Archelaus (), a poet of ancient Greece, is called in ancient sources an Egyptian, and is believed to have been a native of a town in Egypt called Chersonesus, as he is also called "Chersonesita".Antigonus of Carystus, Successions of Philosophers 19Athen. 12.554 He wrote epigrams, some of which are still extant in the Greek Anthology.
Classical scholar Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Jacobs seemed to infer from an epigram of his on Alexander the Great that Archelaus lived in the time of Alexander and Ptolemy I Soter (that is, the 4th century BCE).Anthology of Planudes 120 Other scholars like Christian Lobeck place him in the reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon (2nd century BCE).Christian Lobeck, Aglaophamus p. 749 But both of these opinions are connected with chronological difficulties, and William Linn Westermann showed that Archelaus in all probability flourished under Ptolemy Philadelphus, around the 3rd century BCE, to whom, according to Antigonus of Carystus, he narrated wonderful stories (παράδοξα, or "paradoxes") in epigrams.Antigonus of Carystus, Successions of Philosophers 89
Besides this peculiar kind of epigram, Archelaus wrote a work called ἰδιοφυῆ ("strange or peculiar animals"),Athen. 9.409Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers 2.17 which seems to have likewise been written in verse, and to have treated on strange and paradoxical subjects, like his epigrams.Pliny Elench. lib. xxviii.Schol. ad Nicand. Ther. 822Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 4.22Compare Westermann, Scriptor. Rer. mirabil. Graeci, p. xxii., &c., who has also collected the extant fragments of Archelaus, p. 158, &c.
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