Concept
Diodorus Siculus
Overview
Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily (Ancient Greek: Διόδωρος, romanized: Diódōros; fl. 1st century BC) was an ancient Greek historian from Sicily. He is known for writing the monumental universal history Bibliotheca historica, in forty books, fifteen of which survive intact, between 60 and 30 BC.
The history is arranged in three parts. The first covers mythic history up to the destruction of Troy, arranged geographically, describing regions around the world from Egypt, India and Arabia to Europe. The second covers the time from the Trojan War to the death of Alexander the Great. The third covers the period to about 60 BC. Bibliotheca, meaning 'library', acknowledges that he was drawing on the work of many other authors.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Diodorus Siculus is discussed.
Ptolemy, says Theocritus, commanded 33,339 cities. I suppose the singularity of the number was the reason of assigning it. Diodorus Siculus assigns three millions of inhabitants to Egypt, a very small number; but then he makes the number of their cities amount to 18,000—an evident contradiction. He says the people were formerly seven millions. Thus remote times are always most envied and admired.
David Hume, Hume's Political Discourses
names the idea; opens on it
To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honoured temple in his time; that is, some half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some one…
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, and
names the idea
iii. And when Alexander married in one day 80 of his captains to Persian women, his intention plainly was to ally the Macedonians with the most eminent Persian families. Id. lib. vii. Diodorus Siculus says, they were of the most noble birth in Persia, lib. xvii. The government of Persia was despotic, and conducted in many respects after the Eastern manner, but was not carried so far as to extirpate all nobility, and…
David Hume, Essays
names the idea
And before the days of _Diodorus Siculus_ they had raised their Antiquities so much higher, as to place six, eight, or ten new Reigns of Kings between those Kings, whom they had represented to _Herodotus_ to succeed one another immediately. In the Kingdom of _Sicyon_, Chronologers have split _Apis Epaphus_ or _Epopeus_ into two Kings, whom they call _Apis_ and _Epopeus_, and between them have inserted eleven or…
Isaac Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended
when we ask, “What is the use of the tracts of mountains and valleys, and the very wide expanse of seas in the moon?” and “May not some creature less noble than man be imagined such as might inhabit those tracts?” [19] Diodorus Siculus, ii. 47.
Galileo Galilei, The sidereal messenger of Galileo Galilei
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Diodorus Siculus
Related ideas
- Greece
- Historian
- Abraham
- India
- Julius Caesar
- Jerome
- Mesopotamia
- North Africa
- Classical antiquity
- Sicily
- Troy
- Photios I of Constantinople
- Ancient Greece
- English language
- Ancient Egypt
- Posidonius
- Hecataeus of Abdera
Place in the tradition
Part of Atheism.