Agatharchides

, a voluminous geographer and historian, was a native of Gnidus; and in his youth reader to the historian Heraclides, and afterwards tutor to Ptolomy Alexander, who reigned in Egypt about the year 104 B. C. according to Dodwell. Agatharchides was attached to the doctrine of the Peripatetics. Among the numerous works he wrote on history and geography, the ancients mention the following: 1. “On the Red Sea,” in five books, which is a kind of periplus of the gulph of Arabia; with many curious particulars of the Sabeans, and other nations of Arabia Felix. The fragments of this work preserved by Diodorus and Photius, were printed by Henry Stephens, 1557, 8vo; and collected more fully by Hudson in his “Geographi minores,” vol. I. M. Gosselin also has | dommerited on them in his “Recherches sur la Geographic.” 2. “On Asia,” a work of the historical kind, in ten books; quoted by Diodorus, Phlegon, Lucian, Athenaeus, Phothis, and Pliny. 3. “Of Europe;” a large work, of which Athenasus quotes the 28th, 34th, and 38th books. As the name of Agatharchides occurs in many authors of reputation, it is to be regretted that so many of his works have perished. It is uncertain whether he was the same with Agatharchides of Samos, who wrote on the Phrygian history, and on that of Persia, quoted by Diodorus, Josephus, and Photius. ¹