Ctesias had two successors in the fourth century bce, Dinon and Heracleides of Cumae, not much before the end of the Persian empire. As we know neither the dates of Heracleides nor whether he was the earlier, we can begin with Dinon, whose Persica seems to be more like Ctesias’.
It was probably completed in the early 330s. As far as it is possible to judge from the thirty fragments, which are given by various authors, among whom Athenaeus and Plutarch are nevertheless prominent, Dinon’s Persica appears to have followed the model of Ctesias, going back to the supposed early time of Assyria with Semiramis and dealing with Persian history from Cyrus to his own time. This means both that it continued Ctesias’ account over more than fifty years (from 398 to 343 bce at least) and that it was the Persica which covered the largest chronological scope, including nearly all of Persian history.
The topics attested by the fragments are often close to Ctesias’: accession of Semiramis, of Cyrus, events of Persian history and court intrigues up to contemporary times, description of court practices, and so on. The surviving tradition, however, mentions the precise details of Dinon’s account when they differed from Ctesias’. Such variants were certainly attempts to correct his predecessor, but that does not exclude the possibility that they sometimes rested upon Near Eastern evidence: Dinon’s account of Semiramis’ accession (FGrHist 690 F 7) recalls the ritual of the royal substitute; his versions on Cyrus’ revolt (F 9) and the origins of the expedition against Egypt (F 11) could be among the rival versions already mentioned by Herodotus; and the picture of Artaxerxes III as an ass killing the Apis bull (F 21) is a coherent expression of hostility from Egyptians. As for the reign of Artaxerxes II, about which we are better informed thanks to Plutarch, some variants that have been interpreted as arbitrary and aiming only at originality (Drews 1973: 117) can in fact be traced back to local concurrent versions, as is the case either for the original name of the king (Lenfant 2004: 275 n. 632) or for the account of Cyrus the Younger’s death, where Ctesias diverged from the official version, while Dinon was closer to it (F 17; cf. Lenfant 2004: cxi ff., with n. 450). No more than Ctesias with Herodotus was Dinon content to give a degraded copy of his predecessor’s work - at least some of his divergences rested upon sources, even if not better ones (Stevenson 1987, 1997). Fragments suggest besides that Dinon also had some special interest in two specific fields: court hierarchy and rich material demonstrating royal majesty, on the one hand, and religious practices of Persians and their magi, on the other.
As far as we can see, Dinon’s Persica seems to have been like Ctesias’ and has also been criticized for privileging ‘‘petite histoire’’ (Drews 1973: 117, 200). One may wonder why Jacoby, who was so hard on Ctesias, considered Dinon’s Persica ‘‘ein Quellenwerk’’ (1921: 622), giving him, as it were, the benefit of the doubt. In fact, Drews’ verdict seems to rest on Plutarch’s quotations, Jacoby’s on Athenaeus’. Both are partially right: Dinon - as did the authors who quote him - has selected and interpreted his data in a manner unlike a modern historian focusing on wars or economy, and he may not have refrained from inventing some details here and there; but his inspiration rested also upon Near Eastern accounts and his history probably was ‘‘ein Quellenwerk.’’
Heracleides of Cumae (FGrHist 689) is also little known. He lived in the middle of the fourth century and was born in a city which had returned under Persian rule in the early fourth century. He composed Persica, of which we have only eight fragments, but the fact that the work was divided into only five books suggests that its conception was different from Ctesias’ and Dinon’s works.
The long extant fragments, all from Athenaeus, give consequently the idea of a descriptive work, whereas the scanty allusions by Plutarch also attest a narrative feature. It is impossible to reconstruct the general structure of the account. As there is no extant mention of the Assyrian and Median empires, Heracleides may have been content with Persia. The two extant allusions to events concern the meeting of Themistocles with Xerxes at the Persian court and the marriages of Artaxerxes II with his daughters, which refer to the years 470-465 and the 360s respectively (FF 6, 7). Both are related to events later than the Persian Wars and we consequently do not know whether that last event was narrated, just as we cannot tell whether both allusions were inserted into a continuous account of Persian history. One can only observe that the meeting between Xerxes and Themistocles at the royal court and Artaxerxes’ marriages with his daughters had rather sensational themes. This fact has not yet been pointed out, since Heracleides’ reputation among modern scholars does not rest upon these court stories but upon long and highly precise descriptions of the palace practices, especially the care of the king, his staff (concubines, guards, cooks, bedmakers, etc.), and court etiquette. F 2, which describes the king’s dinner - its organization, the hierarchy among his guests, and the graded distribution of the dishes to them - has especially interested modern historians as a valuable document on court institutions (Briant 1989). The description, which is factual, precise, and reasoned, tallies with Near Eastern documents such as the Persepolis tablets (Lewis 1987), and suggests that Heracleides was well informed. But the most unusual feature seems to be the way in which he tried to explain the logic of the system he described, to show that the king’s dinner was an intelligent and rigorous institution, and that the huge quantity of various meats was not employed to indulge in luxury (as Greeks might have caricatured it), but was rather a judicious way to remunerate a part of the royal staff.
World History
