Philochorus

Philochorus (Latin Philochorus; † around 261 BC) was a Greek historian of Athens and Mythograph of the third century BC. He came from a family of priests and seers, and was victim Schauer, a man of considerable influence.

Philochorus was strict in his anti-Macedonian policy and an implacable opponent of Demetrius I Poliorketes. When Antigonus II Gonatas, the son of the latter, Athens defeated and occupied (261) Philochorus was executed because he had Ptolemy Philadelphus support, who had encouraged the Athenians to resist the Macedonians.

His research on the customs and traditions of his native Attica were included in his work Atthis, in seventeen books, a history of Athens from the earliest times to 262 BC A considerable number of fragments are at the lexicographers, scholiasts, Athenaeus and elsewhere included. The author has written an extract from this plant, and later Asinius Pollio of Tralles (perhaps a freedman of Gaius Asinius Pollio famous ).

Philochorus wrote about oracles, divination and sacrifice; the mythology and religious festivals of the Tetrapolis of Attica; the myths of Sophocles; the life of Euripides and Pythagoras; the establishment of Salamis (Cyprus). He compiled a chronological list of the archons and the Olympics and put a collection of Attic inscriptions, the first of its kind in Greece.

Quite a few fragments of his works are included in the collection edited by Felix Jacoby The fragments of Greek historians (No. 328).

Expenditure

• Charles Gotthold Lenz, Karl Gottfried Siebelis: Philochorus , In: Librorum Fragmenta, Lipsia, 1811 ( digitized at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)