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These are the surviving fragments of Melanthius, an Athenian writer of local history of whom little is known. His works are lost and survive only in brief quotations by later authors, including Harpocration, Athenaeus and the scholia on Aristophanes. The fragments come from his Atthis, a history of Attica, and from a treatise On the Mysteries at Eleusis, which recorded offerings to Hecate, the dedication of initiates' garments, and the Athenian decree against Diagoras of Melos.
Melanthius belongs to the tradition of the Atthidographers, the local historians of Athens. His notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries are valuable because so little was written openly about the rites, and they preserve details of cult practice and religious law found in few other sources.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: FHG IV, Melanthius frr. 2, 4–5; cf. FGrHist 326). 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).