Brad Cook The Epitome of Philip II of Macedon

Ancient Lives of Demosthenes (and Alexander) are numerous, but for Philip II of Macedon not one survives. An epitome of his life, however, does exist in a Vatican manuscript. My goals in this paper are (1) to reintroduce this unique text to the scholarly community, and (2) to compare elements in this text to surviving sources, and (3) to explain the construction and character of the epitome in light of similar texts in Codex vat. gr. 96.

The epitome of the life of Philip is not long, being less than two hundred words. It consists of two sections of approximately equal length. The first half of the epitome contains two episodes from Philip's history, his blinding at Methone and then his taking of Byzantium. The second half of the epitome describes Philip's character and attributes his success both to his character and to that of the Athenians, which is also described.

The first half of the epitome has parallels to surviving sources. The two historical episodes record events that appear in historical sources, such as Diodoros Siculus, as well as in other non-historical sources. The account of Philip's blinding at Methone is quite similar to a section of an account that we have in the Suda (Karanos, kappa 356). The second episode is vaguely similar to a section of an account in the Suda (Leon, lambda 265), but the language suggests a different source. The second half of the epitome bears comparison to the first, longer entry on Philip in the Suda (Philippos, phi 354); the similarities here reveal common topics and interest but no noteworthy similarity in language. The epitome represents a set of sources that are parallel to those preserved elsewhere, as in the Suda, but which have otherwise disappeared from the surviving tradition about Philip.

The epitome appears in a manuscript that includes other biographical texts and epitomes, including excerpts from Diogenes Laertius Lives of the philosophers and epitomes of many of Philostratos’ Lives of the sophists. The epitomes from Philostratos are followed in the manuscript first by an unusual epitome of Demosthenes which is then followed by our epitome of Philip; excerpts from the Archaiologika of Iohannes of Antioch follow. Both the epitomes from Philostratos and the text on Demosthenes shed light on the creation of the Philip text. The Demosthenes text, which is only slightly longer than the Philip epitome, consists of twelve sections that are taken from two extant Lives of Demosthenes (see Westermann, Biographoi [1845] 297-302 and 302-9). Details in the writing of the Vatican manuscript for both the Demosthenes and Philip texts show that the creator of the epitomes marked when he was skipping material. Because the sources of the Demosthenes epitome survive we can observe how that epitome was made. Similar marks in the manuscript show that the Philip epitome was made in the same manner, but without the original texts, we can only get a glimpse at the now lost Lives of Philip.