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Hecataeus of Abdera

 

 
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Hecataeus of Abdera
 
 
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See Hecataeus of Miletus for the earlier historian.
Hecataeus of Abdera
Abdera, Thrace

Abdera was a town on the coast of Thrace 17 km east-northeast of the mouth of the Nestos, and almost opposite Thasos. At coordinates , the site now lies in the Xanthi Prefecture of modern Greece....
 (or of Teos
Teos

Teos or Teo was a maritime city of Ionia, on a peninsula between Chytrium and Myonnesus, colonized by Orchomenus Minyans, Ionians, and Boeotians....
) was a Greek historian
Historian

A historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, systematic narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time....
 and sceptic philosopher who flourished in the 4th century BC.

Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes La?rtius , the biographer of the Greece philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, Asia Minor, and by others from the Roman Empire family of the La?rtii....
 (ix.61) relates that he was a student of Pyrrho
Pyrrho

Pyrrho , a Greek philosopher of classical antiquity, is credited as being the first Skeptic philosopher, and the inspiration for the school known as Pyrrhonism founded by Aenesidemus in the 1st century BC....
, along with Eurylochus
Eurylochus

In Greek mythology, Eurylochus, or Eur?lokhos appears in Homer's Odyssey as second-in-command of Odysseus' ship during the return to Ithaca after the Trojan War....
, Timon the Phliasian
Timon (philosopher)

Timon of Phlius, , the son of Timarchus, was a Hellenistic Greece Philosophical skepticism, a pupil of Pyrrho, and a celebrated writer of satire poems called Silloi ....
, Nausiphanes
Nausiphanes

Nausiphanes , a native of Teos, lived c. 325 BC, was attached to the philosophy of Democritus, and was a pupil of Pyrrho. He had a large number of pupils, and was particularly famous as a rhetorician....
 of Teos and others, and includes him among the "Pyrrhoneans". Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus , was a Roman Greece historian who flourished in the 1st century BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agira in Sicily ....
 (i.46.8) tells us that Hecataeus visited Thebes
Thebes, Egypt

Thebes was a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile . It was the capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian Nome ....
 in the times of Ptolemy I Soter
Ptolemy I Soter

Ptolemy I Soter was a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great who became ruler of Egypt and founder of both the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Ptolemaic Dynasty....
, and composed a history of Egypt.






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See Hecataeus of Miletus for the earlier historian.
Hecataeus of Abdera
Abdera, Thrace

Abdera was a town on the coast of Thrace 17 km east-northeast of the mouth of the Nestos, and almost opposite Thasos. At coordinates , the site now lies in the Xanthi Prefecture of modern Greece....
 (or of Teos
Teos

Teos or Teo was a maritime city of Ionia, on a peninsula between Chytrium and Myonnesus, colonized by Orchomenus Minyans, Ionians, and Boeotians....
) was a Greek historian
Historian

A historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, systematic narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time....
 and sceptic philosopher who flourished in the 4th century BC.

Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes La?rtius , the biographer of the Greece philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, Asia Minor, and by others from the Roman Empire family of the La?rtii....
 (ix.61) relates that he was a student of Pyrrho
Pyrrho

Pyrrho , a Greek philosopher of classical antiquity, is credited as being the first Skeptic philosopher, and the inspiration for the school known as Pyrrhonism founded by Aenesidemus in the 1st century BC....
, along with Eurylochus
Eurylochus

In Greek mythology, Eurylochus, or Eur?lokhos appears in Homer's Odyssey as second-in-command of Odysseus' ship during the return to Ithaca after the Trojan War....
, Timon the Phliasian
Timon (philosopher)

Timon of Phlius, , the son of Timarchus, was a Hellenistic Greece Philosophical skepticism, a pupil of Pyrrho, and a celebrated writer of satire poems called Silloi ....
, Nausiphanes
Nausiphanes

