1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Phylarchus

PHYLARCHUS, a Greek historian, who flourished during the time of Aratus, the strategus of the Achaean League, in the 3rd century B.C. His birthplace is variously given as Athens, Naucratis, or Sicyon. He was probably a native of Naucratis, and subsequently migrated to Athens. He was the author of a history in 28 books, covering the period from the expedition of Pyrrhus king of Epirus to Peloponnesus (272) to the death of the Spartan king Cleomenes (220) after his defeat by Antigonus Doson. Polybius (ii. 56-63) charges him with undue partiality for Cleomenes and unfairness towards Aratus; Plutarch (Aratus, 38), who is of the same opinion, did not hesitate to use him freely in his own biographies of Agis and Cleomenes.

Fragments and life in C. W. Müller, Fragmenta historicorum graecorum, vol. i. (1841); monographs by J. F. Lucht (1836) and C. A. F. Bruckner (1839); C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte (1895).