Studies on Greek Sources for Ancient Thrace

V. Genealogists and mythographers of the 5th-4th centuries BC.

Abstract

The study includes ten genealogists and mythographers from the 5th and 4th centuries BC, whose fragments contain information about Thrace and the Thracians. These authors are Hecataeus of Miletus, who is represented by an excerpt from his ,,Genealogies" (the other fragments are discussed in Fol. Studies I), Accusilaus of Argos, Pherecydes of Athens, Helanicus of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, Harn of Lampsacus, Damastes of Sigeion, Simonides of Keos, Andron of Halicarnassus, Asclepiades of Thragylus and Bion of Proconnesus. The exposition of the texts is based on Jacobi's edition, with the exception of
the three fragments from Charon, which is not placed by him in the composition of the genealogists and mythographers of the 5th-4th centuries BC(?). The fragments of Charon are
extracted by Plutarch and by Athenaeus.

Twenty of the thirty-three fragments are from Helanicus. His texts form a relatively compact group of data that is being introduced into historiography for the first time; previous references to Helannicus are mostly in the linguistic literature. This general observation remains valid for other authors.