Primary source · literary

Bibliotheca historica (Library of History)

Diodorus Siculus

Composition

c. 40 BCE

Language: greek

Reliability

literary tradition access

~500 years from events

A forty-book universal history covering events from the mythical age to 60 BCE. Books 1–5 and 11–20 survive complete; the rest in fragments and Byzantine excerpts. For Carthage, the indispensable books are 11–14 (the fifth-century Sicilian Wars between Carthage and Syracuse, including the campaigns of Hamilcar, Himilco, and Hannibal son of Gisco), 15 (further Sicilian conflicts), 19–20 (the Agathocles crisis and his African invasion, 310–307 BCE), and the surviving fragments of 21–32, which cover the Pyrrhic and First and Second Punic Wars from a perspective independent of, though sometimes harmonizing with, Polybius.

Bias and reliability notes

Greek historian writing in the late Hellenistic period under Caesar and Augustus. Compiled from earlier sources rather than original investigation; for Carthage and Sicily, his principal source was Timaeus of Tauromenium (early 3rd c. BCE), giving us indirect but valuable access to a tradition hostile to Carthage from the Sicilian-Greek perspective. Reliability varies sharply by passage depending on which source he was excerpting; generally most reliable when paraphrasing Polybius or contemporaries of events, less so for early periods.

Public-domain translation

C. H. Oldfather (1933) — read at Perseus →

Claims citing this source

During the Agathocles crisis, the Carthaginian commander Bomilcar attempted a coup against the Carthaginian government, marched his troops into the city, and was defeated when the citizenry rallied against him; he was captured, tortured, and crucified in the agora.

Cited at 20.43-44
After landing in Africa in August 310 BCE, Agathocles burned his own ships on the beach to prevent his troops from retreating to Sicily.

Cited at 20.7
In the autumn of 307 BCE the African campaign collapsed. Agathocles, facing army disaffection and Carthaginian recovery, fled secretly back to Sicily, abandoning his army and his sons; the troops, on discovering the desertion, killed both sons and surrendered to Carthage on terms.

Cited at 20.66-69
The principal surviving narrative of Agathocles's African campaign, Diodorus Books 19–20, is shaped by the now-lost history of Timaeus of Tauromenium, a Sicilian Greek contemporary of Agathocles whose treatment of the tyrant was personally hostile. Modern scholarship reads Diodorus's portrayal of Agathocles partly as a transmission of Timaeus's anti-Agathoclean framing rather than a neutral account.
The African crisis forced the Carthaginian recall of Hamilcar son of Gisco from his Sicilian command; he died in 309 BCE in a Greek counterattack near Syracuse, with his head reportedly sent as a trophy to Agathocles in Africa.

Cited at 20.29-30
Agathocles invited the Cyrenian governor Ophellas, who had marched ~10,000 troops and a similar number of colonists across two months of desert to join the African campaign as Agathocles's ally, to a banquet a few days after their rendezvous, killed him there, and absorbed the surviving Cyrenian army into his own forces.

Cited at 20.40-42
At White Tunis (Leukon Tyneta), shortly after his landing, Agathocles defeated the Carthaginian field army under Hanno and Bomilcar in a major engagement that established him in the Carthaginian hinterland and put Greek troops within striking distance of Carthage itself.

Cited at 20.10-12
Carthage responded to the Mamertine appeal first, establishing a garrison at Messana under a commander named Hanno before the Roman expedition arrived.

Cited at 23.1
The Mamertines of Messana, threatened by Hiero II of Syracuse, appealed for protection both to Carthage and to Rome in 265 or early 264 BCE.

Cited at 23.1.4