Sosicrates of Rhodes (; ) 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 ...

historical History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...

writer. He was born on the

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

Rhodes Rhodes (; ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separ ...

and is noted, chiefly, for his frequent mention by

Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; , ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving book ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek ph ...

in his '' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'', referencing Sosicrates as the sole authority behind such facts as

Aristippus Aristippus of Cyrene (; ; c. 435 – c. 356 BCE) was a hedonistic Greek philosopher and the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy. He was a pupil of Socrates, but adopted a different philosophical outlook, teaching that the goal of life ...

having written nothing. It is inferred that Sosicrates flourished after

Hermippus Hermippus (; fl. 5th century BC) was the one-eyed Athenian writer of the Old Comedy, who flourished during the Peloponnesian War. Life He was the son of Lysis, and the brother of the comic poet Myrtilus. He was younger than Telecleides and old ...

and before

Apollodorus of Athens Apollodorus of Athens (, ''Apollodoros ho Athenaios''; c. 180 BC – after 120 BC), son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar, historian, and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchu ...

, and, therefore, sometime between 200 and 128 BC. Sosicrates is claimed to have penned A '' Succession of Philosophers'', quoted by both

Athenaeus Athenaeus of Naucratis (, or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; ) was an ancient Greek rhetorician and Grammarian (Greco-Roman), grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century ...

and Diogenes Laërtius. Sosicrates also composed a work on the history of

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

,Strabo, x.; Athenaeus, vi. 261 though neither of the aforementioned works has survived.

Notes

Sources

* 2nd-century BC Rhodians 2nd-century BC Greek historians Ancient Greek biographers Ancient Rhodian historians Ancient Greek historians known only from secondary sources {{AncientGreece-bio-stub