Charon of Lampsacus

Charon, one of the earlier Greek historical writers, a native of Lampsacus, supposed to have flourished between the seventy-fifth and seventyeighth Olympiads, about 464 BC. Charon continued the researches of Hecataeus into Eastern ethnography. He wrote (as was the custom of the historians of his day) separate works upon Persia, Libya, Aethiopia, etc. He also subjoined the history of his own time, and he preceded Herodotus in narrating the events of the Persian War, although Herodotus nowhere mentions him. From [p. 326] the fragments of his writings which remain, it is manifest that his relation to Herodotus was that of a dry chronicler to an historian, under whose hands everything acquires life and character. Charon wrote, besides, a chronicle of his own country, as several of the early historians did, who were thence called “Horographers” (ὧροι, corresponding to the Latin annales, ought not to be confounded with ὅροι, termini, limites). The fragments of Charon have been collected by Kreuzer, in his Historicorum Graecorum Antiquissimorum Fragmenta, p. 89 foll.; and by Müller, Frag. Histor. Graec. (Paris, 1841).