Hegesias of Magnesia

Hegesias of Magnesia(Ancient Greek:Ἡγησίας ὁ Μάγνης,Hēgēsias ho Magnēs),Greekrhetorician,and historian, flourished about 300 BC.Strabo(xiv. 648), speaks of him as the founder of the floridAsiatic styleof composition.

Agatharchides,Dionysius of Halicarnassus(De compositione verborum18) andCiceroall speak of him in disparaging terms, althoughVarroseems to have approved of his work. He professed to imitate the simplest style ofLysias,avoiding long periods, and expressing himself in short, jerky sentences, without modulation or finish. His vulgar affectation and bombast made his writings a mere caricature of the oldAttic.Dionysius describes his composition as tinselled, ignoble and effeminate. According toGualtiero Calboli,Hegesias and his fellow Asiatics rejected Attic examples (and in particular the example ofThucydides) in favor of a return to "the models of Ionic andsophisticprose. "

It is generally supposed, from the fragment quoted as a specimen by Dionysius (and cf.Plutarch,Life of Alexander3), that Hegesias is to be classed among the writers of lives ofAlexander the Great.This fragment describes the treatment ofGazaand its inhabitants by Alexander after its conquest, but it is possible that it is only part of an epideictic or show speech, not of an historical work. This view is supported by a remark of Agatharchides inPhotius(cod. 250) that the only aim of Hegesias was to exhibit his skill in describing sensational events.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Hegesias of Magnesia".Encyclopædia Britannica(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Fragments: Greek text and Latin translation,ed.Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller