Listed 75 sub titles with search on: Biographies for wider area of: "MUGLA Province TURKEY" .
KNIDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Sostratus (Sostratos). The son of Dexiphanes, of Cnidus. He was one of the great architects who flourished during and after the life of Alexander the Great. He built for Ptolemy I. of Egypt the great Pharos or light-house at Alexandria, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and also erected at Cnidus a portico supporting a terrace (Pliny , Pliny H. N.xxxvi. 83).
Sostratus of Cnidus (fl. c. 300 BC). Engineer, Architect
Life
A native of Cnidus, in Caria (Asia Minor), Sostratus was the son of Dexiphanes, the architect of the Tetra Stadium in Alexandria. He is cited by Stobaeus.
Work
His works include:
- The Pharos of Alexandria (280 BC): This great lighthouse was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Inscribed on the tower was the legend "Sostratus son of Dexiphanes of Cnidus to the gods who protect those at sea". This is recorded by Lucian, who also gives an account of how it came to be written there. Originally called simply "the Lighthouse", the Pharos gradually became known by the name of the small island ('Pharos') on which it was built. This island, which today is connected with the shore, lay just off the eastern entrance to the harbour of Alexandria. The base of the lighthouse measured 340 x 340 metres, and had mighty breakwaters on the three seaward sides, with defensive turrets at the corners. The total height of the structure was 140 metres, making it the tallest building in the ancient world after the Great Pyramids of Khufu and Khefre. It had four storeys above the raised base. The first of these was square, with windows all around illuminating rooms for the guards and engineers, while the centre was occupied by the hydraulic hoist used to bring up food and fuel and other supplies. Above this first floor was an octagonal storey with spiral staircases. The third was circular, and was ornamented with pillars. The fourth storey housed the reflecting mechanism. A fire was kept burning continuously, and a system of delicate instruments reflected the light. The beacon was visible for a radius of 300 stades (~54 km). Crowning the tower was a huge statue of Poseidon. Many sources refer to a huge "mirror", through which one could see ships far out to sea that were not visible to the naked eye. This may have been a form of telescope, with magnifying lenses. The sources also describe a number of automated figures: there was, for example, a statue that tracked the course of the sun across the sky with its finger; there was a mechanical figure that played music to mark the hours, and there was one that sounded an alarm to alert the city to the approach of an enemy fleet before it was visible on the horizon. The Pharos served as a model for many other ancient lighthouses. Ptolemy I allocated the huge sum of 800 talents of silver (about 21000 kg) for its construction, but work was not in fact begun until the reign of his successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphus. It took 12 years to complete. In 500 AD Ammonius made extensive repairs to the base and the breakwaters. Earthquakes in 796, 1100 and 1326 all took their toll of the structure. In 1480 Sultan al-Ashraf Qa'it Bay of the Mamluks built a fortress on the foundations of the ancient Pharos. Renovated in the early years of the 19th century, this fort was razed by the English in 1882.
- The Suspended Pleasure Gardens: At Cnidus, in Caria, Asia Minor. This was a vast pleasure palace with a roof garden, similar in construction to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Described by Pliny and Lucian.
- The Clubhouse of the Cnidians: At Delphi, 285 - 272 BC. This was a large colonnaded room, which served as a place of resort for Cnidians visiting Delphi.
- Diversionary canals on the Nile: At Memphis. Major engineering project to drain the main channel of the river in order to allow Ptolemy II to capture the besieged city. Described by Lucian.
This text is based on the Greek book "Ancient Greek Scientists", Athens, 1995 and is cited Sep 2005 from The Technology Museum of Thessaloniki URL below.
408 - 355
Eudoxus, (Eudoxos), of Cnidus, the son of Aeschlines, lived about B. C. 366. He
was, according to Diogenes Laertius, astronomer, geometer, physician, and legislator.
It is only in the first capacity that his fame has descended to our day, and he
has ore of it than can be justified by any account of his astronomical science
now in existence. As the probable introducer of the sphere into Greece, and perhaps
the corrector, upon Egyptian information, of the length of the year, he enjoyed
a wide and popular reputation, so that Laertius, who does not even mention Hipparchus,
has given the life of Eudoxus in his usual manner, that is, with the omission
of all an astronomer would wish to know. According to this writer, Eudoxus went
to Athens at the age of twenty-three (he had been the pupil of Archytas in geometry,
and heard Plato for some months, struggling at the same time with poverty. Being
dismissed by Plato, but for what reason is not stated, his friends raised some
money, and he sailed for Egypt, with letters of recommendation to Nectanabis,
who in his turn recommended him to the priests. With them he remained sixteen
months, with his chin and eyebrows shaved, and there, according to Laertius, he
urote the Octaeteris. Several ancient writers attribute to him the invention or
introduction of an imiprovement upon the Octaeterides of his predecessors. After
a time, lie came back to Athens with a band of pupils, having in the mean time
taught philosophy in Cyzicum and the Propontis : he chose Athens, Laertius says,
for the purpose of vexing Plato, at one of whose symposia lie introduced the fashion
of the guests reclining in a semicircle; and Nicomachus (he adds), the son of
Aristotle, reports him to have said that pleasure was a good. So much for Laertius,
who also refers to some decree which was made in honour of Eudoxus, names his
son and daughters, states him to have written good works on astronomy and geometry,
and mentions the curious way in which the bull Apis told his fortune when he was
in Egypt. Eudoxus died at the age of fifty-three. Phanocritus wrote a work upon
Eudoxus (Athen. vii.), which is lost.
The fragmentary notices of Eudoxus are numerous. Strabo mentions him
frequently, and states (ii., xvii.) that the observatory of Eudoxus at Cnidus
was existing in his time, from which he was accustomed to observe the star Canopus.
Strabo also says that he remained thirteen years in Egypt, and attributes to him
the introduction of the odd quarter of a day into the value of the year. Pliny
(H. N. ii. 47) seems to refer to the same thing. Seneca (Qu. Nat. vii. 3) states
him to have first brought the motions of the planets (a theory on this subject)
from Egypt into Greece. Aristotle (Metaph. xii. 8) states him to have made separate
spheres for the stars, sun, moon, and planets. Archimedes (in Arenar.) says he
made the dia. meter of the sun nine times as great as that of the moon. Vitruvius
(ix. 9) attributes to him the invention of a solar dial, called arachne : and
so on.
But all we positively know of Eudoxus is from the poem of Aratus and
the commentary of Hipparchus upon it. From this commentary we learn that Aratus
was not himself an observer, but was the versifier of the Phainomena of Eudoxus,
of which Hipparchus has preserved fragments for comparison with the version by
Aratus. The result is, that though there were by no means so many nor so great
errors in Eudoxus as in Aratus, yet the opinion which must be formed of the work
of the former is, that it was written in the rudest state of the science by an
observer who was not very competent even to the task of looking at the risings
and settings of the stars. Delambre (Hist. Astr. Anc. vol. i.) has given a full
account of the comparison made by Hipparchus of Aratus with Eudoxus, and of both
with his own observations. He cannot bring himself to think that Eudoxus knew
anything of geometry, though it is on record that he wrote geometrical works,
in spite of the praises of Proclus, Cicero, Ptolemy, Sextus Empiricus (who places
him with Hipparchus), &c., &c. Eudoxus, as cited by Hipparchus, neither
talks like a geometer, nor like a person who had seen the heavens lie describes:
a bad globe, constructed some centuries before his time in Egypt, might, for anything
that appears, have been his sole authority. But supposing, which is likely enough,
that he was the first who brought any globe at all into Greece, it is not much
to be wondered at that his reputation should have been magnified. As to what Proclus
says of his geometry.
Rejecting the Oktaeteris mentioned by Laertius, which was not a writing,
but a period of time, and also the fifth book of Euclid, which one manuscript
of Euclid attributes to Eudoxus (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iv.), we have the following
works, all lost, which he is said to have written :
•Geometroimena, mentioned by Proclus and Laertius, which is not, however,
to be taken as the title of a work:
•Organike, mentioned by Plutarch:
•Astronomia di' epon, by Suidas: two books.
•Enoptron or Katoptron and Phainomena mentioned by Hipparchus, and the first
by an anonymous biographer of Aratus: Peri Theon kai Kosmou kai ton Meteorologoumenon
mentioned by Eudocia:
•Ges Periodos, a work often mentioned by Strabo, and by many others, as
to which Harless thinks Semler's opinion probable, that it was written by Eudoxus
of Rhodes.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Eudoxus, (Eudoxos). A celebrated astronomer and geometrician of Cnidus,
who flourished B.C. 366. He studied at Athens and in Egypt, but probably spent
some of his time at his native place, where he had an observatory. He is said
to have been the first who taught in Greece the motions of the planets. His works
are lost.
408 - 355
Eudoxus, born in the city of Cnidus in southern Asia
Minor, in the last years of the Vth century B. C., is one of the great mathematicians
of all times, and probably the greatest of ancient Greece's mathematicians. He
may have belonged to a family of physicians, because, at the time, Cnidus was
famous for its school of medicine, and started his career travelling with fellow-physicians.
When he was 23, he stayed for two months in Piraeus,
going each day to Athens
to listen to Plato and other Socratics. Later he went to Egypt,
where he learned astronomy from priests of Heliopolis. Back from Egypt,
he went to Halicarnassus
and then settled for a while in Cyzicus,
where he founded a school of astronomy that remained famous long after his death.
Then, he came to Athens where
he probably worked with Plato at the Academy. Toward the end of his life, he returned
to his native city of Cnidus where he was involved in lawmaking.
Most of his works, which covered many areas including, aside from
mathematics, astronomy, geography, music, philosophy and more, are lost and known
only through mentions in other works. His works in mathematics are better known
and it is likely they were at the root of a large part of Euclid' Elements. Eudoxus,
with the method of exhaustion he developed in geometry, is one of the fathers
of integral calculus. He is also the inventor in astronomy of a scheme to account
for the movement of planets based on concentric spheres turning within one another,
a method that was to be complexified later by Aristotle, and he can thus be viewed
as the father of scientific astromony. This should give a feel for how developed
mathematics, and especially geometry, was in the time of Plato, showing that a
large part of what ended up in Euclid's Elements was already known.
Bernard Suzanne (page last updated 1998), ed.
This extract is cited July 2003 from the Plato and his dialogues URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
Euryphon, (Euruphon), a celebrated physician of Cnidos in Caria, who was probably born in the former half of the fifth century B. C., as Soranus (Vita Hippocr. in Hippocr. Opera, vol. iii.) says that he was a contemporary of Hippocrates, but older. The same writer saysthat he and Hippocrates were summoned to the court of Perdiccas, the son of Alexander, king of Macedonia; but this story is considered very doubtful, if not altogether apocryphal. He is mentioned in a corrupt fragment of the comic poet Plato, preserved by Galen (Comment. in Hippocr. "Aphor." vii. 44. vol. xviii. pt. i.), in which, instead of apuos, Meineke reads apugos. He is several times quoted by Galen, who says that he was considered to be the author of the ancient medical work entitled Knidiai gnomsi (Comment. in Hippocr. " De Morb. Vulgar. VI." i. 29. vol. xvii. pt. i., where for idiais we should read Knidiais), and also that some persons attributed to him several works included in the Hippocratic Collection (Comment. in Hippocr. " De Humor." i. prooem. vol. xvi.), viz. those entitled Peri Diaites Hugieines, de Salubri Victus Ratione (Comment. in Hippocr. " De Rat. Vict. in Morb. Acut." i. 17. vol. xv.), and Peri Diaites, de Victus Ratione. (De Aliment. Facult. i. 1. vol. vi.) He may perhaps be the author of the second book Peri Nouson, De Morbis, which forms part of the Hippocratic Collection, but which is generally allowed to be spurious, as a passage in this work (vol. ii.) is quoted by Galen (Comment. in Hippocr. " De Morb. Vulgar. VI." i. 29. vol. xvii. pt. i.), and attributed to Euryphon (see Littre's Hippocr. vol. i.); and in the same manner M. Ermerins (Hippocr. de Rat. Vict. in Morb. Acut.) conjectures that he is the author of the work Peri Gunaikeies Phusios, de Natura Muliebri, as Soranus appears to allude to a passage in that treatise (vol. ii.) while quoting the opinions of Euryphon. (De Arte Obstetr.) From a passage in Caelius Aurelianus (de Morb. Chron. ii. 10) it appears, that Euryphon was aware of the difference between the arteries and the veins, and also considered that the former vessels contained blood. Of his works nothing is now extant except a few fragments, unless he be the author of the treatises in the Hippocratic Collection that have been attributed to him.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Demetrius, of Cnidus, apparently a mythographer, is referred to by the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (i. 1165).
KARYANDA (Ancient city) TURKEY
A man of Caryanda, his navigation of the Indus and the eastern seas.
Scylax, (Skulax). A native of Caryanda, in Caria, who was sent by Darius Hystaspis on a voyage of discovery down the Indus. Setting out from the city of Caspatyrus and the Pactyican district, Scylax reached the sea, and then sailed west through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, performing the whole voyage in thirty months (Herod. iv. 44). There is still extant a Periplus bearing the name of Scylax, but which could not have been written by the subject either of this or of the following article. The work is edited by C. Muller in the Geographi Graeci Minores (1861); and by Fabricius (1878).
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Scylax of Caryanda : Carian sailor in Persian service, made
a reconnaissance expedition along the shores of the Indian Ocean (c.515 BCE).
Scylax is known from a passage in the Histories of the Greek researcher
Herodotus of Halicarnassus. It can be found in a large topographical discourse
in book 4, section 44.
The greater part of Asia was explored by [the Persian king] Darius,
who desired to know more about the river Indus, which is one of the two rivers
in the world to produce crocodiles. He wanted to know where this river runs out
into the sea, and sent with his ships [...] Scylax, a man of Caryanda.
They started from the city of Caspatyrus in the land of Pactyike,
sailed down the river towards the east and to the sea. Sailing westwards over
the sea, they came in the thirtieth month to the place from whence the king of
the Egyptians had sent out the Phoenicians of whom I spoke before, to sail round
Africa.
Pactyike was a part of ancient Gandara (eastern Afghanistan) and Caspatyrus,
which is not mentioned in other sources, has to be somewhere along the river Kabul.
Since Herodotus tells us in the next line that Scylax' expedition was a preliminary
to Darius' conquest of the Indus valley, we can date this voyage after 519 -when
Darius' rule was secure- and before 512, when India seems to have been part of
the Persian empire. Scylax' voyage led him along the Indus, along
the shores of the Indian ocean and those of the Persian gulf. We do not know the
details of this expedition, but we have a later source, the Indike by Arrian of
Nicomedia, which contains an excerpt of the story of Nearchus, the admiral of
Alexander the Great. He made the same voyage and mentions the tides, whales and
the hard living conditions along the Gedrosian coast. When Scylax
reached Harmozeia (modern Minab) in Carmania, one of the largest ports in the
Persian Gulf, he may have paused. Here he could repair his ships and prepare himself
for the expedition to the west. He passed Maka (modern Oman) and circumnavigated
the Arabian peninsula. We may assume that he had a special interest for the Arabian
towns in Yemen, which were famous for the production of incense. After this, he
sailed to the north, through the Red Sea, until he reached Suez.
