Antigonus of Carystus was a Greek writer and sculptor active in the 3rd century BCE. He was born in Carystus on the island of Euboea and worked as a bronze sculptor in the royal city of Pergamon. He later moved to Athens, where he wrote biographies and other works. According to modern scholars, his interests in biography and descriptions of philosophical doctrines link him to the Peripatetic tradition of Aristotle's followers.
His writings survive only in fragments quoted by later authors. He is best known for his Lives of Philosophers, a collection of biographies that became a major source for the later biographer Diogenes Laertius. He also wrote On Animals, a work describing strange and marvelous creatures, which places him within a popular Hellenistic literary genre. Furthermore, he authored a lost work on the history of art and artists, which was used as a source by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder. His firsthand experience as a sculptor is thought to have given his writing on art particular authority.
Antigonus is historically important as an early compiler of philosophical biography and anecdote. His lost works served as a crucial link for later historians of philosophy and art, making him a significant, though fragmentary, figure of Hellenistic scholarship.
Available Works
Sources
- Oxford Research Encyclopedia Entry (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics) Accessed: 2026-01-26
- Stanford Encyclopedia Entry (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Accessed: 2026-01-26