HISTORIAN ARISTODEMOS AND BYZANTINE COPYISTS (Historyk Aristodemos i bizantynscy kopisci)

The article is devoted to the puzzling historian Aristodemos (FGrHist 104), whowrote a complete book on common history at a time which is difficult to define. Two separate summaries have been preserved from it. The former one from Codex Parisinus 607, published in the 19th century, includes a description of events from the battle at Salamina until the outbreak of Peloponnesian war (480-431 B.C.). The latter one which comes from Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2469, published in 1962, includes a fragment devoted to events preceding the battle of Plataea in 479 B.C. The article is an attempt to define the relations between the two extracts as well as their relation to the lost original text by Aristodemos. Moreover, it indicates that the extract from Codex Parisinus, mixed with fragments of The Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratos and medical recipes is probably a copyist's exercise, practicing his writing technique. As the initial analysis of the preserved fragments of Aristodemos's writings shows, he was not only a historian, but also an erudite, aspiring to complete the reports of Herodotus, Thucydides and other classic historiographers, living probably in Hellenist times (3-1st century B.C.).