In the ancient world, Scylax' fame was great. A naval handbook from
the fourth century BCE was published under his name.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
KNIDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Agatharchides, or Agatharchus (Agatharchos), a Greek grammarian, born at Cnidos.
He was brought up by a man of the name of Cinnaeus; was, as Strabo (xvi) informs
us, attached to the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and wrote several historical
and geographical works. In his youth he held the situation of secretary and reader
to Heraclides Lembus, who (according to Suidas) lived in the reign of Ptolemy
Philometor. This king died B. C. 146. He himself informs us (in his work on the
Erythraean Sea), that he was subsequently guardian to one of the kings of Egypt
during his minority. This was no doubt one of the two sons of Ptolemy Physcon.
Dodwell endeae case with Alexander likewise. Wesseling and Clinton think the elder
brother to be the one meant, as Soter II. was more likely to have been a minvours
to shew that it was the younger son, Alexander, and objects to Soter, that he
reigned conjointly with his mother. This, however, was thor on his accession in
B. C. 117, than Alexander in B. C. 107, ten years after their father's death.
Moreover Dodwell's date would leave too short an interval between the publication
of Agatharchides's work on the Erythraean Sea (about B. C. 113), and the work
of Artemidorus.
An enumeration of the works of Agatharchides is given by Photius (Cod.
213). He wrote a work on Asia, in 10 books, and one on Europe, in 49 books; a
geographical work on the Erythraean Sea, in 5 books, of the first and fifth books
of which Photius gives an abstract; an epitome of the last mentioned work; a treatise
on the Troglodytae, in 5 books; an epitome of the Aude of Antimachus; an epitome
of the works of those who had written peri tes sunagoges thaumasion anemon; an
historical work, from the 12th and 30th books of which Athenaeus quotes (xii.,
vi.); and a treatise on the intercourse of friends. The first three of these only
had been read by Photius. Agatharchides composed his work on the Erythraean Sea,
as he tells us himself, in his old age, in the reign probably of Ptolemy Soter
II. It appears to have contained a great deal of valuable matter. In the first
book was a discussion respecting the origin of the name. In the fifth lie described
the mode of life amongst the Sabaeans in Arabia, and the Ichthyophagi, or fish-eaters,
the way in which elephants were caught by the elephant-eaters, and the mode of
working the gold mines in the mountains of Egypt, near the Red Sea. His account
of the Ichthyophagi and of the mode of working the gold mines, has been copied
by Diodorus (iii. 12-18). Amongst other extraordinary animals he mentions the
camelopard, which was found in the country of the Troglodytae, and the rhinoceros.
Agatharchides wrote in the Attic dialect. His style, according to
Photius, was dignified and perspicuous, and abounded in sententious passages,
which inspired a favourable opinion of his judgment. In the composition of his
speeches he was an imitator of Thucydides, whom he equalled in dignity and excelled
in clearness. His rhetorical talents also are highly praised by Photius. He was
acquainted with the language of the Aethiopians, and appears to have been the
first who discovered the true cause of the yearly inundations of the Nile. (Diod.
i. 41)
An Agatharchides, of Samos, is mentioned by Plutarch, as the author
of a work on Persia, and one peri lithon. Fabricius, However, conjectures that
the true reading is Agathyrsides, not Agatharchides. There is a curious observation
by Agatharchides preserved by Plutarch (Sympos. viii. 9.3), of the species of
worm called Filaria Medinensis, or Guinea Worm, which is the earliest account
of it that is to be met with.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Sep 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Agetharchides of Cnidus, Geographer, (fl.2nd century AD)
Life
Peripatetic philosopher, geographer, historian, traveller and naturalist,
Agatharchides lived in Alexandria
and spent much of his life on expeditions of exploration. He is cited by Athenaeus,
Strabo, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Artemidorus, Lucian and Photius.
Work
"Journey around the Red Sea": 5 books (132 BC). These works,
which contain valuable information about Arabia and Ethiopia, were consulted by
Diodorus, Artemidorus, Aelian and Strabo.
"On Europe": 49 books on the geography and history of Asia.
"On Asia": 10 books of geography and history, with a section on Africa
(Ethiopia, the Nile).
"On Africa"
"Compendium of winds": Only fragments of this work survive.
In his writings, Agatharchides provides geographic and ethnographic
information about many countries and describes unusual species of plants and animals
(e.g. ant lions, rhinoceros, giraffes, giant snakes, etc.). He names India and
China as "the places where silk comes from", describes the way of life
of the peoples of Arabia ("fish-eaters") and East Africa, provides information
on the gold mines of Ethiopia,
and explains the phenomenon of the periodic flooding of the Nile.
This text is based on the Greek book "Ancient Greek Scientists", Athens, 1995 and is cited May 2004 from The Technology Museum of Thessaloniki URL below.
ALIKARNASSOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Daughter of Lygdamis, queen of Halicarnassus, carved on pillar of Persian Colonnade at Sparta, queen of Halicarnassus, with Xerxes' fleet, fought for Xerxes against Greeks at Salamis, her advice to Xerxes before Salamis.
Artemisia. The daughter of Lygdamis of Halicarnassus,
reigned over Halicarnassus, and also over Cos and other adjacent islands. She
joined the fleet of Xerxes, when he invaded Greece, with five vessels, the best
equipped of the whole fleet after those of the Sidonians; and she displayed so
much valour and skill at the battle of Salamis as to elicit from Xerxes the wellknown
remark that the men had acted like women in the fight and the women like men.
The Athenians, indignant that a woman should appear in arms against them, offered
a reward of 10,000 drachmae to any one who should take her prisoner. She, however,
escaped after the action. If we are to believe Ptolemy Hephaestion, a writer who
mixed up many fables with some truth, Artemisia subsequently conceived an attachment
for a youth of Abydos, named Dardanus; but, not meeting with a return for her
passion, she put out his eyes while he slept, and then threw herself down from
the Lover's Leap at the promontory of Leucate.
Artemisia, a queen of Halicarnassus, Cos, Nisyros, and Calydna, who ruled over these places as a vassal of the Persian empire in the reign of Xerxes I. She was a daughter of Lygdamis, and on the death of her husband, she succeeded him as queen. When Xerxes invaded Greece, she voluntarily joined his fleet with five beautiful ships, and in the battle of Salamis (B. C. 480) she distinguished herself by her prudence, courage, and perseverance, for which she was afterwards highly honoured by the Persian king (Herod. vii. 99, viii. 68, 87, &c., 93, 101, &c.; Polyaen. viii. 53; Paus. iii. 11.3). According to a tradition preserved in Photius, she put an end to her life in a romantic manner. She was in love, it is said, with Dardanus, a youth of Abydos, and as her passion was not returned, she avenged herself by putting his eyes out while he was asleep. This excited the anger of the gods, and an oracle commanded her to go to Leucas, where she threw herself from the rock into the sea. She was succeeded by her son Pisindelis. Respecting the import of the phrase in regard to lovers, "to leap from the Leucadian rock", see Sappho.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Mausolus. A king of Caria and eldest son of Hecatomnus. He reigned B.C. 377-353. In 362 he joined in a revolt against Artaxerxes Mnemon, and thereby added to his dominions. In 358 he aided the Rhodians and their allies against Athens, and died in the year 353, leaving no children. He was succeeded by his wife and sister Artemisia, who erected to his memory the costly monument called from him the Mausoleum.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Artemisia. Another queen of Caria, not to be confounded with the preceding. She was the daughter of Hecatomnus, king of Caria, and married her brother Mausolus, a species of union sanctioned by the customs of the country. She lost her husband, who was remarkable for personal beauty, B.C. 365, and she became, in consequence, a prey to the deepest affliction. A splendid tomb was erected to his memory, called Mausoleum (Mausoleion, scil. mnemeiion, i. e. "tomb of Mausolus"), and the most noted writers of the day were invited to attend a literary contest, in which ample rewards were to be bestowed on those who should celebrate with most ability the praises of the deceased. Among the individuals who came together on that occasion were, according to Aulus Gellius, Theopompus, Theodectes, Naucrites, and even Isocrates. The prize was won by Theopompus. Valerius Maximus and Aulus Gellius relate a marvellous story concerning the excessive grief of Artemisia. They say that she actually mixed the ashes of her husband with water and drank them off. The grief of Artemisia, poignant though it was, did not cause her to neglect the care of her dominions: she conquered the island of Rhodes, and gained possession of some Greek cities on the mainland; and yet it is said that she died of grief two years after the loss of her husband.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Artemisia, the sister, wife, and successor of the Carian prince Mausolus. She was the daughter of Hecatomnus, and after the death of her husband, she reigned for two years, from B. C. 352 to B. C. 350. Her administration was conducted on the same principles as that of her husband, whence she supported the oligarchical party in the island of Rhodes (Diod. xvi. 36, 45; Dem. de Rhod. Libert.). She is renowned in history for her extraordinary grief at the death of her husband Mausolus. She is said to have mixed his ashes in her daily drink, and to have gradually died away in grief during the two years that she survived him. She induced the most eminent Greek rhetoricians to proclaim his praise in their oratory; and to perpetuate his memory she built at Halicarnassus the celebrated monument, Mausoleum, which was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world, and whose name subsequently became the generic term for any splendid sepulchral monument (Cic. Tusc. iii. 31; Strabo, xiv.; Gellius, x. 18; Plin. H. N. xxv. 36, xxxvi. 4.9; Val. Max. iv. 6. ext. 1; Suid. Harpocr. s. vv. Artemisia and Mausolos). Another celebrated monument was erected by her in the island of Rhodes, to commemorate her success in making herself mistress of the island. The Rhodians, after recovering their liberty, made it inaccessible, whence it was called in later times the Abaton (Vitruv. ii. 8).
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Herodotos. A celebrated Greek historian, born at Halicarnassus
in Caria, B.C. 484. He was of Dorian extraction, and of a distinguished family.
His father was named Lyxes, his mother Rhoeo or Dryo. Panyasis, an eminent epic
poet, whom some ranked next to Homer, was his uncle either by the mother's or
father's side. The facts of his life are few and doubtful, except so far as we
can gather them from his own works. Not liking the government of Lydgamis, the
grandson of Queen Artemisia, who was tyrant of Halicarnassus, Herodotus retired
for a season to the island of Samos, where he is said to have cultivated the Ionic
dialect of the Greek, which was the language there prevalent. Before he was thirty
years of age he joined a number of his fellow-exiles in an attempt, which proved
successful, to expel Lygdamis. But the banishment of the tyrant did not give tranquillity
to Halicarnassus, and Herodotus, who himself had become an object of dislike,
again left his native country and visited Athens, where he made the acquaintance
of many of the brilliant writers of the time. Of these, Sophocles became his intimate
friend, and wrote a poem in his honour in B.C. 440, a fragment of which is preserved
by Plutarch. Eusebius states that he received at Athens many public marks of distinction.
As Athenian citizenship was not open to him, he joined, as it is said, a colony
which the Athenians sent to Thurii in Southern Italy, about B.C. 443. He is said
to have died in Thurii, and to have been buried in the market-place.
Herodotus is regarded by many as the father of profane history,
and Cicero calls him historiae patrem; by which, however, nothing more must be
meant than that he is the first profane historian whose work is distinguished
for its finished form, and has come down to us entire. Thus Cicero himself, on
another occasion, speaks of him as the one qui princeps genus hoc (scribendi)
ornavit; while Dionysius of Halicarnassus has given us a list of many historical
writers who preceded him.
Herodotus presents himself to our consideration in two points:
as a traveller and observer, and as an historian. The extent of his travels may
be ascertained pretty clearly from his history; but the order in which he visited
each place, and the time of his visit, cannot be determined. The story of his
reading his work at the Olympic Games, on which occasion he is said to have received
universal applause, and to have had the names of the nine Muses given to the nine
books of his history, has been disproved. The story is founded upon a small piece
by Lucian, entitled "Herodotus or Aetion," which apparently was not
intended by the writer himself as an historical truth; and, in addition to this,
Herodotus was only about twentyeight years old when he is said to have read to
the assembled Greeks at Olympia a work which was the result of most extensive
travelling and research, and which bears in every part of it evident marks of
the hand of a man of mature age. The Olympic recitation is not even alluded to
by Plutarch, in his treatise on the "malignity" of Herodotus. Furthermore,
it is certain that the division of his work into books was not known to Herodotus
himself, but was probably due to the Alexandrian grammarians. It is first mentioned
by Diodorus Siculus. At a later period Herodotus read his history, as we are informed
by Plutarch and Eusebius, at the Panathenaean festival at Athens, and the Athenians
are said to have presented him with the sum of ten talents for the manner in which
he had spoken of the deeds of their nation. The account of this second recitation
may be true.
With a simplicity which characterizes his whole work, Herodotus
makes no display of the great extent of his travels. He frequently avoids saying
in express terms that he was at a place, but he uses words which are as conclusive
as any positive statement. He describes a thing as standing behind the door, or
on the right hand as you enter a temple; or he was told something by a person
in a particular place; or he uses other words equally significant. In Africa he
visited Egypt, from the coast of the Mediterranean to Elephantine, the southern
extremity of the country; and he travelled westward as far as Cyrene, and probably
farther. In Asia he visited Tyre, Babylon, Ecbatana, Nineveh, and probably Susa.
He also travelled to various parts of Asia Minor, and probably went as far as
Colchis. In Europe he visited a large part of the country along the Black Sea,
between the mouths of the Danube and the Crimea, and went some distance into the
interior. He seems to have examined the line of the march of Xerxes from the Hellespont
to Attica, and certainly had seen numerous places on this route. He was well acquainted
with Athens, and also with Delphi, Dodona, Olympia, Delos, and many other places
in Greece. That he had visited some parts of Southern Italy is clear from his
work. The mention of these places is sufficient to show that he must have seen
many more. So wide and varied a field of observation has rarely been presented
to a traveller, and still more rarely to any historian of either ancient or modern
times; and, if we cannot affirm that the author undertook his travels with a view
to collecting materials for his great work, a supposition which is far from improbable,
it is certain that, without such advantages, he could never have written it, and
that his travels must have suggested much inquiry, and supplied many valuable
facts, which afterwards found a place in his history.
The nine books of Herodotus contain a great variety of matter,
the unity of which is not perceived till the whole work has been thoroughly examined;
and for this reason, on a first perusal, the history is seldom well understood.
But the subject of that history was conceived by the author both clearly and comprehensively.
His aim was to combine a general history of the Greeks and the barbarians (i.
e. those not Greeks) with the history of the wars between the Greeks and Persians.
Accordingly, in the execution of his main task, he traces the course of events
from the time when the Lydian kingdom of Croesus fell before the arms of Cyrus,
the founder of the Persian monarchy (B.C. 546), to the capture of Sestus (B.C.
