Acusilaus, Acusilas, or Akousilaos ( grc-gre, Ἀκουσίλαος) of

Argos Argos most often refers to: * Argos, Peloponnese, a city in Argolis, Greece ** Ancient Argos, the ancient city * Argos (retailer), a catalogue retailer operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland Argos or ARGOS may also refer to: Businesses ...

, son of Cabas or Scabras, was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

logographer and

mythographer Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrati ...

who lived in the latter half of the 6th century BC but whose work survives only in fragments and summaries of individual points. He is one of the authors (= ''

FGrHist ''Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker'', commonly abbreviated ''FGrHist'' or ''FGrH'' (''Fragments of the Greek Historians''), is a collection by Felix Jacoby of the works of those ancient Greek historians whose works have been lost, but of ...

'' 2) whose fragments were collected in Felix Jacoby's ''Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker''. Acusilaus was called the son of Cabras or Scabras, and it is not known whether he was of

Peloponnesian The Peloponnese (), Peloponnesus (; el, Πελοπόννησος, Pelopónnēsos,(), or Morea is a peninsula and geographic region in southern Greece. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridge which ...

Boeotia Boeotia ( ), sometimes Latinized as Boiotia or Beotia ( el, Βοιωτία; modern: ; ancient: ), formerly known as Cadmeis, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, and its ...

n Argos. Possibly there were two of the name. He is reckoned by some among the

Seven Sages of Greece The Seven Sages (of Greece) or Seven Wise Men (Greek: ''hoi hepta sophoi'') was the title given by classical Greek tradition to seven philosophers, statesmen, and law-givers of the 7–6th century BC who were renowned for their wisdom. The ...

. According to the '' Suda'', Acusilaus wrote genealogies (c. 500 BC). Three books of his genealogies are quoted, which were for the most part only a translation of

Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet ...

into prose. Acusilaus claimed to have taken some of his information from bronze tablets discovered in his garden which were inscribed with information, a source looked upon with suspicion by some modern commentators. As with most of the other logographers, he wrote in the

Ionic dialect Ionic Greek ( grc, Ἑλληνικὴ Ἰωνική, Hellēnikē Iōnikē) was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic or Eastern dialect group of Ancient Greek. History The Ionic dialect appears to have originally spread from the Greek mainland acr ...

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

is the earliest writer by whom he is mentioned. The works which bore the name of Acusilaus in a later age were spurious.''Suda'',

References

External links

''Fragments of Acusilaus''
– at demonax.info Early Greek historians Ancient Greek mythographers Ancient Argives 6th-century BC writers 6th-century BC Greek people Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown {{Greece-historian-stub