CALLISTHENES (c. 360328 B.C.)

This article appears in Volume V05, Page 57 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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CALLISTHENES (c. 360328 B.C.) , of Olynthus, Greek historian, a relative and pupil of

Aristotle

ARISTOTLE
ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.)

, through whose recommendation he was appointed to attend Alexander the

Great

GREAT

in his Asiatic expedition. He censured Alexander's adoption of oriental customs, inveighing especially against the servile ceremony of adoration. Having thereby greatly offended the king, he was accused of being privy to a treasonable conspiracy and thrown into prison, where he died from torture or disease. His melancholyend was commemorated in a

special

SPECIAL

treatise (KaXAuQ6'kans , crepe rivOovs) by his friend Theophrastus, whose acquaintance he made during a visit to Athens. Callisthenes wrote an account of Alexander's expedition, a history of

Greece

GREECE

from the peace of Antalcidas (387) to the Phocian war (357), a history of the Phocian war and other works, all of which have perished. The romantic life of Alexander, the basis of all the Alexander legends of the middle ages, originated during the time of the Ptolemies, but in its present form belongs to the 3rd century A.D. Its author is usually known as pseudo-Callisthenes, although in the Latin

translation

TRANSLATION

Julius

JULIUS

Valerius Alexander Polemius (beginning of the 4th century) it is ascribed to a certain Aesopus;

Aristotle

ARISTOTLE
ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.)

, Antisthenes, Onesicritus and Arrian have also been credited with the authorship. There are also Syrian, Armenian and Slavonic versions, in addition to four Greek versions (two in

prose

PROSE

and two in verse) in the middle ages (see Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur, 1897, p. 849). Valerius's

translation

TRANSLATION

was completely superseded by that of Leo, arch-priest of Naples in the loth century, the so-called Historia de Preliis.
See Scriptores serum Alexandri Magni (by C. W. Muller, in the Didot edition of Arrian, 1846), containing the genuine fragments and the text of the pseudo-Callisthenes, with notes and introduction; A. Westerrnann, De Callisthene Olynthio et Pseudo-Callisthene Commentatio (18381842); J. Zacher, Pseudo-Callisthenes (1867); W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898), pp. 363, $19 article by

Edward

EDWARD

Meyer in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie; A. Ausfeld, Zur Kritik des griechischen Alexanderromans (Bruchsal, 1894);

Plutarch

PLUTARCH
PLUTARCH (Gr. llXoi rapxos) (c. A.D. 46–120)

, Alexander, 52-55; Arrian, Anab. iv. lo-14; Diog. Laertius v. r; Quintus Curtius viii. 5-8; Suidas s.v. See also ALEXANDER THE

GREAT

GREAT

(ad fin.). For the Latin translations see Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans.), 399; and M. Schanz, Geschichte der romischen Litteratur, iv. I., p. 43.

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