribed only to his colossal self-esteem. Dionysius considers Theopompus to have been verbose, but he never accuses him of promising to do more than he actually did. The supremacy (προτεύειν) that Theopompus so exalted, referred, of course, to a primacy ἐν λόγοις, in rhetorical ability, but above all to cultural primacy: as we saw above in the passage from Photius’ Bibliotheca, “in philosophy and knowledge” (ἐν τῷ φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ φιλομαθεῖν). History becomes a genre among others through the enunciation and the defense of its own technical skills.

Dionysius certainly knows this page of fifth-century history and uses it to define Theopompus’ innovation: we have no proof that Theopompus himself explicitly professed this innovation with respect to his predecessors, but attentive readers of Dionysius’ minor works should not be surprised by this possibility. As Dionysius attests, the major characteristic of Theopompus’ work (τῶν ἔργων αὐτοῦ καὶ χαρακτηρικώτατον) is that he explored the hidden causes of events and the motivations of his protagonists. With respect to Thucydides, then, his approach is novel in that it does not focus only on the hidden causes of actions (τὰς ἀφανεῖς αἰτίας τῶν πράξεων) but takes into consideration also the hidden motives of the actors (τὰς ἀφανεῖς αἰτίας τῶν πραξάντων αὐτὰς), which most people did not perceive.

Readers of this testimonium in Jacoby’s collection, or rather the section of Dionysius’ ad Pompeium Geminum to which it corresponds, usually focus on the end of the sentence, “and to reveal all the secrets of what appears to be virtue and what is not recognized as vice” (καὶ πάντα ἐκκαλύπτειν τὰ μυστήρια τῆς τε δοκούσης ἀρετῆς καὶ τῆς ἀγνοουμένης κακίας), as if this expression synthesized everything that was said before it. It is more likely, however, that this was for Theopompus an additional element, not in any way meant to cover the entire category of hidden causes (ἀφανεῖς αἰτίαι), which Dionysius is clearly presenting progressively, in a list in which the last one is by no means the most important. The merciless moralist in Lucian is evident even in Dionysius, a sort of judge of Hades, who condemns and (less frequently) absolves, at times going too far with observations not pertinent to the main narrative. Theopompus, the maledicentissimus, gets carried away: but Dionysius certainly does not reduce the causal perspective of the Philippica to this tribunal activity. We cannot overlook the structure of the passage and its articulation. The ἀφανές in Theopompus is not simply the accumulation of vices and alleged virtues that underlie the historical process, hiding from the gaze of those who are not in a position to see them; it is above all what moves a man to make decisions, to act, and to think about accomplishing enterprises, without neglecting, as many modern readers of Theopompus have assumed, the events themselves and the inextricable network that makes them seem uncontrollable. Ephorus did not believe that the most dramatic war fought among the Greeks depended on such inherent reasons {18|19} as arche or the laws of nature to which it was bound. Along these lines, even if we know very little of Theopompus’ theory, we should consider the writer of the Philippica. It was the very threatening force of this individual, Philip, that clarifies (if any clarification is needed) the role that decisions, choices, and human emotions played in the shaping of events.

To go beyond appearances, viz., the understanding of οἱ πολλοί, in order to understand events is the mental attitude out of which historie developed in Greece: Herodotus and Thucydides are aware of Xerxes’ ambition and the impetuous behavior of Alcibiades, but they both think (in different ways and from different points of view) that the actions of those characters belong to a dynamic that is to a great extent out of their grasp. During the fourth century, however, alongside an interpretation of facts and their connections there prevails an attention to a different sort of anthropology, one that was considered much less as a constant that could render all events foreseeable and universal, but rather much more contingent on its own dynamics, tied to individual and well-defined personalities, who created unexpected innovation and discontinuity in the course of history. If the point of view of fourth-century historiography was richer, as Theopompus thought, it owed this expansion of its horizons to the advent of a new era, whose meaning was not easy to understand.

Quite apart from his critical choices, Polybius’ viewpoint is telling: Theopompus certainly was violent in his attack of Philip II, but the problem, for Polybius, was not his use of categories such as blame or encomium, nor his narration of historical events. What is stressed in F 27 is that the historian from Chios justified his decision to abandon the Hellenica and saw Philip II as a grandiose, but also a dark and threatening presence in Greek history—a man displaying the customs typical of barbarians, in a moral climate that is completely detached from that aristocratic ethic on which the polis had been based. Polybius’ historiographical principles prevent him from accepting that in rebus Philip’s time and Philip himself are inherently contradictory. In any case, in his opinion aischrologia should never have been used, since it suits neither the ‘genre’, nor the figure against whom it is aimed. It is not accidental that some time later, and with substantial accuracy, the long tale of excesses at the Macedonian court is taken up again by Athenaeus (6.260d-261a = FGH 115 F 225b) in his description of the harmful effects on kings and governors of kolakeia.