478), an event which completed the triumph of the Greeks over the Persians. The
great subject of his work, which is comprised within the space of sixty-eight
years, advances, with a regular progress and truly dramatic development, from
the first weak and divided efforts of the Greeks to resist Asiatic numbers, to
their union as a nation, and their final triumph in the memorable battles of Thermopylae,
Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. But with this subject, which has a complete unity,
well maintained from its commencement to its close, the author has interwoven,
conformably to his general purpose, and by way of occasional digression, sketches
of the various people and countries which he had visited in his wide-extended
travels. The more one contemplates the difficulty of thus combining a kind of
universal history with a substantial and distinct narrative, the more one must
admire, not so much the art of the historian, as his happy power of bringing together
and arranging his materials, which was the result of the fulness of his information,
the distinctness of his knowledge, and his clear conception of the subject. These
numerous digressions are among the most valuable parts of his work; and, if they
had been omitted or lost, barren indeed would have been modern investigation in
the field of ancient history, over which the labour of this one great writer now
throws a clear and steady light. The anecdotes, also, that sparkle through his
pages are fascinating in their variety and in the illustrations they afford of
the life and manners of the age that he describes.
The style of Herodotus is simple, pleasing, and highly picturesque;
often, indeed, poetical both in expression and sentiment, and bearing evident
marks of belonging to a period when prose composition had not yet become a finished
art. That he was a close student of Homer is evident in every page of the history,
since his phrases and expressions are everywhere coloured by the Homeric influence.
Hence, Dionysius of Halicarnassus calls him Homerou zelotes, and Longinus monos
Homerikotatos. So graceful and winning was his style that Athenaeus describes
him as ho meligerus. His information is apparently the result of his own experience.
In physical knowledge he was somewhat behind the science of even his own day.
He had, no doubt, reflected on political questions; but he seems to have formed
his opinions mainly from what he himself had observed. To pure philosophical speculations
he had no inclination, and there is not a trace of such in his writings. He had
a strong religious feeling bordering on superstition, though even here he clearly
distinguished the gross and absurd from that which was reasonable. He seems to
have viewed the manners and customs of all nations in a more truly philosophical
way than many so-called philosophers, considering them all as various forms of
social existence under which happiness might be found. He treats with respect
the religious observances of every nation; a decisive proof of his great good
sense. Until lately there was a strong tendency to exaggerate the credulity of
Herodotus; but a fuller knowledge of the countries described by him has justified
many of the statements once regarded as absurd. Moreover, a distinction must be
drawn between the things he tells of his own knowledge and those which he merely
relates as having been told him by other persons. The exquisite lines quoted by
Prof. Merriam in his introduction are wonderfully descriptive of the whole tone
and spirit of Herodotus:
"He was a mild old man and cherished much
The weight dark Egypt on his spirit laid;
And with a sinuous eloquence would touch
Forever at that haven of the dead.
Single romantic words by him were thrown
As types on men and places, with a power
Like that of shifting sunlight after shower
Kindling the cones of hills and journeying on.
He feared the gods and heroes and spake low
That Echo might not hear in her light room."
Plutarch accused Herodotus of partiality, and composed a treatise
on what he termed the "spitefulness" of this writer (Peri tes Herodotou
Kakoetheias), taxing him with injustice towards the Thebans, Corinthians, and
Greeks in general; but the whole monograph is weak and frivolous.
Herodotus had planned to write a work on Assyrian history,
but whether or not he ever carried out his intention is not known. A life of Homer
has been commonly ascribed to Herodotus, and appears in some editions of his history;
but it is now deemed spurious.
Manuscripts.--Of forth-six MSS. containing a whole or a portion
of Herodotus, five, which are of superior age and excellence, form the basis of
the accepted text. These represent two "families," to one of which belong
the Codex Florentinus or Mediceus of the Laurentian Library at Florence, dating
from the tenth century, a Codex Romanus of the eleventh century, and a second
Codex Florentinus, also of the eleventh century. To the other family belong a
Codex Parisinus, beautifully written, of the thirteenth century, and a third Codex
Romanus of the fourteenth century, lacking, however, the Fifth Book. Of this,
also, the text of the First Book has been considerably altered, possibly in order
to adapt the work to the use of schools. An account of the MSS. is given by Stein
in his edition mentioned below. Bibliography.--The editio princeps of Herodotus
is that of Aldus (1502). Standard critical editions are those of Schweighauser.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Herodotus, (Herodotos). The earliest Greek historian (in the proper sense of the
term), and the father of history, was according to his own statement, at the beginning
of his work, a native of Ilalicarnassus, a Doric colony in Caria, which at the
time of his birth was governed by Artemisia, a vassal queen of the great king
of Persia. Our information respecting the life of Herodotus is extremely scanty,
for besides the meagre and confused article of Suidas, there is only one or two
passages of ancient writers that contain any direct notice of the life and age
of Herodotus, and the rest must be gleaned from his own work. According to Suidas,
Herodotus was the son of Lyxes and Dryo, and belonged to an illustrious family
of Halicarnassus; he had a brother of the name of Theodorus, and the epic poet
Panyasis was a relation of his, being the brother either of his farther or his
mother. (Suid. s. v. Panuasis) Herodotus (viii. 132) mentions with considerable
emphasis one Herodotus, a son of Basilides of Chios, and the manner in which the
historian directs attention to him almost leads us to suppose that this Chian
Herodotus was connected with him in some way or other, but it is possible that
the mere identity of name induced the historian to notice him in that particular
manner.
The birth year of Herodotus is accurately stated by Pamphila (ap.
Gell. xv. 23), a learned woman of the time of the emperor Nero: Herodotus, she
says, was 53 years old at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war; now as this
war broke out in B. C. 431, it follows that Herodotus was born in B. C. 484, or
six years after the battle of Marathon, and four years before the battles of Thermopylae
and Salamis. He could not, therefore, have had a personal knowledge of the great
struggles which he afterwards described, but he saw and spoke with persons who
had taken an active part in them. (ix. 16). That he survived the beginning of
the Peloponnesian war is attested by Pamphila and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Jud.
de Thuc. 5 ; comp. Diod. ii. 32; Euseb. Chron., who however places Herodotus too
early), as well as by Herodotus's own work, as we shall see hereafter. Respecting
his youth and education we are altogether without information, but we have every
reason for believing that he acquired an early and intimate acquaintance with
Homer and other poems, as well as with the works of the logographers, and the
desire one day to distinguish himself in a similar way may have arisen in him
at an early age.
The successor of Artemisia in the kingdom (or tyrannis) of Halicarnassus
was her son Pisindelis, who was succeeded by Lygdamis, in whose reign Panyasis
was killed. Suidas states, that Herodotus, unable to bear the tyranny of Lygdamis,
emigrated to Samos, where he became acquainted with the Ionic dialect, and there
wrote his history. The former part of this statement may be true, for Herodotus
in manny parts of his work shows an intimate acquaintance with the island of Samos
and its inhabitants, and he takes a delight in recording the part they took in
the events he had to relate; but that his history was written at a much later
period will be shown presently. From Samos he is said to have returned to Halicarnassus,
and to have acted a very prominent part in delivering his native city from the
tyranny of Lygdamis; but during the contentions among the citizens, which followed
their liberation, Herodotus, seeing that he was exposed to the hostile attacks
of the (popular ?) party, withdrew again from his native place, and settled at
Thurii, in Italy, where he spent the remainder of his life. The fact of his settling
at Thurii is attested by the unanimous statement of the ancients; but whether
he went thither with the first colonists in B. C. 445, or whether he followed
afterwards, is a disputed point. There is however a passage in his own work (v.
77) from which we must in all probability infer, that in B. C. 431, the year of
the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, he was at Athens; for it appears from that
passage that he saw the Propylaea, which were not completed till the year in which
that war began, It further appears that he was well acquainted with, and adopted
the principles of policy followed by Pericles and his party which leads us to
the belief that he witnessed the disputes at Athens between Pericles and his opponents,
and we therefore conclude that Herodotus did not go out with the first settlers
to Thurii, but followed them many years after, perhaps about the time of the death
of Pericles. This account is mainly based upon the confused article of Suidas,
who makes no mention of the travels of Herodotus, which must have occupied a considerable
period of his life; but before we consider this point, we shall endeavour to fix
the time and place where he composed his work. According to Lucian (Herod. s.
Act. 1, &c.) he wrote at Halicarnassus, according to Suidas in Samos, and according
to Pliny (H. N. xii. 4.8) at Thurii. These contradictions are rendered still more
perplexing by the statement of Lucian, that Herodotus read his work to the assembled
Greeks at Olympia, with the greatest applause of his hearers, in consequence of
which the nine books of the work were honoured with the names of the nine muses.
It is further stated that young Thucydides was present at this recitation and
was moved to tears. (Lucian, l. c. ; Suid. s. vv. Thoukudes, organ; Marcellinus,
Vit. Thuc. § 54; Phot. Bibl. Cod. 60., Bekk. ; Tzetz. Chil. i. 19.) It should
be remarked that Lucian is the first writer that relates the story, and that the
others repeat it after him. As Thucydides is called a boy at the time when he
heard the recitation, he cannot have been more than about 15 or 16 years of age;
and further, as it is commonly supposed that the Olympic festival at which Thucydides
heard the recitation was that of B. C. 456 (Ol. 81.), Herodotus himself would
have been no more than 32 years old. Now it seems scarcely credible that Herodotus
should have completed his travels and written his work at so early an age. Some
critics therefore have recourse to the supposition, that what he recited at Olympia
was only a sketch or a portion of the work but this is in direct contradiction
to the statement of Lucian, who asserts that he read the whole of the nine books,
which on that occasion received the names of the muses. The work itself contains
numerous allusions which belong to a much later date than the pretended recitation
at Olympia; of these we need only mention the latest, viz. the revolt of the Medes
against Dareius Nothus and the death of Amyrtaeus, events which belong to the
years B. C. 409 and 408. (Herod. i. 130, iii. 15; comp. Dahlmann, Herodot., and
an extract from his work in the Classical Museum, vol. i.) This difficulty again
is got over by the supposition, that Herodotus, who had written his work before
B. C. 456, afterwards revised it and made additions to it during his stay at Thurii.
But this hypothesis is not supported by the slightest evidence ; no ancient writer
knows anything of a first and second edition of the work. Dahlmann has most ably
shown that the reputed recitation at Olympia is a mere invention of Lucian, and
that there are innumerable external circumstances which render such a recitation
utterly impossible: no man could have read or rather chanted such a work as that
of Herodotus, in the open air and in the burning sun of the month of July, not
to mention that of all the assembled Greeks, only a very small number could have
heard the reader. If the story had been known at all in the time of Plutarch,
this writer surely could not have passed it over in silence, where he tells us
of Herodotus having calumniated all the Greeks except the Athenians, who had bribed
him. Heyse, Baehr, and others labour to maintain the credibility of the story
about the Olympic recitation, but their arguments in favour of it are of no weight.
There is one tradition which mentions that Herodotus read his work at the Panathenaea
at Athens in B. C. 445 or 446, and that there existed at Athens a psephisma granting
to the historian a reward of ten talents from the public treasury. (Plut. de Malign.
Herod. 26, on whose authority it is repeated by Eusebius, Chron. p. 169.) This
tradition is not only in contradiction with the time at which he must have written
his work, but is evidently nothing but part and parcel of the charge which the
author of that contemptible treatise makes against Herodotus, viz. that he was
bribed by the Athenians. The source of all this calumnious scandal is nothing
but the petty vanity of the Thebans which was hurt by the truthful description
of their conduct during the war against Persia. Whether there is any more authority
for the statement that Herodotus read his history to the Corinthians, it is not
easy to say; it is mentioned only by Dion Chrysostomus (Orat. xxxvii., ed. Reiske),
and probably has no more foundation than the story of the Olympic or Athenian
recitation. Had Herodotus really read his history before any such assembly, his
work would surely have been noticed by some of those writers who flourished soon
after his time; but such is not the case, and nearly a century elapses after the
time of Herodotus, before he and his work emerge from their obscurity.
As, therefore, these traditions on the one hand do not enable us to
fix the time in which the father of history wrote his work, and cannot, on the
other, have any negative weight, if we should be led to other conclusions, we
shall endeavour to ascertain from the work itself the time which we must assign
for its composition. The history of the Persian war, which forms the main substance
of the whole work, breaks off with the victorious return of the Greek fleet from
the coast of Asia, and the taking of Sestos by the Athenians in B. C. 479. But
numerous events, which belong to a much later period, are alluded to or mentioned
incidentally (see their list in the Classical Museum, l. c.), and the latest of
them refers, as already remarked, to the year B. C. 408, when Herodotus was at
least 77 years old. Hence it follows that, with Pliny, we must believe that Herodotus
wrote his work in his old age during his stay at Thurii, where, according to Suidas,
he also died and was buried,for no one mentions that he ever returned to Greece,
or that he made two editions of his work, as some modern critics assume, who suppose
that at Thurii he revised his work, and among other things introduced those parts
which refer to later events. The whole work makes the impression of a fresh composition;
there is no trace of labour or revision; it has all the appearance of having been
written by a man at an advanced period of his life. Its abrupt termination, and
the fact that the author does not tell us what in an earlier part of his work
he distinctly promises, (e. g. vii. 213), prove almost beyond a doubt that his
work was the production of the last years of his life, and that death prevented
his completing it. Had he not written it at Thurii, he would scarcely have been
called a Thurian or the Thurian historian, a name by which he is sometimes distinguished
by the ancients (Aristot. Rhet. iii. 9; Plut. de Exil. 13, de Malign. Herod. 35;
Strab. xiv.), and from the first two of the passages here referred to it is even
doubtful whether Herodotus called himself a Thurian or a Halicarnassian. There
are lastly some passages in the work itself which must suggest to every unbiassed
reader the idea that the author wrote somewhere in the south of Italy. (See, e.
g. iv. 15, 99, iii. 131, 137, 138, v. 44. &c. vi. 21, 127).
Having thus established the time and place at which Herodotus must
have written his work, we shall proceed to examine the preparations he made for
it, and which must have occupied a considerable period of his life. The most important
part of these preparations consisted in his travels through Greece and foreign
countries, for the purpose of making himself acquainted with the world and with
man, and his customs and manners. We may safely believe that these preparations
occupied the time from his twentieth or twenty-fifth year until he settled at
Rhegium. His work, however, is not an account of travels, but the mature fruit
of his vast personal experience by land and by sea and of his unwearied inquiries
which he made every where. He in fact no where mentions his travels and adventures
except for the purpose of establishing the truth of what he says, and he is so
free from the ordinary vanity of travellers, that instead of acting a prominent
part in his work, he very seldom appears at all in it. Hence it is impossible
for us to give anything like an accurate chronological succession of his travels.
