Herodo'rus
（
*(Hro/dwros).
1. A native of Heracleia, in Pontus (hence called sometimes
ὁ Ποντικός, sometimes
ὁ Ἡρακλεώτης), who appears to have lived about the time of Hecataeus of Miletus and Pherecydes, in the latter part of the sixth centnry B. C. His son Bryson, the sophist. lived before the time of Plato. (Arist.
Hist. Anim. 6.6, 9.12.)
Works
Herodorus was the author of a work on the mythology and worship of Heracles, which comprised at the same time a variety of historical and geographical notices.
It must have been a work of considerable extent. Athenaeus (ix. p. 410f.) quotes from the 17th book of it.
It is frequently referred to in the scholia attached to the works of Pindar and Apollonius Rhodius and by Aristotle, athenaeus, Apollodorus, Plutarch, and others.
The scholiast on Apollonius also refers to a work by Herodorus on the Macrones, a nation of Pontus, to a work on Heraclea, and to one on the Argonauts. (Schol.
ad Apoll. 1.1024, 1.71, 773, &c.) Quotations are also found from the
Οἰδιποῦς, Πελοπεία, and
Ὀλυμπία of Herodorus.
But it is not clear whether these were all separate works or only sections of the work on Hercules.
But the
Ἀργοναυτικά, which is frequently quoted, was doubtless a separate work, as also was probably the work on Heracleia; unless in the passage where it is referred to (
Schol. Apoll. 2.815), we should read
Περὶ Ἡρακλέονς, instead of
Περὶ Ἡρακλέας.
A mistake made by the scholiasts on Apollonius (
2.1211), who ascribe to Herodorus two hexameter lines from one of the Homeric hymns (
Hymn. Hom. xxxiv.) has led to the supposition that the Argonautics of Herodorus was a poem.
The character of the quotations from it points to a different conclusion. Westermann has collected the passages in which the writings of Herodorus are quoted. (Vossius,
De Hist. Gr. p. 451, ed. Westermann.)
