In paraphrasing Ephorus, Diodorus supplies crucial information, esp. Water (classical element) Ways and Means (Xenophon) Wedding of Ceyx. The History was widely quoted in antiquity and was generally commended for its accuracy (except in military descriptions). interesting to Ephorus were migrations, the founding of cities, and family histories (see genealogy). The fourth-century historian Ephorus of Cyme, in an indirect fragment preserved in Strabo's Geography ( BNJ 70 F 149), describes male age-transition rituals of Crete that include a pederastic mock-abduction. Individual books were apparently devoted to a particular area (southern and central Greece, Macedonia, Sicily, Persia), but within each book events were sometimes retold episodically, sometimes synchronically.Įphorus drew on diverse sources, at times using good judgement (he preferred the Oxyrhynchus historian to Xenophon ), at other times making unfortunate choices (he coloured Thucydides' (2) account with material from 4th‐cent. Ephorus provided each book with a separate proem. to Polybius, he was the first universal historian, combining a focus on Greek history with events in the barbarian east. His work was grand in scope and far longer than 5th‐cent. The 30‐book History avoided the mythological period, beginning with the Return of the Heraclids and reaching the siege of Perinthus, in 340. ISBN: 9781109428834 Access Restriction: Restricted for use by site license.A historian whose lost work is important because Diodorus (2) Siculus followed it extensively. Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Pennsylvania, 2009. Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-10, Section: A, page: 3995. This viewpoint led Ephorus to condemn the Spartan offenses committed against his homeland during his lifetime and demanded that his narrative reject the pro-Lacedaemonian account of Xenophon's Hellenica. Rather, his text was influenced by the author's sense of local perspective focused on the Aeolid and his native Cyme. As such, Ephorus did not disseminate a pro-Athenian view of history out of deference to his master or employ praise and blame for the principal purpose of moralizing. We will find, however, that the tradition of his Isocratean education is spurious Ephorus neither accepted a historical model from Isocrates nor endorsed his political or cultural positions. This and many other authorial decisions have been credited to his supposed apprenticeship to Isocrates and his promulgation of "rhetorical history." This historiographical technique would have focused on style and moralization as opposed to historical accuracy and original analysis. In fact, the Histories contradict the Xenophonic narrative on numerous occasions. Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chios), especially Theopompus. An investigation into Ephorus' use of sources will find that he employed virtually every available text known to us with the exception of Xenophon's Hellenica. When the extant fragments are considered as an organic whole and compared with the full. In addition, this survey will determine that the Greek history sections of books eleven through fifteen of Diodorus' Bibliotheca preserve the course of events from the Histories. Since his work exists in fragmentary form, we must treat its individual remains on a case-by-case basis. In the last several generations, there has been a tremendous reluctance to question some of our most basic assumptions about Ephorus, particularly his motives for writing history as well as his personal perspectives on culture and politics. Remarkably, Barber's 1935 work is the last monograph devoted entirely to Ephorus as such, a new treatment is needed. Despite its considerable historiographical importance, the text has only survived in fragments cited by other authors. Summary: Ephorus of Cyme, a Greek historian of the fourth century BC, is best known for his thirty-book Histories, which treated the Hellenic world from the end of the mythological age down to his own day. System Details: Mode of access: World Wide Web.