The minute account which Larcher has made up, is little more than a fiction, and
is devoid of all foundation. In Greece Proper and on the coasts of Asia Minor
there is scarcely any place of importance, with which he is not perfectly familiar
from his own observation, and where he did not make inquiries respecting this
or that particular point; we may mention more especially the oracular places such
as Dodona and Delphi. In many places of Greece, such as Samos, Athens, Corinth
and Thebes, he seems to have made a rather long stay. The places where the great
battles had been fought between the Greeks and barbarians, as Marathon, Thermopylae,
Salamis, and Plataeae, were well known to him, and on the whole route which Xerxes
and his army took on their march from the Hellespont to Athens, there was probably
not a place which he had not seen with his own eyes. He also visited most of the
Greek islands, not only in the Aegean, but even those in the west of Greece, such
as Zacynthus. As for his travels in foreign countries, we know that he sailed
through the Hellespont, the Propontis, and crossed the Euxine in both directions;
with the Palus Maeotis he was but imperfectly acquainted, for he asserts that
it is only a little smaller than the Euxine. He further visited Thrace (ii. 103)
and Scythia (iv. 76, 81). The interior of Asia Minor, especially Lydia, is well
known to him, and so is also Phoenicia. He visited Tyre for the special purpose
of obtaining information respecting the worship of Heracles; previous to this
he had been in Egypt, for it was in Egypt that his curiosity respecting Heracles
had been excited. What Herodotus has done for the history of Egypt, surpasses
in importance every thing that was written in ancient times upon that country,
although his account of it forms only an episode in his work. There is no reason
for supposing that he made himself acquainted with the Egyptian language, which
was in fact scarcely necessary on account of the numerous Greek settlers in Egypt,
as well as on account of that large class of persons who made it their business
to act as interpreters between the Egyptians and Greeks; and it appears that Herodotus
was accompanied by one of those interpreters. He travelled to the south of Egypt
as far as Elephantine, everywhere forming connections with the priests, and gathering
information upon the early history of the country and its relations to Greece.
He saw with his own eyes all the wonders of Egypt, and the accuracy of his observations
and descriptions still excites the astonishment of travellers in that country.
The time at which he visited Egypt may be determined with tolerable accuracy.
He was there shortly after the defeat of Inarus by the Persian general Megabyzus,
which happened in B. C. 456; for he saw the battle field still covered with the
bones and skulls of the slain (iii. 12.), so that his visit to Egypt may be ascribed
to about B. C. 450. From Egypt he appears to have made excursions to the east
into Arabia, and to the west into Libya, at least as far as Cyrene, which is well
known to him. (ii. 96.) It is not impossible that he may have even visited Carthage,
at least he speaks of information which he had received from Carthaginians (iv.
43, 195, 196), though it may be also that he conversed with individual Carthaginians
whom he met on his travels. From Egypt he crossed over by sea to Tyre, and visited
Palaestine; that he saw the rivers Euphrates and Tigris and the city of Babylon,
is quite certain (i. 178, &c., 193). From thence he seems to have travelled northward,
for he saw the town of Ecbatana which reminded him of Athens (i. 98). There can
be little doubt that he visited Susa also, but we cannot trace him further into
the interior of Asia. His desire to increase his knowledge by travelling does
not appear to have subsided even in his old age, for it would seem that during
his residence at Thurii he visited several of the Greek settlements in southern
Italy and Sicily, though his knowledge of the west of Europe was very limited,
for lie strangely calls Sardinia the greatest of all islands (i. 170, v. 106,
vi. 2). From what he had collected and seen during his travels, Herodotus was
led to form his peculiar views about the earth, its form, climates, and inhabitants
; but for discussions on this topic we must refer the reader to some of the works
mentioned at the end of this article. Notwithstanding all the wonders and charms
of foreign countries, the beauties of his own native land and its free institutions
appear never to have been effaced from his mind.
A second source from which Herodotus drew his information was the
literature of his country, especially the poetical portion, for prose had not
yet been cultivated very extensively. With the poems of Homer and Hesiod he was
perfectly familiar, though lie attributed less historical importance to them than
might have been expected. He placed them about 400 years before his own time,
and makes the paradoxical assertion, that they had made the theogony of the Greeks,
which cannot mean anything else than that those poets, and more especially Hesiod,
collected the numerous local traditions about the gods, and arranged them in a
certain order and system, which afterwards became established in Greece as national
traditions. He was also acquainted with the poetry of Alcaeus, Sappho, Simonides.
Aeschylus, and Pindar. He further derived assistance from the Arimaspeia, an epic
poem of Aristeas, and from the works of the logographers who had preceded him,
such as Hecataeus, though he worked with perfect independence of them, and occasionally
corrected mistakes which they had committed; but his main sources, after all,
were his own investigations and observations.
The object of the work of Herodotus is to give an account of the struggles
between the Greeks and Persians, from which the former, with the aid of the gods,
came forth victorious. The subject therefore is a truly national one, but the
discussion of it, especially in the early part, led the author into various digressions
and episodes, as he was sometimes obliged to trace to distant times the causes
of the events he had to relate, or to give a history or description of a nation
or country, with which, according to his view, the reader ought to be made familiar;
and havilng once launched out into such a digression, he usually cannot resist
the temptation of telling the whole tale, so that most of his episodes form each
an interesting and complete whole by itself. He traces the enmity between Europe
and Asia to the mythical times. But he rapidly passes over the mythical ages,
to come to Croesus, king of Lydia, who was known to have committed acts of hostility
against the Greeks. This induces him to give a full history of Croesus and the
kingdom of Lydia. The conquest of Lydia by the Persians under Cyrus then leads
him to relate the rise of the Persian monarchy, and the subjugation of Asia Minor
and Babylon. The nations which are mentioned in the course of this narrative are
again discussed more or less minutely. The history of Cambyses and his expedition
into Egypt induce him to enter into the detail of Egyptian history. The expedition
of Dareius against the Scythians causes him to speak of Scythia and the north
of Europe. The kingdom of Persia now extended from Scythia to Cyrene, and an army
being called in by the Cyrenaeans against the Persians, Herodotus proceeds to
give an account of Cyrene and Libya. In the meantime the revolt of the Ionians
breaks out, which eventually brings the contest between Persia and Greece to an
end. An account of this insurrection and of the rise of Athens after the expulsion
of the Peisistratidae, is followed by what properly constitutes the principal
part of the work, and the history of the Persian war now runs in a regular channel
until the taking of Sestos. In this manner alone it was possible for Herodotus
to give a record of the vast treasures of information which he had collected in
the course of many years. But these digressions and episodes do not impair the
plan and unity of the work, for one thread, as it were, runs through the whole,
and the episodes are only like branches that issue from one and the same tree:
each has its peculiar charms and beauties, and is yet manifestly no more than
a part of one great whole. The whole structure of the work thus bears strong resemblance
to a grand epic poem. We remarked above that the work of Herodotus has an abrupt
termination, and is probably incomplete: this opinion is strengthened on the one
hand by the fact, that in one place the author promises to give the particulars
of an occurrence in another part of his work, though the promise is nowhere fulfilled
(vii. 213); and, on the other, by the story that a favourite of the historian,
of the name of Plesirrhous, who inherited all his property, also edited the work
after the author's death. (Ptolem. Heph. ap. Phot. Bibl. Cod. 190.) The division
of the work into nine books, each bearing the name of a muse, was probably made
by some grammarian, for there is no indication in the whole work of the division
having been made by the author himself.
There are two passages (i. 106, 184) in which Herodotus promises to
write a history of Assyria, which was either to form a part of his great work,
or to be an independent treatise by itself. Whether he ever carried his plan into
effect is a question of considerable doubt; no ancient writer mentions such a
work; but Aristotle, in his History of Animals (viii. 20), not only alludes to
it, but seems to have read it, for he mentions the account of the siege of Nineveh,
which is the very thing that Herodotus (i. 184) promises to treat of in his Assyrian
history. It is true that in most MSS. of Aristotle we there read Hesiod instead
of Herodotus, but the context seems to require Herodotus. The life of Homer in
the Ionie dialect, which was formerly attributed to Herodotus, and is printed
at the end of several editions of his work, is now universally acknowledged to
be a production of a later date, though it was undoubtedly written at a comparatively
early period, and contains some valuable information.
It now remains to add a few remarks on the character of the work of
Herodotus, its importance as an historical authority, and its style and language.
The whole work is pervaded by a profoundly religious idea, which distinguishes
Herodotus from all the other Greek historians. This idea is the strong belief
in a divine power existing apart and independent of man and nature, which assigns
to every being its sphere. This sphere no one is allowed to transgress without
disturbing the order which has existed, from the beginning, in the moral world
no less than in the physical; and by disturbing this order man brings about his
own destruction. This divine power is, in the opinion of Herodotus, the cause
of all external events, although he does not deny the free activity of man, or
establish a blind law of fate or necessity. The divine power with him is rather
the manifestation of eternal justice, which keeps all things in a proper equilibrium,
assigns to each being its path, and keeps it within its bounds. Where it punishes
overweaning haughtiness and insolence, it assumes the character of the divine
Nemesis, and nowhere in history had Nemesis overtaken and chastised the offender
more obviously than in the contest between Greece and Asia. When Herodotus speaks
of the envy of the gods, as he often does, we must understand this divine Nemesis,
who appears sooner or later to pursue or destroy him who, in frivolous insolence
and conceit, raises himself above his proper sphere. Herodotus everywhere shows
the most profound reverence for everything which he conceives as divine, and rarely
ventures to express an opinion on what he considers a sacred or religious mystery,
though now and then he cannot refrain from expressing a doubt in regard to the
correctness of the popular belief of his countrymen, generally owing to the influence
which the Egyptian priests had exercised on his mind; but in general his good
sense and sagacity were too strong to allow him to be misled by vulgar notions
and errors.
There are certain prejudices of which some of the best modern critics
are not quite free : one writer asserts, that Herodotus wrote to amuse his hearers
rather than with the higher objects of an historian, such as Thucydides; another
says that he was inordinately partial towards his own countrymen, without possessing
a proper knowledge of and regard for what had been accomplished by barbarians.
To refute such errors, it is only necessary to read his work with an unbiassed
mind : that his work is more amusing than those of other historians arises from
the simple, unaffected, and childlike mode of narration, features which are peculiar
more or less to all early historians. Herodotus further saw and acknowledged what
was good and noble wherever it appeared; for he nowhere shows any hatred of the
Persians, nor of any among the Greeks : he praises and blames the one as well
as the other, whenever, in his judgment, they deserve it. It would be vain indeed
to deny that Herodotus was to a certain extent credulous, and related things without
putting to himself the question as to whether they were possible at all or not;
his political knowledge, and his acquaintance with the laws of nature, were equally
deficient; and owing to these deficiencies, he frequently does not rise above
the rank of a mere story-teller, a title which Aristotle ( De Animal. Gener. iii.
5) bestows upon him. But notwithstanding all this, it is evident that he had formed
a high notion of the dignity of history; and in order to realise his idea, he
exerted all his powers, and cheerfully went through more difficult and laborious
preparations than any other historian either before or after him. The charge of
his having flattered the Athenians was brought against Herodotus by some of the
ancients, but is totally unfounded; he only does justice to the Athenians by saying
that they were the first who had courage and patriotism enough to face the barbarian
invaders (vi. 112), and that thus they became the deliverers of all Greece; but
he is very far from approving their conduct on every occasion; and throughout
his account of the Persian war, he shows the most upright conduct and the sincerest
love of truth. On the whole, in order to form a fair judgment of the historical
value of the work of Herodotus, we must distinguish between those parts in which
he speaks from his own observation, or gives the results of his own investigations,
from those in which he merely repeats what he was told by priests, interpreters,
guides, and the like. In the latter case he undoubtedly was often deceived; but
lie never intrudes such reports as anything more than they really are; and under
the influence of his natural good sense, he very frequently cautions his readers
by some such remark as " I know this only from hearsay," or " I
have been told so, but do not believe it." The same caution should guide
us in his account of the early history of the Greeks, on which he touches only
in episodes, for he is generally satisfied with some one tradition, without entering
into any critical examination or comparison with other traditions, which he silently
rejects. But wherever he speaks from his own observation, Herodotus is a real
model of truthfulness and accuracy; and the more those countries of which he speaks
have been explored by modern travellers, the more firmly has his authority been
established. There is scarcely a traveller that goes to Egypt, the East, or Greece,
that does not bring back a number of facts which place the accuracy of the accounts
of Herodotus in the most brilliant light : many things which used to be laughed
at as impossible or paradoxical, are found to be strictly in accordance with truth.
The dialect in which Herodotus wrote is the Ionic, intermixed with
epic or poetical expressions, and sometimes even with Attic and Doric forms. This
peculiarity of the language called forth a number of lexicographical works of
learned grammarians, all of which are lost with the exception of a few remnants
in the Homeric glosses ( lexeis ). The excellencies of his style do not consist
in any artistic or melodious structure of his sentences, but in the antique and
epic colouring, the transparent clearness, the lively flow of his narrative, the
natural and unaffected gracefulness, and the occasional signs of carelessness.
There is perhaps no work in the whole range of ancient literature which so closely
resembles a familiar and homely oral narration than that of Herodotus. Its reader
cannot help feeling as though he was listening to an old man who, from the inexhaustible
stores of his knowledge and experience, tells his stories with that single-hearted
simplicity and naivecte which are the marks and indications of a truthful spirit.
"That which charms the readers of Herodotus," says Dahlmann, "is
that childlike simplicity of heart which is ever the companion of an incorruptible
love of truth, and that happy and winning style which cannot be attained by any
art or pathetic excitement, and is found only where manners are true to nature;
for while other pleasing discourses of men roll along like torrents, and noisily
hurry through their short existence, the silver stream of his words flows on without
concern, sure of its immortal source, every where pure and transparent, whether
it be shallow or deep; and the fear of ridicule, which sways the whole world,
affects not the sublime simplicity of his mind." We have already had occasion
to remark that notwithstanding all the merits and excellencies of Herodotus, there
were in antiquity certain writers who attacked Herodotus on very serious points,
both in regard to the form and the substance of his work. Besides Ctesias ( Pers.
i. 57.), Aelius Harpocration, Manetho, and one Pollio, are mentioned as authors
of works against Herodotus; but all of them have perished with the exception of
one bearing the name of Plutarch ( Peri tes Herodotou kakoetheias ), which is
full of the most futile accusations of every kind. It is written in a mean and
malignant spirit, and is probably the work of some young rhetorician or sophist,
who composed it as an exercise in polemics or controversy.
Herodotus was first published in a Latin translation by Laurentius
Valla, Venice, 1474; and the first edition of the Greek original is that of Aldus
Manutius, Venice, 1502, fol. which was followed by two Basle editions, in 1541
and 1557, fol. The text is greatly corrected in the edition of H. Stephens (Paris,
1570 and 1592 fol.), which was followed by that of Jungermann, Frankfort, 1608,
fol. (reprinted at Geneva in 1618, and at London in 1679, fol.). The edition of
James Gronovius (Leiden, 1715) has a peculiar value, from his having made use
of the excellent Medicean MS.; but it was greatly surpassed by the edition of
P. Wesseling and L. C. Valckenaer, Amsterdam, 1763, fol. Both the language and
tile matter are there treated with great care; and the learned apparatus of this
edition, with the exception of the notes of Gronovins., was afterwards incorporated
in the edition of Schweighauser, Argentorati et Paris. 1806, 6 vols. in 12 parts
(reprinted in London, 1818, in 6 vols., and the Lexicon Herodoteum of Schweighauser
separately in 1824 and 1841, 8vo.). The editor had compared several new MSS.,
and was thus enabled to give a text greatly superior to that of his predecessors.
