Baton of Sinope

Baton of Sinope was an ancient Greek historian and grammarian of the Hellenistic period.

Life

Baton was apparently active in the second half of the third century BC, as we can deduce from the fact that Eratosthenes of Cyrene polemicized against him. Polybius also polemicized against his overly dramatic description of the death of the Syracusan tyrant Hieronymus.
Another piece of chronological evidence is offered by Plutarch, who writes in his Life of Agis:
Since Aratus' memoirs were published only after Aratus' death in 213 BC, Baton's unfamiliarity with the book might indicate that he wrote sometime prior to 213 BC.

Works

Of Baton's works, only titles and fragments remain, which may indicate that in style he resembled more Phylarchus than Polybius. Athenaeus describes him as a rhetor. That Baton was cited by both Plutarch and Athenaeus demonstrates that his work continued to be read directly until at least the 2nd century AD. However, that he is not given a biographical entry in the Suda suggests that he never attained first-rate importance as a historian.
Baton's works include:On Persia or On the PersianOn the tyrants of Ephesus On Thessaly and Haemonia On the tyranny of Hieronymus On the poet Ion

At least two volumes of Chreia

Athenaeus, in his Deipnosophistae, quotes verbatim a passage from Baton's treatise on Thessaly and Haemonia in which Baton asserts that the Roman Saturnalia derive from an "entirely Greek" festival, saying that among the Thessalians it is called Peloria.