If we look again at Polybius’ criticism of Theopompus’ decision to move from the Hellenica to the Philippica, we are able to observe that Polybius’ negative evaluation is based not only on the underestimation of the so-called Λευκτρικοὶ καιροὶ καὶ τὰ ἐπιφανέστατα τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἔργα: the proemium of the Philippica, in which we know that Theopompus justified his choice, must have contained {25|26} both the declaration of the threatening grandeur of Philip and the reason why Greek history was immersed in and contained by the affairs of the Macedonian king (συμπεριλαβεῖν . . . ἐν τῇ Φιλίππου τὰ τῆς Ἑλλάδος : Polybius 8.11.4). The independence of Greek history of “the times of Leuctra” and the true significance of this period for the birth of the Achaean League, an epochal event in the context of the third to second centuries BCE, were considered in Theopompus’ prologue to be less important than the convergence of all the most significant events in the unifying ascent of Philip and Macedon. The inclusion of Greek history in the Philippica does not merely serve as a superficial organizational principle (cheirismos); it gives the work meaning and direction. For Theopompus, τὰ περὶ Φιλίππου embraces both the crucial battle of Cnidus and the dramatic break constituted by the fall of Sparta’s naval power. Theopompus’ perspective (and it could not be otherwise) is oriented towards the great Asian campaign, which the Greek polis, precisely at Cnidus with the end of Spartan thalassocracy, had lost. Not only does this explain Theopompus’ praise of Lysander, but it also clarifies that the structure of the Philippica is an explicit declaration of a universal perspective, whose characterizing element has to do with its subject and its spatial extent, not its chronological completeness. Polybius’ irritation (perhaps even excessive) at this decision is just what he felt for Timaeus who, in wanting to make Sicily, which was only a tea cup, into the centre of the world, could claim to be the author of a universal history (Polybius 12.23.4–7 = FGH 566 F 119a); placing Timoleon “over the most splendid heroes” and Sicily, which had been liberated by Timoleon, at the pivot of the entire history, “he, who had written only about Italy and Sicily, considered it natural to be worthy of comparison with writers of universal history” (12.23.7: αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ Ἰταλίας μόνον καὶ Σικελίας πραγματευόμενος εἰκότως παραβολῆς ἀξιωθῆναι τοῖς ὑπὲρ τῆς οἰκουμένης καὶ τῶν καθόλου πράξεων πεποιημένοις τὰς συντάξεις). This charge against Timaeus is crucial for our understanding of Polybius’ reaction to the Philippica’s proemium; for Polybius completely and disdainfully denies what both Timaeus and Theopompus had claimed by the extent of their interests and the choices they made.

Polybius’ encomium and acknowledgement of Ephorus, as well as his criticism of the proemium of the Philippica, finds its justification in one idea: Ephorus was the first to write a spatially and chronologically ‘universal history’, just as Polybius was the first to conceive a Universalgeschichte that certainly comprised all known space but is limited in time to the rise of Rome, an event that absorbs all other history within itself. Polybius grants Ephorus a primacy that he denies, in order to confer it on himself, Theopompus, Timaeus, and even on Herodotus and Thucydides, who had been epitomized or resumed by Theopompus. That is to say, and this is the paradox in T 19 and F 27, Theopompus made a choice {26|27} that paralleled that of the Achaean critic: to subsume Greek history within τὰ Φιλίππου, because only so powerful an individual, of so dark and grand stature, could give a meaning to, indeed a way of reading, a series of events that would otherwise have been scattered in the fundamental crisis of the poleis.

To gain a more balanced understanding of Theopompus’ historiographical identity, it is not enough, of course, to analyze only the intentions he expresses in the proemia and elsewhere. We should read the fragments in their context, going beyond even the established interpretations. But first it will be necessary to take a preliminary look at the typology of the tradition that has preserved Theopompus and provided us with his prevailing image. The brief observations that follow, although limited, can, I think, serve as the basis for further investigation.

The two logoi of Philocrates and Aristophon (F 164; F 166), retained by Didymus, are full of historical judgments on the situation in Athens in 347/6 {31|32} BCE, in particular Aristophon’s summary of the financial situation in the city on the eve of the Peace of Philocrates. The account of Hermias of Atarneus in Didymus (F 291) helps not only to clarify the tone of Theopompus’ entire account—his harsh judgment, for example, on the money-changer, who was immoral and violent and only by chance in a position of power—but also reveals that he covered Hermias’ attempt to reestablish the city’s ancient constitution after he came to power in Atarneus. The events of 341, followed by the death of the tyrant, surely left room for a more extensive history only alluded to in the Deipnosophists.

We can observe similar attention to the broader background in the fragments in Strabo and Plutarch. In the Geography, the texts of the citations—we think, perhaps, of the excursus on the Adriatic (F 129f.), the Peloponnesus (F 383), Epirus (F 382), Boeotia (F 385), Mariandynians (F 388), the Hellespont, and Sestus (F 390)—are articulated according to the ethnographic approach of Hecataeus, a tendency echoed both by Ephorus and Timaeus in their description of topoi that have to do with local traditions that were not widely known. Here, the citations from Theopompus define unknown terms or provide a story that is unique, miraculous, or unattested elsewhere. Strabo says that Theopompus aimed to narrate myths better then Herodotus, Ctesias, Hellanicus, and the authors of Indica (F 381). In fact, what Theopompus actually said was that he would tell “even myths better than Herodotus, Ctesias, Hellanicus, and the authors of Indica” (φήσας ὅτι καὶ μύθους ἐν ταῖς ἱστορίαις ἐρεῖ, κρεῖττον ἢ ὡς Ἡρόδοτος καὶ Κτησίας καὶ Ἑλλάνικος καὶ οἱ τὰ Ἰνδικὰ συγγράψαντες), emphasizing a superiority in comparison to his predecessors of the sort that is contained in Photius’ version of his proemium (F 25).

