Ephorus

“ EPHORUS (c. 400–330 B.C.) , of Cyme in Aeolis, in Asia Minor, Greek historian. Together with the historian Theopompus he was a pupil of Isocrates, in whose school he attended two courses of rhetoric. But he does not seem to have made much progress in the art, and it is said to have been at the suggestion of Isocrates himself that he took up literary composition and the study of history. The fruit of his labours was his Ἱστορίαι in 29 books, the first universal history, beginning with the return of the Heraclidae to Peloponnesus, as the first well-attested historical event. ”

“ In the same manner the river Archelous in Arcadia, and Cephesus in Boeotia, which runs down from Phocaea, have cast up great quanities of earth, by both which the writer is convicted of falsity: and indeed no man is to expect any certainty from Ephorus, who may be palpably discerned not to make it his business in many things to declare the truth. The philosophers indeed in Memphis have urged strong reasons for the increase of the Nile, which are hard to be confuted ”

“ The cosmi of Crete are compared by Aristotle, Ephorus and Cicero, with the ephors of Lacedæmon.568 We are first led to suspect the correctness of this comparison by the fact, that the larger part of the extensive power of the ephoralty did not exist in the ancient constitution of Sparta, and consequently there could not have been any thing corresponding with it in the sister constitution of Crete. ”

“ And, in true Homeric fashion, he did not hesitate to cater to the reigning taste by the embellishment or even the invention of detail. He sacrificed truth to rhetorical effect. And yet he achieved an immense popularity, and established what has been called "the Vulgate of Greek history." One might be tempted to call his contemporary and rival, Theopompus of Chios, the Thucydides of this rhetorical period, as Ephorus was its Herodotus ”

“ Ephorus relates, after he had endeavored to corrupt the oracle of Apollo, and had again failed to persuade the priestesses of Dodona by means of Pherecles, that he went to Ammon, and discoursed with the guardians of the oracle there, proffering them a great deal of gold, and that they, taking this ill, sent some to Sparta to accuse Lysander; and on his acquittal the Libyans, going away, said, "You will find us, Spartans, better judges, when you come to dwell with us in Libya," there being a certain ancient oracle, that the Lacedæmonians should dwell in Libya. ”

“ From a historiography which is the slave of formal rhetoric, the modern historian has nothing to learn except how not to write history, and his regret that Ephorus and Theopompus are known principally in the citations of later compilers is tempered by the remembrance of the kind fortune which has brought Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon down to him in their entirety. ”

“ It is well known that all the Kelts are fond of disputes; and that amongst them pæderasty is not considered shameful. Ephorus extends the size of Keltica too far, including within it most of what we now designate as Iberia, as far as Gades. He states that the people are great admirers of the Greeks, and relates many particulars concerning them not applicable to their present state. ”

“ He was a contemporary of Alexander the Great.
[948] Diodôr. iv. 1. Strabo, ix. p. 422, ἐπιτιμήσας τοῖς φιλομυθοῦσιν ἐν τῇ τῆς ἱστωρίας γραφῇ.
[949] Ephorus recounted the principal adventures of Hêraklês (Fragm. 8, 9, ed. Marx.) , the tales of Kadmus and Harmonia (Fragm. 12) , the banishment of Ætôlus from Elis (Fragm. 15; Strabo, viii. p. 357) ; he drew inferences from the chronology of the Trojan and Theban wars (Fragm. 28) ; he related the coming of Dædalus to the Sikan king Kokalus, and the expedition of the Amazons (Fragm. 99-103) . ”

“ Unfortunately, Polybius has not given us his own description of this battle of Mantinea. He only says enough to make us feel how imperfectly we know its details. There is too much reason to fear that the account which we now read in Diodorus may be borrowed in large proportion from that very narrative of Ephorus here so much disparaged. ”

“ Ἑκαταῖος δὲ ὁ Μιλήσιος ἑτέρους λέγει τῶν Ἠλείων τοὺς Ἐπείους· τῷ γοῦν Ἡρακλεῖ συστρατεῦσαι τοὺς Ἐπείους καὶ συνανελεῖν αὐτῷ τόν τε Αὐγέαν καὶ τὴν Ἦλιν (Hekat. ap. Strab. viii. p. 341) .
[327] Ephorus said that Ætôlus had been expelled by Salmôneus king of the Epeians and Pisatæ (ap. Strabo. viii. p. 357) : he must have had before him a different story and different genealogy from that which is given in the text.
[328] Apollodôr. i. 7, 6. Dôrus, son of Apollo and Phthia, killed by Ætôlus, after having hospitably received him, is here mentioned. ”

