Ephorus

For other people named Ephorus, seeEphorus (disambiguation).

Ephorus
Born	c.400 BC Cyme,Achaemenid Empire
Died	330 BC (agedc.70)
Children	1

Ephorus of Cyme(/ˈɛfərəs/;Greek:Ἔφορος ὁ Κυμαῖος,Ephoros ho Kymaios;c. 400 BC– 330 BC) was anancient Greekhistorianknown for hisuniversal history.

Biography

Information on his biography is limited. He was born inCyme,Aeolia,and together with the historianTheopompuswas a pupil ofIsocratesinrhetoric.He does not seem to have made much progress as a speaker, and at the suggestion of Isocrates himself he took up literary composition and the study ofhistory.According toPlutarch,Ephorus declinedAlexander the Great's offer to join him on hisPersian campaignas the officialhistoriographer.His son Demophilus followed in his footsteps as a historian.

Main works

Ephorus'magnum opuswas a set of 29 books recounting auniversal history.The whole work, edited by his son Demophilus—who added a 30th book—contained a summary description of theSacred Wars,along with other narratives from the days of theHeraclidsup until the taking ofPerinthusin 340 BC byPhilip of Macedon,covering a time span of more than seven hundred years.According toPolybius,Ephorus was the first historian to ever author a universal history.For each of the 29 separate books, Ephorus wrote aprooimion.The work was probably simply namedHistoriai,and followed a thematic, rather than a strictly chronological order in its narrative. These writings are generally believed to be the main or sole source forDiodorus Siculus' account of the history of Greece between 480 and 340 BC, which is one of only two continuous narratives of this period that survive.

It is clear that Ephorus made critical use of the best authorities. His history was highly praised and read in antiquity, and later ancient historians freely drew upon his work. Large parts of the history of Diodorus Siculus may have originated in Ephorus's history.Straboattached much importance to Euphorus's geographical investigations,and praised him for being the first to separate the historical from the simply geographical element. In hisGeographica,Strabo quoted Ephorus at length.Polybius,while crediting him with a knowledge of the conditions of naval warfare, ridiculed his description of the 362 BCEBattle of Mantineaas showing ignorance of the nature of land operations.

Additional works

Besides the universal history, Ephorus wrote anEpichorios logos(Ἐπιχώριος λόγος), a patriotic essay in which he praised the traditions ofCyme.He also wrotePeri heurematon(Περὶ εὑρημάτων), a book about inventions, andPeri lexeos(Περὶ λέξεως), "On Style".

Music was invented to deceive and delude mankind.
— Ephorus, inHistory,preface.

Other works attributed to him were:

• A Treatise on Discoveries
• Respecting Good and Evil Things
• The Remarkable Recipes
• On Remarkable Things in Various Countries(it is doubtful whether these were separate works, or just extracts from the Histories)
• A Treatise on my Country,on the history and antiquities of Cyme
• The Book of Goodness,his manual on achieving happiness and pleasing others.
• An Essay on Style,his only rhetorical work, which is occasionally mentioned by the rhetoricianTheon (rhetorician).

Despite having written all these works, nothing but isolated fragments survived from theancient world.His entire work has been lost.

Critiques

According to theEncyclopædia BritannicaEleventh Edition,his surviving writings all show a certain lack of passion, in spite of his keen interest in matters of style, and of political partisanship, except for his enthusiasm for Cyme. According to ancient writers, he was respected as an able and thorough, though somewhat dull historiographer.He was commended for drawing (though not always) a sharp line of demarcation between the mythical and historical;he even recognized that a profusion of detail, though lending corroborative force to accounts of recent events, is ground for suspicion, in reports of far-distant history. His style was high-flown and artificial, as was natural considering his early training, and he frequently sacrificed truth to rhetoric effect. However, according toDionysius of Halicarnassus,he and Theopompus were the only historical writers whose language was accurate and complete.

Ephorus and astronomy

Ephorus reported that acometsplit apart as far back as thewinter of 372–373 BC.

The Roman philosopherSeneca the Younger,whoseNaturales quaestionesis the ancient source for Ephorus's comet report, is severe in his judgment (7.16):

It requires no great effort to strip Ephorus of his authority; he is a mere chronicler.... Ephorus is not a person of any scrupulous honour; he is often duped, often he tries to dupe. For example, he asserts that the great comet which, by its rising, sankHeliceandBuris,which was carefully watched by the eyes of the whole world since it drew issues of great moment in its train, split up into two stars; but nobody besides him has recorded it. Who, I wonder, could observe the moment at which the comet broke up and was resolved into two parts? And if there is any one who saw it split up into two, how is it that no one saw it first formed out of the two? And why did Ephorus not add the names of the two stars into which it was broken up, since they must have been some of the five planets?

It is worth noting the ancient Greeks believed that comets were the source of celestial objects like stars.

Bibliography

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Ephorus".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 678.