Dionysius of Miletus was the first to write Persica. Information on him is especially scanty, and what follows must be taken as suggestions rather than certainties. He seems to have been contemporary with Darius’ and Xerxes’ reigns (Moggi 1972: 438-442), and he wrote both Persica and Events After Darius ( Ta meta Dareion) in five books. The Persica dealt with the Persian empire at least from the end of the reign of Cambyses (FGrHist 687 F 2), and perhaps from its origins with Cyrus, up to and including the reign of Darius, while Events After Darius tackled the period following Darius’ death. As the latter had five books, it probably provided detailed treatment of Xerxes’ reign (at least of its beginning) and on the Second Persian War (480-479). The first writer of Persica would thus have written on, after, and because of the Persian Wars, as has been noted for the authors of the early Persica (Drews 1973: 36).
The four fragments do not tell us much. They all have corresponding variants in Herodotus’ history (Moggi 1972: 452-462), which can only suggest that such historical and cultural questions were already discussed some decades before Herodotus himself. As was recently observed (Marincola 1999), nothing confirms Jacoby’s view that Dionysius’ Persica should be considered as more ethnographic and descriptive than narrative.
The next author of Persica, Charon of Lampsacus, was contemporary with the Persian Wars and wrote in the second or third quarter of the fifth century bce. Charon was considered by ancient authors as earlier than Herodotus and there is no reason to reject that view (Moggi 1977; contra, Jacoby 1943, FGrHist Komm. Illa.!, 18), even though it need not imply that Charon was a source for Herodotus (Moggi 1977: 24). Seven of Charon’s fragments could go back to his Persica. They attest that it dealt not only with Greco-Persian relations - Persian conquest of Asia Minor (687b F 4), Ionian Revolt (F 5, F 3?), Persian Wars (F 1, at least, is on Mardonius’ expedition in 492 bce), and the meeting between Themistocles and Artaxerxes (F 6) - but also with the origins of the Persian empire and its founder (F 2 on Mandane’s dream). Textual citations (FF 4, 5) suggest that the narrative was very concise. In fact, it consisted of only two books (T 1), to compare with Herodotus’ nine.
The third author of Persica was Hellanicus of Lesbos, who lived ca. 480-407/6 and was contemporary with Herodotus, although he survived him some twenty years. His native island was under Persian rule until the battle of Mycale (479); he was born near the time it became an ally of Athens, but the western frontier of the Persian empire was not very distant, and he probably traveled at least in Asia Minor. Persia, however, was not his exclusive concern, insofar as his Persica was just a monograph among dozens of others, which were either mythographical or ethnographical. Sixteen fragments have been traced back to it, but they are brief, hard to delimit, and concern details only. Hellanicus is the first author of Persica who is known to have treated also Assyrians and Babylonians (687a FF 2, 7). His allusion to Medea as the eponymous ancestor of the Medes (F 5) may suggest that he tackled the origin of that people with a mythographical approach, something also attested in his other writings. He certainly treated many events of Persian history (Cambyses’ brothers, the murder of his successor, Darius’ children, Xerxes’ expedition) and he alluded to some Persian customs (question of the burial of dead men). We do not know whether his Persica dealt successively with the Assyrian and Median empires before approaching the history of the Persian empire (as Ctesias later did), and any assumption about the work’s structure is impossible to check. One can only say that the chronological scope went at least from mythical times through Assyrian, Median, and Persian history to the battle of Salamis (F 11). There is no evidence that his account went beyond the Second Persian War and, as this event was a turning point for Lesbos, such a limit would fit very well with Hellanicus’ familial experience. In any case, his Persica was not a long work: it was divided into two books at least, possibly no more. If FF 3 and 4, which allude to Thracian cities and come from Book 2, are related to the account of Xerxes’ expedition (as suggested by Drews 1973: 22 and Ambaglio 1980: 132-133), it would confirm that the narrative was very concise, as Charon’s had been.
Hellanicus’ chronological relationship to Herodotus has been discussed even more than for the preceding historians. It seems most probable that his Persica was composed earlier: so ancient testimonies suggest (T 1; F 11), and it would seem odd to write immediately after Herodotus a book on Persia and the Persian Wars which would be far more concise than his (Drews 1973: 23-24; Ambaglio 1980: 34; contra, Jacoby 1913a). There is no reason, however, to exclude the possibility of parallel redaction. Be that as it may, fragments are inconclusive about a possible relationship between the two works, and it is most probable anyway that both historians used oral evidence for the most part. That is to say, every theory on the evolution of the historical genre that rests upon their relationship is highly questionable.
The three preceding Persica were independent of Herodotus’ work. They dealt both with the history of the Persian empire and with the Greco-Persian Wars, but the proportion allowed to each topic cannot be defined. The focus on the Persian world becomes clearer with the Persica of the fourth century bce, about which we are also better informed.
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