Sallust's 'Jugurtha': Concord, Discord, and the Digressions

Sallust's 'Jugurtha': Concord, Discord, and the Digressions 

Author(s): Thomas Wiedemann 

Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Apr., 1993), pp. 48-57 

Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association 

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Greece & Rome, Vol. xl, No. 1, April 1993 

SALLUST'S JUGURTHA: CONCORD, DISCORD, AND 

THE DIGRESSIONS 

By 

THOMAS WIEDEMANN 

The current fashion for emphasizing ambiguities and discontinuities in 

literary texts should have found Sallust's writings congenial. The Catiline 

explores competing and contradictory claims to virtus, exemplified by 

Caesar, Cato, and Catiline himself, a paragon of ambiguity in contrast to 

the unproblematic Cicero. The Jugurthine War is twice the length, with a 

more complicated structure and a wider range of material, including three 

formal digressions. A concern with the relationship between virtue and 

success, and with conflict between alternative virtues, is central to this 

monograph too; it concludes with a victory achieved not by years of 

military exertion but as the result of Jugurtha's treacherous betrayal to 

Sulla by Bocchus in contravention of all recognized moral principles 

('kinship, marriage, and a formal treaty': cognationem, affinitatem, 

praetereafoedus intervenisse; cf. 'deceit', composito dolo, 111.2 and 4). 

Although the three digressions are a highly visible feature of the 

Jugurtha, surprisingly little attention has been directed to their functions 

within the narrative. Two of these digressions - the first and third - where 

they are discussed at all in recent commentaries, continue to be thought to 

have little material relevance to Sallust's theme. Where explanation of 

these two digressions has been attempted, as in Buchner's commentary or 

Scanlon's The Influence of Thucydides on Sallust, it has tended to be in 

stylistic terms. Histories from Herodotus onwards included digressions for 

a range of literary reasons - as structural devices to divide the text into 

distinct sections; to denote the passing of a period of time; as a way of 

adding variety and colour to what was ostensibly a matter-of-fact military 

narrative; and as a practical means to feed the reader additional material 

supporting the author's argument, which in a recited text (or unravelled 

volume) could not be done in the form of the notes or appendices that are 

available to writers today.1 Such explanations in primarily literary terms 

are attractive in view of the digressions used by Sallust's exemplar, 

Thucydides. Thus Thucydides begins his account of the Sicilian Expedition 

with a description of the island's geography and ethnography (6. 1-5); he 

describes the origins of party strife, stasis, at Corcyra (3. 82-4); and he uses

SALLUST'S JUGURTHA: CONCORD, DISCORD, AND DIGRESSIONS 49 

the semi-legendary story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton to explain 

Athenian attitudes to tyranny (6. 53-4). These three passages clearly gave 

Sallust some inspiration for his own three digressions in the Jugurtha (for 

convenience, we may refer to them as A, B, and C): A. The ethnography of 

north Africa; B. Civil discord at Rome; C. The legend of the Philaeni. Each 

is carefully marked off from the preceding and following text. A: 'Res 

postulare videtur ... ad necessitudinem rei satis dictum' (17.1-19.8: 'The 

subject seems to demand ... enough has been said for what the subject 

requires'); B: 'ceterum mos partium et factionum ... quam ob rem ad 

inceptum redeo' (41.1-42.5: 'As for the tendency of division and faction... 

so I return to the narrative I have begun'); and C: 'Sed quoniam in eas 

regiones per Leptitanorum negotia venimus, non indignum videtur 

egregium atque mirabile facinus duorum Carthaginensium memorare ... 

