Demetrius of Phaleron and the Letter on Jewish Law

Demetrius of Phaleron, around 350–280 BCE, is the name this site attaches to an Athenian orator and Peripatetic, a hearer of Theophrastus. With Macedonian support he governed Athens from 317 to 307 BCE, then went into exile, later at the court of Ptolemy I at Alexandria.

Ancient lists make him a prolific writer on history, rhetoric, and literary criticism. Those books survive only in fragments. A treatise On Style has long travelled under his name; later readers generally give it to an unidentified later hand. Genuine remains include histories, political writings, and collections of fables, as fragments.

A fragment here is a later extract. The Library of Alexandria as a later story of advice is a host’s attachment, not a recovered autograph of Demetrius.