Hecataeus of MiletusMiletus was an ancient city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...
(c. 550–c. 476 BC), named after the
GreekGreek 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...
goddessA goddess is a female deity. Often deities are part of a polytheistic system that includes several deities in a pantheon. In some cultures goddesses are commonly associated with the Earth, motherhood, love, and the household, often reflecting the historical gender roles of that culture...
HecateHecate or Hekate was a popular chthonian Greco-Roman goddess, often associated with magic, witches, ghosts, and crossroads. Possibly originating in the Anatolian region of Caria, she is attested in poetry as early as Hesiod's Theogony...
, was an early
GreekGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
historianAn historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time...
of a wealthy family. He flourished during the time of the
PersianThe Achaemenid Empire or Persian Empire was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, succeeding the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
invasion. After having travelled extensively, he settled in his native city, where he occupied a high position, and devoted his time to the composition of geographical and historical works. When
AristagorasAristagoras was the leader of Miletus in the late 6th century BC and early 5th century BC.He was the son of Molpagoras, and son-in-law of Histiaeus, whom the Persians had set up as tyrant of Miletus. Aristagoras gained control of the city when Histiaeus was appointed as an advisor to the Persian...
held a council of the leading
IoniaIonia 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...
ns at Miletus to organize a
revoltThe Ionian Revolt, and associated revolts in Aeolis, Doris, Cyprus and Caria, were military rebellions by several regions of Asia Minor against Persian rule, lasting from 499 to 493 BC...
against the Persian rule, Hecataeus in vain tried to dissuade his countrymen from the undertaking.
Hecataeus of MiletusMiletus was an ancient city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...
(c. 550–c. 476 BC), named after the
GreekGreek 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...
goddessA goddess is a female deity. Often deities are part of a polytheistic system that includes several deities in a pantheon. In some cultures goddesses are commonly associated with the Earth, motherhood, love, and the household, often reflecting the historical gender roles of that culture...
HecateHecate or Hekate was a popular chthonian Greco-Roman goddess, often associated with magic, witches, ghosts, and crossroads. Possibly originating in the Anatolian region of Caria, she is attested in poetry as early as Hesiod's Theogony...
, was an early
GreekGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
historianAn historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time...
of a wealthy family. He flourished during the time of the
PersianThe Achaemenid Empire or Persian Empire was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, succeeding the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
invasion. After having travelled extensively, he settled in his native city, where he occupied a high position, and devoted his time to the composition of geographical and historical works. When
AristagorasAristagoras was the leader of Miletus in the late 6th century BC and early 5th century BC.He was the son of Molpagoras, and son-in-law of Histiaeus, whom the Persians had set up as tyrant of Miletus. Aristagoras gained control of the city when Histiaeus was appointed as an advisor to the Persian...
held a council of the leading
IoniaIonia 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...
ns at Miletus to organize a
revoltThe Ionian Revolt, and associated revolts in Aeolis, Doris, Cyprus and Caria, were military rebellions by several regions of Asia Minor against Persian rule, lasting from 499 to 493 BC...
against the Persian rule, Hecataeus in vain tried to dissuade his countrymen from the undertaking. In 494 BC, when the defeated Ionians were obliged to sue for terms, he was one of the ambassadors to the Persian
satrapSatrap was the name given to the governors of the provinces of ancient Median and Persian empires, including the Achaemenid Empire and in several of their heirs, such as the Sassanid Empire and the Hellenistic empires....
ArtaphernesArtaphrenes, was the brother of Darius Hystaspis, and satrap of Sardis.It was he who received the embassy from Athens sent probably by Cleisthenes in 497 BC, and subsequently warned the Athenians to receive back the tyrant Hippias....
, whom he persuaded to restore the constitution of the Ionic cities. Hecataeus is the first known Greek
historianAn historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time...
, and was one of the first classical writers to mention the
Celtic peopleCelts is a modern term used to describe any of the European peoples who spoke, or speak, a Celtic language...
.
Works
Some have credited Hecataeus with a work entitled
Ges Periodos ("Travels round the Earth" or "World Survey'), written in two books. Each book is organized in the manner of a
periplusPeriplus is the Latinization of an ancient Greek word, περίπλους , literally "a sailing-around." Both segments, peri- and -plous, were independently productive: the ancient Greek speaker understood the word in its literal sense; however, it developed a few specialized meanings, one of which became...
, a point-to-point coastal survey. One, on
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
, is essentially a periplus of the Mediterranean, describing each region in turn, reaching as far north as
ScythiaThe Scythians or Scyths were an Ancient Iranian people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who throughout Classical Antiquity dominated the Pontic-Caspian steppe, known at the time as Scythia. By Late Antiquity the closely-related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scythians in this area...
. The other book, on
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
, is arranged similarly to the
Periplus of the Erythraean SeaThe Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a Greek periplus, describing navigation and trading opportunities from Roman Egyptian ports like Berenice along the coast of the Red Sea, and others along Northeast Africa and India...
of which a version of the 1st century CE survives. Hecataeus described the countries and inhabitants of the known world, the account of
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
being particularly comprehensive; the descriptive matter was accompanied by a
mapA map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....
, based upon
AnaximanderAnaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded him and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and Pythagoras amongst his...
’s map of the earth, which he corrected and enlarged. The work only survives in some 374 fragments, by far the majority being quoted in the geographical lexicon
Ethnika compiled by
Stephanus of ByzantiumStephen of Byzantium, also known as Stephanus Byzantinus was the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica...
.
The other known work of Hecataeus was the
Genealogiai, a rationally systematized account of the traditions and the myths of the Greeks, a break with the epic myth-making tradition, which survives in a few fragments, just enough to show what we are missing.
Skepticism
Hecataeus' work, especially the
Genealogiai, shows a marked scepticism, opening with "
Hecataeus of Miletus thus speaks: I write what I deem true; for the stories of the Greeks are manifold and seem to me ridiculous." Unlike his contemporary
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, poet, and social and religious critic. Our knowledge of his views comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by later Greek writers...
, he did not criticize the myths on their own terms; his disbelief rather stems from his broad exposure to the many contradictory mythologies he encountered in his travels.
An anecdote from Herodotus (II, 143), of a visit to an
EgyptianAncient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and...
temple at
ThebesThebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile . It was inhabited beginning in around 3200 BC. It was the eponymous capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian nome...
, is illustrative. It recounts how the priests showed Herodotus a series of statues in the temple's inner sanctum, each one supposedly set up by the high priest of each generation. Hecataeus, says Herodotus, had seen the same spectacle, after mentioning that he traced his descent, through sixteen generations, from a god. The Egyptians compared his genealogy to their own, as recorded by the statues; since the generations of their high priests had numbered three hundred and forty-five, all entirely mortal, they refused to believe Hecataeus's claim of descent from a mythological figure. This encounter with the immemorial antiquity of Egypt has been identified as a crucial influence on Hecataeus's scepticism: the mythologized past of the
HellenesThe Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in diaspora communities around the world....
shrank into insignificant fancy next to the history of a civilization that was already ancient before
MycenaeMycenae , is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90 km south-west of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. Argos is 6 km to the south; Corinth, 48 km to the north...
was built.
He was probably the first of the
logographersThe logographers were the Greek historiographers and chroniclers before Herodotus, "the father of history". Herodotus himself called his predecessors λογοποιόι...
to attempt a serious prose history and to employ critical method to distinguish myth from historical fact, though he accepts
HomerHomer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
and other poets as trustworthy authorities. Herodotus, though he once at least controverts his statements, is indebted to Hecataeus for the concept of a prose history.
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