late 4th – early 3rd century BC) was a historian from the Greek island of Peparethus.
His works are lost, but they included histories of Persia and Rome: Quintus Fabius Pictor and Plutarch acknowledge their debts to the latter as a source for their histories of early Rome, its native traditions and ancestral Greek connections.
Plutarch seems to have relied on Fabius' history but acknowledges Diocles as its basis and authority.
He may have had access to Roman sources and traditions on which he foisted Greek interpretations and interpolations.
He appears to have been a figure of note, well travelled, and abstemious; Athenaeus cites Demetrius of Scepsis to attest that Diocles "drank cold water to the day of his death".