Phylarchus

(Φύλαρχος). (1) A Greek historian, born probably at Naucratis, in Egypt, about B.C. 210, lived long at Sicyon, afterwards in Athens; author of a great historical work in twenty-eight books, dealing with the fifty years from the invasion of the Peloponnesus by Pyrrhus to the death of Cleomenes, king of Sparta (272-221). His enthusiastic admiration of that monarch appears to be the cause of the severe judgment passed on Phylarchus by Polybius (ii. 56), who represents the Achaean view. His style was lively and attractive, but sensational. His work was much used by Trogus Pompeius and by Plutarch in his lives of Cleomenes and Aratus. Only a few fragments remain, and have been edited by Müller in his Fragmenta Hist. Graec. (Paris, 1868).

(φύλαρχος). The Athenian term for (a) the president of a φυλή (see Phylé); (b) one of the ten subordinate officers commanding the citizen cavalry. See hippeis.