Chares of Mytilene

Chares of Mytilene ( ancient Greek Χάρης ) was an ancient Greek historian, in the 4th century BC

Chares was born in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos and participated in the campaign of Macedon king Alexander against the Achaemenid Empire. Probably Chares acted as a sort of major-domo. He later wrote a history of the Alexanderzugs in ten (or maybe eleven) books. From the work which according to Athenaeus the title had stories about Alexander, but only fragments have survived ( The fragments of Greek historians No. 125), which nevertheless are but some of great value. So Chares reports about about the mass wedding at Susa (fragment 4) and other events at the court of Alexander.

The reliability of Chares can be difficult to project just because, inaccuracies, or even gross errors are detected in some fragments that reveal the sometimes anecdotal character of his work; partly novelistic traits can be discerned (fragment 5). It is likely to have not acted in the work to a strictly chronological and exhaustive presentation of history, but rather a description that focused on specific events and their action center of the courtyard was Alexander. Nevertheless, Chares was also used by other Alexander historians, such as by Kleitarchos and Plutarch.