We know very little about the life of Antiochus of Syracuse, the son of Xenophanes: he wrote a work on Italy (Italias oikismos [Settlement of Italy] or suggramma peri teis Italias [Composition concerning Italy]) whose length is unknown (probably one book only), and a History of Sicily (historia ton Sikelikon or Sikeliotis suggraphei) in nine books, from Cocalus, king of the Sicans, to the year 424/3 bce (FGrHist 555 T 3). Only a few fragments of these works are preserved: one from the History of Sicily and twelve from the probably much shorter work on ancient Italy. The work on Sicily was probably used by Thucydides (6.2-5) and then superseded by those of Antiochus’ authoritative successors Philistus and Timaeus, which probably explains its limited impact in later ages; the work on Italy may have been more popular because there were fewer competitors (Luraghi 2002: 56-59). Antiochus’ relative popularity between the first century BCE and the first century CE runs parallel to Philistus and Timaeus, who were made popular in Rome in that period by Cicero, whose strong interest in Sicily was tied to his political career (Taiphakos 1980: 177-178).
All we have of Antiochus’ Sicelica is a random reference in Pausanias (10.11.3) that is connected to a dedication in Delphi by the Greeks from the Lipari islands; a short history of the foundation of Lipari by the Cnidians is attributed to Antiochus, at least as far as the name of the founder is concerned: the Cnidian Pentathlus, predecessor of Dorieus on the western routes in the sixth century, who is ignored by Herodotus. This is about all we know of this work, which tellingly went all the way back to the Sicans, first inhabitants of the island, well before the arrival of the Greeks, and stretched to the age of the first Athenian expedition to Sicily (427-424 bce), thereby including Hermocrates, who inspired the Peace of Gela in 424/3. It is possible that Antiochus addressed the ‘‘pan-Sicilian’’ resistance to the Athenian invasion, but this is just a supposition. In any case, Thucydides’ portrayal of Hermocrates (4.59-64) largely reflects what the Syracusan leader represented for the history of Sicily in the last thirty years of the fifth century, possibly even beyond the ‘‘Attic war’’ (as Sicilian historians called the Athenian invasion of 415-413) and into the age of Dionysius. In my opinion, the debt of mainland historiography to the first known author of Sicelica goes beyond the information included in Thucydides’ Sicilian archaeology (6.2-5; Wollflin 1872). It is likely that the western version that Herodotus relegates to the margins of his own views on the role of Gelon at the time of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece (7.164-166) goes back to some extent to a tradition which he could not ignore: the portrayal of Gelon, before Hermocrates, as a philhellenic leader promoted by Pindar and by the Deinomenid court of Hiero.
A close and in some ways dialectical relationship between Sicelica historiography and mainland Greek historiography ( Hellenica) is suggested by the proem of Antiochus’ On Italy (peri Italias):. the approach to Italic archaiologia recalls the method used by Thucydides in selecting information on the distant past of the Greeks (FGrHist 555 F 2):
Antiochus, the son of Xenophanes, wrote (sunegrapse) what follows about Italy, [selecting] the most trustworthy and clearest information from the ancient accounts.
This brings to mind not only Thucydides’ ‘‘writing’’ (sunegrapse/suggraphei), but more broadly the reflection in fifth-century historiography on the ways of selecting information about a past that can be reconstructed under certain conditions, with significant limitations and far from the prejudices of contemporaries (Parmeggiani 2003: 255 ff.). The selection of information about the past requires a critical assessment that is necessary in order to vouch for the trustworthiness ( ta pistotata) of the narrative and show with clarity (ta saphestata) what stands up to scrutiny. If Dionysius is reflecting his predecessor’s thought accurately (as there is no reason to doubt he does), we should consider the notion that Antiochus shared at least with Herodotus, and perhaps even more with Thucydides, a certain way of thinking about the past, about the very possibility of discovering it and rendering it in an adequate way (saphos heurein/saphes skopein: Thuc. 1.1.3, 22.4), by means of a critical method influenced by Hecataeus’, but much more refined and sophisticated. Such clues to the content and method of his work suggest that Antiochus was not at all isolated from the general cultural trends of his time, and reinforce the impression that western Greek historiography entertained a very close and to some extent polemical relationship to mainland Greek historical culture. Even if we recognize the ‘‘Thucydidean’’ tone of Antiochus F 2, however, it is extremely hard to tell whether Thucydides might have been influenced in this field also by Antiochus’ reflection on ancient history and on how to reconstruct and narrate it.