Nausiphanes , a native of Teos, lived c. 325 BC, was attached to the philosophy of Democritus, and was a pupil of Pyrrho. He had a large number of pupils, and was particularly famous as a rhetorician....
 of Teos and others, and includes him among the "Pyrrhoneans". Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus , was a Roman Greece historian who flourished in the 1st century BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agira in Sicily ....
 (i.46.8) tells us that Hecataeus visited Thebes
Thebes, Egypt

Thebes was a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile . It was the capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian Nome ....
 in the times of Ptolemy I Soter
Ptolemy I Soter

Ptolemy I Soter was a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great who became ruler of Egypt and founder of both the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Ptolemaic Dynasty....
, and composed a history of Egypt. Diodorus supplies the comment that many additional Greeks went to and wrote about Egypt in the same periode. The Suda
Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine Empire Medieval Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world. It is an Encyclopedia lexicon with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers....
 gives him the nickname, 'critic grammarian' and says that he lived in the time of the successors
Partition of Triparadisus

The Partition of Triparadisus was a power-sharing agreement passed at Triparadisus in 321 BCE between the generals of Alexander the Great, in which they named a new regent and established the repartition of their satrapies....
 to Alexander
Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
.

Works

No complete works of Hecataeus have survived to our time, and our knowledge of his writing exists only in fragments located in various ancient Greek and Latin authors' works, primarily in Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus , was a Roman Greece historian who flourished in the 1st century BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agira in Sicily ....
, whose ethnography
Ethnography

Ethnography is a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies. Ethnography presents the results of a holism research method founded on the idea that a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other....
 of Egypt (Bibliotheca historica
Bibliotheca historica

[Image:AlexandreLouvre.jpg|thumb|right|150px|Bust of Alexander...
, Book I) represents by far the largest amount. Diodorus is mostly paraphrasing Hecataeus, thus it is difficult to extract Hecataeus' actual writings (see Carolus Müller's Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum). Hecataeus wrote the work "Aegyptiaca" or "On the Egyptians", both suggestions are based on known titles of other ethnographic works, an account of Egypt’s customs, beliefs and geography, and the single largest fragment from this lost work
Lost work

A lost work is a document or literature work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist. Works may be lost to history either through the destruction of the original manuscript, or through the non-survival of any copies of the work....
 is held to be Diodorus account of the Ramesseum
Ramesseum

The Ramesseum is the Temples of a Million years of Pharaoh Ramesses II . It is located in the Thebes, Egypt necropolis in Upper Egypt, across the Nile from the modern city of Luxor....
, tomb of Osymandyas (i.47-50).

Diodorus (ii.47.1-2) and Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonius of Rhodes

Apollonius of Rhodes, also known as Apollonius Rhodius , early 3rd century BCE - after 246 BCE, was a librarian at the Library of Alexandria....
 tell of another work by Hecataeus, "On the Hyperboreans". Additional information on the Hyperborean
Hyperborea

In Greek mythology, according to tradition, the Hyperboreans were a mythical people who lived far to the north of Thrace. The Greeks thought that Boreas, the North Wind, lived in Thrace, and that therefore Hyperborea was an unspecified region in the northern lands that lay beyond Scythia....
’s can be found in Strabo
Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
 and Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
, who might have their information from Hecataeus.

Though no name of a philosophical work by him is known, according to the Suda
Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine Empire Medieval Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world. It is an Encyclopedia lexicon with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers....
, the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia, he wrote a treatise on the poetry of Hesiod
Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
 and Homer
Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
, but nothing of them has survived. The Suda lists no other work by Hecataeus, also not a historical account of Egypt.

Regarding his authorship of a work on the Jews (utilized by Josephus
Josephus

Josephus , also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu and, after he became a Roman citizenship, as Titus Flavius Josephus, was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70....
 in Contra Apionem), it is conjectured that portions of the Aegyptiaca were revised by a Hellenistic Jew from his point of view and published as a special work.

Sources

  • "The Messenger of God in Hecataeus of Abdera", Francis R. Walton, Harvard Theological Review
    Harvard Theological Review

    Harvard Theological Review, abbrev. HTR, is a quarterly List of theological journals of the Harvard Divinity School in the United States....
    , Vol. 48, #4 (Oct., 1955), p.255-257.