Heraclides Lembus

Heraclides Lembus was an Ancient Greek statesman, historian and philosophical writer whose works only survive in fragments quoted in later authors.

Life

Heraclides was an Egyptian civil servant who lived during the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor. The Suda mentions a Heraclides of Oxyrhynchus, but according to Diogenes Laërtius he originated from Callatis or Alexandria.He was the son of a man named Sarapion. He is said to have negotiated the treaty that ended Antiochus IV's invasion of Egypt in 169 BC. That Agatharchides of Cnidus became known by being his secretary is further evidence to his importance in the Ptolemaic administration.

Works

His works survive only in fragments.Histories in at least 37 books. The extant fragments discuss the following topics: a frog plague in Paeonia and Dardania; Demetrius Poliorcetes and his father Antigonus Monophthalmus in love with the courtesan Demo; philological eccentricities concerning Alexarchus, the brother of Cassander inventing words. Traditionally, two further fragments are attributed to the Histories on the foundation of Rome by Greeks returning from the Trojan war and on the Spartan king Archidamus II; however, these might actually belong to Heraclides' epitome of Aristotle's Constitutions. An epitome was, presumably, made by Hero of Athens, a rhetor tentatively dated to the first century AD.Lembeutikos Logos, about which nothing is known, apart from an obscure connection to his nickname.

an epitome of Sotion's Successions of Philosophers.
an epitome of Satyrus' Lives.
an epitome of Hermippus's On Lawgivers, On the Seven Sages and On Pythagoras.
excerpts from an epitome of Aristotle's Constitutions and Barbarian Customs. The fragments of these largely lost works were published in 1847 as Heraclidis politiarum quae extant, by F. G. Schneidewin.
a biography of Archimedes, mentioned by Eutocius.

Criticism

As a historian Heraclides has been discounted, as the selection criteria in his epitome of Aristotle's Constitutions show a certain inclination towards the weird and sensational, e.g.:
His prime merit lies in the faithful transmission of otherwise lost sources. The Histories were, presumably, criticised by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in The Arrangement of Words with regard to his Asiatic style.