Library › Greek: History › Fragment (P.Oxy. 2442)
This is a single short fragment of Hellanicus of Lesbos, the fifth-century BC historian and mythographer, preserved in an ancient commentary on Pindar's Paeans found on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. 2442). It records variant accounts of the death of Clymenus, king of the Minyans, noting that Hellanicus said he was killed by a Theban while fighting at Onchestus. The work it comes from is unknown.
The fragment is a small example of how papyrus discoveries have added to the remains of lost Greek historians. It bears on the legendary wars between Thebes and Orchomenus and shows ancient scholars comparing competing versions of a myth, setting Hellanicus beside Apollodorus and Epimenides.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: FGrHist 4 F 133bis). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).