Taphoi wrote:I would say that the usefulness is similar to the reconstruction of an ancient shattered vase
If it was indeed similar to this, it would be useful to attempt such a reconstruction. Unfortunately it is rather like reconstructing an ancient shattered vase on the basis of a description of the few remaining shards, without having seen them yourselves, and knowing that the description is at least incomplete, possibly even wholly inadequate. Furthermore, you seem to have only very few potsherds to work with. Out of 9603 words in the sample chapter, only 192 are marked as certain, if I have counted correctly. That is about 2%, while archaeologists nowadays do not reconstruct ancient buildings unless they have about 95% of the original material. For vases, there might be parallels you can compare to your reconstruction, as most vases probably were not unique. Moreover, quite a few reconstructed vases I have seen were only partially reconstructed because of lacking parts, while you seem to aim at a complete reconstruction of Cleitarchus’ work.
Both the named fragments and the parallel passages in Curtius and Diodorus, are reworkings by the quoting authors. That is why I mentioned Bosworth’s review, as I wonder what you would do with such passages as the accession of Abdalonymos he has analyzed there. You have two versions, both going back to Cleitarchus, with completely different interpretations. The common facts will have been in Cleitarchus, but there is no reason to assume that he even noted the turn of fortune stressed in his own words by Diodorus, nor that he had a dialogue on virtuous poverty such as we find in Curtius. Of course, it is interesting to inquire what episodes Cleitarchus included in his work, but the we can only gain partial knowledge, because if Cleitarchus wrote 13 books, his work was more than ten times as long as Diodorus’ treatment of Alexander and significantly longer than Curtius’ as well. Thus, we cannot even make a list of all topics he dealt with, and, equally importantly, there is no way of knowing what he omitted. Furthermore, we almost never know how he interpreted the events he narrated.
Diodorus is not such a secure guide as traditional
Quellenforscher would want him to be. Like I said, he cut down Cleitarchus’ work to about 10% of the original length, which means that he must have seriously summarized everything, and he rewrote it in his own words (which nowadays even those who stick to the traditional view admit). In doing so, he often changed the emphasis, or imposed a completely new interpretation. For the battle descriptions even Stylianou admits that they are Diodorus’ own work, and the works of people like Neubert, Pavan, Palm, and Camacho Rojo (or Bosworth in the above mentioned review) have shown that such remoddeling is not limited to the battles. Consequently, if you want to reconstruct Cleitarchus, much more work has to be done Diodorus and Curtius (and the narrative of the latter cannot be compared to non-Alexander material by him). The situation is somewhat similar to the source problem for Diodorus XVIII-XX, where scholars assume that we can somehow reconstruct Hieronymus’ work from Diodorus narrative, but many problems this entails have hardly been studied nor even pointed out in some cases.
If Bosworth and Welles mean an actual reconstruction, I strongly disagree with their view, but I doubt that that is what they mean. Note, moreover, that Bosworth says “My
feeling is that it is possible to reconstruct
something of his work” (my italics).
Of course, I mentioned Bosworth’s review not for you, but for those who might not know it, as is usually the aim of a reference.
Best wishes,
Alexander