“ But subsequently, Ephorus says, some controversy arising among the allies at Sparta, which made it necessary to consult the writings which Lysander had kept by him, Agesilaus came to his house, and finding the book in which the oration on the Spartan constitution was written at length, to the effect that the kingdom ought to be taken from the Eurypontidse and Agiadæ, and to be offered in common, and a choice made out of the best citizens, at first he was eager to make it public, and to show his countrymen the real character of Lysander. ”

“ Ephorus declares the superiority of Bœotia over the bordering nations not only in this respect, but also because it alone has three seas adjoining it, and a great number of harbours. At the Crisæan and Corinthian Gulfs it received the commodities of Italy, Sicily, and Africa. Towards Eubœa the sea-coast branches off on each side of the Euripus; in one direction towards Aulis and Tanagrica, in the other, to Salganeus and Anthedon; on one side there is an open sea to Egypt, and Cyprus, and the islands; on the other to Macedonia, the Propontis, and the Hellespont. ”

“ In the spring of the memorable year 409 B.C., through the exuberant wealth of Carthage, he was in a condition to leave Africa with a great fleet of sixty triremes, and fifteen hundred transports or vessels of burthen; [898] conveying an army, which, according to the comparatively low estimate of Timæus, amounted to more than one hundred thousand men; while Ephorus extended the number to two hundred thousand infantry, and four thousand cavalry, together with muniments of war and battering machines for siege. With these he steered directly for the western Cape of Sicily, Lilybæum ”

“ Spartans did in respect of the Helots, the Thessalians in the case of the Penestæ, and the Cretans with the Clarotæ. But the Cretans call those servants, who are in their houses Chrysoneti, [414:1] and those whose work lies in the fields Amphamiotæ, being natives of the country, but people who have been enslaved by the chance of war; but they also call the same people Clarotæ, because they have been distributed among their masters by lot.
And Ephorus, in the third book of his Histories, "The Cretans call their slaves Clarotæ, because lots have been drawn for them ”

“ Ephorus in Strabo (x. 4 § 21) gives a curious account of the violent abduction of beloved boys ({Greek}) by the lover ({Greek}) ; of the obligations of the ravisher ({Greek}) to the favourite ({Greek}) [FN#371] and of the “marriage-ceremonies” which lasted two months. See also Plato, Laws i. c. 8. Servius (Ad Æneid. x. 325) informs us “De Cretensibus accepimus, quod in amore puerorum intemperantes fuerunt, quod postea in Lacones et in totam Græciam translatum est.” The Cretans and afterwards their apt pupils the Chalcidians held it disreputable for a beautiful boy to lack a lover. ”

“ He succeeded Theophrastus, B.C. 288, as head of that school. He devoted himself to the study of natural science, and appears to have held a pantheistic system of philosophy. By Cudworth, Leibnitz, and others, he has been charged with atheism. The “Euremata” of Ephorus, here mentioned, was a book which treated of inventions.
1559 See end of B. iv.
1560 Of Tragilus, in Thrace, a disciple and contemporary of Isocrates. His book, here mentioned, treated on the subjects chosen by the Greek tragic writers, and the manner in which they had dealt with them. ”

“ The common narrative of Ephorus is repeated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and is evidently invented to account for the name Παρθενίαι, which Antiochus declines to explain.1359.Xen. Rep. Lac. I. 6. Plutarch Lyc. 15. Comp. Num. 4. Lac. Apophth. p. 224.1360.Hesychius in v.1361.Op. et Di. 695.1362.Leg VIII. p. 785. Aristotle indeed (Polit. VII. 16.) gives 37 years as the most fitting time for marriage in a man; which number Larcher (Chronologie d'Herodote) has no reason to suppose borrowed from the laws of Laconia. The Trœzenians were forbidden by the oracle from making early marriages, Aristot. ”

“ Firstly, black-winged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light. That of the Immortals did not exist until Eros had brought together all the ingredients of the world, and from their marriage Heaven, Ocean, Earth and the imperishable race of blessed gods sprang into being. ”

