Hecataeus of Abdera
HecataeusofAbderaor ofTeos(Greek:Ἑκαταῖος ὁ Ἀβδηρίτης;c.360 BC –c.290 BC[1]), was a Greekhistorianwho flourished in the 4th century BC. Though none of his works survive, his writings are attested by later authors in various fragments, in particular hisAegyptica,a work on the society and culture of the Egyptians, and hisOn the Hyperboreans.He is one of the authors (=FGrHist264) whose fragments were collected inFelix Jacoby'sFragmente der griechischen Historiker.[2]
Life
[edit]Diodorus Siculustells us that Hecataeus visitedThebesin the times ofPtolemy I Soterand composed a history of Egypt. Diodorus supplies the comment that many additional Greeks went to and wrote about Egypt in the same period.[3]TheSudagives him the nickname 'critic grammarian' and says that he lived in the time of the successors toAlexander.[4]According toDiogenes Laertius,he was a student ofPyrrho.[5]
Works
[edit]No complete works of Hecataeus have survived, and knowledge of his writing exists only in fragments located in various ancient Greek and Latin authors' works, most of which concern religion. Eighth fragments are from his book about theHyperboreans,the mythical people of the far north. Six fragments survive from hisAegyptiacaand regardEgyptianphilosophy,priests, gods, sanctuaries,Moses,wine, and which makes mention ofClearchusand thegymnosophists.[6]Hecataeus wrote the workAegyptiaca[7](c.320 – 305 BC)[8]orOn the Egyptians(the same title ofManetho's later work),[9]both suggestions are based on known titles of other ethnographic works, an account of Egypt's customs, beliefs and geography, and the single largest fragment from thislost workis held to be Diodorus' account of theRamesseum,tomb ofOsymandyas(i.47-50).[citation needed]According to Montanari, in his work, Egypt is "strongly idealised", depicted as a country "exemplary in its customs and political institutions".[10]His digression on the Jews inAegyptiacawas the first mention of them in Greek literature. It was subsequently paraphrased in Diodorus Siculus 40.3.8.
Diodorus Siculus'ethnographyof Egypt (Bibliotheca historica,Book I) represents by far the largest number of fragments. Diodorus mostly paraphrases Hecataeus, thus it is difficult to extract Hecataeus' actual writings (as inKarl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller'sFragmenta Historicorum Graecorum). Diodorus (ii.47.1-2) andApollonius of Rhodestell of another work by Hecataeus,On the Hyperboreans.[11]Clement of Alexandria(Stromata5.113) cites a work titled "OnAbrahamand the Egyptians ". According to Clement, Hecataeus was the source for verses of Sophocles that praisemonotheismand condemnidolatry.[12]The major fragment explicitly attributed to Hecataeus in Jewish and Christian literature is found inJosephus(Apion1.183-205) in which Josephus argues that learned Greeks (Apion1.175) andAristotle(Apion1.176-82) admired the Jews.[12]The work is considered spurious by some;[13]However Pucci Ben Zeev, in surveying scholarship on this matter, finds reasons to grant core elements of authenticity in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary.[14]
According to the 10th centuryByzantineencyclopedia theSuda,Hecataeus wrote a treatise onHomerandHesiod,entitledOn the Poetry of Homer and Hesiod(Περὶ τῆς ποιήσεως Ὁμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου);[15]nothing of this work survives, however, and it is mentioned by no other ancient source.[16]
References
[edit]Citations
[edit]- ^Hornblower & Spawforth (2003,p.671)
- ^Jacoby's work has been updated byBrill's New Jacoby;seeLang (2012).
- ^Diodorus Siculus,1.46.8.
- ^Klaus Meister"Hecataeus" (2) of Abdera inOxford Classical Dictionary3rd. ed.Oxford;Oxford University Press1999 p.671
- ^Diogenes Laertius (1925,9.69 (pp. 482, 482)).
- ^Stoneman, Richard.The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks,Princeton University Press, 2019, p 142
- ^Wachsmuth (1895), Trüdinger (1918), Burton (1972)
- ^Lang (2012,Biographical Essay).
- ^Jacoby (1943), Murray (1970), Fraser (1972)
- ^Montanari (2022,p. 900).
- ^Bar-Kochva, Bezalel(1997)."The Structure of an Ethnographical Work".Pseudo-Hecataeus: "On the Jews".University of California Press.ISBN9780520268845.
- ^abR. Doran,Pseudo-Hecataeus (Second Century B.C.-First Century A.D.). A New Translation and Introduction,inJames H. Charlesworth(1985),The Old Testament Pseudoepigrapha,Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc., Volume 2,ISBN0-385-09630-5(Vol. 1),ISBN0-385-18813-7(Vol. 2), p. 906
- ^OCD3p.671
- ^Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev "The Reliability of Josephus Flavius: The Case of Hecateus' and Manentho's Accounts of Jews and Judaism: Fifteen years of contemporary research (1974-1990) Journal for the Studies of Judaism 24 no2. December 1993
- ^Sudaε 359=BNJ,F 264 T1;Brill's New Pauly,s.v. Hecataeus (4).
- ^Brill's New Pauly,s.v. Hecataeus (4).
Bibliography
[edit]- Diogenes Laertius(1925),Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II: Books 6-10,translated by Hicks, R. D., Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,ISBN978-0-674-99204-7.
- Lang, Philippa (2012), "Hekataios (264)", in Worthington, Ian (ed.),Brill's New Jacoby, Part III,Leiden:Brill,doi:10.1163/1873-5363_bnj_a264.
- Montanari, Franco (2022), "VIII. Historiography",History of Ancient Greek Literature,Berlin: De Gruyter,doi:10.1515/9783110426328,ISBN9783110419924,S2CID248687280.
- Smith, William,ed. (1873),"Hecataeus (2)",Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology,London: John Murray.
- Walton, Francis R. (October 1955), "The Messenger of God in Hecataeus of Abdera",Harvard Theological Review,48(4): 255–257,doi:10.1017/S0017816000025244,S2CID163376359.
- Hornblower, Simon;Spawforth, Antony, eds. (2003),"Hecataeus (2)",Oxford Classical Dictionary(3rd rev. ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press,ISBN0-19-860641-9.
Further reading
[edit]- Murray, Oswyn (August 1970), "Hecataeus of Abdera and Pharaonic Kingship",The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology,56:141–171,doi:10.2307/3856050,JSTOR3856050.
- Dillery, John (1998), "Hecataeus of Abdera: Hyperboreans, Egypt, and the" Interpretatio Graeca "",Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte,47(3): 255–275,JSTOR4436508
External links
[edit]- Fragments of HecataeusinDie Fragmente der Vorsokratiker(in German)&(in Greek)
