Cratippus (; fl. 375 BC) 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 ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

. There are only three or four references to him in ancient literature, and his importance derives from him being identified by several scholars (e.g. Blass) with the author of the historical fragment discovered by Grenfell and Hunt. The fragment itself was published in ''Oxyrhynchus Papyri'', vol. v, and is known as the ''

Hellenica Oxyrhynchia ''Hellenica Oxyrhynchia'' is an Ancient Greek history of Greece in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BCE known only from papyrus fragments unearthed at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. The author, whose name is not recorded in the surviving fragments, is ...

''. It may be regarded as a fairly certain inference from a passage in

Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...

(', p. 345 E, ed. Bernardakis, ii. p. 455) that he was an

Athenian Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

writer, intermediate in date between

Thucydides Thucydides ( ; ; BC) was an Classical Athens, Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts Peloponnesian War, the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been d ...

and

Xenophon Xenophon of Athens (; ; 355/354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian. At the age of 30, he was elected as one of the leaders of the retreating Ancient Greek mercenaries, Greek mercenaries, the Ten Thousand, who had been ...

, and that his work continued the narrative of Thucydides, from the point at which the latter historian stopped (410 BC) down to the

Battle of Cnidus The Battle of Cnidus () was a military operation conducted in 394 BC by the Achaemenid Empire against the Spartan fleet during the Corinthian War. A fleet under the joint command of Pharnabazus and former Athenian admiral, Conon, destroyed the ...

. A recent edition of the surviving papyrus fragments is V. Bartoletti, ''Hellenica Oxyrhynchia'' (Leipzig, 1959), which includes a bibliography.

Further reading