nunc ad rem redeo' (79.1-10: 'Since the business of Leptis has taken me to 

that part of the world, it does not seem unworthy to relate the outstanding 

and astonishing deed of two Carthaginian brothers ... now I return to the 

subject').2 

How, if at all, does their subject-matter relate to Sallust's theme? The 

answer will depend on what we take Sallust's theme to be. 'I am going to 

write up the war which the Roman people waged with Jugurtha king of the 

Numidians, (a) firstly because it was great and bloody and with victories on 

both sides, (b) next because that was the first occasion when the arrogance 

of the nobility was challenged. That struggle brought disorder to 

everything divine and human, and reached such a degree of madness that 

war and the devastation of Italy were the only limit to civil strife' (5.1).3 

The three commonplaces of advertising the historian's material as exciting 

to read because it is great, bloody, and containing many changes of fortune, 

follow precedent.4 Sallust's second explicit reason sounds more interesting 

and has been variously interpreted, depending upon whether scholars 

preferred to emphasize Sallust as a moralist opposing the vice of arrogance, 

or (following Mommsen) as a political pamphleteer opposed to the 

nobilitas. The view that his purpose in writing history was primarily 

political presupposes a picture of Roman politics as structured around two 

political groupings - 'parties' as understood in the nineteenth century, 

rather than modern democratic mass parties - with Sallust supporting the 

'popular' leader, Julius Caesar. This is not a view of Roman politics which 

many find acceptable today. There are also problems about the assumption 

that Sallust was Caesar's protege; why, in that case, was he expelled from 

the Senate by Appius Claudius, one of the censors of 50 B.c., without 

protest from the other censor, Lucius Piso, who was Caesar's father-in-law

50 SALLUST'S JUGURTIHA: CONCORD, DISCORD, AND DIGRESSIONS 

and represented his interests? (There is nothing surprising about Sallust's 

joining Caesar in 49 B.c.; like others who had been excluded from political 

advancement, he saw that a Caesarian victory was a precondition for any 

further role in public life.)5 

Whatever our view of the historical Sallust's political affiliation, the 

passage explicitly advises the reader that the monograph he is about to read 

discusses the beginning of the sequence of events that led to the 

devastation of Italy: the civil wars between Sulla and the 'Marians' in the 

80s, but for Sallust's contemporaries perhaps more immediately those of 

the 40s B.C. The external and internal conflicts are tightly connected, and 

Sallust links the two around the polarity of concord or co-operation versus 

discord and envy (there are of course other moral issues whose consideration 

binds his text together). That conceptual polarity is vividly brought to 

the fore by the deathbed advice given by Micipsa to his sons: 'small things 

grow as a result of concord, but the greatest things will waste away as a 

result of discord.'6 

The three digressions separate off and introduce phases of the war under 

various Roman commanders who represent different ethical states. A: the 

catastrophic Roman failures under the command of the nobles Bestia and 

Albinus, who notwithstanding their hereditary claim to virtus suffer from 

the vices of avaritia and imperitia. B: the second phase, in which the 

aristocratic general Metellus is indeed competent, but fails to make the best 

use of his subordinate Marius because of his arrogance. Finally C, the last 

phase of the war, in which Marius is successful, but not on his own. The 

final surrender of Jugurtha to the Romans by the Mauretanian king 

Bocchus is brought about by Marius' quaestor Sulla, to whom Sallust 

devotes a detailed and ambiguously positive character-sketch (ch. 95). The 

reader cannot ignore the moral: the best noble commander cannot succeed 

if he ignores the talent of a novus homo; but a talented novus homo can only 

succeed in co-operation with a talented aristocrat. Marius and Sulla 

together brought success for Roman arms against the external threat; 

contrast the 'bellum atque vastitas Italiae' later brought about by their 

discord, which 'I am not sure whether I would be more ashamed or more 

disgusted to narrate' (incertum habeopudeat anpigeat magis disserere, 95.4). 

Sallust's other themes are secondary to this emphasis on co-operation. 

He has subordinated his selection of narrative material to this moral theme 

to the extent that geographical or chronological precision, as commentators 

constantly remind us, are of little interest to him. Thus he fails to 

make explicit reference to the winters that separated the campaigning 

seasons of 108, 107, and 106 B.C. (Syme, Sallust, p. 145; Paul, p. 198;


Watkiss, p. 27). The break in Sallust's narrative represented by digression 

C probably corresponds to the first of these winters, but that only shows 

that Sallust's objective was not to record a sequence of campaigns, but to 

structure his text in terms of an account of political virtues and vices. The 

same applies to digression A: one of its functions may well be to cover a 

period of perhaps four years between Rome's division of Numidia and 

Jugurtha's seizure of Adherbal's portion, but that is not something Sallust 

chooses to tell us: rather, he wants to signal that he is about to begin his 

account of the events leading to direct military intervention. The three 

digressions separate phases of the war which illustrate different moralities, 

associated with a series of Roman commanders, who are not only 

contrasted with one another, but also with the enemies they are fighting 

against. 

