[58] Diodor. xv. 8, 9.
This remarkable anecdote, of susceptible Grecian honor on the part of Evagoras, is noway improbable, and seems safe to admit on the authority of Diodorus. Nevertheless, it forms so choice a morsel for a panegyrical discourse such as that of Isokrates, that one cannot but think he would have inserted it had it come to his knowledge. His silence causes great surprise—not without some suspicion as to the truth of the story.
[59] Isokrates, Or. iii, (Nikokles) s. 40,—a passage which must be more true of Evagoras than of Nikokles.
[60] Isokrat. Or. ix, s. 88. Compare his Orat. viii, (De Pace) s. 138.
[61] Isokrates, ib. s. 85. εὐτυχέστερον καὶ θεοφιλέστερον, etc.
[62] I give this incident, in the main, as it is recounted in the fragment of Theopompus, preserved as a portion of the abstract of that author by Photius (Theopom. Fr. 111, ed. Wichers and ed. Didot).
Both Aristotle (Polit. v, 8, 10) and Diodorus (xv, 47) allude to the assassination of Evagoras by the eunuch; but both these authors conceive the story differently from Theopompus. Thus Diodorus says—Nikoklês, the eunuch, assassinated Evagoras, and became “despot of Salamis.” This appears to be a confusion of Nikoklês with Nikokreon. Nikoklês was the son of Evagoras, and the manner in which Isokrates addresses him affords the surest proof that he had no hand in the death of his father.
The words of Aristotle are—ἡ (ἐπίθεσις) τοῦ εὐνούχου Εὐαγόρᾳ τῷ Κυπρίῳ· διὰ γὰρ τὸ τὴν γυναῖκα παρελέσθαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπέκτεινεν ὡς ὑβρισμένος. So perplexing is the passage in its literal sense, that M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, in the note to his translation, conceives ὁ εὐνοῦχος to be a surname or sobriquet given to the conspirator, whose real name was Nikoklês. But this supposition is, in my judgment, contradicted by the fact, that Theopompus marks the same fact, of the assassin being an eunuch, by another word—Θρασυδαίου τοῦ ἡμιάῤῥενος, ὃς ἦν Ἠλεῖος τὸ γένος, etc.
It is evident that Aristotle had heard the story differently from Theopompus, and we have to choose between the two. I prefer the version of the latter; which is more marked as well as more intelligible, and which furnishes the explanation why Pnytagoras,—who seems to have been the most advanced of the sons, being left in command of the besieged Salamis when Evagoras quitted it to solicit aid in Egypt,—did not succeed his father, but left the succession to Nikoklês, who was evidently (from the representation even of an eulogist like Isokrates) not a man of much energy. The position of this eunuch in the family of Nikokreon seems to mark the partial prevalence of Oriental habits.
[63] Isokrates, Or. iii, (Nikoklês) s. 38-48; Or. ix, (Evagoras) s. 100; Or. xv, (Permut.) s. 43. Diodorus (xv, 47) places the assassination of Evagoras in 374 B.C.