The best edition after this is that of Gaisford (Oxford, 1824, 4 vols. 8vo.),
who incorporated in it nearly all the notes of Wesseling, Valckenaer and Schweighauser,
and also made a collation of some English MSS. A reprint of this edition appeared
at Leipzig in 1824, 4 vols. 8vo. The last great edition, in which the subject-matter
also is considered with reference to modern discoveries, is that of Bahr, Leipzig,
1830, &c. 4 vols. 8vo. Among the school editions, we mention those of A. Matthiae,
Leipzig, 1825, 2 vols. 8vo.; G. Long, London, 1830; and 1. Bekker, Berlin, 1833
and 1837, 8vo. Among all the translations of Herodotus, there is none which surpasses
in excellence and fidelity the German of Fr. Lange, Breslau, 1811, &c., 2 vols.
8vo. The works written on IIerodotus, or particular points of his work, are extremely
numerous: a pretty complete account of the modern literature of Herodotus is given
by Bahr in the Neue Jahrbucher fur Philologie und Paedagogik, vol. xli.; but we
shall confine ourselves to mentioning the principal ones among them, viz., J.
Rennell, The Geographical System of Herodotus, London, 1800, 4to, and 1832, 2
vols. 8vo.; B. G. Niebuhr, in his Kleine Philol. Schriften, vol. i.; Dahlmann,
Herodot, ans seinem Buche sein Leben, Altona, 1823, 8vo., one of the best works
that was ever written ; C. G. L. Heyse, De Herodoti Vita et Itineribus, Berlin,
1826, 8vo.; H. F. Jager, Disputationes Herodoteae, Gottingen, 1828, 8vo.; J. Kenrick,
The Egypt of Herodots, with notes and preliminary dissertations, London, 1841,
8vo.; Bahr, Commentatio de Vita et Scriptis Herodoti, in the fourth Avolume of
his edition.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Herodotus' Histories:
the 28 logoi
The Histories are the account of the researches done by the Greek
author Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c.480-c.429). It is an entertaining work of
great variety, dealing with history, ethnology, topography and morality.
In Antiquity, books consisted of papyrus scrolls. Our division of
Herodotus' Histories in nine 'books' goes back to an edition by scholars of the
third century BCE, working in the great library of Alexandria.
There are strong indications that this is not the original division; probably,
Herodotus thought about his oeuvre as a collection of twenty-eight lectures, in
Greek called 'logoi'.
This overview of the contents of Herodotus' Histories is based on
Silvana Cagnazzi's article 'Tavola dei 28 logoi di Erodoto' in the journal Hermes
103 (1975), page 385-423.
Book one
•first logos: the story of Croesus (1.1-94) text: the story of Arion
•second logos: the rise of Cyrus the Great (1.95-140)
•third logos: affairs in Babylonia and Persia
(1.141-216)
Book two
•fourth logos: geography of Egypt
(2.1-34)
•fifth logos: customs and animals of Egypt (2.35-99)
text: Egyptian customs
text: The hippopotamus
text: Mummification
•sixth logos: history of Egypt (2.100-182)
text: The relief of Sesostris
Book three
•seventh logos: Cambyses' conquest of Egypt (3.1-60)
text: The madness of Cambyses
•eighth logos: the coups of the Magians and Darius (3.61-119, 126-141, 150-160)
text: The gold-digging ants
text: The edges of the earth
•ninth logos: affairs on Samos
(3.39-60, 120-125, 142-149)
Book four
•tenth logos: country and customs of the Scythians (4.1-82)
text: The circumnavigation of Africa
•eleventh logos: Persian campaign against the Scythians (4.83-144)
•twelfth logos: Persian conquest of Libya
(4.145-205)
Book five
•thirteenth logos: Persian conquest of Thrace
(5.1-28)
•fourteenth logos: beginning of the Ionian revolt; affairs in Sparta
(5.28-55)
•fifteenth logos: affairs in Athens
(5.55-96)
•sixteenth logos: Ionian revolt (5.97-126)
Book six
•seventeenth logos: Persian reconquest of Ionia
(6.1-42)
•eighteenth logos: affairs in Greece
(6.43-93)
•nineteenth logos: battle of Marathon
(6.94-140)
Book seven
•twentieth logos: Persian preparations (7.1-55)
text: Xerxes' ancestors
text: Xerxes' canal through the Athos
text: Xerxes in Abydos
twenty-first logos: the Persians cross to Europe (7.56-137)
•twenty-second logos: battle of Thermopylae
(7.138-239)
text: Greek spies at Marathon
Book eight
•twenty-third logos: naval battle off Artemisium
(8.1-39)
•twenty-fourth logos: naval battle off Salamis
(8.40-96)
•twenty-fifth logos: winter (8.97-144)
Book nine
•twenty-sixth logos: battle of Plataea
(9.1-89)
•twenty-seventh logos: liberation of Ionia
(9.90-113)
•twenty-eighth logos: foundation of the Athenian empire (9.114-122)
Jona Lendering, ed.
This extract is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
Jar with Authors and Muses (It has been suggested the man is the historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus facing his Muse). Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Editor’s Information
The e-texts of the works by Herodotus are found in Greece (ancient country) under the category Ancient Greek Writings.
Dionysius. Halicarnassensis or Halicarnasseus, an historian and critic,
born at Halicarnassus in the first century B.C. We know nothing of his history
beyond what he has told us himself. He states that he came to Italy at the termination
of the civil war between Augustus and Antony (B.C. 29), and that he spent the
following two-and-twenty years at Rome in learning the Latin language and in collecting
materials for his history. He died at Rome, B.C. 7. The principal work of Dionysius
is his work on Roman antiquities (Rhomaike Archaiologia), which commenced with
the early history of the people of Italy and terminated with the beginning of
the First Punic War, B.C. 265. It originally consisted of twenty books, of which
the first ten remain entire. The eleventh breaks off in the year B.C. 312, but
several fragments of the latter half of the history are preserved in the collection
of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and to these a valuable addition was made in 1816,
by Mai, from an old MS. Besides, the first three books of Appian were founded
entirely upon Dionysius, and Plutarch's biography of Camillus must also be considered
as a compilation mostly taken from the Antiquitates Romanae, so that perhaps,
upon the whole, we have not lost much of his work. The intention of the author
in writing his history was to give the Greeks a more accurate and favourable idea
than they had hitherto entertained of the Roman people and its civilization, for
it had always fretted the Easterns to have been conquered by a race of mere "barbarians."
The work is founded upon a very careful and thorough study of authorities, and
is one of our chief sources of information upon ancient Roman history in its internal
and external development. Good editions of the Antiquitates are those of Reiske,
6 vols. (Leipzig, 1774-76), Schwartz (Leipzig, 1877), and Jacoby 2 vols. (1885-88).
The first edition in the original Greek was that of R. Stephanus (Paris, 1546).
Dionysius also wrote a treatise on rhetoric (Techne Retorike);
criticisms (Ton Archaion Krisis) on the style of Thucydides, Lysias, Isocrates,
Isaeus, Dinarchus, Plato, and Demosthenes; a treatise on the arrangement of words
(Peri Suntheseos Onomaton); and some other short essays. The first complete edition
of the entire works of Dionysius was that of Sylburg (Frankfort, 1586; reprinted
at Leipzig, 1691). More recent editors of the rhetorical works are Gros (Paris,
1826) and Westermann.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Of Halicarnassus, the most celebrated among the ancient writers of the name of
Dionysius. He was the son of one Alexander of Halicarnassus, and was born, according
to the calculation of Dodwell, between B. C. 78 and 54. Strabo (xiv.) calls him
his own contemporary. His death took place soon after B. C. 7, the year in which
he completed and published his great work on the history of Rome. Respecting his
parents and education we know nothing, nor any thing about his position in his
native place before he emigrated to Rome; though some have inferred from his work
on rhetoric, that he enjoyed a great reputation at Halicarnassus. All that we
know for certain is, the information which he himself gives us in the introduction
to his history of Rome (i. 7), and a few more particulars which we may glean from
his other works. According to his own account, he went to Italy immediately after
the termination of the civil wars, about the middle of 0l. 187, that is, B. C.
29. Henceforth he remained at Rome, and the twenty-two years which followed his
arrival at Rome were mainly spent by him in making himself acquainted with the
Latin language and literature, and in collecting materials for his great work
on Roman history, called Archaeologia. We may assume that, like other rhetoricians
of the time, he had commenced his career as a teacher of rhetoric at Halicarnassus;
and his works bear strong evidence of his having been similarly occupied at Rome.
(De Comp. Verb. 20, Rhetor. 10.) There he lived on terms of friendship with many
distinguished men, such as Q. Aelius Tubero, and the rhetorician Caecilius; and
it is not improbable that he may have received the Roman franchise, but his Roman
name is not mentioned anywhere. Respecting the little we know about Dionysius,
see F. Matthai, de Dionysio Halic., Wittenberg, 1779, 4to.; Dodwell, de A elate
Dionys. in Reiske's edition of Dionysius, vol. i.; and more especially C. J. Weismann,
de Dionysii Halic. Vita et Script., Rinteln, 1837, 4to., and Busse, de Dionys.
Hal. Vita et Ingenio, Berlin, 1841, 4to.
All the works of Dionysius, some of which are completely lost, must
be divided into two classes: the first contains his rhetorical and critical treatises,
all of which probably belong to an earlier period of his life--perhaps to the
first years of his residence at Rome--than his historical works, which constitute
the second class.
a. Rhetorical and Critical Works.-- All the productions of this class shew that
Dionysius was not only a rhetorician of the first order, but also a most excellent
critic in the highest and best sense of the term. They abound in the most exquisite
remarks and criticisms on the works of the classical writers of Greece, although,
at the same time, they are not without their faults, among which we may notice
his hypercritical severity. But we have to remember that they were the productions
of an early age, in which the want of a sound philosophy and of a comprehensive
knowledge, and a partiality for or against certain writers led him to express
opinions which at a maturer age he undoubtedly regretted. Still, however this
may be, he always evinces a well-founded contempt for the shallow sophistries
of ordinary rhetoricians, and strives instead to make rhetoric something practically
useful, and by his criticisms to contribute towards elevating and ennobling the
minds of his readers. The following works of this class are still extant: 1. Techne
rhetorike addressed to one Echecrates. The present condition of this work is by
no means calculated to give us a correct idea of his merits and of his views on
the subject of rhetoric. It consists of twelve, or according to another division,
of eleven chapters, which have no internal connexion whatever, and have the appearance
of being put together merely by accident. The treatise is therefore generally
looked upon as a collection of rhetorical essays by different authors, some of
which are genuine productions of Dionysius, who is expressly stated by Quintilian
(iii. 1.16) to have written a manual of rhetoric. Schott, the last learned editor
of this work, divides it into four sections. Chap. 1 to 7, with the exclusion
of the 6th, which is certainly spurious, may be entitled peri panegurikon, and
contains some incoherent comments upon epideictic oratory, which are anything
but in accordance with the known views of Dionysius as developed in other treatises;
in addition to which, Nicostratus, a rhetorician of the age of Aelius Aristeides,
is mentioned in chap. 2. Chapters 8 and 9, peri eochematismenon, treat on the
same subject, and chap. 8 may be the production of Dionysius; whereas the 9th
certainly belongs to a late rhetorician. Chapter 10, peri ton en meletais plemmeloumenon,
is a very valuable treatise, and probably the work of Dionysius. The 11th chapter
is only a further development of the 10th, just as the 9th chapter is of the 8th.
The techne rhetorike is edited separately with very valuable prolegomena and notes
by H. A. Schott, Leipzig, 1804, 8vo. 2. Peri suntheseos onomaton, addressed to
Rufus Melitius, the son of a friend of Dionysius, was probably written in the
first year or years of his residence at Rome, and at all events previous to any
of the other works still extant. It is, however, notwithstanding this, one of
high excellence. In it the author treats of oratorical power, and on the combination
of words according to the different species and styles of oratory. There are two
very good separate editions of this treatise, one by G. H. Schaefer (Leipzig,
1809, 8vo), and the other by F. Goller (Jena, 1815, 8vo), in which the text is
considerably improved from MSS. 3. Peri mimeseos, addressed to a Greek of the
name of Demetrius. Its proper title appears to have been hupounematismoi peri
tms mimeseos. (Dionys. Jud. de Thuc. 1, Epist. ad Pomp. 3.) The work as a whole
is lost, and what we possess under the title of ton archaion kriois is probably
nothing but a sort of epitome containing characteristics of poets, from Homer
down to Euripides, of some historians, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Philistus,
Xenophon, and Theopompus, and lastly, of some philosophers and orators. This epitome
is printed separately in Frotscher's edition of the tenth book of Quintilian (Leipzig,
1826), who mainly follows the opinions of Dionysius. 4. Peri ton archaion rhetoron
hupomnematismoi, addressed to Ammaeus, contains criticisms on the most eminent
Greek orators and historians, and the author points out their excellences as well
as their defects, with a view to promote a wise imitation of the classic models,
and thus to preserve a pure taste in those branches of literature. The work originally
consisted of six sections, of which we now possess only the first three, on Lysias,
Isocrates, and Isaeus. The other sections treated of Demosthenes, Hyperides, and
Aeschines; but we have only the first part of the fourth section, which treats
of the oratorical power of Demosthenes, and his superiority over other orators.
This part is known under the title peri lektikes Demosthenous deinotetos, which
has become current ever since the time of Sylburg, though it is not found in any
MS. The beginning of the treatise is mutilated, and the concluding part of it
is entirely wanting. Whether Dionysius actually wrote on Hyperides and Aeschines,
is not known; for in these, as in other instances, he may have intended and promised
to write what he could not afterwards fulfil either from want of leisure or inclination.
There is a very excellent German translation of the part relating to Demosthenes,
with a valuable dissertation on Dionysius as an aesthetic critic, by A. G. Becker.
(Wolfenbiittel and Leipzig, 1829, 8vo.) 5. A treatise addressed to Ammaeus, entitled
Hepistole pros Ammaion prote, which title, however, does not occur in MSS., and
instead of prote it ought to be called epistole deutepa. This treatise or epistle,
in which the author shews that most of the orations of Demosthenes had been delivered
before Aristotle wrote his Rhetoric, and that consequently Demosthenes had derived
no instruction from Aristotle, is of great importance for the history and criticism
of the works of Demosthenes. 6. Epistole pros Gnaion Pomteion, was written by
Dionysius with a view to justify the unfavourable opinion which he had expressed
upon Plato, and which Pompeius had censured. The latter part of this treatise
is much mutilated, and did not perhaps originally belong to it. See Vitus Loers,
de Dionys. Hal. judicio de Platonis oratione et genere dicendi, Treves, 1840,
4to. 7. Peri tou Thoukudidou chapaktepos kai ton loipon tou sungrapheos idiomaton,
was written by Dionysius at the request of his friend Q. Aelius Tubero, for the
purpose of explaining more minutely what he had written on Thucydides. As Dionysius
in this work looks at the great historian from his rhetorical point of view, his
judgment is often unjust and incorrect. 8. Peri ton tou Thoukudidou idiomaton,
is addressed to Ammaeus. The last three treatises are printed in a very good edition
by C. G. Kruger under the title Dionysii Historiographica, i. e. Epistolae ad
Cn. Pomp., Q. Ael. Tuber. et Ammaeum, Halle, 1823, 8vo. The last of the writings
of this class still extant is--9. Deinapchos, avery valuable treatise on the life
and orations of Deinarchus. Besides these works Dionysius himself mentions some
others, a few of which are lost, while others were perhaps never written; though
at the time he mentioned them, Dionysius undoubtedly intended to compose them.
