Memnon of Heraclea
Memnon of Heraclea (
Memnon's history encompassed an unknown number of books, but Photius had read the ninth through the sixteenth, and made a tolerably copious abstract of that portion. The first eight books he had not read, and he speaks of other books after the sixteenth. The ninth book begins with an account of the tyrant Clearchus, the disciple of Plato and Isocrates. The thirteenth book contains a long account of the rise of Rome. The last event mentioned in the sixteenth book was the death of Brithagoras, who was sent by the Heracleians as ambassador to Julius Caesar, after the latter had obtained the supreme power (48 BC).
From this
, 1816, containing, together with the remains of Memnon, a few fragments of other writers on Heraclea.Memnon's history is valuable as a continuous account of nearly all the Hellenistic period, albeit a compressed one from a local vantage point. It is also valuable as the only reasonably complete example of the Greek historical genre of local history.
References
- OCD s.v.
- Smith, William (editor); Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, "Memnon", Boston, (1867)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty|title=(help)
Further reading
- Liv Mariah Yarrow, Historiography at the End of the Republic (Oxford University Press, 2006), limited preview online.
External links
- Memnon; History of Heracleia, Andrew Smith (translator), (2004)
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