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THE HELLENISTIC WORLD R. Malcolm Errington, A History of the Hellenistic World 323-30 BC. Blackwell History of the Ancient World. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Pp. xix + 348, with 21 black-and-white illustrations. ISBN 978-0-631-23388-6. GBP19.99.
Malcolm Errington is particularly well-qualified to be the author of this important volume in this Blackwell series. His earlier major publications include Philopoemen (1969), The Dawn of Empire: Rome's Rise to World Power (1971) and A History of Macedonia (1990).1 In line with the aim of the series, which is to provide 'a new narrative history of the ancient world', he describes this book as 'a history of important political events and developments, not an encyclopedia with a brief rundown on all aspects of cultural life in the 300 years covered by it' (p. x). In other contexts he has defended (though those who know him and his work would consider it fairer to say that he has championed) his more traditional approach to historical writing in his monographs with its focus on well-researched narrative and political history. Indeed, this matches perfectly the above-mentioned aim of the series. So here we have embedded in the narrative sober analysis of the complex, multifaceted developments of this momentous political history that stretched from the death of Alexander the Great down to the demise of 'the last of the great Macedonian monarchies' (p. 308) in 30 BC.2 Developments are properly contextualized and interconnections are clearly established. Errington eschews the biographical approach, which means not having to bother with anecdotal material of dubious historical value and not having to face the temptation to cater for any assumed devotion on the reader's part to the characters of popular imagination. He is also careful not to distract or irritate the reader with obtrusive direct or intertextual references to contemporary politics.
The book comes without footnotes or endnotes, but references to the ancient sources are built into the text and, where the name of a modern scholar is cited in parenthesis, the reference is in respect of factual or source material rather any particular line of argument. The 'Select Bibliography' (pp. 316-19) provides not only a short schematic guide to source selections in or with an English translation but also to the key modern books, with...