PALAEPHATUS, the author of a small extant treatise, entitled Περὶ Ἀπίστων (On “Incredible Things”). It consists of a series of rationalizing explanations of Greek legends, without any attempt at arrangement or plan, and is probably an epitome, composed in the Byzantine age, of some larger work, perhaps the Λύσεις τῶν μυθικῶς εἰρημένων, mentioned by Suïdas as the work of a grammarian of Egypt or Athens. Suïdas himself ascribes a Περὶ Ἀπίστων, in five books, to Palaephatus of Paros or Priene. The author was perhaps a contemporary of Euhemerus (3rd century B.C.). Suïdas mentions two other writers of the name: (1) an epic poet of Athens, who lived before the time of Homer; (2) an historian of Abydus, an intimate friend of Aristotle.
See edition by N. Festa, in Mythography graeco (1902), in the Teubner series, with valuable prolegomena supplementary to Intorno all' opuscolo di Palefato de incredibilibus (1890), by the same writer.