Ephorus of Cyme

Ephorus, of Cyme, one of the most influential Greek historians of the fourth century BC, the author of a history of the cities of Greece and Asia Minor in thirty books, no longer extant; it began with the ‘return of the Heracleidae’ (i.e. the Dorian Invasion c.1100 BC) and continued to the siege of Perinthus by Philip II of Macedon in 341 BC, including myths and legends, geography and ethnography, political and military history. Ephorus consulted numerous authorities now lost to us, and his work was known to Polybius and extensively used by Strabo and Diodorus, books 11–16 of whose history are almost entirely dependent on him as well as being the main source of our knowledge of him. See also OXYRHYNCHUS HISTORIAN.