(Ἔφορος).
1. Of Cumae, a celebrated Greek historian, was, according to Suidas, to whom we are indebted for our information respecting his life, a son either of Demophilus or Antiochus; but as Plutarch (Ei ap. Delph. p. 389a.) mentions only the former name, and as Ephorus's son was called Demophilus (Athen. 6.232), we must believe that the father of Ephorus was called Demophilus. Ephorus was a contemporary of Theopompus, and lived about B. C. 408, a date which Marx, one of his editors, strangely mistakes for the time at which Ephorus was born. Ephorus must have survived the accession of Alexander the Great, for Clemens of Alexandria (Strom. i. p. 403) states that Ephorus reckoned 735 years from the return of the Heracleidae down to B. C. 333, or the year in which Alexander went to Asia. The best period of his life must therefore have fallen in the reign of Philip. Ephoris was a pupil of Isocrates in rhetoric, at the time when that rhetorician had opened his school in the island of Chios; but not being very much gifted by nature, like most of his countrymen, he was found unfit for entering upon life when he returned home, and his father therefore sent him to school a second time. (Plut. Vit. X Orat. p. 839a.) In order not to disappoint his father again, Ephorus now zealously devoted himself to the study of oratory, and his efforts were crowned with success, for he and Theopompus were the most distinguished among the pupils of Isocrates (Menand. Rhet. Διαιρές. ἀποδεικτ. p. 626 ed. Aldus), and from Seneca (de Tranq. Anim. 6) it might almost appear, that Ephorus began the career of a public orator. Isocrates, however, dissuaded him from that course, for he well knew that oratory was not the field on which Ephorus could win laurels, and he exhorted him to devote himself to the study and composition of history. As Ephorus was of a more quiet and contemplative disposition than Theopompus, Isocrates advised the former to write the early history of Greece, and the latter to take up the later and more turbulent periods of history. (Suidas; Cic. de Orat. 3.9; Phot. Bibl. Cod. 176, 260.) Plutarch (de Stoic. Repugn. 10) relates that Ephorus was among those who were accused of having conspired against the life of king Alexander, but that he successfully refuted the charge when he was summoned before the king.