(8.51.1) as “the one ‘absolute date ’ ” in Herodotus, but that is not the function of the
mention of Calliades’ archonship in the text: Herodotus is not helpfully providing a
key to archon lists so that everyone will be able to fix the moment in time, but rather
signaling the moment of overlap into Athenian time. Calliades’ archonship is only an
“absolute date” to us as a result of two millennia of synchronistic work. See rather
Wilcox 1987, 57 – 59, and Shaw 2003, 21, 32.
Daffinà (1987, 28 – 29) comments on how hard it was for a Roman to use the
consular lists intuitively as a means of orientating himself in temporal space. Still, for
those who were practiced at it, the exercise was clearly not the impossibility it may
appear to be to us: note the language of Velleius Paterculus, criticizing those who get
the date of Pompey’s birth wrong, “even though the ordering of the years from the
consulate of C. Atilius and Q. Servilius is so easy” (cum a C. Atilio et Q. Seruilio con-
sulibus tam facilis esset annorum digestio,2.53.4). Many readers of this book will recall
scholars of an earlier generation who moved around lists of consuls and archons with
this same facility.
37.Ad Att.13.30, 32, 33, 6, 4, 5 = Shackleton Bailey 1965 – 70, 303, 305, 309, 310,
311, 312. The last in the series, 316, is not keyed in to this legation but forms part of the
same pattern of inquiries for a planned dialogue setting. I am heartened by the begin-
ning of the second of these letters, where Cicero says, “You don’t quite understand
what I wrote to you about the Ten Commissioners”; even Atticus, it appears, found it
hard to follow. See Badian 1969 for discussion of the prosopography, with praise for
the accuracy of Cicero and Atticus; esp. Sumner 1973, 166 – 70, on these letters, and
161 – 76, in general on “Cicero at work” in Ad Atticum.
Bettini 1991, 143, 167 – 68.
Sumner 1973 on Brutus,and Douglas 1966b, esp. 293: “The Leges Annales
ensured that Roman politicians were as conscious of such dates as any graduate of his
‘year’ or ‘class’ ”; cf. Aveni 1989, 178 – 83, on analogous apprehensions of age groups
among the Nuer and the Mursi.
We could compare the way in which Cicero speaks of Solon in Brutusas being
an old man in a Roman time frame but a youth in a Greek one (39).
Samuel 1972, 57 – 138; Hannah 2005, 48 – 56.
Gomme 1945, 2 – 8, remains the first place to go for a discussion of the problems
facing Thucydides in chronology.
Jacoby 1954, 1:15; cf. Möller 2001, 248.
Jacoby 1954, 2:279 — not to mention the Theban equivalents, the Boeotarchs,
Pythangelus and Diemporus, who are part of his narrative of the incursion into
Plataea.
Note the argument of Smart (1986) that Thucydides was intent on making the
beginning of the war part of a “natural” process, not dependent on the artificial and
discontinuous eponymous dating; cf. Dunn 1998b, 40 – 41. Timaeus appears to have
notes to pages 15 – 18