The logographers (from the Ancient Greek λογογράφος logográphos, a compound of λόγος lógos, here meaning "story" or "prose", and γράφω gráphō, "write") were the Greek historiographers and chroniclers before Herodotus, "the father of history".
With one exception their representatives came from Ionia and its islands, and their position was most favourably situated for the acquisition of knowledge concerning the distant countries of East and West.
Their criticism makes a crude attempt to rationalize the current legends and traditions connected with the founding of cities, the genealogies of ruling families, and the manners and customs of individual peoples.
The first logographer of note was Cadmus (dated to the 6th century BC), a perhaps mythical resident of Miletus, who wrote on the history of his city.
The logographers, though they worked within the same mythic tradition, were distinct from the epic poets of the Trojan War cycle because they wrote in prose, in a non-periodic style which Aristotle (Rhetoric, 1409a 29) calls λέξις εἰρομένη (léxis eiroménē, from εἴρω eírō, "attach, join up"), that is, a "continuous" or "running" style.