Diocles of Peparethus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diocles of Peparethus was an ancient Greek historian . He apparently lived in the 3rd century BC. BC, perhaps as early as the late 4th century. He was probably the first author of the Roman founding legend about the characters Romulus and Remus .

Diocles came from the island of Peparethos . Little is known about his life. He wrote a now lost historical work in Greek. At the end of the 3rd century, Quintus Fabius Pictor , the first Roman historian, used the tragic-style work of Diocles as a source for his version of the founding saga of Rome, according to Plutarch . The fact that Plutarch's version of the founding legend, which is based on the representation of Diocles, resembles that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus , which he claims to have taken literally from Fabius Pictor, speaks for the correctness of this statement . However, some ancient scholars, including Eduard Schwartz , have dated Diocles after Fabius Pictor and assumed that Plutarch relied only indirectly on Diocles. In the more recent research, however, it is mostly assumed that Diocles wrote his work first. It remains open, however, what knowledge Diocles had about early Roman history. Judging by the few fragments, his work was probably influenced by mythology.

Text output

literature

Remarks

  1. Klaus Bringmann : History of the Roman Republic , Munich 2002, p. 158f. ( online ).
  2. Plutarch, Romulus 3 and 8.
  3. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 1.79 and 1.83.
  4. See also Werner Suerbaum (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Latinischen Literatur der Antike . Volume 1, Munich 2002, p. 363 ( online ).