Among the former we may mention charakteres ton harmonion (Dionys. de Compos.
Verb. 11), of which a few fragments are still extant, and Pragmateia huper tes
politikms philosophias pros tous katatrechontas autes adikos. (Dionys. Jud. de
Thuc. 2.) A few other works, such as "on the orations unjustly attributed to Lysias"
(Lys. 14), "on the tropical expressions in Plato and Demosthenes " (Dem.
32), and peri tes ekloges ton onomaton (de Comp. Verb. 1), were probably never
written, as no ancient writer besides Dionysius himself makes any mention of them.
The work peri hermeneias, which is extant under the name of Demetrius Phalereus,
is attributed by some to Dionysius of Halicarnassus; but there is no evidence
for this hypothesis, any more than there is for ascribing to him the Bios Homerou
which is printed in Gale's Opuscula Mythologica.
b. Historical Works.--In this class of compositions, to which Dionysius appears
to have devoted his later years, he was less successful than in his critical and
rhetorical essays, inasmuch as we everywhere find the rhetorician gaining the
ascendancy over the historian. The following historical works of his are known:
1. Chronoi or chronika (Clem. Alex. Strom. i.; Suid. s. v. Dionusios; Dionys.
A. R. i. 74.) This work, which is lost, probably contained chronological investigations,
though not concerning Roman history. Photius (Bibl. Cod. 84) mentions an abridgment
(sunopsis) in five books, and Stephanus of Byzantium (s. vv. Arikeia and Korialla)
quotes the same under the name of epitome. This abridgment, in all probability
of the chronoi, was undoubtedly the work of a late grammarian, and not, as some
have thought, of Dionysius himself. The great historical work of Dionysius, of
which we still possess a considerable portion, is -- 2. Hpomaike Archaiologia,
which Photius (Bibl. Cod. 83) styles histopikoi ligoi. It consisted of twenty
books, and contained the history of Rome from the earliest or mythical times down
to the year B. C. 264, in which the history of Polybius begins with the Punic
wars. The first nine books alone are complete; of the tenth and eleventh we have
only the greater part; and of the remaining nine we possess nothing but fragments
and extracts, which were contained in the collections made at the command of the
emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and were first published by A. Mai from a
MS. in the library of Milan (1816, 4to.), and reprinted at Frankfurt, 1817, 8vo.
Mai at first believed that these extracts were the abridgment of which Photius
(Bibl. Cod. 84) speaks; but this opinion met with such strong opposition from
Ciampi (Biblioth. Ital. viii.), Visconti (Journal des Savans, for June, 1817),
and Struve (Ueber die von Mai aufgefund Stucke des Dionys. von Halic. Konigsberg,
1820, 8vo.), that Mai, when he reprinted the extracts in his Script. Vet. Nova
Collectio (ii., ed. Rome, 1827), felt obliged in his preface to recant his former
opinion, and to agree with his critics in admitting that the extracts were remnants
of the extracts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus from the Hpomaike Archaiologia.
Dionysius treated the early history of Rome with a minuteness which raises a suspicion
as to his judgment on historical and mythical matters, and the eleven books extant
do not carry the history beyond the year B. C. 441, so that the eleventh book
breaks off very soon after the decemviral legislation. This peculiar minuteness
in the early history, however, was in a great measure the consequence of the object
he had proposed to himself, and which, as he himself states. was to remove the
erroneous notions which the Greeks entertained with regard to Rome's greatness
and to shew that Rome had not become great by accident or mere good fortune, but
by the virtue and wisdom of the Romans themselves. With this object in view, he
discusses most carefully everything relating to the constitution, the religion,
the history, laws, and private life of the Romans; and his work is for this reason
one of the greatest importance to the student of Roman history, at least so far
as the substance of his discussions is concerned. But the manner in which he dealt
with his materials cannot always be approved of: he is unable to draw a clear
distinction between a mere mythus and history; and where he perceives inconsistencies
in the former, he attempts, by a rationalistic mode of proceeding, to reduce it
to what appears to him sober history. It is however a groundless assertion, which
some critics have made, that Dionysius invented facts, and thus introduced direct
forgeries into history. He had, moreover, no clear notions about the early constitution
of Rome, and was led astray by the nature of the institutions which he saw in
his own day; and he thus transferred to the early times the notions which he had
derived from the actual state of things--a process by which he became involved
in inextricable difficulties and contradictions. The numerous speeches which he
introduces in his work are indeed written with great artistic skill, but they
nevertheless shew too manifestly that Dionysius was a rhetorician, not an historian,
and still less a statesman. He used all the authors who had written before him
on the early history of Rome, but he did not always exercise a proper discretion
in choosing his guides, and we often find him following authorities of an inferior
class in preference to better and sounder ones. Notwithstanding all this, however,
Dionysius contains an inexhaustible treasure of materials for those who know how
to make use of them. The style of Dionysius is very good, and, with a few exceptions,
his language may be called perfectly pure.
The first work of Dionysius which appeared in print was his Archaeologia,
in a Latin translation by Lapus Biragus (Treviso, 1480), from a very good Roman
MS. New editions of this translation, with corrections by Glareanus, appeared
at Basel, 1532 and 1549; whereupon R. Stephens first edited the Greek original,
Paris, 1546, fol., together with some of the rhetorical works. The first complete
edition of the Archaeologia and the rhetorical works together, is that of Fr.
Sylburg, Frankfurt, 1586, 2 vols. fol. (reprinted at Leipzig, 1691, 2 vols. fol.)
Another reprint, with the introduction of a few alterations, was edited by Hudson,
(Oxford, 1704, 2 vols. fol.) which however is a very inferior performance. A new
and much improved edition, though with many bad and arbitrary emendations, was
made by J. J. Reiske, (Leipzig, 1774, &c.) in 6 vols. 8vo., the last of which
was edited by Morus. All the rhetorical works, with the exception of the techne
rhetorike and the peri suntheseos onomaton, were edited by E. Gros, (Paris, 1826,
&c.) in 3 vols. 8vo. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. iv.; Westermann, Gesch. d. Griech.
Beredts.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Rhetorica. . .In the time of the Empire the rhetorical schools in general flourished, and we possess an extensive rhetorical literature of that age reaching as far as the fifth century A.D. It includes the works of authors who mainly treated of the literary and aesthetic side of rhetoric, especially those of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the champion of Atticism and of refined taste, and the unknown author of the able treatise.
This extract is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Andron, of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian, who is mentioned by Plutarch (Thes.c. 25) in conjunction with Hellanicus. (Comp. Tzetzes, ad Lycophr. 894, 1283; Schol. ad Aesch. Pers. 183)
KNIDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Aratus (Aratos), of Cnidus, the author of a history of Egypt. (Anonym. Vit. Arat.)
Aretades, of Cnidus, of uncertain date, wrote a work on Macedonian affairs (Makedonika) in three books at least, and another on the history of islands (nesiotika) in two books at least. (Plut. Parall. 11, 27.) It is uncertain whether the Aretades referred to by Porphyry (ap. Euseb. Praep. Ev. x. 3), as the author of a work Peri sunemptoseos, is the same as the above or not.
Ctesias (Ktesias). A Greek historian, born in Cnidus in Caria, and a contemporary of Xenophon. He belonged to the family of the Asclepiadae at Cnidus. In B.C. 416, he went to the Persian court, and became private physician to King Artaxerxes Mnemon. In this capacity he accompanied the king on his expedition against his brother Cyrus, and cured him of the wound which he received in the battle of Cunaxa, B.C. 401. In 399, he returned to his native city, and worked up the valuable material which he had collected during his residence in Persia, partly from his own observation and partly from his study of the royal archives, into a History of Persia (Persika), in twenty-three books. The work was written in the Ionic dialect. The first six books treated the history of Assyria, the remaining ones that of Persia from the earliest times to events within his own experience. Ctesias's work was much used by the ancient historians, though he was censured as untrustworthy and indifferent to truth--a charge which may be due to the fact that he followed Persian authorities, and thus often differed, to the disadvantage of the Greeks, from the version of facts current among his conntrymen. Only fragments and extracts of the book survive, and part of an abridgment in Photius (Cod. 72). The same is true of his Indika, or notices of the researches which he had made in Persia on the geography and productions of India.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Ctesias. Greek physician who stayed at the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes
II Mnemon from 404 to 398/397. Ctesias wrote several books about Persia
and India. These books are
now lost but were quoted by ancient authors; consequently, we are able to judge
their value as history (low) and as works of art (entertaining).
Life
The Suda, a tenth century Byzantine dictionary that contains much information
about ancient authors, writes about Ctesias:
He was the son of Ctesiarchus or Ctesiochus, from Cnidus. As a physician, he
cared -in Persia- for Artaxerxes Mnemon, who had ordered him to come. He composed
a History of the Persians in twenty-four books.
All sources agree that Ctesias was born in the Carian town Cnidus,
a town in the extreme southwest of modern Turkey.
In Antiquity, Cnidus was well-known for its doctors, which were called Asclepiads.
It is likely that Ctesias was indeed a physician: he quotes other doctors and
delights in the description of wounds.
It is certain that Ctesias came to Persia as a prisoner of war, but
it is unclear when he was taken captive. Some ancient and modern scholars have
assumed that he took part in the campaign of prince Cyrus the Younger against
his brother, king Artaxerxes II Mnemon (404-359), in 401 BCE. There is something
to be said for this solution of the problem. There were many Greek mercenaries
in Cyrus' company, and although they defeated Artaxerxes' army at Cunaxa near
Babylon, many were taken
captive when Cyrus died. It is certain that Ctesias was present at Cunaxa, but
when we read his narrative of the battle, it is clear that Ctesias was already
Artexerxes' court physician.
Another argument against the theory that Ctesias was taken prisoner
at Cunaxa, is that it forces us to assume that Ctesias stayed only six or seven
years at the Persian court. His History of the Persians breaks off in 398/397,
and Ctesias claims that he had by then served as court physician for seventeen
years. When we accept that Ctesias came to Artaxerxes' court during teh Cunaxa
campaign, we must read 'seven' instead of 'seventeen'; this is not impossible
-exaggeration is one Ctesias' favorite games- but it is poor method.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. In 420, Pissuthnes, the satrap
of Lydia revolted against
king Darius II Nothus (423-404). The Persian commander Tissaphernes was able to
incite a rebellion under Pissuthnes' Greek mercenaries and Pissuthnes was executed.
(Ctesias described this rebellion in book eighteen of the History of the Persians.)
In 414, Pissuthnes' son Amorges rebelled; he was supported by the Carians and
the Athenians. It is plausible that Tissaphernes took Ctesias of Cnidus captive
when Amorges' rebellion was suppressed. (If Ctesias was captured in 414, we may
assume that he was born between 444 and 434.)
Ctesias was a respected physician, but it is uncertain whether he
served at Persepolis immediately
after his capture. The fragments we possess do not show intimate knowledge of
the royal court of Darius II; he may have stayed at Tissaphernes' court. On the
other hand, the discovery of one scrap of papyrus containing a hitherto unknown
chapter of Ctesias' History of the Persians, can change our view. In any case,
it was certainly not uncommon for Greek doctors to become court physician in Persia.
The Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus
(c.480-c.429) tells us the story of a prisoner of war named Democedes of Croton,
who cured king Darius the Great.
In 412, Ctesias' hometown Cnidus left the Athenian, anti-Persian alliance.
This was an important event, because it offered the Persians a new naval base
in the Aegean sea. It is likely that this incident played a role in Ctesias' life,
but we do not know how. When we assume that he was already present at the Persian
court, the royal physician may have played a role in the negotiations which led
to the defection of Cnidus. When we assume that he served in a lower position,
the Cnidian rebellion enabled him to move upward in the Persian hierarchy.
What is certain, is that Ctesias was already Artaxerxes' personal
physician when the latter became king in the spring of 404. As we have already
seen above, Artaxerxes' brother Cyrus the Younger marched to Babylonia with an
army of Greek mercenaries; Cyrus' men defeated Artaxerxes' army at Cunaxa, but
their master was killed in action (autumn 401). It is certain that Ctesias was
present at Cunaxa and cured his king's wounds. Later, he played a role in the
negotiations between the Greek mercenaries and the Persians.
As we have already seen, Athens had been the leader of an anti-Persian
alliance. In 431, war had broken out between Athens
and a coalition of Greek towns led by Sparta.
After the revolt of Amorges, which Athens had supported, the Persians had started
to pay the Spartans, who built a navy and were able to defeat Athens
in 405. The Persians were unpleasantly surprised when the Spartans turned against
their ally: they supported Cyrus the Younger in 401 and their general Thibron
invaded Asia in 400. Ctesias was to play a crucial role in the Persian counter-offensive.
The satrap of Persia's territories in northwest Turkey,
Pharnabazus, had suffered from Spartan aggression and understood that it was important
to check Spartan power. Euagoras, the king of Salamis
on Cyprus, had his own reasons to fear the Spartan navy. Consequently, he wanted
to build a strong fleet to attack Sparta
at home; he had already found an Athenian admiral, Conon. What was lacking, was
money, which could be obtained in Persia. Ctesias conducted the negotiations in
398/397; Artaxerxes ordered money to be sent and a fleet to be built. In August
394, the Spartans were decisively defeated off Cnidus.
By then, Ctesias had returned to his home town; he may have witnessed
Conon's victory. It is likely that he started to write his History of the Persians
after his return. Other works were the History of India (to which On the Asian
tributes probably was an appendix), and a medical treatise. Three other books
were called Periodos, 'description of the earth'. The existence of two books On
mountains and a publication On rivers is disputed.
It is unknown when Ctesias died, but we can make an educated guess.
We already saw that he was probably captured in 414 (above) and from this, we
deduced a year of birth between 444 and 434. In Antiquity, someone who reached
the age of forty (more or less Ctesias' age in 398), had a fair chance to reach
the age of seventy as well; this results in a year of death between 374 and 364.
History of the Persians
Ctesias' History of the Persians is a strange work. The author claims
that he will correct many of the untrue ideas of the Greeks and blames the Greek
researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus
(c.480-c.429) for telling many lies. Because Ctesias spent seventeen years in
Persia, was court physician and served as diplomat, we might expect him to be
a position to keep his promises and to write a truly reliable history of the Achaemenid
empire. However, this is not what Ctesias has done. Few ancient authors are so
unreliable as Ctesias.
However, in Antiquity, it was considered an important study. The Athenian
orator Isocrates and the philosopher Plato knew Ctesias' work and the Macedonian
philosopher Aristotle had read his description of the legendary Assyrian king
Sardanapalus. Only when the Christian historian Orosius (fifth century) wrote
his Seven books of history against the pagans, there was an alternative history
of the ancient Near East, and was Ctesias forgotten. We know the History of the
Persians from an ancient reworking (by Diodorus of Sicily)
and a Byzantine excerpt (by the ninth-century patriarch of Constantinople,
Photius).
