Theopompus of Chios

Theopompus (Greek: Θεόπομπος; c. 380 BC – c. 315 BC) was a Greek historian and rhetorician.

Theopompus was born on Chios. In early youth he seems to have spent some time at Athens, along with his father, who had been exiled on account of his Laconian sympathies. Here he became a pupil of Isocrates, and rapidly made great progress in rhetoric; we are told that Isocrates used to say that Ephorus required the spur but Theopompus the bit (Cicero, Brutus, 204).

At first he appears to have composed epideictic speeches, in which he attained to such proficiency that in 352‑351 he gained the prize of oratory given by Artemisia II of Caria in honour of her husband, although Isocrates was himself among the competitors. It is said to have been the advice of his teacher that finally determined his career as an historian—a career for which he was peculiarly qualified owing to his abundant patrimony and his wide knowledge of men and places. Through the influence of Alexander, he was permitted to return to Chios about 333, and figured for some time as one of the leaders of the aristocratic party in his native town. After Alexander's death he was again expelled, and took refuge with Ptolemy in Egypt, where he appears to have met with a somewhat cold reception. The date of his death is unknown.

The works of Theopompus were chiefly historical, and are much quoted by later writers. They included an Epitome of Herodotus's History (whether this work is actually his is debated), the Hellenics (Ἑλληνικά), the History of Philip, and several panegyrics and hortatory addresses, the chief of which was the Letter to Alexander.

The Hellenics treated of the history of Greece, in twelve books, from 411 (where Thucydides breaks off) to 394 BC — the date of the battle of Cnidus (cf. Diod. Sic., xiii. 42, with xiv. 84). Of this work only a few fragments were known up till 1907. The papyrus fragment of a Greek historian of the 4th century, discovered by B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, and published by them in Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. v. (1908), has been recognized by Eduard Meyer, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Georg Busolt as a portion of the Hellenics. This identification has been disputed, however, by Friedrich Blass, J. B. Bury, and others, most of whom attribute the fragment, which deals with the events of the year 395 BC and is of considerable extent, to Cratippus.

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