CALLISTHENES (c. 360-328 b.c.), of Olynthus, Greek historian, a relative and pupil of Aristotle, through whose recommendation he was appointed to attend Alexander the Great in his Asiatic expedition. He censured Alexander’s adoption of oriental customs, inveighing especially against the servile ceremony of adoration. Having thereby greatly offended the king, he was accused of being privy to a treasonable conspiracy and thrown into prison, where he died from torture or disease. His melancholy end was commemorated in a special treatise (Καλλισθένης ἢ περὶ πένθους) by his friend Theophrastus, whose acquaintance he made during a visit to Athens. Callisthenes wrote an account of Alexander’s expedition, a history of Greece from the peace of Antalcidas (387) to the Phocian war (357), a history of the Phocian war and other works, all of which have perished. The romantic life of Alexander, the basis of all the Alexander legends of the middle ages, originated during the time of the Ptolemies, but in its present form belongs to the 3rd century a.d. Its author is usually known as pseudo-Callisthenes, although, in the Latin translation by Julius Valerius Alexander Polemius (beginning of the 4th century) it is ascribed to a certain Aesopus; Aristotle, Antisthenes, Onesicritus and Arrian have also been credited with the authorship. There are also Syrian, Armenian and Slavonic versions, in addition to four Greek versions (two in prose and two in verse) in the middle ages (see Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur, 1897, p. 849). Valerius’s translation was completely superseded by that of Leo, arch-priest of Naples in the 10th century, the so-called Historia de Preliis.
See Scriptores rerum Alexandri Magni (by C.W. Müller, in the Didot edition of Arrian, 1846), containing the genuine fragments and the text of the pseudo-Callisthenes, with notes and introduction; A. Westermann, De Callisthene Olynthio et Pseudo-Callisthene Commentatio (1838-1842); J. Zacher, Pseudo-Callisthenes (1867); W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898), pp. 363, 819; article by Edward Meyer in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie; A. Ausfeld, Zur Kritik des griechischen Alexanderromans (Bruchsal, 1894); Plutarch, Alexander, 52-55; Arrian, Anab. iv. 10-14; Diog. Laërtius v. I; Quintus Curtius viii. 5-8; Suidas s.v. See also [Alexander The Great] (ad fin.). For the Latin translations see Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng, trans.), § 399; and M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, iv. i., p.43.
CALLISTO, in Greek mythology, an Arcadian nymph, daughter of Lycaon and companion of Artemis. She was transformed into a bear as a penalty for having borne to Zeus a son, Arcas, the ancestor of the Arcadians. Hera, Zeus and Artemis are all mentioned as the authors of the transformation. Arcas, when hunting, encountered the bear Callisto, and would have shot her, had not Zeus with swift wind carried up both to the skies, where he placed them as a constellation. In another version, she was slain by Artemis. Callisto was originally only an epithet of the Arcadian Artemis herself.
See Apollodorus iii. 8; Ovid, Metam. ii. 381-530; R. Franz, De Callistus fabula (1890), which deals exhaustively with the various forms of the legend.
CALLISTRATUS, Alexandrian grammarian, flourished at the beginning of the 2nd century b.c. He was one of the pupils of Aristophanes of Byzantium, who were distinctively called Aristophanei. Callistratus chiefly devoted himself to the elucidation of the Greek poets; a few fragments of his commentaries have been preserved in the various collections of scholia and in Athenaeus. He was also the author of a miscellaneous work called Συμμικτά used by the later lexicographers, and of a treatise on courtesans (Athenaeus iii. 125 B, xiii. 591 D). He is not to be confused with Callistratus, the pupil and successor of Isocrates and author of a history of Heraclea in Pontus.
See R. Schmidt, De Callistrato Aristophaneo, appended to A. Nauck’s Aristophanis Byzantii Fragmenta (1848); also C.W. Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, iv. p. 353 note.