Chion
（
Χίων), the son of Matris, a noble citizen of Heracleia, on the Pontus, was a disciple of Plato.
With the aid of Leon (or Leonides), Euxenon, and other noble youths, he put to death Clearchus, the tyrant of Heracleia. (B. C. 353.) Most of the conspirators were cut down by the tyrant's body-guards upon the spot, others were afterwards taken and put to death with cruel tortures, and the city fell again beneath the worse tyranny of Satyrus, the brother of Clearchus. (Memnon, apud
Phot. Cod. 224, pp. 222, 223, ed. Bekker;
Just. 16.5.)
Works
Letters ascribed to Chion
There are extant thirteen letters which are ascribed to Chion, and which are of considerable merit; but they are undoubtedly spurious. Probably they are the composition of one of the later Platonists.
Editions
They were first printed in Greek in the Aldine collection of Greek Letters, Venet. 1499, 8vo.;
again, in Greek and Latin, in the reprint of that collection, Aurel. Allob. 1606.
The first edition in a separate form was by J. Caselius, printed by Steph. Myliander, Rostoch, 1583, 4to.;
there was also a Latin translation published in the same volume with a Latin version of the fourth book of Xenophon's Cyropaedeia, by the same editor and printer, Rostoch, 1584, 4to. A more complete edition of the Greek text, founded on a new recension of some Medicean MSS., with notes and indices, was published by J. T. Coberus, Lips. and Dresd. 1765, 8vo.
The best edition, containing all that is valuable in the preceding ones, is that of J. Conr. Orelli, in the same volume with his edition of Memnon, Lips. 1816, 8vo. It contains the Greek text, the Latin version of Caselius, the Prolegomena of A. G. Hoffmann, the Preface of Coberus, and the Notes of Coberus, Hoffmann, and Orelli.
There are several selections from the letters of Chion.
Further Information
A. G. Hoffmann,
Prolegom. ad Chionis Epist. Graec. futuram edit. conscripta ; Fabric.
Bibl. Graec. i. p. 677.
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