Of the three digressions, B (on partes, political divisions) is the one whose 

thematic relevance to the narrative is the easiest to identify: it gives the 

reader the background to popular hostility to the 'nobles' and to the 

Mamilian rogation. The Gracchi are treated as a separate and discrete 

theme, justifying Sallust's at first sight curious assertion in ch. 5.1 that 

Rome's political divisions began only at the time of the Jugurthan war. 

These chapters were composed at a time when the experience of civil war 

and of the triumviral proscriptions was still fresh; it is not illegitimate to 

assume that Sallust wished his readers to understand them with reference 

to the actions and claims of contemporary political leaders. The emphasis 

on civil discord is reinforced by the stylistic parallels with the analysis of 

stasis given by Thucydides on the occasion of one of the first major 

outbreaks of civil strife recorded in that narrative, at Corcyra in 3. 79-81.7 

Sallust's account associates other vices with civil dissension (41.10). It is 

preceded by a sentence describing the court of enquiry set up by the 

Mamilian rogation, 'conducted harshly and violently, on the basis of 

uncorroborated rumours and in accordance with the caprice of the 

people: at that time, with things going their way, the people exercised 

total lack of restraint, just as the nobility had so often done' ('exercita 

aspere violenterque ex rumore et lubidine plebis: ut saepe nobilitatem, sic 

ea tempestate plebem ex secundis rebus insolentia ceperat'). Lubido, 

capriciousness, is picked up again in the digression, first applied to the 

people (41.5), and then to the nobilitas (42.4). To read this digression as a 

political attack on the 'nobility' would be naive: on the contrary, Sallust 

explicitly describes the Gracchi as themselves 'noble' ('the first nobles to 

prefer true glory to the unjust exercise of power', 'primi ex nobilitate ... 

qui veram gloriam iniustae potentiae anteponerent': 41.10). If the account

52 SALLUST'S JUGURTHA: CONCORD, DISCORD, AND DIGRESSIONS 

of civil conflict has a programme, it is to analyse rival claims to political 

virtus. 

Political co-operation and discord are also the theme of the first 

digression, whose timbre is at first sight very different. Sallust wants it to 

look like the ethnographical digressions in which Hellenistic historians 

displayed their erudition, in competition with their predecessors.8 He 

makes no claim to have learnt anything about Numidia through autopsy 

(there is no reference to his having governed the territory, although the 

description of the Numidian huts at 18.8 looks like autopsy: see 

Koestermann, ad loc.); instead, he claims to have read King Hiempsal's 

description, written in Punic, in a specially prepared translation. Notwithstanding 

such a recondite (and, to his Italian readers, inaccessible) 

literary source, Sallust disclaims all responsibility for the truth-value of its 

contents (as Herodotus sometimes does). Hiempsal's myth explaining the 

origins of the peoples of North Africa in terms of the Median, Persian, and 

Armenian components of the army that accompanied Hercules on his 

expedition to the far west tells the reader nothing about the political 

structure of second-century B.C. Numidia, or of the background to its 

relationship with Rome, outlined in a few sentences (ch. 19.7). Its relevance 

to Sallust's narrative lies elsewhere: it is a statement about the difference 

between a well-ordered state, and the anarchy of division. Hercules is to be 

understood as the symbol of civil society; it was as a founder of cities that 

he was known in the western Mediterranean.9 Hercules' death results in the 

division and dispersal of his army. For the Persian contingent, civil life is 

abandoned, and civilized norms are transgressed: ships are turned upside 

down to make huts, commerce (with Spain) becomes impossible because 

there is no common language, and they end up as nomads like the 

autochthonous Gaetulians (18.3-8). City life developed sooner among the 

Medians and Armenians because their proximity to Spain facilitated 

commerce (an argument reminiscent of Thucydides in his Archaeology), 

but it was not that particular ethnic element that established control over 

North Africa: it was the more warlike and nomadic ex-Persians, now calling 

themselves Numidians. Sallust has chosen to report Hiempsal's myth 

because of the moral point it makes. It explains the discord endemic in 

North Africa. It also glosses the division of Numidia in the immediately 

preceding chapter (16.5), with Adherbal's portion 'having more harbours 

and fine buildings' corresponding to that originally inhabited by Libyans, 

and Jugurtha's 'richer in fields and population' to the Gaetulian part. The 

phrase in divisione with which that sentence begins is picked up by the first 

words of Sallust's account of the controversy amongst geographers as to


whether Africa is a separate entity or not: In divisione orbis terrae... (17.3: 

'in dividing up the globe'). 'Africa' entails disagreement. 

