Heraclides Lembus

• Name — Heraclides Lembus • Native Name — Ἡρακλείδης Λέμβος • Born — c. 2nd century BC • Birthplace — Callatis or Alexandria • Occupation — Historian, statesman, civil servant • Notable Works — Successions of the Philosophers • Era — Hellenistic philosophy • Region — Ancient Greek philosophy • Language — Ancient Greek • Main Interests — Doxography

Heraclides was an Egyptian civil servant who lived during the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor (2nd century BC). The Suda mentions a Heraclides of Oxyrhynchus, but according to Diogenes Laërtius he originated from Callatis or Alexandria.He was the son of a man named Sarapion ('Lembus' is a nickname meaning 'cockboat'). He is said to have negotiated the treaty that ended Antiochus IV's invasion of Egypt in 169 BC. That Agatharchides of Cnidus became known by being his secretary is further evidence to his importance in the Ptolemaic administration.

His works (mainly excerpts and epitomes from earlier writers) survive only in fragments. • Histories (Ἱστορίαι) in at least 37 books. The extant fragments discuss the following topics: a frog plague in Paeonia and Dardania; Demetrius Poliorcetes and his father Antigonus Monophthalmus in love with the courtesan Demo; philological eccentricities concerning Alexarchus, the brother of Cassander inventing words. Traditionally, two further fragments are attributed to the Histories on the foundation of Rome by Greeks returning from the Trojan war and on the Spartan king Archidamus II; however, these might actually belong to Heraclides' epitome of Aristotle's Constitutions. An epitome was, presumably, made by Hero of Athens, a rhetor tentatively dated to the first century AD. • Lembeutikos Logos (Λεμβευτικὸς λόγος), about which nothing is known, apart from an obscure connection to his nickname. • an epitome of Sotion's Successions of Philosophers. • an epitome of Satyrus' Lives. • an epitome of Hermippus's On Lawgivers, On the Seven Sages and On Pythagoras. • excerpts from an epitome of Aristotle's Constitutions (Πολιτεῖαι) and Barbarian Customs (Νόμιμα βαρβαρικά). The fragments of these largely lost works (only the Constitution of the Athenians (Aristotle) extant) were published in 1847 as Heraclidis politiarum quae extant, by F. G. Schneidewin. • a biography of Archimedes (doubtful), mentioned by Eutocius.