Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

He also writes about topics that other sources or Xenophon perhaps might not be so interested in.

So he gives all these biographies, you know, you get all these glimpses of other parts of the Greek world and even beyond that.

Yeah.

And Diodorus obviously preserves this continuous history.

I mean, he was trying to write a universal history.

Most of it is lost, but there is a significant chunk, especially the fourth century, that's preserved entire.

So you actually rely on him.

Once Xenophon's narrative ends in 362, you have Diodorus, and otherwise you would have very little at all.

But I also want to mention a couple of other sources that become very prominent in the fourth century, especially the orators, because in the fifth you have just the first beginning of that.

in the fourth century, the Athenian orators, these writers who write essentially speeches to the assembly, speeches to the council and speeches in courts, and they become a hugely important additional source.

They're obviously hugely problematic in all sorts of ways, but they actually give us a whole extra layer and often they refer to and appeal to and organise in some ways historical events as well.

Justin is precious because he is summarizing a lost Philippic, right?

So there was a whole tradition of people writing histories of Philip of Macedon.

They're all lost.

And we have the summary of Diodorus and we have the summaries of Justin.

And so we do need them both in order to get something like a story.

And yeah, Justin is problematic, but Justin is one of those authors who talks about when Sparta built a wall for the first time for the incident.

So there are important things that are reported by Justin that otherwise we would find much more difficult.

I mean, it's right to be harsh on Justin, but you know, he also, we also can't afford to throw anything out.

That's the problem of ancient history in general.