Throughout the monograph, Sallust's account of the actions of Rome's 

African enemies emphasizes division and disorder. This is particularly 

true of the final phase of the war. 'When the kings learnt about Marius' 

arrival, they went their separate ways to inaccessible places'; Sallust 

comments that Jugurtha hoped that he could similarly divide the Roman 

forces (ch. 87.4). Even when Jugurtha's and Bocchus' armies combine to 

attack the Romans, there is no organization - 'not in line or in any 

normal battle formation, but in gangs just as chance grouped them 

together' (97.4). The emphasis on the role of chance, confusion, and 

indiscipline in explaining the outcome of particular incidents in warfare is 

of course Thucydidean in origin. But for Sallust indiscipline and division 

are moral weaknesses, instances of man's failure to rise above the level of 

the beasts, either at the individual or at the social level. In classical 

literature, one typical marker of the point where men are almost animals 

is the nomad.10 Having destroyed his own supporters, and beginning to 

realize that he cannot win the war, Jugurtha declines to the level of a 

nomad: he is 'doubtful and uncertain', varius incertusque; 'He changed his 

itineraries and his commanders from day to day; sometimes he moved 

against the enemy, sometimes into the desert' (74.1); 'After that he never 

stayed in one place for more than one day or one night' (76.1), repeating 

'contrary to royal dignity, he often rested in a different place each night, 

and sometimes he would wake from his sleep, grab his weapons and make 

a disturbance' (72.2). As in other character sketches - most strikingly that 

of Catiline - internal and external instability go hand in hand. They are 

inimical to civil society, but characteristic of despots, such as Bocchus: 

'Royal wishes are generally as fickle as they are emphatic, and often 

contradict themselves' ('plerumque regiae voluntates ut vehementes sic 

mobiles, saepe ipsae sibi advorsae': 113.1). Bocchus' mobilitas ingeni, 

constant changes of plan, and treachery (explicitly called Punica fides: 

108.3; cf. 88.6, 102.15) are repeatedly emphasized. To the very last 

moment, Bocchus is divided within himself as to whether to betray 

Jugurtha to Sulla or vice versa. 'During the night which preceded the day 

set for the conference, the Moor first summoned his friends, then 

changed his mind and sent everyone else away, and is said to have had a 

great struggle with himself, changing the expression of his face and eyes 

as he kept changing his mind; although he said nothing, they betrayed 

what was hidden in his heart' (113.3.). 

But it is not just among Africans that civilized behaviour is liable to


break down, to revert to unstable nomadism. The autochthonous 

Gaetulians and Libyans had lived like beasts, 'they were ruled by no 

customs or law or anyone's authority' (18.2). Rome too is threatened by 

that absence of law, so Memmius claims at the beginning of his speech 

attacking the domination of the aristocracy (no justice, 31.1; not law but 

caprice, 31.7). Particularly striking is the account of indiscipline in the 

Roman army in Africa. Just as the pre-Herculean Gaetulians are described 

in epic terms as restless and roaming about (vagi palantes, 18.2: cf. 

Koestermann, ad loc.), so the Romans had abandoned discipline: 'they 

roamed about restlessly, wasting the fields' (vagabantur et palantes agros 

vastare, 44.5). Sallust's description of the state in which Metellus found his 

army consciously uses phrases reminding the reader of chapter 18, but 

there are interesting differences: the nomads move from place to place to 

find fresh land, agros temptantes, but the Roman army moves camp only 

when forced to by stench or lack of fodder; while the Persians and Medes 

respectively find it difficult to buy or barter things with the people of Spain 

(ab Hispanis emundi aut mutandi copia) and barter amongst themselves 

(mutare res inter se instituerant, 18.5 and 9), the Roman soldiers barter their 

illicit war booty with traders for imported wine (mutare cum mercatoribus 

vino advecticio). Spurius Albinus' absence and his brother's incompetence 

had allowed the Roman army in Africa to sink to the level reminscent of 

Hercules' army after it had lost its leader. 

