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The Seventeenth Book of Diodorus: in Two Parts
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During this period Greece was the scene of disturbances and revolutionary movements
from which arose the war called Lamian.1 The reason was this. The king had ordered all his satraps to
dissolve their armies of mercenaries,2
and as they obeyed his instructions, all Asia was overrun with soldiers released from service
and supporting themselves by plunder. Presently they began assembling from all directions at
Taenarum in Laconia,
[2]
whither came also such of the Persian
satraps and generals as had survived, bringing their funds and their soldiers, so that they
constituted a joint force.
[3]
Ultimately they chose as supreme
commander the Athenian Leosthenes, who was a man of unusually brilliant mind, and thoroughtly
opposed to the cause of Alexander. He conferred secretly with the council at Athens and was
granted fifty talents to pay the troops and a stock of weapons sufficient to meet pressing
needs. He sent off an embassy to the Aetolians, who were unfriendly to the king, looking to the
establishment of an alliance with them, and otherwise made every preparation for war.
[4]
So Leosthenes was occupied
with such matters, being in no doubt about the seriousness of the proposed conflict, but
Alexander launched a campaign with a mobile force against the Cossaeans, for they would not
submit to him.3 This is a people outstanding in
valour which occupied the mountains of Media; and relying upon the ruggedness of their country
and their ability in war, they had never accepted a foreign master, but had remained
unconquered throughout the whole period of the Persian kingdom, and now they were too proudly
self-confident to be terrified of the Macedonian arms.
[5]
The
king, nevertheless, seized the routes of access into their country before they were aware of
it, laid waste most of Cossaea, was superior in every engagement, and both slew many of the
Cossaeans and captured many times more.So the Cossaeans were
utterly defeated, and, distressed at the number of their captives, were constrained to buy
their recovery at the price of national submission.
[6]
They
placed themselves in Alexander's hands and were granted peace on condition that they should do
his bidding. In forty days at most, he had conquered this people. He founded strong cities at
strategic points and rested his army.4 ...
1 Justin 13.5.1-8. The war did not actually break out until after Alexander's death, and Diodorus gives an account of it later (Book 18.8 ff.) which repeats some of this material.
2 Cp. chap. 106.3.
3 Plut. Alexander 72.3; Arrian. 7.15.1-3. This activity took place in the winter of 324/3 B.C. and was intended to solace Alexander's grief for the death of Hephaestion.
4 The abrupt ending of this paragraph, where we should expect at least the length of Alexander's stay, and the asyndetical beginning of chap. 112 coincide with the intrusion of an unwanted dating formula to indicate a lacuna in the archetype.
Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.
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References (5 total)
- Cross-references to this page
(2):
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), COSSAEI
- Smith's Bio, Leo'sthenes
- Cross-references in notes from this page (2):
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(1):
- LSJ, φέρω
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