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Hellanicus of Lesbos
 
 
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Hellanicus of Lesbos (in Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 ) (born in Mytilene
Mytilene

Mytilene is the Capital city of Lesbos Island, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, and capital of Lesbos Prefecture and the Northern Aegean region....
 on the isle of Lesbos
Lesbos Island

Lesbos is a Greece List of islands of Greece located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of 1632 Square kilometre with 320 kilometres of coastline, making it the third largest Greek island and the largest of the numerous Greek islands scattered in the Aegean....
 in 490 BC) was an ancient Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 logographer
Logographer (history)

The logographers were the Greek historiographers and chroniclers before Herodotus, "the father of history". Herodotus himself called his predecessors ????p???? ....
 who flourished during the latter half of the 5th century BC. He is reputed to have lived to the age of 85.

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....
, he lived for some time at the court of one of the kings of Macedon
Macedon

Macedon or Macedonia was the name of a monarchy centred in the northernmost part of ancient Greece. The homeland of the ancient Macedonians, it was bordered by the kingdom of Epirus to the west and the region of Thrace to the east....
, and died at Perperene, a town on the gulf of Adramyttium in Aeolis
Aeolis

Aeolis or Eolis or Aeolia or Eolia was an area that comprised the west and northwestern region of Asia Minor, mostly along the coast, and also several offshore islands , where the Aeolians Ancient Greece city-states were located....
,opposite Lesbos
Lesbos Island

Lesbos is a Greece List of islands of Greece located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of 1632 Square kilometre with 320 kilometres of coastline, making it the third largest Greek island and the largest of the numerous Greek islands scattered in the Aegean....
.

His work includes the first mention of the legendary founding of Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 by the Trojans
Troy

Troy is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle, and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer....
; he writes that the city was founded by Aeneas
Aeneas

This article is about the Roman hero. For other uses, see Aeneas .In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Troy hero, the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Venus_....
 when accompanying Odysseus
Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses , in Greek mythology , was a legendary Greeks king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's Epic poetry, the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
 on travels through Latium
Latium

Lazio, called Latium in English language, is a Regions of Italy of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche to the north, Abruzzo to the east, Campania to the south, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west....
.






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Hellanicus of Lesbos (in Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 ) (born in Mytilene
Mytilene

Mytilene is the Capital city of Lesbos Island, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, and capital of Lesbos Prefecture and the Northern Aegean region....
 on the isle of Lesbos
Lesbos Island

Lesbos is a Greece List of islands of Greece located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of 1632 Square kilometre with 320 kilometres of coastline, making it the third largest Greek island and the largest of the numerous Greek islands scattered in the Aegean....
 in 490 BC) was an ancient Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 logographer
Logographer (history)

The logographers were the Greek historiographers and chroniclers before Herodotus, "the father of history". Herodotus himself called his predecessors ????p???? ....
 who flourished during the latter half of the 5th century BC. He is reputed to have lived to the age of 85.

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....
, he lived for some time at the court of one of the kings of Macedon
Macedon

Macedon or Macedonia was the name of a monarchy centred in the northernmost part of ancient Greece. The homeland of the ancient Macedonians, it was bordered by the kingdom of Epirus to the west and the region of Thrace to the east....
, and died at Perperene, a town on the gulf of Adramyttium in Aeolis
Aeolis

Aeolis or Eolis or Aeolia or Eolia was an area that comprised the west and northwestern region of Asia Minor, mostly along the coast, and also several offshore islands , where the Aeolians Ancient Greece city-states were located....
,opposite Lesbos
Lesbos Island

Lesbos is a Greece List of islands of Greece located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of 1632 Square kilometre with 320 kilometres of coastline, making it the third largest Greek island and the largest of the numerous Greek islands scattered in the Aegean....
.

His work includes the first mention of the legendary founding of Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 by the Trojans
Troy

Troy is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle, and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer....
; he writes that the city was founded by Aeneas
Aeneas

This article is about the Roman hero. For other uses, see Aeneas .In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Troy hero, the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Venus_....
 when accompanying Odysseus
Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses , in Greek mythology , was a legendary Greeks king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's Epic poetry, the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
 on travels through Latium
Latium

Lazio, called Latium in English language, is a Regions of Italy of central Italy, bordered by Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche to the north, Abruzzo to the east, Campania to the south, and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west....
. However, he supported the idea that the Etruscans lay behind the origins of the Pelasgians
Pelasgians

The name Pelasgians was used by some Ancient Greece writers to refer to populations that preceded the Greeks in Greece, "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably autochthonous people in the Greek world." During the Classical Greece enclaves under that name resided in several locations of mainland Greece, Crete and other regi...
, an ancient Greek people who were thought to have predated the great Achaean invasions.

