Philochorus

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Philochoros from Athens ( Latinized Philochorus ; * around 340 BC; † around 261 BC) was a Greek historian and mythographer . He was a well-respected scholar and the most important of the atthidographers .

life and work

Philochoros came from a priestly family and was a son of Cyknos. His activity as a seer and sacrificial gazer is first for 306 BC. Occupied. In this capacity he had considerable influence. Politically conservative, he was oriented towards the old values ​​of Athens , had a strict anti-Macedonian mind and was a relentless opponent of Demetrios I Poliorketes . According to the Suda , which offers a short biography about him, Philochorus was born around 261 BC. At the instigation of Antigonus II Gonatas , son of Demetrios, he was executed because he sided with the Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the Chremonideic War , who had encouraged the Athenians to resist the Macedonians.

The Suda performs a total of 21 works by Philochorus; another six are known from other testimonies. These writings deal with Athenian history, religion and literature, but have been lost except for fragments. Among other things, the discovery of extensive fragments of Didymos' commentary on Demosthenes (1904) resulted in numerous new fragments of the Philochoros writings.

Philochorus' main work Atthis was a history of Athens from the earliest times to 262 BC. In seventeen books. It almost completely replaced older depictions of local Athenian history. Later Alexandrian scholars used it to explain the great Attic orators. A considerable number of fragments have come down to us from the lexicographers and Scholiasts , from Atheneus , Dionysius of Halicarnassus and elsewhere. The author himself wrote an excerpt from this work, and later Asinius Pollio von Tralles (perhaps a freedman of the famous Gaius Asinius Pollio ).

The first two books of Philochoros' Atthis dealt with the mythical time up to Solon , the following two books represent the subsequent epoch up to the end of the 5th century BC. Books 5 and 6 extended to 338 or 317 BC. And the remaining 11 books were dedicated to the time experienced by the author himself. Philochorus therefore gave relatively little space to the early period, but wrote in great detail about his own present. Almost no fragments have survived from this historical part of the work, while most of the numerous fragments come from the first six books. From them it can be seen that Philochorus interpreted myths rationalistically. The short, in the narrower sense historical fragments show that the author used a sober, unadorned language; his information has almost documentary value.

Philochorus also wrote about oracles , divination and sacrifice ; Athenian agons ; the mythology and religious festivals of the Tetrapolis of Attica; the myths of Sophocles ; the lives of Euripides and Pythagoras ; the founding of Salamis . He compiled chronological lists of the Archons (from Sokratides to Apollodorus, 374 to 350 or 319 BC) and the Olympiads and put on a collection of Attic inscriptions, the first of its kind in Greece. From all these works only sparse fragments have survived.

expenditure

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c Klaus Meister: Philochoros. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 9, Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01479-7 , Sp. 821.
  2. ^ Richard Laqueur: Philochoros. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIX, 2, Stuttgart 1938, Col. 2434.
  3. ^ Richard Laqueur: Philochoros. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIX, 2, Stuttgart 1938, Col. 2436.
  4. ^ Richard Laqueur: Philochoros. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XIX, 2, Stuttgart 1938, Sp. 2436-2438.
personal data
SURNAME Philochorus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Philochorus Atheniensis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek historian and mythographer
DATE OF BIRTH around 340 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH around 261 BC Chr.