Note 1079 — Chapter XCVIII · OUTLYING HELLENIC CITIES.

Diodor. xv. 81. ἐζήλωσε μὲν τὴν Διονυσίου τοῦ Συρακοσίου διαγωγὴν, etc. Memnon, Fragm. c. 1; Isokrates, Epist. vii.

It is here that the fragments of Memnon, as abstracted by Photius (Cod. 224), begin. Photius had seen only eight books of Memnon’s History of Herakleia (Books ix.-xvi. inclusive); neither the first eight books (see the end of his Excerpta from Memnon), nor those after the sixteenth, had come under his view. This is greatly to be regretted, as we are thus shut out from the knowledge of Heraklean affairs anterior to Klearchus.

It happens, not unfrequently, with Photius, that he does not possess an entire work, but only parts of it; this is a curious fact, in reference to the libraries of the ninth century A. D.

The fragments of Memnon are collected out of Photius, together with those of Nymphis and other Herakleotic historians, and illustrated with useful notes and citations, in the edition of Orelli; as well as by K. Müller, in Didot’s Fragm. Hist. Græc. tom. iii. p. 525. Memnon carried his history down to the time of Julius Cæsar, and appears to have lived shortly after the Christian era. Nymphis (whom he probably copied) was much older; having lived seemingly from about 300-230 B. C. (see the few Fragmenta remaining from him, in the same work, iii. p. 12). The work of the Herakleotic author Herodôrus seems to have been altogether upon legendary matter (see Fragm. in the same work, ii. p. 27). He was half a century earlier than Nymphis.