Stesimbrotos

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Stesimbrotos (of Thasos) was an ancient Greek writer and sophist of the 5th century BC. Because of the primarily biographical information in his works, he is also counted among the historians. According to Plutarch , he lived at the time of the Greek statesman Kimon (510-449 BC).

life and work

Stesimbrotos came from the island of Thasos , the northernmost island of the Greek archipelago, off the Macedonian-Thracian coast. Plutarch reports that as part of his military actions against the still remaining Persian positions of power in Thrace , Kimon also took action against Thasos, who died in 465 BC. Had fallen away from Athens. After defeating the Thasians in a sea battle, he forced the city itself to surrender. In the wake of Kimon's repression against opposition groups on Thasos, Stesimbrotos was also driven into emigration and came to Athens.

Stesimbrotos wrote, among other things, a work on Homer and a work on the Athenian statesmen with partly negative characterizations of the Attic politicians Themistocles , Kimon and Pericles . He also wrote a work On Mysteries , which is said to have differed from comparable works by its polemical tone.

reception

Xenophon has Socrates Stesimbrotos mentioned in a positive way in his banquet . Xenophons Socrates values ​​Stesimbrotos as a Homer exegete who could reveal the deeper meaning of these works through ingenious, mostly allegorical explanations.

The literary historian Karl Rosenkranz saw in the poet and scholar Antimachos von Kolophon , who was one of the first to publish critical remarks on Homeric poetry, a student of Stesimbrotus.

When composing his surviving vitae , in which he presents and compares the lives of Greek and Roman statesmen and speakers, Plutarch refers a total of eleven times to Stesimbrotos, whom he repeatedly accuses of inaccuracies.

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff sharply criticized Stesimbrotos and described him as a "journalist" of antiquity who wrote tendentious and defamatory texts against Athenian politicians who were unpopular to him in the style of the modern "revolver press".

literature

Overview representations

  • Manuel Baumbach : Stesimbrotos. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 11, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01481-9 , Sp. 975 f.
  • Frances Pownall: Stesimbrotos of Thasos. In: Roger S. Bagnall (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Ancient History , Vol. 11. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester et al. a. 2013, p. 6393 f.
  • Pedro Pablo Fuentes González: Stésimbrote de Thasos. In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Volume 6, CNRS Éditions, Paris 2016, ISBN 978-2-271-08989-2 , pp. 589-596.

Investigations

  • Fritz Schachermeyr : Stesimbrotos and his writing about statesmen (= Austrian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class. Meeting reports 247.5). Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 1965.
  • Klaus Meister : Stesimbrotos' work on the Athenian statesmen and their historical significance (FGrHist 107 F 1-11) . In: Historia 27/2, 1978, pp. 274-294.
  • Antonis Tsakmakis: The historical work of the Stesimbrotos of Thasos . In: Historia 44, 1995, pp. 129-152.

Remarks

  1. FGrHist 107 F 1-11.
  2. Stefan Schorn : 'Periegetische Biographie' - 'Historische Biographie': Neanthes von Kyzikos (FgrHist 84) as a biographer . In: Michael Erler, Stefan Schorn (eds.): The Greek Biography in Hellenistic Time , Berlin 2007, p. 150.
  3. ^ Karl Rosenkranz: Handbook of a general history of poetry , Vol. 1, Halle 1832, p. 184.
  4. ^ Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff: The Thukydides legend . In: Hermes 12, 1877, pp. 326–367 ( digitized version ), here: pp. 362–367.