surnamed POSITRUS, a Greek miscellaneous writer, was a native of Heraclea in Pontus (whence his surname), and flourished in the fourth century B.C. He was a man of wealth, and indulged his taste for travel and literature by removing from his birth-place to Athens, where he studied under Plato, whose favourite pupil he is said to have become. He wrote voluminously upon a great variety of topics; but of his numerous works only a small fragment On Statecraft has descended to us. This essay was first printed with the Variae Historiae of Eelian, at Rome, in 1545; but the best editions are those of Köler, Halle, 1804, and Corneille, Paris, 1805. The Homeric Allegories, which used to be fathered upon him, are the work of a very different hand. Of Heraclides' personal history nothing is known, except that he was a very vain man, very fond of good living, and very fat. There were some silly stories afloat about him. On his death-bed he is said to have requested a friend to hide his body as soon as he died, and to put a serpent in its place, that his townsmen might believe that he had been carried off to heaven. But this and the other trifles to the same effect may very safely be rejected.