Editing Cleitarchus

{{Short description|4th-century BC Greek historian}}
{{for|the Greek tyrant|Cleitarchus of Eretria}}

'''Cleitarchus''' or '''Clitarchus''' ({{langx|el|Κλείταρχος|Kleitarchos}}) was one of the [[historian]]s of [[Alexander the Great]]. Son of the historian [[Dinon of Colophon]], he spent a considerable time at the court of [[Ptolemy I Soter|Ptolemy Lagus]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} He was active in the mid to late 4th century BCE.

[[Quintilian]] (''[[Institutio Oratoria]]''. x. I. 74) credits him with more ability than trustworthiness, and [[Cicero]] (''Brutus'', II) accuses him of giving a fictitious account of the death of [[Themistocles]]. But there is no doubt that his history was very popular, and much used by [[Diodorus Siculus]], [[Quintus Curtius]], [[Junianus Justinus|Justin]] and [[Plutarch]], and the authors of the [[Alexander Romance|Alexander romance]]s. His unnatural and exaggerated style became proverbial.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

His work, the ''[[History of Alexander]]'', is almost completely lost and has survived only in some thirty fragments preserved by ancient authors, especially by [[Claudius Aelianus|Aelian]] and [[Strabo]].

A recent papyrological find from [[Oxyrhynchus]] (P.Oxy. LXXI 4808) records that he was a tutor ({{langx|el|διδάσκαλος}}) of [[Ptolemy IV Philopator]], r.221–205 BCE, and suggests that he wrote in the mid to late 3rd century, not, as was hitherto thought, in the late 4th. Luisa Prandi (2012) has recently restated the case for the "high" dating.

==References==
{{Reflist}}
* {{EB1911|wstitle=Cleitarchus|volume=6|page=481}}
* Luisa Prandi, ''Fortuna e realtà dell'opera di Clitarco'' (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1996) (Historia. Einzelschriften, 104).
* Luisa Prandi, ′New Evidence for the Dating of Cleitarchus (POxy LXXI.4808)?′, Histos 6 (2012), 15–26, [http://research.ncl.ac.uk/histos/documents/2012A02PrandiNewEvidenceforCleitarchusRevised.pdf]

==External links==
*[[Livius.org]], [https://www.livius.org/articles/person/cleitarchus/ Cleitarchus] by [[Jona Lendering]]
*[http://www.dur.ac.uk/Classics/histos/ Histos], [http://www.dur.ac.uk/Classics/histos/1997/bosworth.html In Search of Cleitarchus] by A.B. Bosworth
*[http://pothos.org Pothos.org], [https://web.archive.org/web/20110806185825/http://www.pothos.org/content/index.php?page=kleitarchos Dating Kleitarchos] by Karl Soundy

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Year of birth unknown]]
[[Category:Year of death unknown]]
[[Category:4th-century BC Greek historians]]
[[Category:Historiography of Alexander the Great]]
[[Category:Hellenistic-era historians]]
[[Category:Ptolemaic court]]


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