The virtus of the brothers Albinus lay solely in their birth, and Spurius' 

support for his brother by entrusting him with command of the army in his 

absence brought disaster on the Romans; indeed they cannot really be 

described as co-operating, since Aulus acts in Spurius' absence (and seeks 

to win the glory of ending the war in competition with him), and Spurius 

refuses to recognize his brother's treaty (ch. 37-9). Their failure as 

brothers is highlighted by the very peculiar theme of Sallust's third 

digression. It is carefully prepared by a statement about an appeal of Lepcis 

to Metellus (selected for no other reason than to give Sallust an excuse for 

introducing the story). 'Since the affairs of the people of Lepcis have 

brought us to this region, it seems fitting to relate the noble and memorable 

act of two Carthaginians' (79.1). Egregium atque mirabile facinus, as the 

historian's material is typically supposed to be; though the reader is taken 

aback to find a Roman historian selecting Carthaginians as exemplars of a 

noble deed. In fact neither Lepcis nor its would-be tyrant Hamilcar are of 

significance to the progress of the war, and Sallust does not bother to 

mention either of them again. It is the ethical import of the story of the 

Philaeni that interests Sallust. Biichner suggested that Sallust intended it to

SALLUST'S JUGURTIHA: CONCORD, DISCORD, AND DIGRESSIONS 55 

reinforce the reader's appreciation of the virtus of Metellus (and perhaps 

also of Marius), as though virtus were unproblematic. But the qualities 

shown by the Philaeni are more complex than athletic energy and a 

willingness to be buried alive for their country. The fact that the 

protagonists are brothers is an essential element of the story. To run a race, 

only one competitor is needed to represent each city. The fact that they are 

pairs of brothers places the story in a line of similar tales illustrating 

anxieties about the potential for rivalry between brothers. Fraternal co- 

operation came to represent the highest moral virtue. An example - 

perhaps one which triggered Sallust's story - was Solon's account of 

Cleobis and Biton (Herodotus 1. 31).11 

'Who can be more of a friend than one brother to another' asks Micipsa 

in his deathbed speech, and immediately continues with the warning: 'and 

what outsider would you be able to trust if you became an enemy of your 

own people?' (10.5). Brothers represent conflict more frequently than 

mutual support. That conflict may lead to fratricide, as in the story of 

Eteocles and Polynices. Twins, as the closest type of fraternal relationship, 

may symbolize the danger most sharply: Acrisius and Proetius quarrelled 

while still in the womb, and resolved their quarrel by fighting when they 

grew up (thus becoming the inventors of the shield: Apollodorus, ed. 

Frazer, Loeb vol. I p. 145 n. 4). For Romans, the story of the quarrel 

between Romulus and Remus was a central part of the myth of their city's 

foundation, providing an explanation for civil discord until eventually the 

Christian patrons Peter and Paul replaced Romulus and Remus. Such 

anxieties are not limited to Greece and Rome, as the story of Jacob and 

Esau shows (Genesis 25. 21 ff.), nor to societies whose rules of inheritance 

gave brothers (and at Rome sisters) equal and rival claims to inherit their 

father's property. Shakespeare's Lear shows that even when, from the 

tenth century on, north-western Europeans developed the system of 

primogeniture as a means to regulate precedence and inheritance between 

siblings, the theme lost little if any of its mythical power. 

What then are the parallels Sallust wishes to draw between the tale of the 

Philaeni and the third phase of the war? Metellus, learning of Marius' 

appointment, feels insulted, fails to pursue his military advantage, and final 

success eludes him. Even before that, Metellus' and Marius' co-operation is 

only at surface level: when they campaign together, they act in different 

places - divorsi agebant, 55.6. In contrast the Philaeni, when slandered as 

not having set off on the prescribed day, accept the challenge and sacrifice 

their lives for their country. Their co-operation with their country is 

symbolized by their mutual solidarity: the Romans, too, will achieve their


aims, but only if the two partes - represented by Marius and Sulla - co- 

operate. 

It is not only the two Roman pairs Metellus/Marius and Marius/Sulla 

who exemplify the problems of co-operation. There is also the relationship 

between Jugurtha and his courtier Bomilcar, and between Jugurtha and his 

fellow king Bocchus. In chapters 61 and 62, Sallust describes how Metellus 

planned to entrap Jugurtha by suborning Bomilcar to persuade him to 

surrender unconditionally. Jugurtha initially agrees, but then changes his 

mind, and the war continues. Immediately after this comes Sallust's 

account of Marius' request for leave to bid for the consulship: just as 

Bomilcar treacherously and unsuccessfully tries to persuade Jugurtha to 

surrender, so Metellus disloyally and unsuccessfully tries to persuade 

Marius to put off his bid for the consulship. Sallust is scathing in his 

account of the behaviour of both Romans: 'he had a contemptuous and 

proud spirit, that common vice of the nobility' (64.1); 'he behaved with 

ambition and with anger, the worst of advisors... he talked both accusingly 

and boastfully about the progress of the war' (64.4f.). The episode of 

Bomilcar's treachery against Jugurtha is concluded a few pages later, and 

he is executed; in the following chapter, the episode of Metellus' lack of 

support for Marius is concluded when Metellus sends him home (domum 

dimittit), to stand for the consulship (chs. 72 and 73). 