In Plutarch, too, we can see that the exclusively moralistic quotations that predominate in Athenaeus are but one aspect of Theopompus’ research. The figure of Agesilaus is illustrative of the relationship between Theopompus’ narration of events and his historical judgment. In the central section of Plutarch’s bios, we find several fragments of an account characterized by evaluations similar to those that assail Philip. According to Theopompus, it was agreed that Agesilaus, who was the only one to receive the command of land and sea troops during the war in Asia Minor, was “the greatest . . . and the most prominent of those then living” (μέγιστος . . . καὶ τῶν τότε ζώντων ἐπιφανέστατος), although “he was prouder of his virtue than he was of his power” (Agesilaus 10.9-10 = FGH 115 F 321). Nevertheless, there are some cracks, here and elsewhere, resulting in a more nuanced picture. Entrusting Pisander with the fleet was clearly a mistake not only because, despite his courage, Pisander had no experience (Xenophon Hellenica 3.4.27–29), but also because Agesilaus privileged the interests of his family over those of the state. Agesilaus’ virtue, of which he {32|33} was so proud, clearly had limits, and Theopompus was not prepared to gloss over them in order to paint an idealized portrait of him. The king’s valor is not at stake, and he very realistically seems to want to prevent the Spartans from facing Epaminondas’ army during the Theban invasion, “against so great, as Theopompus says, a river and wave of war” (πρὸς τοσοῦτον, ὥς φησι Θεόπομπος, ῥεῦμα καὶ κλύδωνα πολέμου); and because of the part he played in causing the invasion, Agesilaus was forced to bend his virtue to mere calculations and to tolerate offenses. It is quite probable that the greatness and limitations of Agesilaus, according to Theopompus’ portrayal of him, were that of a king who recognized the splendor of his city at the time of the expedition to Asia, but was forced to humiliating terms not long afterward. The lofty figure of F 321 does not only try to limit damages, but he incautiously pushes away the invaders with an offer of money, useless inasmuch as they were already in the process of leaving Laconia (Agesilaus 32.13–33.2 = FGH 115 F 323). Plutarch wonders why it is only Theopompus who remembers this detail, which is ignored by all others (Agesilaus 33.1). Agesilaus’ mistake, namely his responsibility for the invasion of Peloponnesus, did not contradict the fact that the Spartans owed the salvation of their city—and on this all were agreed—to Agesilaus, through his wise renouncing of his personal ambitions. It is unclear whether we should also ascribe to Theopompus Plutarch’s discussion of the causes of Sparta’s fall just after this passage (Agesilaus 33.4), in which Plutarch blames Sparta’s downfall on the introduction of a perverse taste for power and supremacy. Agesilaus’ cautiousness, in any case, was not able to revive Sparta: it was a single error, as Plutarch says just after F 323, that drove the polis to its end, just as in the case of an otherwise healthy body infected by disease.

Theopompus’ depiction of Agesilaus, as preserved in Plutarch, is a privileged means, in my opinion, to understand the complexity of his historical judgment about contemporary events. As Plutarch’s Agesilaus shows, Theopompus analyzed contemporary events in detail, corrected the tradition regarding them, and discussed them from a long-term perspective that allowed for a more complex understanding of their causes. Agesilaus is not a character from an encomium, but a multifaceted politician, just as happens in the vivid action of events and not in the assemblies where things are described and said in order to persuade. In Theopompus’ description, Agesilaus’ errors and virtues are intertwined without malice, reflecting Theopompus’ interest in going beyond mere celebration. In the same way, Theopompus’ complex and articulate evaluation of Demosthenes (F 328), softened in a way that displeases Plutarch (he was not “moody and flighty”: F 326), takes into account a variety of actions and, most of all, the dynamis of an orator who forces Philip to peace. The focus is here on the strength of logos in driving events, of a politician who controls situations {33|34} through his words. The positive portrait of Lysander (F 332) is also not merely a rhetorical encomium but is subjected to the critical meticulousness that the Greeks call akribeia. The subversive, innovative character of his politics that could have saved the polis from the Persian threat, was rejected, just as in the case of Alcibiades.

These observations—and there are many others that ought to be added—enable, I think, a more satisfactory reading of Theopompus’ work. This deinos mythologist is an author, punctilious, comprehensive, and meticulous. He narrates broad historical developments, ably interspersing his narrative with digressions of every sort; he attacks opponents so as to include both praise and blame in his account. Quite apart from Athenaeus’ charge of a rhetorical and epideictic moralism, Theopompus seems to be an historian in the full meaning of the term and certainly to have been influenced more by Thucydides and Herodotus than by his putative teacher, Isocrates. {34|}