The History of the Persians starts with three books of Assyrian history.
They follow Herodotus' conception of Near-Eastern history: no distinction is made
between the Assyrian and Babylonian history. Almost all the subject matter of
these books is legendary. Then, we read three books about the history of the Medes.
Again, Ctesias is inspired by Herodotus, who also believed that there had been
a long period in which the Medes ruled a vast Asian empire. What Ctesias has to
tell about the Median monarchy, is entirely fictional.
Books seven, eight and nine deal with the beginning of the reign of
the Persian king Cyrus the Great (559-530 BCE). From what we know of Ctesias'
work, he did not describe Cyrus' greatest deed: the capture of Babylon.
This is unlikely to be a result of the poor transmission of Ctesias' work: Photius'
excerpt may be somewhat unbalanced, but it does not omit important events. The
next three books describe Cyrus' wars against the Indians, and his death in battle.
Here Ctesias is following a tradition that was unknown to Herodotus: in the first
book of his Histories, he writes that Cyrus died during a war against the Massagetes.
Taken together, the five books on Cyrus are a kind of vie romancee, comparable
to the Education of Cyrus by Ctesias' contemporary Xenophon (c.430-c.355). Probably,
Xenophon copied Ctesias, not the other way round.
Both historians agree that Cyrus was succeeded by Cambyses, to whose
reign (530-522) Ctesias devotes the twelfth book. For once, Ctesias seems to offer
reliable information: he writes that Cambyses conquered Egypt
because the Egyptians were betrayed. This is correct, but it is probably a lucky
incident: Ctesias does not even know the name of the traitor or his monarch.
Book thirteen, fourteen and fifteen are dedicated to the coup of the
Magian in 522, to the counter-coup of Darius the Great, to his reign (522-486)
and to the reign of his son Xerxes (486-465). Although Ctesias adds some details
and has changed the names of the actors, his story is essentially that of Herodotus.
This can clearly be seen at the end: he knows the details of the first seven of
eight years of Xerxes' reign -which he could have found in Herodotus- and then
jumps to Xerxes' death. Another remarkable aspect is that Ctesias knows the name
of important eunuchs. It is possible that Ctesias, himself a courtier, based his
History of the Persians on what he heard from courtiers, who were especially interested
in court history.
The next three books are dedicated to the reigns of Artaxerxes I and
Darius II (464-424 and 423-405). It included the stories of the revolt of a general
named Megabyzus and the brief interregnum of Xerxes II and Sogdianus, for which
Ctesias is our only source.
The first years of king Artaxerxes II is the subject of the next three
books. The story focuses on the attempt of Artaxerxes' brother Cyrus the Younger
to seize the Persian throne, which culminated in the battle at Cunaxa (autumn
401). This part of Ctesias' work is relatively well-known, because it is quoted
at great length by the Greek author Plutarch of Chaeronea, who wrote a biography
of Artaxerxes.
The last book tells how Artaxerxes sent Ctesias to the west, where
he had to conduct negotiations. The History of the Persians breaks off in 398/397,
the year in which Ctesias returned to Cnidus.
It is a strange book. Ctesias makes strange mistakes (for example,
he thinks that Nineveh is situated on the boards of the Euphrates). Unfortunately,
he is one of our most important sources for the Achaemenid empire between Xerxes'
expedition to Greece (480-479) and the revenge of the Greeks and the Macedonian
king Alexander the Great (336-323).
History of India
To understand Ctesias' History of India, we must know what he meant
with the word 'history'. This is not history in our sense, but simply means 'research'.
What Ctesias offers is therefore not a story about the past, but the result of
an inquiry. In Persia, he
heard stories from officials who had visited the country along the river Indus
(modern Pakistan); these officials, Ctesias must have interviewed. Therefore:
history.
As far as we can deduce from Photius' summary, there is no system
in Ctesias' book: everything is put together.It is therefore easy to understand
the judgment of the ancient literary critic Dionysus of Halicarnassus, who states
that the works of Ctesias were 'entertaining but badly composed' (On composition
10).
India is pictured as if it is 'the big other': everything is different
from Greece, it is a country without past (therefore: no history in our sense)
and without individuals (at least not in Photius' epitome). Ctesias' India is
just a foreign culture, with the stress on foreign. His information is, not surprisingly,
highly unreliable: when he had heard a strange story, he wrote it down. India
is a fairy tale country, situated on the edges of the earth.
And yet, sometimes it is possible to see beyond Ctesias' strange stories.
Then we can discover to what Indian realities the Greek physician is referring.
Take, for example, the people and wild animals of India - fairy tale beings who
were to become popular in ancient and medieval bestiaries. People with big feet
on a medieval miniature
•Cynoscephalae: a mountain tribe of people with dog's heads. This is probably
a translation of the Indian word svapaka, 'people who live and eat with the dogs',
an indication of people belonging to a very low caste.
•Ctesias mentions people with one big foot: this has to be a misunderstanding
of the practice of certain holy men (sadhu) to stand in unusual poses for a long
time, usually on one foot.
•The righteous Pygmees ('fist-men'), who are 90 centimeters high, have large
genitals and very long beards, which they use as coat: probably a misunderstanding
of the sadhu's.
•The Martichora, a kind of tiger with a human face and three rows of teeth.
This is a common Persian word; in modern Persian, the tiger is called mardomxor.
But these are exceptions. Ctesias' History of India remains a puzzling
text that does indirectly refer to ancient India, but in ways we can not comprehend.
In Antiquity, it was not very popular: after Alexander the Great had visited the
Indus valley, eyewitness accounts became accessible, which superseded Ctesias'
work.
Literature
The fragments of Ctesias were collected by the great German classicist
Felix Jacoby, in his famous Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, in which Ctesias
is Greek historian number 688 (vol. IIIc; 1958). To the best of my knowledge,
the only recent translation of the fragments of Ctesias is: Ctesias. Histoires
de l' Orient, 1991 Paris. It is translated and annotated by Janick Auberger; the
brief but fine introduction is by Charles Malamoud. This edition has been used
throughout this article.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
Ctesias (Ktesias), οf Cnidus in Caria, and a son of Ctesiochus or Ctesiarchus
(Suid. s. v. Ktesias; Eudocia; Tzetz. Chil. i. 82). Cnidus was celebrated from
early times as a seat of medical knowledge, and Ctesias, who himself belonged
to the family of the Asclepiadae, was a physician by profession. He was a contemporary
of Xenophon; and if Herodotus lived till B. C. 425, or, according to some, even
till B. C. 408, Ctesias may be called a contemporary of Herodotus. He lived for
a number of years in Persia at the court of king Artaxerxes Mnemon, as private
physician to the king (Strab. xiv.). Diodorus (ii. 32) states, that Ctesias was
made prisoner by the king, and that owing to his great skill in medicine, he was
afterwards drawn to the court, and was highly honoured there. This statement,
which contains nothing to suggest the time when Ctesias was made prisoner, has
been referred by some critics to the war between Artaxerxes and his brother, Cyrus
the Younger, B. C. 401. But, in the first place, Ctesias is already mentioned,
during that war, as accompanying the king (Xen. Anab. i. 8.27). Moreover, if as
Diodorus and Tzetzes state, Ctesias remained seventeen years at the court of Persia,
and returned to his native country in B. C. 398 (Diod. xiv. 46; comp. Plut. Artax.
21), it follows, that he must have gone to Persia long before the battle of Cunaxa,
that is about B. C. 415. The statement, that Ctesias entered Persia as a prisoner
of war, has been doubted; and if we consider the favour with which other Greek
physicians, such as Democedes and Hippocrates were treated and how they were sought
for at the court of Persia, it is not improbable that Ctesias may have been invited
to the court; but the express statement of Diodorus, that he was made a prisoner
cannot be upset by such a mere probability. There are two accounts respecting
his return to Cnidus. It took place at the time when Conon was in Cyprus. Ctesias
himself had simply stated, that he asked Artaxerxes and obtained front him the
permission to return. According to the other account. Conon sent a letter to the
king, in which he gave him advice as to the means of humbling the Lacedaemonians.
Conon requested the bearer to get the letter delivered to the king by some of
the Greeks who were staying at his court. When the letter was given for this purpose
to Ctesias, the latter inserted a passage in which he made Conon desire the king
to send Ctesias to the west, as he would be a very useful person there (Plut.
Artax. 21). The latter account is not recommended by any strong internal probability,
and the simple statement of Ctesias himself seems to be more entitled to credit.
How long Ctesias survived his return to Cnidus is unknown.
During his stay in Persia, Ctesias gathered all the information that
was attainable in that country, and wrote:
1. A great work on the history of Persia (Persika) with the view of giving his
countrymen a more accurate knowledge of that empire than they possessed, and to
refute the errors current in Greece, which had arisen partly from ignorance and
partly from the national vanity of the Greeks. The materials for his history,
so far as he did not describe events of which he had been an eye-witness, he derived,
according to the testimony of Diodorus, from the Persian archives (diphtherai
Basilikai), or the official history of the Persian empire, which was written in
accordance with a law of the country. This important work of Ctesias, which, like
that of Herodotus, was written in the Ionic dialect, consisted of twentythree
books. The first six contained the history of the great Assyrian monarchy down
to the foundation of the kingdom of Persia. It is for this reason that Strabo
(xiv.) speaks of Ctesias as sungrapsas ta Assuriaka kai ta Persika. The next seven
books contained the history of Persia down to the end of the reign of Xerxes,
and the remaining ten carried the history down to the time when Ctesias left Persia,
i. e. to the year B. C. 398 (Diod. xiv. 46). The form and style of this work were
of considerable merit, and its loss may be regarded as one of the most serious
for the history of the East (Dionys. Hal. De Comp. Verb. 10; Demetr. Phal. De
Elocut. 212, 215). All that is now extant of it is a meagre abridgment in Photius
(Cod. 72), and a number of fragments which are preserved in Diodorus, Athenaeus,
Plutarch, and others. Of the first portion, which contained the history of Assyria,
there is no abridgment in Photius, and all we possess of that part is contained
in the second book of Diodorus, which seems to be taken almost entirely from Ctesias.
There we find that the accounts of Ctesias, especially in their chronology, differ
considerably from those of Berosus, who likewise derived his information from
eastern sources. These discrepancies can only be explained by the fact, that the
annals used by the two historians were written in different places and under different
circumstances. The chronicles used by Ctesias were written by official persons,
and those used by Berosus were the work of priests; both therefore were written
from a different point of view, and neither was perhaps strictly true in all its
details. The part of [p. 899] Ctesias's work which contained the history of Persia,
that is, from the sixth book to the end, is somewhat better known from the extracts
which Photius made from it, and which are still extant. Here again Ctesias is
frequently at variance with other Greek writers, especially with Herodotus. To
account for this, we must remember, that he is expressly reported to have written
his work with the intention of correcting the erroneous notions about Persia in
Greece; and if this was the case, the reader must naturally be prepared to find
the accounts of Ctesias differing from those of others. It is moreover not improbable,
that the Persian chronicles were as partial to the Persians, if not more so, as
the accounts written by Greeks were to the Greeks. These considerations sufficiently
account, in our opinion, for the differences existing between the statements of
Ctesias and other writers; and there appears to be no reason for charging him,
as some have done, with wilfully falsifying history. It is at least certain, that
there can be no positive evidence for such a serious charge. The court chronicles
of Persia appear to have contained chiefly the history of the royal family, the
occurrences at the court and the seraglio, the intrigues of the women and eunuchs,
and the insurrections of satraps to make themselves independent of the great monarch.
Suidas (s. v. Pamphila) mentions, that Pamphila made an abridgment of the work
of Ctesias, probably the Persica, in three books.
2. Another work, for which Ctesias also collected his materials during his stay
in Persia, was: a treatise on India (Indika) in one book, of which we likewise
possess an abridgment in Photius, and a great number of fragments preserved in
other writers. The description refers chiefly to the north-western part of India,
and is principally confined to a description of the natural history, the produce
of the soil, and the animals and men of India. In this description truth is to
a great extent mixed up with fables, and it seems to be mainly owing to this work
that Ctesias was looked upon in later times as an author who deserved no credit.
But if his account of India is looked upon from a proper point of view, it does
not in any way deserve to be treated with contempt. Ctesias himself never visited
India, and his work was the first in the Greek language that was written upon
that country: he could do nothing more than lay before his countrymen that which
was known or believed about India among the Persians. His Indica must therefore
be regarded as a picture of India, such as it was conceived by the Persians. Many
things in his description which were formerly looked upon as fabulous, have been
proved by the more recent discoveries in India to be founded on facts.
Ctesias also wrote several other works, of which, however, we know little more
than their titles: they were:
3. Peri Oron, which consisted of at least two books (Plut. de Fluv. 21; Stob.
Froril. C. 18)
4. Periplous Asias (Steph. Byz. s. v. Sigunos), which is perhaps the same as the
Periegesis of which Stephanus Byzantius (s. v. Kosute) quotes the third book.
5. Peri Potamon (Plut. de Fluv. 19), and
6. Peri ton kata ten Asian phoron.
It has been inferred from a passage in Galen, that Ctesias also wrote
on medicine, but no accounts of his medical works have come down to us.
The abridgment which Photius made of the Persica and Indica of Ctesias
were printed separately by II. Stephens, Paris, 1557 and 1594, and were also added
to his edition of Herodotus. After his time it became customary to print the remains
of Ctesias as an appendix to Herodotus. The first separate edition of those abridgments,
together with the fragments preserved in other writers, is that of A. Lion, Gottingen,
1823, with critical notes and a Latin translation. A more complete edition, with
an introductory essay on the life and writings of Ctesias, is that of Buhr, Frankfort,
1824.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
MYLASSA (Ancient city) TURKEY
Heracleides, (Herakleides).. A citizen of Mylasa in Caria, who commanded the Carian Greeks in their successful resistance to the arms of Persia after the revolt of Aristagoras, B. C. 498. The Persian troops fell into an ambuscade which had been prepared for them, and were cut to pieces, together with their generals, Daurises, Amorges, and Sisimaces. (Herod. v. 121.)
ALIKARNASSOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Cleon, a rhetorician of Halicarnassus, lived at the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 4th century B. C. (Plut. Lys. 25.)
