Xanthus (historian)
Xanthos the Lydian, also Xanthos of Sardis, was a Lydian historian in the 5th century BC and author of Lydiaká.
About his life little is known: Xanthos probably originated in Sardis ( the Suda says that he was born in Miletus ) and was the son of a certain Candaules. Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that he lived before the Peloponnesian War, but even at the time of Thucydides.
The probably originally consisting of four books Lydiaká (especially Greek city names on the geographical dictionary of Stephanus of Byzantium, but also longer bodies of Strabo ) are only a few, but one (F 16) indirect fragments obtained, which probably is a summary of the work, written by a certain Menippos, was present. The originality of this summary, however, was already controversial among ancient historians. In his work Xanthos described the Lydian history from the earliest times to the 6th century BC He was referring obviously the first time, natural history and linguistic studies in its deliberations with a - compare Strabo, who quotes Eratosthenes ( F 12 ) as Xanthos praise for the explanation of the fact pronounce that there are two or three thousand stadia ( 320-500 km ) from the sea give landscapes inland where you find mussels, salt water marshes, etc.:
" Xanthos now says that under Artaxerxes [ 465-425 ] a great drought had occurred, so that rivers and swamps and wells dried up, but he himself was far from the sea fossilized shells and also the comb-like imprints of Cheramydeis [ shellfish species ] and a saltwater marsh among the Armenians and the Matienern and in the lower Phrygia [meaning the Lydian landscape Katakekaumene is ] seen, which is why he was convinced that the planes [ there ] were once been a sea " ( quoted from:. Lendle 1992, p 26 ).
Not only are these ( richtige! ) hypothesis, but also mentioned, to be developed from the fragments investigations of languages in the Lydian room show us Xanthos as quite self- investigative ( local) historian who built however many novelistic embellished stories in his work seems to have - for a truly informed judgment (even its eventual influence on the development of Greek historiography in total ), however, we lack the basis: too few fragments have been preserved.
Possibly formed the intake of Sardis by Cyrus II in 547 BC, the end of his presentation. The work was out of the above-mentioned historians among others an important source for Nikolaos of Damascus, which is likely to have, however, likely based on a heavily fictionalized in the Hellenistic configured version of the " Lydiaká ".