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I agree that Aelian's extracts could be separated from those of Arrian and Plutarch. This has consequences for the nature of the purported forgery. If the Aelian extracts are from the Ephemerides and Ecbatana then they extend the scope of the Ephemerides at least 8 months into the past before Alexa...

I was following Robinson (C A R Robinson, The Ephemerides of Alexander's Expedition) who has the entries from Arrian, Plutarch and Aelian conveniently laid out side by side in a tabular form by date, and who takes "tetradi meta eikada" as the 24th. Robinson's interpretation seems pretty r...

Aelian's excerpt from the Ephemerides uses the same format as Plutarch for the 28th but uses a regular forward count for the 24th. So does the decad count reflect Plutarch's or Aelian's representation of the dates rather than that of the Diarist? Chris, I had a look at Aelian 3.23 and I can see tha...

I would certainly agree with you that Samuel's Babylonian sources for the Ephemerides idea does not make much sense. I would warn you also that Hammond's idea that Diodotus was Eumenes' successor is also fairly dubious. It is pretty much contradicted by Nepos and Hammond is wrong to suggest that the...

There are other reasons to look at these dates. The Ephemerides appear to be primary evidence for the nature of the Macedonian day, and they clearly used a dawn-dawn day count, but Samuel argued that this was not the actual Macedonian day. Is it a good argument? Part of his objection is the decad f...

Aristobulos was a man with much privileged information on whom Arrian frequently relies. Yet according to the above I must accept that he was a man of relatively little importance who learned of AlexanderGÇÖs death only when it was proclaimed to the rank and file, and furthermore that he did not ha...

Chris, The fundamental reference on these issues would be A E Samuel, Ptolemaic Chronology, Munich 1962. Pages 46-9 deal with the dating of Alexander's death and there is a whole chapter on the Macedonian calendar. Personally, I think that the arguments for discrediting the 28th Daisios as given by ...

I am deep into a review of the debate on whether the Ephemerides are real or fake documents, which affects other material on that page. (Trawling the net for material about this is what led me to this forum.) I have an article on the authenticity of the Ephemerides scheduled to appear in the Ancien...

My point is that 14 is demonstrably not a biological extreme even in modern western contexts and even less so in ancient Macedonia. It is well within the normal range for paternity. There is plenty of evidence that Macedonian princes behaved precociously. Alexander negotiated the purchase of Bucepha...

You are wrong to compare the probabilityof 14 with the probability of fatherhood at all other ages, because the latter allows a much greater duration to achieve fatherhood. Rather the probability at 14 should be compared with the probability for some other single year. We can say for example that in...

A quick trawl of the web turned up this study of teenage fatherhood: http://www.juvenilejustice.com/teenfather.html It found 7 members of a sample of 615 "urban males" who had become fathers at age 15. Probably around half had been 14 at the time of conception given 9 months gestation. The...

My paper is scheduled to be published in the Conference Proceedings. I expect they will be available to purchase from the University of Padua. I will ask. I cannot publish it on my website, since I would be infringing upon the prerogative of the Conference Proceedings.

Best wishes,

Andrew

Just in case anyone is based in Italy or can be there in mid-September: The University of Padua (GÇ£Universita degli Studi di PadovaGÇ¥ near Venice) is holding a conference on the Tombs of the Greek Heroes ("Eroi, Eroismi, Eroizzazioni Dalla Grecia Antica") on 18th -19th September. I will ...

Hi Agesilaos, Tarn has shown that it is possible to construct a seemingly credible plot such that Heracles was introduced as an imposter in 309BC, despite the fact that Nearchus (and Meleager?) raised the subject of Heracles at the Assembly in Babylon just after Alexander's death. However, Tarn's ca...

It is impossible that Alexander was married to Barsine. If he had been, then any male child would automatically have been recognised as Alexander's son. It is clear that Alexander never acknowledged Heracles as his son, because Diodorus 18.2.1 states that Alexander was considered "childless&quo...