Castor of Rhodes

Castor of Rhodes was an ancient Greek rhetorician and historian from Rhodes . He lived in the 1st century BC. Chr.

Kastor wrote several works; most of them have not survived. His main work, which has only survived in fragments, was the Chronika . In six books they described the time from Belos and Ninos to the year 61/60 BC. The presentation was possibly in tabular form, but this is controversial. The fact that Castor began his work, in which he also took mythological stories into account, with the oriental story of the legendary King Ninos, underlines his efforts to present the oriental and the Greco-Roman history as a unit. In this sense, he also extended the lists of Greek kings in order to make Greek history appear as old as ancient Oriental. The work offered lists of kings and officials. For the period from 776 BC. In his portrayal he used the system of counting the Olympics.

The chronicles were used in the following time by Varro , Flavius Josephus , Plutarch , Eusebius of Caesarea (who explicitly refers to Castor) and Georgios Synkellos . Whether Diodorus also used the work is doubtful today.

Text output

Felix Jacoby (Ed.): The Fragments of the Greek Historians , No. 250

literature

Paul Christesen: Olympic Victor Lists and Ancient Greek History . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 2007, pp. 311–322.
Wilhelm Kubitschek : Kastor 8. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume X, 2, Stuttgart 1919, Sp. 2347-2357.

personal data
SURNAME	Castor of Rhodes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Castor Rhodius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Greek rhetorician and historian
DATE OF BIRTH	2nd century BC BC or 1st century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH	1st century BC Chr.