ABSTRACT
It can safely be assumed that Diodorus reused dramatic enactments of the events, especially for the battle in the Great Harbour and the speeches delivered in the aft ermath of victory, from Timaeus, whose source was Philistus. It is apparent that the divergence in the two most important sources for Syracusan history in the Peloponnesian War can be accounted for by the origin of the material employed by Th ucydides and Diodorus. Th e former obtained background material from Antiochus, some eyewitness information about the siege itself, and perhaps even consulted with Syracusans such as Hermocrates for details about the Syracusan tactics and Gylippus’ role as commander. Diodorus, however, has preserved the highly patriotic account of Philistus (for example at 13.15.5) through possibly an intermediate source, but nonetheless it retains the fl avour of this Syracusan view. It is particularly in the aft ermath of the victory that Diodorus provides material that is found nowhere else, because either for Th ucydides or for the later writer Plutarch it was not relevant to their subjects.
