a celebrated Greek historian of Cnæ in Æolis, born about the year 362 b.c., a year memorable for the battle of Mantinea. His father's name was Demophilus, or Antiochus; and being contemporary of Eudoxus and Theopompus, he studied along with them under the philosopher Isocrates. Of his personal history we are entirely ignorant; and if it were not for the high character he enjoyed among the ancients as an orator and historian, his name would be unworthy of notice. It was Isocrates who directed his attention more particularly to that branch of literature in which he eventually became so eminent; and, to mark the distinctive peculiarities in the Ephorus mind and character of his two pupils Theopompus and Ephorus, the philosopher is reported to have said, "se calcaribus in Ephoro, contra autem in Theopompo frenis uti solere."

The great work of Ephorus was a history of the wars between the Greeks and Persians, in which, like Herodotus, he introduced, in the form of episodes, the description of foreign and barbarous nations, yet only in as far as they were connected with and served to illustrate Grecian history. It must be allowed, however, that the Greeks considered the work of Ephorus as an universal history; but then this may be explained from the extreme vanity of that nation, in believing that their history was the central point on which that of the whole world turned. Meier Marx, who has published a collection of the fragments of this work, has endeavoured to give us the contents of the thirty books of which it was composed.

The first book contained an account of the return of the Heraclidae into the Peloponnesus, and the change of affairs consequent upon that event; and the second was occupied with the state of the rest of Greece; and the third narrated the departure of the Greek colonies to Asia. In these three books he thus brought the history of Greece and Asia down to that period when they began to assume a peaceful aspect, probably a few years before the commencement of the Median war. After this introduction he proceeded to describe separately each country which subsequently became the scene of important transactions; in the fourth book Europe, in the fifth Asia and Africa, and in the sixth he probably gave an account of the nation of the Pelasgi. The seventh book contained the most ancient traditionary notices of Sicily, and probably all he could collect respecting the original inhabitants of Italy and the adjacent islands. The eighth book narrated the various changes of fortune to which those nations had been subject, who in succession held the supreme command in Asia, namely, the Assyrians, Lydians, and Persians. The fragments which remain refer principally to the affairs of Croesus. In the ninth book we had the origin, changes, and migrations of the Amazons, Scythians, and other nations who inhabited the coasts of the Pontus and those northern countries, whence, through Thrace and Thessaly, he returned to Greece and its affairs. Then it was that Ephorus reached the period when, like every Greek historian, he imagined that the transactions of the whole world became centred in the causes and events of the Persian war; and then also he began to treat his subject with more copiousness, for we find that in his tenth book he had already brought down his history to the times of Miltiades, about 490 B.C. In his eighteenth book he had reached Dercyllidas, 399 B.C. In his twenty-fifth he had arrived at the battle of Mantinea, 362 B.C. We thus see that he must have employed seven or eight books in describing thirty-seven years, whilst his last four or five books could contain the history of only twenty-two years. The part of the thirtieth book which gave an account of the sacred war was composed, not by Ephorus himself, but by his son Demophilus; at the conclusion of the war Ephorus took up the thread of the history, and continued it to the siege of Perinthus, 340 B.C. According to Diodorus Siculus, the whole period treated of was 750 years.

For a more full description of the life of Ephorus, and a collection of the fragments of his history which have been preserved, the reader may consult Ephori Fragmenta a Marcio Carolu, 1815; Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen, Leipzig, 1819; Vossius De Historicis Graecis, Lugd. Bat. 1651; and Ulrici, Charakteristik der antiken historiographie, Berlin, 1833.