Taphoi wrote:
Unfortunately, I don't have time to write essays in response to your rhetoric. People will have to spot the non sequiturs themselves.
That is the most embarrassing and pathetic attempt to avoid an answer I've read in quite some time.
Taphoi wrote:With all due respect, what would have saved time would have been if Paralus had found the palimpsest fragment before writing an essay denying its existence.
And that, without putting too blunt a point on it, is fabrication. You have not bothered at all to address the points in the post and I would please like you to demonstrate where I've denied the existence of the palimpsest.
Taphoi wrote:Suffice to say, you have overlooked the fragments of Arrian's Events after Alexander, which do say that the seizure of the corpse steeled Perdiccas in his decision to attack Ptolemy.
I'll begin with the last part of that claim first.
It is never a good look to alter one's position whilst giving the impression the new is one's original. The original position:
Taphoi wrote:... Ptolemy's seizure of the corpse was influential in deciding Perdiccas to attack Ptolemy rather than defend Ionia against Antipater.
Current position:
Taphoi wrote:.... the seizure of the corpse steeled Perdiccas in his decision to attack Ptolemy.
English may not be the first language of some who visit Pothos so I will explain the subtle change. The first claim is that the seizure of the corpse influenced Perdiccas in making a decision to attack Egypt first rather than Macedonia. Thus the seizure was an influence in a decision Perdiccas was to make, to whit, whether to attack Egypt or to March on Macedonia.
To the second position. I have clearly demonstrated that this decision was made
before the seizure of the corpse (please see "rhetoric" above in earlier post). Your wording - steeled Perdiccas in his decision, not steeled him in deciding - describes a decision
already taken that is further hardened by the seizure. This is, in fact, exactly what ' the
palimpsest of Arrian states:
He was even more determined to make an attack on Egypt, in order to remove Ptolemaeus from power
The language - like your own - is describing the confirmation of a decision already taken. That decision - as Diodorus baldy states - was taken during the winter prior to the seizure of the corpse. As a matter of form, you need to acknowledge when you change your position rather than misrepresent it as your original.
As to the claim that I've overlooked material in Events after Alexander, the above should demonstrate that this is clearly an error on your part. It is clear in Diodorus (and Events after Alexander) that Perdiccas, over the autumn and winter of 321/20, was encamped somewhere in Psidia. It is here, adjacent to Phrygia, that he begins his marital intrigues as well as moving against Antigonus who escapes to Antipater. It is here, after Ptolemy's annexation of Cyrene (and his murder of Perdiccas' hyparch Cleomenes), that the synedrion in which the decision to attack Egypt first was taken. In the Spring Perdiccas would march south and Eumenes would march north (with a side trip to Sardis). Thus Arrian, in the palimpsest to which you refer elsewhere, states that in the spring of 320 Perdiccas, the Kings and the royal army moved from Psisdia into Cilicia. At the same time Arrhidaeus defies Perdiccas and takes the corpse to Egypt.
When he arrived with his army in Cilicia with this intention, because he knew that Philotas, the satrap of the country, was a friend of Craterus, he deprived Philotas of his command and set up Philoxenus, an undistinguished Macedonian
The "intention" is to remove Ptolemy. The time is spring 320 and Arrian seems to have given a list of reasons for the invasion of Egypt ("...the desertion of Arrhidaeus to Ptolemaeus, and the taking of the body of Alexander to Egypt...") - a list that is clearly not complete in what survives - before returning to the narrative of the actual campaign which begins with Perdiccas re-organising Cilicia. Photius, in his severely contracted summary, only picks up this campaign when Perdiccas leaves Damascus - something that should give pause especially when dealing with matters such as Photius' dot point summary of the Babylon Settlement.
I would suggest a reading of the source material outside the confines dictated by a preconceived hypothesis.
