Akestorides (Author)

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Akestorides was an ancient mythographer , about whose biography and lifetime nothing is known.

The only remaining information about his work comes from the library of Photios I from the 9th century. According to the information given in it, it was a collection of myths and curious historical events in four books, structured according to the cities to which they refer. Photios read the text in a composite manuscript together with that of a Sotion and the work of Nikolaos of Damascus on the customs of exotic peoples. He comments that a large part of the content and the style of Akestorides' speech corresponded to the works of his predecessors, but that there were also some deviations in content. In addition, Photios suspects that the author, by naming his work as “Myths”, was less likely to deny the historicity of the story it contained than to emphasize its interest and entertainment value.

Eduard Schwartz therefore suspects that Akestorides' work more or less corresponded to that of Konon - which is also only preserved in fragments - and contained various curious stories, information and historical details. Felix Jacoby also assumes that it was a collection of wondrous stories ( ancient Greek παράδοξα ), as they were written more often in antiquity - even if the Akestorides script itself did not have this title.

Apart from Photios, only Johannes Tzetzes in the 12th century mentions the work of Akestorides as an example of a text in which particularly unbelievable curiosities were found. However, he does not provide any further information and has probably only taken the name of the author from Photios or another source.

In research, Akestorides is usually dated to the post-Christian period.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Photios, Libraries 189 p. 146a.
  2. ^ A b c Eduard Schwartz: Akestorides 5th In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswwissenschaft (RE). Volume I, 1, Stuttgart 1893, Col. 1167.
  3. ↑ a b Felix Jacoby: The fragments of the Greek historians. Part One: Genealogy and Mythography. Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1923, p. 501.
  4. ↑ Johannes Tzetzes, Chiliades 7,648.
personal data
SURNAME Akestorides
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek mythographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1st millennium
DATE OF DEATH 1st millennium