Diodorus Siculus(89 av. J.-C. — 19 av. J.-C.)
Diodorus Siculus
Agyrion
8 min read
Greek historian of the 1st century BC, born in Sicily, author of the Bibliotheca historica, a vast universal history encyclopedia in 40 volumes covering mythical origins through the age of Caesar.
Key Facts
- Born around 90 BC in Agyrium, Sicily
- Lived in Rome under Julius Caesar and Augustus
- Wrote the Bibliotheca historica between 60 and 30 BC
- His 40-volume work covers world history from creation to Caesar's wars
- One of the rare surviving sources on Greek mythology and ancient Egyptian history
Works & Achievements
These books cover Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and Ethiopia, weaving together mythology, geography, and ethnography in a pioneering comparative approach that makes Diodorus a forerunner of cultural anthropology.
Diodorus recounts the myths of the great Greek heroes — Heracles, Jason, Theseus, Orpheus — offering an euhemeristic reading: gods and heroes are understood as exceptional human beings who were deified after death.
The best-preserved books, covering the Persian Wars, the Age of Pericles, and the conquests of Alexander the Great. They remain an irreplaceable source for modern historians of this period.
Partially lost, these books dealt with the Punic Wars, the rise of Rome, and events up to Julius Caesar, whom Diodorus explicitly names as the closing boundary of the entire work.
A monumental work of which only 15 complete books and fragments of the rest have survived. It remains one of the most ambitious attempts in Antiquity to write a universal history of humanity.
Anecdotes
Diodorus of Sicily spent more than thirty years writing his Library of History, traveling as far as Egypt and Rome to gather his sources. He wanted to offer readers a universal history stretching from the mythical origins of the world to his own time — a project of unprecedented ambition in the ancient world.
During his time in Egypt, Diodorus witnessed a telling incident: a Roman had accidentally killed a sacred cat, and the crowd lynched him despite the authorities' attempts to intervene. To Diodorus, this episode illustrated the power of religious belief over human behavior, far beyond any written law.
Diodorus was convinced that Greek mythology contained a veiled historical truth. He proposed a euhemeristic reading of the gods: Heracles, Dionysus, and Osiris, he argued, had been great men who were deified after their deaths by popular veneration — a bold idea that shocked some of his contemporaries.
His Library of History opened with Egyptian, Greek, and Mesopotamian creation myths, making him one of the first authors to attempt a comparative history of the religions of the ancient world. He drew parallels between Osiris and Dionysus, and between Isis and Hera, searching for a universal common ground shared by all civilizations.
Although criticized by some modern historians for relying heavily on his predecessors without crediting them, Diodorus has passed down to us precious fragments of authors now lost, such as Ephorus and Ctesias. Without him, entire sections of ancient history would be completely unknown to us.
Primary Sources
The Egyptians say that, in the beginning, only Heaven and Earth existed, their natures merged into a single being. Then they separated from one another, and the world took the form we know today.
Heracles, through his countless labors, rendered the greatest services to humanity. That is why men, wishing to honor this outstanding benefactor, granted him divine honors and the rank of immortal.
Semiramis, queen of Babylon, had hanging gardens built to console a wife who longed for the verdant meadows of her homeland. She also raised walls so mighty that no enemy could ever breach them.
The Hyperboreans dwell beyond the breath of Boreas, in a blessed land where the sun shines without cease and men live in happiness, celebrating Apollo with perpetual songs and dances.
The Amazons, it is said, inhabited Libya long before those of the Pontus Euxinus. They formed a nation ruled by women of exceptional martial valor, and their queen Myrina subjugated many peoples by the force of her arms.
Key Places
Diodorus's hometown, known today as Agira in central Sicily. This small city of Greek origin was the starting point of a life entirely devoted to scholarship and universal history.
Capital of the Mediterranean world, where Diodorus spent extended periods to access the libraries and sources needed for his encyclopedia. It was here that he wrote the greater part of his work.
The great Egyptian metropolis home to the famous Library, visited by Diodorus, who drew on it for information about mythology and the history of the pharaohs. It was also where he witnessed the lynching of the man who killed a sacred cat.
The birthplace of Greek historiography and of the authors Diodorus compiled, from Herodotus to Thucydides. The Athenian intellectual tradition lies at the heart of the Sicilian historian's method and culture.
Diodorus devotes lengthy passages to Babylon, its Hanging Gardens, and its queen Semiramis. This mythical city embodies his ambition to write a history that reaches beyond the Greco-Roman world alone.