With (d) we reach the most difficult of all the cruces that meet us in chs. 23-31.5, the narrative covering Philomelus’ activities from his visit to Archidamus to his defeat and death at the battle of Neon. To take the immediate point first: how, short of imbecility, are we to account for Diodorus’ statement at 30.1 that Philomelus ‘‘was forced to lay hands on the sacred dedicatory offerings and plunder the oracle,’’ when no more than two paragraphs earlier (28.2, repeated at 56.5) he claims exactly the opposite? One of the few clear points to emerge from the scholarship on these chapters (well recapitulated by Buckler 1989: 161ff.) is a near-general agreement that ch. 24 (in particular §4) shows signs of overlap with ch. 28 (in particular §3), and ch. 25 (in particular §1) with ch. 30 (in particular §1). To say, as Buckler does (1989: 175), ‘‘that Diodorus is guilty of a major narrative-doublet in which significant events are repeated’’ in fact solves nothing: we need to know how and why such repetitions arose to begin with, in particular since - an important point generally ignored - on almost every occasion they occur so near to each other as to preclude plain absentmindedness. The obvious answer is that Diodorus’ text for this portion of the Sacred War was still unrevised at the time of his death (see Green 2006: 8-9, 29-30), and contained, according to what would seem to have been his usual procedure, summaries from at least two different sources which were not in complete agreement. Had he lived, he would have selected material from these summaries to produce a final consistent narrative. Composing as he did on scrolls, this method for difficult episodes (summaries first, followed by a final critical reconciliation) is surely the only possible one for a historian working largely from literary sources, and on so broad a canvas.
The clearest repetition involves 24.4 and 28.3, describing the Locrian attack following Philomelus’ occupation of Delphi in the summer of 356. 24.4 places this attack immediately after the occupation. Diodorus’ blanket inclusion of all early events in the war, down to the forcing of the Pythia - in fact datable to the summer of 355 - under the 355/4 rubric is due to his calculating from the Amphictyonic declaration of war (see above). The account of the Locrian attack at 28.3 he places under 354/3 because he remembered that it happened in the second archon-year of the war; unfortunately he picked the wrong beginning point (the Amphictyonic declaration rather than the seizure of the shrine) from which to calculate. This was a culpable slip, but is at least understandable: furthermore, it is the kind of mistake that revision would have picked up. In any case, both passages indubitably refer to the same invasion, which it is safe to date in the July or August (24.4, immediately, as he stresses, after the occupation) of 356.
25.1 and 30.1, under 355/4 and 354/3 respectively, are a good deal less certain, even though one item they contain is virtually identical: that is, unlike 24.4 and 28.3, they do not require us to collapse two events into one. 25.1 describes Philomelus’ defensive measures - taken in what we can calculate, from the context, to have been the late fall and winter of 356/5, after a Boeotian vote to support Delphi and a Theban embassy to Thessaly - to protect his occupation of Delphi: a siege-wall, the recruitment of free Phocians, and the hiring of mercenaries at 50 percent over the normal going rate. (With 25.1 cf. 28.3-4; for the alliance of Athens, Sparta, and others with Philomelus, cf. Diod. 29.1; Paus. 3.10.3; Xen. Vect. 5.9-10; for the renewal of hostilities against Phocis by the Boeotians and Locrians, with contributions from the Alyzeans, cf. Diod. 28.4-29.1 and RO 57/Tod 160/Harding 74. A fuller list of both sides’ supporters is given at 29.1.) 30.1 repeats the information about his hiring mercenaries for high pay (with a note as to why this was necessary), but is set over a year later, against the background of the Amphictyonic declaration of war and the massing of a strong Boeotian army in support of the Delphians. It is this last that is used to explain both the lavish pay and the raiding, at last, of sacred treasure, ‘‘since the war now demanded yet more extensive funds.’’
Though in all these chapters Diodorus is clearly lining up more than one source (among other things he has [31.6, 34.3] two accounts, and dates, for Philip’s siege of Methone), we do not need to assume that a statement concerning inflated pay for mercenaries always needs to refer to the same occasion. Its repetition here rather glosses why, in the winter of 355, Philomelus, according to one tradition, was forced to abandon his well-publicized earlier determination not to lay hands on Delphi’s offerings. Diodorus’ alternative source emphasizes this refusal in its early stages (28.3), pointing out that Philomelus instead levied contributions from Delphi’s wealthy population (the clear implication being that they were profiteers doing well out of oracular business, and deserved what they got), and at 56.5 clears him of guilt in this matter altogether, in sharp contrast to his successors, Onomarchus and his own brother Phayllus. Though the truth here is impossible to determine, the evidence at least suggests that Philomelus originally brought genuine religious scruples to his occupation of Delphi, however much he may have been forced afterwards to compromise them.
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