Theopompus the Historian

Victor Matthews is an associate professor of classics at the University
of Guelph.

Shrimpton here examines the work of Theopompus of Chios, a historian in
the fourth century BC. Theopompus is one of the many “lost” writers
of antiquity, and in his introduction Shrimpton presents an illuminating
discussion of the nature of “fragments” and the difficulties of
treating “fragmentary” authors.

Chapter 1 examines the historian’s life, works, and style. It dates
his birth to circa 379 BC, and his Epitome of Herodotus to the mid-/late
360s, Hellenica to the 350s, and Philippica to the 340s and after.
Shrimpton sees Theopompus as a maverick, who assumed the viewpoint of an
outsider, a Chian or Ionian, aloof from the power struggles of the Greek
mainland.

In Chapter 2, Shrimpton acknowledges that the Hellenica fragments are
too scanty to help determine the work’s structure, or even whether it
was organized annalistically or in terms of subject matter.

Chapter 3, however, suggests that the numerous fragments of Philippica
indicate that Theopompus presented a chronological account of Philip’s
career, “punctuated by digressions (some enormous).” Shrimpton shows
that Theopompus used moral judgments to manipulate the reader’s
opinion. In Chapter 4 he presents a thorough examination of the
historian’s moral and political views. This leads him to consider, in
the next chapter, Theopompus’s treatment of the two most significant
and opposing figures of the period, Philip and Demosthenes. He concludes
that Theopompus sympathized with Demosthenes’s policy of resistance to
Macedon, yet blamed the orator for the allied future at Chaeronea. But
Theopompus’s portrait of Philip was “a grotesque caricature which no
amount of positive information was going to erase.”

An appendix on Hellenica Oxryhnchia shows clearly that its unknown
author was not Theopompus, and argues tentatively for its being
Cratippus.

Somewhat curiously, Shrimpton presents the testimonia and fragments of
Theopompus as Appendix B, when one would expect this material (the basis
for his study) to precede his discussion. All Greek is translated, and
the book has scholarly notes and a very comprehensive bibliography.