Review of Dillery, Clio's Other Sons

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

John Dillery, Clio's Other Sons: Berossus and Manetho, with an afterword on Demetrius. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Pp. xxxviii, 494. ISBN 9780472052271. $50.00 (pb).

Reviewed by David Branscome, Florida State University (dbranscome@fsu.edu)

Publisher's preview

It is a good time for Berossus of Babylon and for the Egyptian Manetho of Sebennytus. Both of these early Hellenistic native priests—who wrote (now fragmentary) histories of their respective homelands in Greek—have received a lot of scholarly attention recently.1 In the last decade and a half, Dillery himself has written a series of articles on Berossus and Manetho, which culminates in the book under review. The first monographic study that seeks to elucidate Berossus’ historiographical context, aims, and methods by comparing them with those of Manetho (and vice versa), Clio’s Other Sons represents a major contribution to several fields at once: Greek historiography in general, Hellenistic historiography in particular, and even Babylonian and Egyptian history.

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