It is important to ascertain whether in the Actium campaign Antony really had only the small proportion of Italian legionaries sometimes assigned to him, and this can only be done by analyzing his legionary figures from Philippi onwards. Unfortunately, though Appian is usually quite clear, he omits one figure at the very start, which prevents one treating the matter synthetically; so one must analyze backwards from Antony's legionary coins.

This paper is a contribution to the question of how far Polybius fulfilled that part of an historian's duty which consists of acquiring information; it gives an instance, small in itself no doubt, where he definitely neglected to obtain good information which lay to his hand, and preferred to repeat a commonplace untruth of the literary hacks.

Contemporary inscriptions prove practically beyond doubt that Philip V. was the son of Demetrius II. and of the Epeirot princess Phthia. But historians have always started from Eusebius' statement that he was the son of Chryseis, a Thessalian captive whom Demetrius married and who afterwards married Doson, and have tried to fit other things in with Eusebius. Now it does not much matter to us which of two unknown women was Philip's mother; but it does matter how we approach our (...) evidence, and we must start from the contemporary evidence and work downward, not vice versa. I need not here go through all the different theories based on the late evidence; what I am going to do is first to examine the inscriptions, which has not yet been done in this connexion, and then explain how Eusebius' blunder arose; for even if a definite statement be certainly wrong, we want to know how it got there. (shrink)

It has been common in history for the conqueror or usurper to fortify his position by marrying a daughter of the old line. It was done by Alexander at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, by Herod at the end. There is reason to believe that it was also done both by Ptolemy I. and Seleucus.