Heraclides of Pontus, a versatile philosopher whose work still remains largely unexplored, wrote several pieces on Homer including “Solutions of the Homeric problems”, to which some of the extant fragments are attributed. One of these (F. 171 Wehrli = 99 Schütrumpf) concerns the Iliad and the Odyssey being discrepant in the number of the cities on Crete: the Catalogue of Ships refers to the island as ἑκατόμπολιν (Il. 2.649) while Odysseus in his ‘Cretan Lies’ states that people dwell ninety great cities on Crete (Od. 19.174). To explain this inconsistency, Heraclides tells a dramatic story about Idomeneus which he probably made up himself, being an eminent author of dialogues and even tragedies (provided that the relevant testimonies are reliable) with an interest in mythology. His version of Idomeneus’ homecoming was not supported by contemporary historians, and, although later picked up by some poets and scholars, did not end up as a part of the commonplace Idomeneus tradition as we know it today
Heraclides of Pontus (active ca 360–310 BC) is one of the sources used in Ps.-Plutarch’s De musica. In his turn, the Pontic philosopher is known to have quoted a list of ancient poets and musicians and their achievements from an epigraphical document preserved in Sicyon. Incising such a work in stone would be natural as a dedication to some divinity in a sanctuary, where it would promote the fame of the historian who composed it. The system of dating used in the Sicyonian chronicle was based on the records of Hera’s priestesses held in Argos. As far as we know, this approach was first applied by Hellanicus of Mytilene (ca 480–395 BC). If the unknown author of the chronicle borrowed his method of dating from Hellanicus, this implies that the document was created in the late fifth or early fourth century BC. Nevertheless, for Heraclides this inscription was, on the one hand, anonymous, and on the other, authoritative. Both these peculiarities lead us to assume that he believed the Sicyonian chronicle to be an archaic document. Perhaps the author forged it to pass for an ancient inscription, in order to quote from, and thus give weight to his arguments in discussions on music.
This article examines the testimonia concerning Aeschylus’ purported brothers — Cynegirus and Ameinias — both of whom are said to have distinguished themselves during the Greco-Persian Wars. Cynegirus, a strategos, met a heroic death at the Battle of Marathon, while Ameinias earned renown for his bravery at Salamis. Although modern scholarship widely accepts Cynegirus as Aeschylus’ brother, the earliest extant testimony of their kinship derives from Heraclides of Pontus, later reiterated by an anonymous scholiast on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The alleged kinship between Aeschylus and Ameinias, however, remains a subject of debate. This study aligns with the view that their association may stem from later conflation or errors within the ancient historiographical tradition. Regarding Aeschylus and Cynegirus, while Heraclides provides the primary testimony and the subsequent tradition is based on much later sources, their alleged fraternal relationship must be treated with due historiographical caution