Berōsus
（
Βηρωσός). A Greek writer, born in Bithynia, and a priest
of Belus. He lived as early as the time of Alexander the Great, and about B.C. 280 wrote a
work, dedicated to King Antiochus Soter, on Babylonian history, in three books
(
Babylonica or
Chaldaica). The work must have been of great
value, as it was founded on ancient priestly chronicles preserved in the Temple of Belus at
Babylon. Its importance as an authority for the ancient history of Asia is fully attested by
the fragments that remain, in spite of their scanty number and disordered arrangement. They
are preserved for us chiefly in the works of Iosephus, Eusebius , and Syncellus, and have been
edited by W. Richter
(Leipzig, 1825), and by Müller in the second volume
of the
Historicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (of the “Collection
Didot”), published at Paris in 1848. The work entitled
Antiquitatum
Libri Quinque cum Commentariis Ioannis Annii (Rome, 1498), published in Latin
as a work of Berosus, was in reality written by the Dominican Giovanni Nanni of Viterbo.