Dionysius. Aelius Dionysius, a Greek rhetorician of Halicarnassus, who lived in the time of the emperor Hadrian. He was a very skilful musician, and wrote several works on music and its history. (Suid. s. v. Dionusios.) It is commonly supposed that he was a descendant of the elder Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the author of the Roman Archaeology. Respecting his life nothing further is known. The following works, which are now lost, are attributed to him by the ancients : 1. A Dictionary of Attic words (Attika onomata) in five books, dedicated to one Scymnus. Photius (Bibl. Cod. 152) speaks in high terms of its usefulness, and states, that Aelius Dionvsius himself made two editions of it, the second of which was a great improvement upon the first. Both editions appear to have existed in the time of Photius. It seems to have been owing to this work that Aelius Dionysius was called sometimes by the surname of Atticista. Meursius was of opinion that our Dionysius was the author of the work peri akliton pematon kai enklinomenon lexeon, which was published by Aldus Manutius (Venice, 1496) in the volume entitled " Horti Adonidis;" but there is no evidence for this supposition. (Comp. Schol. Venet. ad Iliad. xv. 705; Villoison, Prolegom. ad Hom. Il.) 2. A history of Music (mousike historia) in 36 books, with accounts of citharoedi, auletae, and poets of all kinds. (Suid. l. c.) 3. Hpuphmika hupomnemata, in 24 books. (Suid. l. c.) 4. Mousikes paideia e diatribai, in 22 books. (Suid. l. c.) 5. A work in five books on what Plato had said about music in his politeia. (Suid. l. c.; Eudoc.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
KNIDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Aeschylus of Cnidus, a contemporary of Cicero, and one of the most celebrated rhetoricians in Asia Minor. (Cic. Brut. 91, 95.)
Artemidorus, of Cnidud, a son of Theopompus, and a friend of Julius Caesar (Strab. xiv.), was a rhetorician, and taught the Greek language at Rome. At the time when the plot was formed against the life of Caesar, B. C. 43, Artemidorus, who had heard of it, cautioned Caesar by a letter, and urged him to take care of himself; but the warning was not heeded. (Plut. Caes. 65; Zonaras, vol. i.)
MYLASSA (Ancient city) TURKEY
(Strabo 14,2,24)
Hybreas, (Hubreas), of Mylasa in Caria, was, according to Strabo, the greatest orator of his time. His father left him nothing but a mule and cart, with which he gained his living for some time by carrying wood. He then went to hear Diotrephes at Antioch, and, on his return, he became an agoranoeos in his native city. Having gained some property in this occupation, he applied himself to public speaking and public business, and soon became the leading man in the city. There is a celebrated saying of his, addressed to Enthydemus, who was the first man in the city while he lived, but who made a somewhat tyrannical use of his influence: "Euthydemus, thou art a necessary evil to the state, for we can neither live under thee nor without thee." By the boldness with which he expostulated with Antony, when the triumvir was plundering Asia in the year after the battle of Philippi (B. C. 41), Hybreas rescued his native city from the imposition of a double tax. " If," said he to the triumvir, "you can take tribute twice a year, you should be able also to make for us a summer twice and an autumn twice." (Plut. Anton. 24.) When Labienus, with the Parthians under Pacorus, invaded Asia Minor (B. C. 40), the only cities that offered any serious opposition to him were Laodicea, under Zeno, and Mylasa, under Hybreas. Hybreas, moreover, exasperated the young general by a taunting message. When the city was taken, the house and property of Hybreas were destroyed and plundered, but he himself had previously escaped to Rhodes. He was restored to hishome after the expulsion of the Parthians by Ventidius. (Strab. xiii., xiv.) He is quoted two, or three times by Seneca; but, with these exceptions, his works are wholly lost. (Westermann, Gesch. d. Griech. Beredlsamckeit, § 86, n. 20.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
STRATONIKIA (Ancient city) TURKEY
A pupil of Carneades, and an excellent orator
In the time of our fathers, was born a noteworthy man, Menippus, surnamed Catocas, whom Cicero, as he says in one of his writings, applauded above all the Asiatic orators he had heard, comparing him with Xenocles and with the other orators who flourished in the latter's time.
Protogenes. A celebrated Greek painter of Caunus, in Caria, who lived for the most part at Rhodes, in the time of Alexander the Great and his first successors. He died B.C. 300. His poverty seems to have prevented him from attending the school of any of the celebrated masters of his age, for no one is named as his instructor. He long remained poor, until the unselfish admiration which his contemporary and brother painter Apelles showed for his works raised him in riper years to great celebrity. His works, owing to the excessive care he bestowed on them, were few in number; but their perfect execution led to their being ranked by the unanimous voice of antiquity among the highest productions of art. His most celebrated works were a "Resting Satyr," and also a painting representing the Rhodian hero, Ialysus. On the latter he spent seven or, according to others, as many as eleven years. To insure its permanence he covered it with four distinct coats of paint, so that when the upper coating perished the lower might take its place.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
His (Apelles of Colophon) greatest contemporary was Protegenes of Caunus, an insignificant town on the Carian coast, subject to Rhodes, where the artist took up his abode. Mr. Torr (Classical Review, 1890, p. 231) suggests that the artist had been accustomed to paint pictures of ships, as thank-offerings for escapes at sea. At any rate, it was probably mainly due to Apelles that his work came to be known and appreciated: on the other hand, this seems inconsistent with the fact that Pliny places him among those who practised sculpture as well as painting. Besides a few portraits, of Philiscus, Antigonus, and the mother of Aristotle, and one work in Athens, his chief themes seem to have been drawn from the local traditions of Rhodes; an often repeated anecdote records his presence at the sacking of Rhodes by Demetrius in B.C. 304, which we may take as a central point of his chronology. Demetrius spared the town from burning in order to save the picture by Protogenes of the Rhodian hero Ialysus. In this picture occurred the dog, the effect of whose foaming mouth was said to have been attained by Protogenes throwing his sponge in desperation at the picture; and the partridge, which though a mere detail attracted so much attention that the artist, in annoyance, erased it. To attain this high degree of realism, he is said to have worked very slowly, and it was against this impression of laboriousness that the criticisms of Apelles were directed.
This extract is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
IASSOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Apollonius, surnamed Cronus, a native of lassus in Caria, was a philosopher of the Megarian school, a pupil of Eubulides, and teacher of the celebrated Diodorus, who received from his master the surname Cronos. (Strab. xiv.; Diog. Laert. ii. 111)
Here was born the dialectician Diodorus, nicknamed Cronus, falsely so at the outset, for it was Apollonius his master who was called Cronus, but the nickname was transferred to him because of the true Cronus' lack of repute.
Diodorus. Surnamed Cronus, a son of Ameinias of lasus in Caria, lived at the court of Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Soter, who is said to have given him the surname of Cronus on account of his inability to solve at once some dialectic problem proposed by Stilpo, when the two philosophers were dining with the king. Diodorus is said to have taken that disgrace so much to heart, that after his return from the repast, and writing a treatise on the problem, he died in despair. (Diog. Laert. ii. 111.) According to an account in Strabo (xiv. p. 658, xvii.), Diodorus himself adopted the surname of Cronus from his teacher, Apollonius Cronus. Further particulars respecting his life are not known. He belonged to the Megaric school of philosophy, and was the fourth in the succession of the heads of that school. He was particularly celebrated for his great dialectic skill, for which he is called o dialektikos, or dialektikotatos. (Strab. l. c. ; Sext. Empir. adv. Gram. i.; Plin. H. N. vii. 54.) This epithet afterwards assumed the character of a surname, and descended even to his five daughters, who were likewise distinguished as dialecticians. Respecting the doctrines of Diodorus we possess only fragmentary information, and not even the titles of his works are known. It appears, however, certain that it was he who fully developed the dialectic art of the Megaricsv, which so frequently degenerated into mere shallow sophistry. (Cic. Acad. ii. 24, 47.) He seems to have been much occupied with the theory of proof and of hypothetical propositions. In the same manner as he rejected in logic the divisibility of the fundamental notion, he also maintained, in his physical doctrines, that space was indivisible, and consequently that motion was a thing impossible. He further denied the coming into existence and all multiplicity both in time and in space; but he considered the things that fill up space as one whole composed of an infinite number of indivisible particles. In this latter respect he approached the atomistic doctrines of Democritus and Diagoras. In regard to things possible, he maintained that only those things are possible which actually are or will be; possible was, further, with him identical with necessary; hence everything which is not going to be cannot be, and all that is, or is going to be, is necessary; so that the future is as certain and defined as the past. This theory approached the doctrine of fate maintained by the Stoics, and Chrysippus is said to have written a work, peri dunaton, against the views of Diodorus. (Diog. Laert. vii. 191; Cic. de Fato, 6, 7. 9, ad Fam. ix. 4.) He made use of the false syllogism called Sorites, and is said to have invented two others of the same kind, viz. the enkekalummenos and the keratines logos. (Diog. Laert. ii. 111.) Language was, with him, as with Aristotle, the result of an agreement of men among themselves. (Lersch, Sprachphilos. der Alt. i.; Deycks, de Megaricorum Doctrina.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
KNIDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Diocles. Of Cnidus, a Platonic philosopher, who is mentioned as the author of Diatribai, from which a fragment is quoted in Eusebius. (Praep. Evany. xiv.)
MYNDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Eusebius, of Myndus in Caria, a distinguished New Platonist and contemporary of Eunaplus, who mentions him (p. 48, ed. Boissonade), and ranks him in what is called the golden chain of New Platonists. Stobaeus, in his Sermones, has preserved a considerable number of ethical fragments from the work of one Eusebius, whom some consider to be the same as the New Platonist, whereas others are inclined to attribute them to a Stoic of that name. (Wyttenbach, ad Eunap. p. 171.)
VARGYLIA (Ancient city) TURKEY
From Bargylia there was a man of note, the Epicurean Protarchus, who was the teacher of Demetrius called Lacon
ALIKARNASSOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Panyasis. A Greek poet of Halicarnassus, uncle of Herodotus, the historian.
He was put to death by the tyrant Lygdamis about B.C. 454 for being the leader
of the aristocratic party. He composed a poem in fourteen books and 9000 verses,
entitled Heraclea (exploits of Heracles), which was reckoned by later writers
among the best epics. The few fragments preserved are in an elegant and graceful
style. Another poem of his, the Ionica (Ionika), contained 7000 lines, and relates
the history of Neleus, Codrus, and the Ionian colonies. Panyasis was ranked by
the Alexandrian School with the great epic poets. The fragments of Panyasis are
edited by Gaisford (1823) and Dubner (1840). There was another person of the same
name, possibly the grandson of the poet, who wrote a work in two books on dreams.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Pigres. A Greek poet of Halicarnassus, regarded by Baumeister and others
as author of the Batrachomyomachia. He is said to have been either the brother
or son of Queen Artemisia of Caria. Besides the work mentioned, a poem called
Margites is ascribed to him by Suidas and by Plutarch. He also inserted a pentameter
line after each hexameter in the Iliad --a very curious literary freak. The following
will serve as an illustration (Il. i. 1):
Menin aeide thea Peleiadeo Achilleos,
Mousa gar su pases peirat echeis sophies:
He is also said to have been the first poet to introduce the
iambic trimeter.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Batrachomyomachia. The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice. The title of an epic poem, falsely bearing the name of Homer. It was a parody of the Iliad, and was probably written by Pigres. It consists of 294 hexameters, and has been edited by Ernesti in his edition of Homer
Pigres: Perseus Project
Epos: The most notable representatives of mythical epic poetry in the following centuries are Pisander of Camirus (about B.C. 640), and Panyasis of Halicarnassus (during the first half of the fifth century).
Vatrachomyomachia
Heracleitus. An elegiac poet of Halicarnassus, a contemporary and friend of Callimachus, who wrote an epigram on him which is preserved in Diogenes Laertius (ix. 17; comp. Strab. xiv. p. 656).
IASSOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Choerilus (Choirilos). Of Iasos in Caria. This Choerilus was also an epic
poet, who accompanied Alexander the Great. Alexander promised him a gold-piece
for every good verse he wrote in celebration of his achievements, but declared
that he would rather be the Thersites of Homer than the Achilles of Choerilus.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Choerilus, probably of Iasos, a worthless epic poet in the train of Alexander
the Great (Curtius, viii. 5.8). Horace says of him (Ep. ii. 1. 232-234),
"Gratus Alexandro regi Magno fuit ille
Choerilus, incultis qui versibus et male natis
Rettulit acceptos, regale nomisma, Philippos;"
and (Art. Poet. 357, 358),
" Sic mihi, qui multum cessat, fit Choerilus ille,
Quem bis torque bonum cum risu miror"
From the former passage it is evident that we must refer to this Choerilus the
statement of Suidas respecting Choerilus of Samos, that he received a gold stater
for every verse of his poem. However liberally Alexander may have paid Choerilus
for his flattery, he did not conceal his contempt for his poetry, at least if
we may believe Acron, who remarks on the second of the above passages, that Alexander
used to tell Choerilus that "he would rather be the Thersites of Homer than the
Achilles of Choerilus". The same writer adds, that Choerilus bargained with Alexander
for a piece of gold for every good verse, and a blow for every bad one; and the
bad verses were so numerous, that he was beaten to death. This appears to be merely
a joke.
Suidas assigns to Choerilus of Samos a poem entitled Lamiaka, and
other poems. But in all probability that poem related to the Lamian war, B. C.
323; and, if so, it must have been the composition of this later Choerilus. To
him also Noke assigns the epitaph on Sardanapalus, which is preserved by Strabo
(xiv.), by Athenaeus (viii., who says, that it was translated by Choerihus from
the Chaldee, xii.; compare Diod. ii. 23; Tzetz. Chil. iii. 453), and in the Greek
Anthology.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
KNIDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Hermodorus, a lyric poet, whose songs were incorporated in the Anthology of Melcager. We still possess an epigram of his on the Aphrodite of Cnidus, but he is otherwise unknown. There is a fragment of two lines quoted by Stobaeus (Flor. tit. Ix. 2), under the name of Hermodotus, which, according to some critics, is a mistake for Hermodorus; but nothing can be said about the matter.
ALIKARNASSOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
A tyrant of Caria, son of Pisindelis, who reigned in the time of Herodotus at Halicarnassus. He put to death the poet Panyasis. Herodotus fled from his native city in order to avoid his tyranny, and afterwards aided in deposing him.
TERMERA (Ancient city) TURKEY
A man of Termera, a Carian despot deposed by the Ionians, in Xerxes' fleet
KNIDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Dicaeocles, (Dikaiokles), a writer of Cnidos, whose essays (diatribai) are referred to by Athenaeus. (xi.)
MYNDOS (Ancient city) TURKEY
Alexander (Alexandros) of Myndus in Caria, a Greek writer on zoology of uncertain
date. His works, which are now lost, must have been considered very valuable by
the ancients, since they refer to them very frequently. The titles of his works
are: Ktenon Historia, a long fragment of which, belonging to the second book,
is quoted by Athenaeus (v.ii.; Aelian, Hist. An. iii. 23, iv. 33, v. 27, x. 34).
This work is probably the same as that which in other passages is simply called
Peri Zoon, and of which Athenaeus (ix.) likewise quotes the second book. The work
on birds (Peri Ptenon, Plut. Mar. 17; Athen. ix) was a separate work, and the
second book of it is quoted by Athenaeus. Diogenes Laertius (i. 29) mentions one
Alexon of Myndus as the author of a work on myths, of which he quotes the ninth
book. This author being otherwise unknown, Menage proposed to read Alexandros
ho Mundios instead of Alexon. But everything is uncertain, and the cojecture at
least is not very probable.
Botryas (Botruas), of Myndus, is one of the writers whom Ptolemy, the son of Hephaestion made use of in compiling his " New History." (Phot., a., 21, ed. Bekker.)
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