We may conclude that the material of the three digressions is far from 

irrelevant to the theme of Sallust's history. As Sir Ronald Syme put it, 'The 

digressions are often a clue to the writer's closest preoccupations'. In a text 

which questions different 'virtues' and explores the conflicts between 

them, the consistently positive emphasis on concordia may surprise; but 

both aspects are entirely consistent with the historical experience of 

Italians in the 40s B.C. 

NOTES 

1. T. F. Scanlon, The Influence of Thucydides on Sallust (Heidelberg, 1980), pp. 175; 126-37; K. 

Buchner, DerAufbau von Sallusts BellumJugurthinum (1956), p. 15 emphasizes the structural role ('die 

gliedernde Funktion') of the first digression. G. Al. Paul, A Historical Commentary on Sallust's Bellum 

Jugurthinum (Liverpool, 1984), has little specific to say on the literary functions of the digressions: 

p. 72 (A), p. 198 (C). L. Watkiss's student edition leaves the third digression out of his analysis completely: 

p. 19. 

2. The four introductory chapters also display elements typical of a digression, ending with the 

standard digressory formula 'nunc ad rem redeo': see T. E.J. Wiedemann, LCM 4 (1979), 13-16 and 

LCM 5.7 July 1980), 147-9. They introduce a discrete section (chs. 5-16) containing material about 

the background to the war analogous to that given by Thucydides in his first book. 

3. 'Bellum scripturus sum quod populus Romanus cum Iugurtha rege Numidarum gessit, primum


quia magnum et atrox variaque victoria fuit, dehinc quia tunc primum superbiae nobilitatis obviam 

itum est. Quae contentio divina et humana cuncta permiscuit eoque vecordiae processit, ut studiis 

civilibus bellum atque vastitas Italiae finem faceret.' 

4. On the epic greatness of the war about to be narrated, cf., e.g., Herodotus 1. 1, Thucydides 1. 

23.1, Polybius 1. 13.11, Livy 21. 1.12 etc., and for verse writers, e.g., Vergil Aeneid 7. 44 f.: 'maius opus 

moveo.' We may also note that Sallust's account of the military operations of the final phase of the war, 

under Marius' command, is introduced by the phrase 'it seemed [to Marius] that it was time to under- 

take greater and more difficult things': 89.3. 

5. Piso 'belonged to Caesar' and intervened to prevent the removal from the senate of Caesar's 

supporter Curio: Cassius Dio 40. 63.3. For Caesar's reinstatement of those demoted by the censors, cf. 

Suetonius, Divus Julius 41.1. On the historical Sallust, see J. Malitz, Ambitio Mala (Bonn, 1975). 

6. 'Concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maxumae dilabuntur': 10.6. The importance of 

concord as a political slogan in the Ciceronian period was discussed by Hermann Strasburger in his 

1931 doctoral thesis (Studien zurAlien Geschichle I [Hildesheim, 1982], 1 ff.). 

7. Scanlon, pp. 131 ff. 

8. Syme, Sallust (Oxford, 1964), p. 152: 'Greek erudition and fancies.' 

9. G. Karl Galinsky, The Herakles Theme (Oxford, 1972). At Athens, it was Theseus who became 

the founding hero of the 'city' and of political life: hence Theseus is associated with Herakles in some of 

his adventures, and takes over some of his attributes. 

10. Wiedemann, 'Between men and beasts', in I. S. Moxon, J. D. Smart, and A.J. Woodman (edd.), 

Past Perspectives (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 189ff. 

11. Similar tales of races run to establish boundaries between cities may involve several runners, but 

not brothers. In the race between Clazomenae and Cyme, the plurality of runners is explained by the 

requirement to offer a sacrifice at the boundary: Diodorus 15. 1. 

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