Philochorus
 |
This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (February 2012) |
 |
This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2012) |
Philochorus, of Athens, Greek historian during the 3rd century BC, (d. circa 261 BCE), was a member of a priestly family. He was a seer and interpreter of signs, and a man of considerable influence.
He was strongly anti-Macedonian in politics, and a bitter opponent of Demetrius Poliorcetes. When Antigonus Gonatas, the son of the latter, besieged and captured Athens (261), Philochorus was put to death for having supported Ptolemy Philadelphus, who had encouraged the Athenians in their resistance to Macedonia.
His investigations into the usages and customs of his native Attica were embodied in an Atthis, in seventeen books, a history of Athens from the earliest times to 262 BC. Considerable fragments are preserved in the lexicographers, scholiasts, Athenaeus, and elsewhere. The work was epitomized by the author himself, and later by Asinius Pollio of Tralles (perhaps a freedman of the famous Gaius Asinius Pollio).
Philochorus also wrote on oracles, divination and sacrifices; the mythology and religious observances of the tetrapolis of Attica; the myths of Sophocles; the lives of Euripides and Pythagoras; the foundation of Salamis, Cyprus. He compiled chronological lists of the archons and Olympiads, and made a collection of Attic inscriptions, the first of its kind in Greece.
[edit] References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
[edit] Further reading
- Greek text: F.Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 328
- Translation: P.Harding, The story of Athens: the fragments of the local chronicles of Attika(2008) ISBN 0-415-33809-3
