Roger Pearse

If the objection is that 9th century Byzantine writers cannot be trusted to quote material accurately, and specifically Syncellus cannot, it would be most interesting to see something like some evidence for this. In view of the fact that much of Diodorus Siculus is today known only from the extracts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and many authors from Photius, it would be a conclusion that again would dispose of much of what we have retrieved from the ancient world. So I think that we are dealing with an argument by selective obscurantism.

The point is not about when he wrote, tho, but whether Africanus' reference is correct. Obviously if the work finished in the 167th Olympiad, it could not have contained what Africanus said it did. So one or the other is wrong.

Incidentally I don't care for arguments where people offer 'facts' not generally known without indicating where they come from. All this is parrotted without acknowledgement from Richard Carrier on Thallus.

The idea that Thallus ended in the 167th Olympiad rests on a numeral in the Armenian version of Eusebius' Chronicle. Richard Carrier proceeded to assert that, regardless of the testimony of Africanus, we should be confident that the numeral is not corrupt. The editors (Petermann and Karst) of Eusebius are not nearly so confident.

As Carrier himself mentions, Mosshammer's study of the Chronicle notes lots of problems with numerals in the Armenian version. Indeed Jerome himself made a mistake reading the Greek numerals in Eusebius when making his Latin translation, so it was clearly dead easy to do. But... we do not posit a corruption without evidence.

The data is:

1. Eusebius tells us the work finished in the 167th Olympiad.
2. Africanus refers to it for something in 33AD.
3. Numerals are more at risk of corruption in ancient texts than text itself is.

Faced with this, most of us will preserve what the text of E. says, but certainly not use a numeral to argue that a text is corrupt. If we have to choose, we would choose in the other direction based on general probability. Those authors whom I have seen have all done the same.

All the best,

Roger Pearse