Acusilaus, Acusilas, Acousileos, or Akousilaos () of Argos, son of Cabas or Scabras, was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

logographer and

mythographer Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

who lived in the latter half of the 6th century BC but whose work survives only in fragments and summaries of individual points. He is one of the authors (= ''

FGrHist ''Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker'', commonly abbreviated ''FGrHist'' or ''FGrH'' (''Fragments of the Greek Historians''), is a collection by Felix Jacoby of the works of those ancient Greek historians whose works have been lost, but o ...

'' 2) whose fragments were collected in

Felix Jacoby Felix Jacoby (; 19 March 1876 – 10 November 1959) was a German classicist and philologist. He is best known among classicists for his highly important work '' Fragmente der griechischen Historiker'', a collection of text fragments of ancient ...

's ''Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker''. Acusilaus was called the son of Cabras or Scabras, and it is not known whether he was of

Peloponnesian The Peloponnese ( ), Peloponnesus ( ; , ) or Morea (; ) is a peninsula and geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridge ...

Boeotia Boeotia ( ), sometimes Latinisation of names, Latinized as Boiotia or Beotia (; modern Greek, modern: ; ancient Greek, ancient: ), is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the modern regions of Greece, region of Central Greece (adm ...

n Argos. Possibly there were two of the name. He is reckoned by some among the

Seven Sages of Greece The Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men was the title given to seven philosophers, statesmen, and law-givers of the 7th–6th centuries BCE who were renowned for their wisdom Wisdom, also known as sapience, is the ability to apply knowledge, ...

. According to the ''

Suda The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; ; ) is a large 10th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine encyclopedia of the History of the Mediterranean region, ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas () or Souidas (). It is an ...

'', Acusilaus wrote genealogies (c. 500 BC). Three books of his genealogies are quoted, which were for the most part only a translation of

Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...

into prose. Acusilaus claimed to have taken some of his information from bronze tablets discovered in his garden which were inscribed with information, a source looked upon with suspicion by some modern commentators. As with most of the other logographers, he wrote in the

Ionic dialect Ionic or Ionian Greek () was a subdialect of the Eastern or Attic–Ionic dialect group of Ancient Greek. The Ionic group traditionally comprises three dialectal varieties that were spoken in Euboea (West Ionic), the northern Cyclades (Central ...

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

is the earliest writer by whom he is mentioned. The works which bore the name of Acusilaus in a later age were spurious.''Suda'',

References

External links

''Fragments of Acusilaus''
– at demonax.info Early Greek historians Ancient Greek mythographers Ancient Argives 6th-century BC Greek writers Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown 6th-century BC Greek philosophers Presocratic philosophers 6th-century BC historians {{Greece-historian-stub