“ Injurious King, hast thou no fear of God, Nor Cadmus, sower of the Giants' Sod, Life-spring to great Echîon and to thee? TEIRESIAS Good words my son, come easily, when he That speaks is wise, and speaks but for the right. Else come they never! Swift are thine, and bright As though with thought, yet have no thought at all Lo this new God, whom thou dost flout withal, I cannot speak the greatness wherewith He In Hellas shall be great! Two spirits there be, Young Prince, that in man's world are first of worth. ”

“ Good luck attend his mission to the ships! may he reach the host of Hellas and spy it out, then turn again and reach the altars of his father's home in Ilium!
Grant him to mount the chariot drawn by Phthia's steeds, when Hector, our master, hath sacked Achæa's camp, those steeds that the sea-god gave to Peleus, son of Æacus; for he and he alone had heart enough for home and country to go and spy the naval station; his spirit I admire; how few stout hearts there be, when on the sea the sun-light dies and the city labours in the surge ”

“ Nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite's shaft shot by the hands of Love, the child of Zeus. Idly, idly by the streams of Alpheus and in the Pythian shrines of Phœbus, Hellas heaps the slaughtered steers; while Love we worship not, Love, the king of men, who holds the key to Aphrodite's sweetest bower,—worship not him who, when he comes, lays waste and marks his path to mortal hearts by wide-spread woe. ”

“ Thou daughter of Tyndarus, thou art no child of Zeus, but sprung, I trow, of many a sire, first of some evil demon, next of Envy, then of Murder and of Death, and every horror that the earth begets. That Zeus was never sire of thine I boldly do assert, bane as thou hast been to many a Hellene and barbarian too. Destruction catch thee! Those fair eyes of thine have brought a shameful ruin on the fields of glorious Troy. ”

“ In the dark he lies forsaken! All Lo, we race with death, we perish, Dionysus, here before thee! Dost thou mark us not, nor cherish, Who implore thee, and adore thee? Hither down Olympus' side, Come, O Holy One defied, Be thy golden wand uplifted o'er the tyrant in his pride! A Maiden Oh, where art thou? In thine own Nysa, thou our help alone? O'er fierce beasts in orient lands Doth thy thronging thyrsus wave, By the high Corycian Cave, Or where stern Olympus stands ”

“ And in every ambush they have set By the old Altar, close to Troy, we know He sits—a murderous reptile of a foe! [Pg 28 vv. 510-529] Rhesus.
No brave man seeks so dastardly to harm His battle-foes; he meets them arm to arm. This Greek of thine, this sitter like a thief In ambush, I will make of him my chief Care. I will take him living, drive a straight Stake through him, and so star him at the Gate To feed your wide-winged vultures. 'Tis the death Most meet for a lewd thief, who pillageth God's sanctuary, or so we hold in Thrace. Hector (making no answer) . ”

“ And he who shares with her an unending supremacy of perfection of form is not one of the gods, her equals, but a mortal lad, who was the son of a king.
As Aphrodite sported one day with Eros, the little god of love, by accident she wounded herself with one of his arrows. And straightway there came into her heart a strange longing and an ache such as the mortal victims of the bow of Eros knew well. While still the ache remained, she heard, in a forest of Cyprus, the baying of hounds and the shouts of those who urged them on in the chase. ”

“ Receive this wreath to bind thy clustering hair.
Thou hast come home, who hast run no bootless course
In athlete-race, but who hast slain thy foe
Aegisthus, murderer of thy sire and mine. 885
And thou, his battle-helper, Pylades,
A good man's nursling, from mine hand accept
A wreath; for in this conflict was thy part
As his: in my sight ever prosper ye!
Orestes.
The Gods account thou first, Electra, authors 890
Of this day's fortune: praise thereafter me,
Who am but minister of heaven and fate. ”

“ Eurypylus; and aye as he rushed on
Fell 'neath his spear a multitude untold.
As tall trees, smitten by the strength of steel
In mountain-forest, fill the dark ravines,
Heaped on the earth confusedly, so fell
The Achaeans 'neath Eurypylus' flying spears—
Till heart-uplifted met him face to face
Achilles' son. The long spears in their hands
They twain swung up, each hot to smite his foe.
But first Eurypylus cried the challenge-cry;
"Who art thou? Whence hast come to brave me here?
To Hades merciless Fate is bearing thee;
For in grim fight hath none escaped mine hands ”