logographers (logographoi). 1. Early Greek prose writers who were forerunners of historians proper (see HISTORIOGRAPHY I), and who lived mostly in Ionia (Greek Asia Minor) in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. None of their works has survived, but there are numerous references to them and quotations in later authors. The earliest are said to have been Cadmus and Dionysius, both of Miletus, but very little is known of either. Hecataeus, also of Miletus, was one of the most famous. Pherecȳdēs of Athens, active in the first half of the fifth century BC, wrote Histories (i.e. ‘inquiries’) in ten books, both mythical and genealogical. Charōn of Lampsacus, Xanthus of Lydia, and Hellanīcus of Lesbos were a little earlier than, or contemporary with, Herodotus. Of these, Hellanicus, who outlived Herodotus, was a prolific author, writing on mythological topics (systematic genealogies of heroic families), on regional history (e.g. Lesbiaca, Persica), and on local history and chronology; his Atthis was criticized by Thucydides for its inadequate chronology of the fifth century.
2. Name given at Athens to persons who were hired to write speeches for litigants to deliver in a court of law. Antiphon was said to have been the first of these; Lysias and Demosthenes (2) were also very successful at this practice. Since many trials were political, speech writing sometimes laid the foundation for a later political career.
