HELL, used in English both of the place of departed spirits and of the place of torment of the wicked after death (0. Eng. hel, a Teutonic word from a root meaning "to cover"). In the O.T. it translates the Hebrew Sheol, in the N.T. the Greek Hades, and 14evva, Hebrew Gehenna (see ESCHATOLOGY). HELLANICUS OF LESBOS, Greek logographer, flourished during the latter half of the 5th century B.C. According to Suidas, he lived for some time at the court of one of the kings of Macedon, and died at Perperene, a town on the gulf of Adramyttium oppo site Lesbos. Some thirty works are attributed to him—chronologi cal, historical and episodical. Mention may be made of : The Priestesses of Hera at Argos, a chronological compilation ; the Karneonikai, a list of the victors in the Carnean games (the chief Spartan musical festival), including notices of literary events; Phoronis, chiefly genealogical, dealing with the period up till the return of the Heracleidae ; Deukalioneia; his local histories in clude an Atthis, giving the history of Attica from 683 to the end of the Peloponnesian War (404), in which Thucydides (i.97), says the events of the years 480-431 were treated briefly and superficially, and with little regard to chronology; Troika, Persika, Lesbiaka, and others.
Hellanicus marks a real step in the development of his toriography. He was not content to repeat the traditions that had gained general acceptation through the poets, but tried to give them as they were locally current, and by using the few national or priestly registers that presented something like contemporary registration, to lay the foundations of a scientific chronology, based primarily on the list of the Argive priestesses of Hera, and secondarily on genealogies, lists of magistrates (e.g. the archons at Athens), and Oriental dates, in place of the old reckoning by generations. But his materials were insufficient and he often had recourse to the older methods. On account of his deviations from common tradition, Hellanicus is called an untrustworthy writer by the ancients themselves. He appears to have made no systematic use of inscriptions, and he never, like his contemporary Herodotus, rose to the conception of a single current of events wider than the local distinction of race. His style, so far as it can be judged from the fragments, was bald.
Fragments in Muller, Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, i. and iv. ; and in F. Jacoby, Fragmenta der Griechischen Historiker (1923) , where references in ancient authors are also quoted. See among older works L. Preller, De Hellanico Lesbio historico (184o) ; Mure, History of Greek Literature, iv. ; late criticism in H. Kullmer, "Hellanikos" in Jahrbiicher fur klass. Philologie (Supplementband, xxvii. 455 sqq.) (19oz) which contains new edition and arrangements of fragments; C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, "Hellanikos, Herodot, Thukydides," in Klio vi. 127 sqq. (1906) ; J. B. Bury, Ancient Greek Historians 0909), pp. 27 sqq. ; the exhaustive article by Gudeman in Pauly-Wissowa viii. I.