Logographer (history) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The logographers were the Greek historiographers and chroniclers before Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

, "the father of history". Herodotus himself called his predecessors λογοποιοί (logopoioi, from ποιέω, poieo, 'to make'). Thucydides

Thucydides

Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...

applies the name to all who preceded him, including Herodotus (I, 21).

Their representatives with one exception came from Ionia

Ionia

Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...

and its islands, which from their position were most favourably situated for the acquisition of knowledge concerning the distant countries of East and West. They wrote in the Ionic dialect in what was called the unperiodic style (see below) and preserved the poetic character, if not the style, of their epic model. Their criticism amounts to nothing more than a crude attempt to rationalize the current legends and traditions connected with the founding of cities, the genealogies of ruling families, and the manners and customs of individual peoples. Of scientific criticism there is no trace whatever, and so they are often called chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...

rs rather than historian
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

s.

The first logographer of note was Cadmus

Cadmus of Miletus

Cadmus of Miletus was, according to some ancient authorities, the oldest of the logographi. Modern scholars who accept this view, assign him to about 550 BC; others regard him as purely mythical...

(dated to the 6th century BC), a perhaps mythical resident of Miletus

Miletus

Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...

, who wrote on the history of his city. Other logographers flourished from the middle of the 6th century BC until the Greco-Persian Wars

Greco-Persian Wars

The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and city-states of the Hellenic world that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus...

; Pherecydes of Leros

Pherecydes of Leros

Pherecydes of Leros was a Greek mythographer and logographer. He came from the island of Leros. Pherecydes spent the greater part of his working life in Athens, and so he was also called Pherecydes of Athens: the encyclopedic Byzantine Suda consider Pherecydes of Athens and of Leros...

, who died about 400 BC

400 BC

Year 400 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Esquilinus, Capitolinus, Vulso, Medullinus, Saccus and Vulscus...

, is generally considered the last. Hecataeus of Miletus (6th–5th century BC), in his Genealogiai, was the first of them to attempt (not entirely successfully) to separate the mythic

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

past from the true historic past, which marked a crucial step in the development of genuine historiography. He is the only source that Herodotus cites by name. After Herodotus

Herodotus

, the genre declined, but regained some popularity in the Hellenistic era.

The logographers, though they worked within the same mythic tradition, were distinct from the epic poets

Cyclic Poets

Cyclic Poets is a shorthand term for the early Greek epic poets, approximate contemporaries of Homer. We know no more about these poets than we know about Homer, but modern scholars regard them as having composed orally, as did Homer. In the classical period, surviving early epic poems were...

of the Trojan War cycle because they wrote in prose, in a non-periodic style which Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

(Rhetoric, 1049a 29) calls λέξις εἰρομένη (lexis eiromenê, from εἴρω, eiro, 'attach, join up'), that is, a "continuous" or "running" style.

Famous logographers

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...

(On Thucydides, 5) names those who were most famous in the classical world. They are noted with an asterisk (*) in the following incomplete list of logographers:

Acusilaus
Acusilaus
Acusilaus of Argos, son of Cabas or Scabras, was a Greek logographer and mythographer who lived in the latter half of the 6th century BC but whose work survives only in fragments and summaries of individual points....

of Argos, who paraphrased in prose, correcting the tradition where it seemed necessary, the genealogical works of Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

in the Ionic dialect. He confined his attention to the prehistoric period and made no attempt at a real history.
Cadmus of Miletus
Cadmus of Miletus
Cadmus of Miletus was, according to some ancient authorities, the oldest of the logographi. Modern scholars who accept this view, assign him to about 550 BC; others regard him as purely mythical...

*
Charon* of Lampsacus
Lampsacus
Lampsacus was an ancient Greek city strategically located on the eastern side of the Hellespont in the northern Troad. An inhabitant of Lampsacus was called a Lampsacene. The name has been transmitted in the nearby modern town of Lapseki.-Ancient history:...

