What stretches before the reader is an almost exact equivalent of the 1996 French edition. This Is not according to the original plan; the American edition was to incorporate the author’s corrections, revisions, and additions reflecting subsequent Achaemenid research. With one exception, however, no supplementary material was received (for reasons described by the author above) —the exception being the discussion of the Aramaic customs document from Egypt discussed in chap. 9/3 (pp. 385-387). Tire author’s bracketed added passages in the Research Notes, which were to be revised into the text, are marked with [[double brackets[j. Numbering of figures and maps in the original was somewhat erratic, so it diverges here.
This is not to say there is no difference; hundreds of Classical references have been corrected. Given worlds enough and time, many corrections could also liave been made to the citations of the contemporary literature. In order to avoid as much as possible the pitfalls of indirect renderings, quotations from ancient sources have, when possible, been taken from published English translations (the mark appears in the reference for each such passage), rather than translated from the author’s French renderings (forms of names in published translations have not been regularized. Only in a few cases, where the two versions are completely irreconcilable (or where the citation could not be matched with published translations), has a translation of the author’s version been made.
The sources used are the following:
Classical
Aelian, Historical Miscellany, trans. N. G. Wilson (Loeb Classical Library [LCL], 1997) Aristotle, The Complete Works, the Oxford translations revised by Jonathan Barnes (Boiiingen edition, 1984)
Arrian, Anrthflsis of Aiexrmc/er and Inclica, trans. P. A. Blunt (LCL, 1976-83)
Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, trans. Charles Burton GuJick (LCL, 1928-33) Deinostlienes, trans. unnamed, intro, by John Harrington (Everyman, [1954])
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, trans. C. H. Oldfather, Charles L Sliennan,
C. Bradford Welles, Russel M. Geer, and F. R. Walton (LCL, 1933-67)
Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Selincoiirt (Penguin, 1954; rev. ed. John Marincola, 1996)
Isocrates, trans. George Norton (LCL, 1928)
Josephus, The Life: Against Apion, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray; The Jewish War, trans. H. St. J.
H’hackeray; Jewish Antiquities, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray et al. (LCL, 1926-55 [ 13 vols.]) C. Nepos, trans. John C. Rolfe (LCL, 1984)
Pausanius, Description of Greece, trans. W. H. S. Jones, H. A. Onnered, and (arranged by) R. E. Wycherley (LCL, 1918-35 [5 vols.])
Plato, Complete Works, various translators, ed, John M. Cooper (Hackett edition, 1997) Plutarcli: Lives, trans. John Dryclen, rev. Arthur Hugh Clough (Modern Library, undated repr. of 1864 ed.); Moralia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt (LCL, 1931-36 [vols. 3—4]) Polyaenus, Stratagems of War, trans. R. Shepherd (Chicago: Ares, 1974).
Polybius, The Histories, trans. W. R, Paton (LCL, 1922-27) [6 vols.])
Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander, tians. John C. Rolfe (LCL, 1946)
Strabo, The Geography, trans. Horace Leonard Jones (LCL, 1928-30 [vols. 5-7]) Thucydides, The Peleponnesian War, trans. Crawley (Modern Library, 1951 repr. of undated trans.)
Xenophon, Hellenica and Anabasis, trans. Carleton L. Brownson; Oeconomicus and Scripta Minora, trans. E. C. Marchant; Cyropaedia, trans. Walter Miller [some citations, trans. H. G. Dakyns (Everyman, 1992 repr. of 1914 ed.)] (LCL, 1914-25)
The principal ancient sources for which no English edition was available to me are Cte-sias and Justin.
Oriental
Aramaic from Egypt: A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Sth Century b. c. (1923) [APj; G. R. Driver, Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century b. c. (2d ed., 1957) [ADj; Emil G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri (1953) [BMAP]
Berossus: S. A. Burstein, The Babyloniaca ofBerossus (1978)
Old Persian, Roland G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon (2d ed., 1953)
Biblical
Jerusalem Bible
I would like to express my gratitude to Larissa Bonfante, Professor of Classics at New York University', who provided access to many of the editions listed above; to Maureen Gallery Kovacs and Matthew W. Stolper for help with technical terminology, especially in numismatics and ancient economy and society respectively; and to sundry contributors to the newsgroup sci. lang for discussing some obscure French terminology. I have scrupulously maintained the author's distinctions between ville and cite (‘town’ and ‘city’; see p. 377), and between sanctuaire and temple, at his request.
I am also especially grateful to my friend and publisher Jim Eisenbraun for commissioning this project in July 1996; after the French publisher’s approval of the submitted specimen, translating began at the very end of that year and proceed during, roughly, the first halves of 1997,1998, 2000, and 2001. Jim and his editorial staff made many improvements in the English style and French renderings; and Jim as book designer has as usual created a look that is both elegant and practical.
After not too many pages, the reader will discover that this is not a connected narrative history of the Persian Empire. Moreover, the reader is expected to be familiar with the narrative sequence of Achaemenid history, with the career of Alexander the Great, and with the entire Greek and Latin literature from which such histories have hitherto been drawn. The reader might find it useful to first turn to Joseph Wiesehofer, Ancient Persia (English translation, 1996) 1-101, for an overview that is thematically and conceptually remarkably similar to this work, and to the Ghronological Ghart therein for the sequence of events, as far as they can be determined. Only then, I think, can this book {whose aim, superbly realized, is to show just how a historian must evaluate and extrapolate from the available sources) be used with profit.
Glearly, this massive work represents only the first monument along the new highway through the crossroads of the ancient world.
Peter T. Daniels New York Gity, March 2002
World History
