Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/285

263 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 263 many historical events in this work*, although he did not write a con- nected history of the period comprised in it. Hecatseus wrote in the pure Ionic dialect ; his style had great simplicity, and was sometimes animated, from the vividness of his descriptions f. § 5. Pherecydes also wrote on genealogies and mythical history, but did not extend his labours to geography and ethnography. He was born at Leros, a small island near Miletus, and afterwards went to Athens; whence he is sometimes called a Lerian, sometimes an Athe- nian. He flourished about the time of the Persian war. His writings comprehended a great portion of the mythical traditions ; and, in parti- cular, he gave a copious account, in a separate work, of the ancient times of Athens. He was much consulted by the later mythographers, and his numerous fragments must still serve as the basis of many mythological inquiries. By following a genealogical line he was led from Philseus, the son of Ajax, down to Miltiades, the founder of the sovereignty in the Chersonesus ; he thus found an opportunity of de- scribing the campaign of Darius against the Scythians; concerning which we have a valuable fragment of his history. § 6. Charon, a native of Lampsacus, a Milesian colony, also belongs to this generation §, although he mentioned some events which fell in the beginning of the reign of Artaxerxes, Olymp. 78. 4. B.C. 465 ||. Cha- ron continued the researches of Hecatseus into eastern ethnography. He wrote (as was the custom of these ancient historians) separate works upon Persia, Libya, Ethiopia, &c. He also subjoined the his- tory of his own time, and he preceded Herodotus in narrating the events of the Persian war, although Herodotus nowhere mentions him. From the fragments of his writings which remain, it is manifest that his relation to Herodotus was that of a dry chronicler to a histo- rian, under whose hands everything acquires life and character ^[. Charon wrote besides a chronicle ** of his own country, as several of the early historians did, who were thence called horoyraphers. Probably f As in the fragment from Longinus de Sublim. 27. Creuzer. Hist. Ant. fr. p. 54. X Sturz Pherecydis fragments, ed. altera. Lips. 1824. Whether the ten books cited by the ancients were published by Pherecydes himself in this order, or whether they were not separate short treatises of Pherecydes which had been collected by later editors and arranged as parts of one work, seems doubtful and difficult of in- vestigation. § Dionysius Halic. de Thucyd. jud. 5. p. 818. Reiske places Charon with Acu- silaus, Hecatseus, and others, among the early ; Hellanicus, Xanthus, and others, among the more recent predecessors of Thueydides. II Plutarch. The mist. 27. ^1 Charon's fragments are collected in Creuzer, ibid. p. S9, sq. termini, /unites. See Schweighseuser ad Athen. XL p. 475 B. XII. 520 D.
 * As that in Herod. VI. 137.
 * r ileei. corresponding to the Latin annates- ought not to be confounded with 'ogoi,