It is worth noting that, while apparently skipping the stories of journeys westward by Greek heroes of the mythic age, Antiochus’ narrative had a very broad chronological framework, starting from pre-Hellenic Italia well before the eighth century bce and reaching down at least to the foundation of Heraclea (433-432 bce). The spatium historicum recalls that of Thucydides’ ‘‘Archaeology,’’ embracing an age before the watershed of the Trojan War: Dionysius says that Antiochus, unlike Hellanicus (FGrHist 4 F 79) and Philistus (FGrHist 556 F 46), did not give a precise date for the migration of the Sicels into Sicily, but in all likelihood dated it before the Trojan War, that is, earlier than Thucydides did (6.2.4-5), who diverged from Hellanicus and Philistus only on the name of the tribes (Oenotrians and Opicians) that had compelled the Sicels to leave Italy (Manni 1957: 156-157). Antiochus’ sources are not indigenous (Luraghi 2002: 72-74), but the depiction of the archaic age as a whole is characterized by a peculiar western perspective, which allows the historian to extend the geographical framework of his work to include Latium, the area of Rome, whence the Sicels had originated (Braccesi 1978: 38ff.).
In the early history of Italia king Italus takes pride of place. He gave his name to the people and is described as a wise (sophos) and brave (agathos) king, who originally ruled a rather small territory that formed the original nucleus of an ‘‘early Italia’ located south of the isthmus between the gulfs of Squillace and Sant’Eufemia (FGrHist 555 F 5). Aristotle (Pol. 1329b6-8) preserves ethnographic details on Italus' kingdom, such as an early institution of ‘‘common meals'' (sussitia), which suggests at least some familiarity with these topics in fourth-century historiography. Ephorus may be Aristotle’s direct source, and may himself depend on Antiochus or possibly on Philistus, an author whose work he certainly knew (cf. Plut. Dion 36.3; Vattuone 2000: 165-171). In historical terms, Italus’ story may be worthless, but it certainly had some contemporary relevance: if the cultural development of the preGreek local populations could even offer a precedent for the ‘‘Pythagorean’’ practice of common meals in an era that seems to precede even the Minoan age, it suggested that the Greek colonies had not come into contact with a radically hostile and ‘‘barbaric’’ indigenous world.
The western viewpoint that characterizes the Italic archaiologia is visible also in the fragments on colonial foundations. It has been observed that Strabo quotes Antiochus alongside a vulgata, probably seen as more authoritative, to which the references to the old author add precious details or rectifications (Musti 1988: 54-55). A case in point is offered by the foundation of Croton (F 10), with its comprehensive narrative of Myscellus’ settlement, where the ‘‘deviation’’ towards Sybaris, prevented by the Delphic oracle, and the common expedition with Archias, the founder of Syracuse, seem to reflect historical events and political debates of the fifth century concerning Syracuse’s politics towards Croton and the Siritis on the eve of the Athenian intervention in the west (427-424 bce). In the case of Tarentum, the insistence on the fact that Helots and Partheniai were originally not slaves is also likely to have political overtones (F 13). Antiochus is also likely to have brought fundamental corrections to the plot of Euripides’ Melanippe Desmotis in order to rectify a narrative that in the end supported the alliance between Athens and Metapontum at the time of the Peloponnesian War (F 12). The polemic against Euripides is in some ways specious, and close to the method displayed by Thucydides in his ‘‘Archaeology’’ and showcased in his treatment of the case of the tyrannicides (1.20).
Antiochus ended up being seen as the first Greek historian of the west, that is, the first author of Italica and Sicelica, as shown by that ‘‘polemical canon,’’ so to speak, of Greek historiography that is Josephus’ Against Apion (1.16 = FGrHist 555 T 5), where the disagreements between Greek historians are emphasized, culminating in Timaeus, who ‘‘did not deem it appropriate to agree with the narratives of any of his predecessors, neither Antiochus, nor Philistus, nor Callias.’’ Antiochus’ was a reference work not only for Thucydides but also for Philistus. Both Antiochus and Philistus probably extolled the age of the Deinomenids and saw in Hermocrates and Dionysius I, in a meaningful political continuity, the embodiment of a national identity for the history of the Greeks among the peoples of the western Mediterranean. Antiochus’ surviving fragments display not so much a short-sighted Lokalpa-triotismus as a historical consciousness of the implications of the settlement of the Greek colonies in a non-Greek world, ‘‘barbarian’’ but not necessarily hostile, whose perception is not reduced to heroic tales arguing for the precedence of Greek presence. Hermocrates’ ‘‘pan-Sicilian’’ politics, the spirit of the Gela conference, which constituted the final point of Antiochus’ Sicelica, reflects this same consciousness, the point of view from which the western historians looked at mainland Greece but also at the identity of the Italic peoples and beyond them at Rome.
World History
