was the battle of Salamis. His importance consists in his having taken
for his theme national and contemporary events in place of the deeds of
old-time heroes. For this new departure he apologizes in the
introductory verses (preserved in the scholiast on Aristotle,
_Rhetoric_, iii. 14), where he says that, the subjects of epic poetry
being all exhausted, it was necessary to strike out a new path. The
story of his intimacy with Herodotus is probably due to the fact that he
imitated him and had recourse to his history for the incidents of his
poem. The _Perseis_ was at first highly successful and was said to have
been read, together with the Homeric poems, at the Panathenaea, but
later critics reversed this favourable judgment. Aristotle (_Topica_,
viii. 1) calls Choerilus's comparisons far-fetched and obscure, and the
Alexandrians displaced him by Antimachus in the canon of epic poets. The
fragments are artificial in tone.

G. Kinkel, _Epicorum Graecorum Frag._ i. (1877); for another view of
his relations with Herodotus see Mueder in _Klio_ (1907), 29-44.

(3) An epic poet of Iasus in Caria, who lived in the 4th century B.C. He
accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns as court-poet. He is
well known from the passages in Horace (_Epistles_, ii. 1, 232; _Ars
Poetica_, 357), according to which he received a piece of gold for every
good verse he wrote in celebration of the glorious deeds of his master.
The quality of his verses may be estimated from the remark attributed to
Alexander, that he would rather be the Thersites of Homer than the
Achilles of Choerilus. The epitaph on Sardanapalus, said to have been
translated from the Chaldean (quoted in Athenaeus, viii. p. 336), is
generally supposed to be by Choerilus.

See G. Kinkel, _Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta_, i. (1877); A.F. Naeke,
_De Choerili Samii Aetate Vita et Poesi aliisque Choerilis_ (1817),
where the above poets are carefully distinguished; and the articles in
Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencydopaedie_, iii. 2 (1899).

CHOEROBOSCUS, GEORGIUS (c. A.D. 600), deacon and professor at the
oecumenical school at Constantinople. He is also called _chartophylax_
either as the holder of some ecclesiastical office or as superintendent
of the university library. It is not known whether "Choeroboscus" (Gr.
for "swineherd") is an allusion to his earlier occupation or an
inherited family name. During his tenure of office he delivered a course
of lectures on g