Some thirty works are attributed to him--chronological, historical and episodical. Mention may be made of:
  • The Priestesses of Hera at Argon: a chronological compilation, arranged according to the order of succession of these functionaries
  • The Carneonikae: a list of the victors in the Carnean games (the chief Sparta
    Sparta

    Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the Eurotas River in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From circa 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars....
    n musical festival), including notices of literary events
  • An Atthis, giving the history of Attica
    Attica

    Attica is a Peripheries of Greece in Greece, containing Athens, the capital of Greece. Attica is subdivided into the prefectures of Greece of Athens Prefecture, Piraeus Prefecture, East Attica and West Attica....
     from 683 to the end of the Peloponnesian War
    Peloponnesian War

    The Peloponnesian War which lasted from 431-404BC was an Ancient Greece military conflict, fought by Athens and its Athenian empire against the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta....
     (404), which is referred to by Thucydides
    Thucydides

    Thucydides was a Greeks history and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C....
     (1.97), who says that he treated the events of the years 480-431 briefly and superficially, and with little regard to chronological sequence
  • Phoronis: chiefly genealogical, with short notices of events from the times of Phoroneus
    Phoroneus

    In Greek mythology, Phoroneus was a culture-hero of the Argolid, fire-bringer, primordial king and son of the river god Inachus and either Melia, the primordial Ash or Argia, the embodiment of the Argolid itself: "Inachus, son of Oceanus, begat Phoroneus by his sister Argia," wrote Gaius Julius Hyginus, in Fabulae 143....
    , primordial king in Peloponnesus
    Peloponnese

    The Peloponnese or Peloponnesus is a large peninsula and Regions of Greece in southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth....
    .
  • Troica and Persica: histories of Troy and Persia.


Hellanicus authored works of chronology, geography, and history, particularly concerning Attica
Attica

Attica is a Peripheries of Greece in Greece, containing Athens, the capital of Greece. Attica is subdivided into the prefectures of Greece of Athens Prefecture, Piraeus Prefecture, East Attica and West Attica....
, in which he made a distinction between what he saw as Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
 from history. His influence on the historiography
Historiography

Historiography is the aspect of semiotics that is the study of how knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted. Broadly speaking, historiography examines the writing of history and the use of historical methods, drawing upon such elements such as authorship, sourcing, interpretation, style, bias, and audience....
 of Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 was considerable, lasting until the time of Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greeks mathematician, poet, sportsperson, geographer and astronomer. He made several discoveries and inventions including a system of latitude and longitude....
 (3rd century B.C.).

He transcended the narrow local limits of the older logographers, and was not content to merely repeat the traditions that had gained general acceptation through the poets. He tried to give the traditions as they were locally current, and availed himself of the few national or priestly registers that presented something like contemporary registration.

He endeavoured to lay the foundations of a scientific chronology, based primarily on the list of the Argive priestesses of Hera
Hera

In the Twelve Olympians of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage....
, and secondarily on genealogies, lists of magistrates (e.g. the archon
Archon

Archon is a Greek language word that means "ruler", frequently used as the title of a specific public office. It is the masculine present participle of the verb stem ???-, meaning "to rule", derived from the same root as monarch, hierarchy and anarchism....
s at Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
), and Oriental dates, in place of the old reckoning by generations. But his materials were insufficient and he often had recourse to the older methods.

On account of his deviations from common tradition, Hellanicus is often called an untrustworthy writer by the ancients themselves, and it is a curious fact that he appears to have made no systematic use of the many inscriptions which were ready to hand. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus....
 censures him for arranging his history, not according to the natural connection of events, but according to the locality or the nation he was describing; and undoubtedly he never, like his contemporary Herodotus
Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
, rose to the conception of a single current of events wider than the local distinction of race. His style, like that of the older logographers, was dry and bald.

He also wrote a work (), named Atlantis (or Atlantias), about the daughter of the titan Atlas
Atlas (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Atlas was the primordial Titan who supported the heavens. Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Klym?ne :...
. It is based on an earlier worked likely named Atlantias, too, which has been found on papyrus fragments.

Further reading

Fragments in Carl Müller, Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, i. and iv.; see among older works Ludwig Preller
Ludwig Preller

Ludwig Preller was a Germany philologist and antiquarian.Born in Hamburg, he studied at Leipzig, Berlin and G?ttingen, in 1838 he was appointed to the professorship of philology at the University of Tartu, which, however, he resigned in 1843....
, De Hellanico Lesbio historico (1840); Mure, History of Greek Literature, iv.; late criticism in H Kullmer, Hellanikos in Jahrbücher für klass. Philologie (Supplementhand, xxvii. 455 sqq.) (1902), which contains new edition and arrangement of fragments; CF Lehmann-Haupt, Hellanikos, Herodot, Thukydides, in Klio vi. 127 sqq. (1906); JB Bury, Ancient Greek Historians (1909), pp. 27 sqq.

in William Mure
William Mure

William Mure was a Scotland scholar and politician.The Laird of Caldwell, North Ayrshire, Scotland, he was educated at Westminster School, London, England; University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and Bonn, Germany....
, 'A critical history of the language and literature of antient Greece' (1853)