, author of histories of Persia, Libya, and Ethiopia, and of annals of his native town, with lists of the prytaneis
Prytaneis
The Prytaneis were the executives of the boule of ancient Athens. The term is probably of pre-Greek origin ....

and archon
Archon
Archon is a Greek word that means "ruler" or "lord", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ἀρχ-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy, and anarchy.- Ancient Greece :In ancient Greece the...

s, and of the chronicles of Lacedaemonian kings.
Damastes of Sigeion
Sigeion
Sigeion was a Greek city in the north-west of the Troad region of Anatolia located at the mouth of the Scamander . Sigeion commanded a ridge between the Aegean Sea and the Scamander which is now known as Yenişehir and is a part of the Çanakkale district in Çanakkale province, Turkey...

, pupil of Hellanicus, author of genealogies of the combatants before Troy and an ethnographic and statistical list of short treatises on poets, sophists, and geographical subjects.
Hecataeus of Miletus*
Hellanicus of Lesbos
Hellanicus of Lesbos
Hellanicus of Lesbos was an ancient Greek logographer who flourished during the latter half of the 5th century BC. He was born in Mytilene on the isle of Lesbos in 490 BC and is reputed to have lived to the age of 85...

*
Hippys* and Glaucus, both of Rhegium; the first wrote histories of Italy and Sicily, the second a treatise on ancient poets and musicians which was used by Harpocration
Harpocration
Valerius Harpocration was a Greek grammarian of Alexandria, probably working in the 2nd century CE. He is possibly the Harpocration mentioned by Julius Capitolinus as the Greek tutor of Lucius Verus ; some authorities place him much later, on the ground that he borrowed from Athenaeus...

and Pseudo-Plutarch
Pseudo-Plutarch
Pseudo-Plutarch is the conventional name given to the unknown authors of a number of pseudepigrapha attributed to Plutarch.Some of these works were included in some editions of Plutarch's Moralia...
Melesagoras* of Chalcedon
Chalcedon
Chalcedon , sometimes transliterated as Chalkedon) was an ancient maritime town of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, almost directly opposite Byzantium, south of Scutari . It is now a district of the city of Istanbul named Kadıköy...
Pherecydes of Leros
Pherecydes of Leros
Pherecydes of Leros was a Greek mythographer and logographer. He came from the island of Leros. Pherecydes spent the greater part of his working life in Athens, and so he was also called Pherecydes of Athens: the encyclopedic Byzantine Suda consider Pherecydes of Athens and of Leros...

*
Stesimbrotos of Thasos
Stesimbrotos of Thasos
Stesimbrotos of Thasos , doubtless raised at Thasos, was a sophist, a rhapsode and logographer, a writer on history, and an opponent of Pericles and reputed author of a political pamphlet On Themistocles, Thucydides, and Pericles. Plutarch used writings by Stesimbrotos in his Life of Pericles,...

, opponent of Pericles
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...

and reputed author of a political pamphlet on Themistocles
Themistocles
Themistocles ; c. 524–459 BC, was an Athenian politician and a general. He was one of a new breed of politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy, along with his great rival Aristides...

, Thucydides, and Pericles.
Xanthus
Xanthus (historian)
Xanthus of Lydia was a native Lydian historian and logographer who, during the mid-fifth century BC, wrote texts on the history of Lydia known as Lydiaca . Xanthus also wrote occasionally about geology. It is believed that Xanthus was the earliest historian to have written a significant amount on...

*, of Sardis
Sardis
Sardis or Sardes was an ancient city at the location of modern Sart in Turkey's Manisa Province...

in Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

, author of a history of Lydia and one of the chief authorities used by Nicolaus
Nicolaus
Nicolaus is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Nicholas. Nicolaus may refer to:In science:* Nicolaus Copernicus, astronomer who provided the first modern formulation of a heliocentric theory of the solar systemIn mathematics:...

of Damascus.

Sources

The History of History; Shotwell, James T. (NY, Columbia University Press, 1939)
The Ancient Greek Historians; Bury, John Bagnell
J. B. Bury
John Bagnell Bury , known as J. B. Bury, was an Irish historian, classical scholar, Byzantinist and philologist.-Biography:...

(NY, Dover Publications, 1958)

Famous logographers

Sources

Further reading