Istro il Callimacheo

All modern scholars agree that Istros, 'the Callimachean', did not write an Atthís, but made a compilation of Atthides, in at least 14 books, that have survived only in fragments. In effect, in F. Jacoby' FGrHist, Istros figures among the other Atthidographers, yet as the sole entry of the section devoted to the writers of Sammlungen. Information on Istros' biography as been preserved by 7 testimonia, which are all of antiquarian literature and often difficult to understand. As a matter of fact, two men called Istros are supposed, by some scholars, to have lived in Hellenistic times and to have studied the literary heritage of classical Greece. In my opinion, evidence proves that Istros, Menander's son and Istros' grandson, lived in Alexandria in the third century BC and worked in connection with (or, perhaps, at the service of) Callimachus. The complete list of Istros' works has been lost, but the Suda states that they were many: 77 fragments have been preserved, in 38 the topic is Athens, 39 display a variety of subject matters. The actual title of Istros' main work on Athenian history is hardly reconstructable; however, it is supposed to have been simply Attiká, a title we often find in Harpocration's 'Lexicon on the Ten Orators’. On the grounds of his work's fragments, Istros seems to have been interested only in royal Athens, while passing over the history of the city after the kings, unlike the other Atthides which reach and cover also their Atthidographers' age. Istros' main work is supposed to have been read together with Philochorus' Atthís in the course of Roman empire. While the latter dwelt upon the 'historical' Athenian events, Istros' Attiká focused on the 'mythical' Athenian events in the memory of the kings; in this way, the two works gave the reading public a general picture of Athens' history.