Editing Hegesias of Magnesia

{{short description|Ancient Greek historian and rhetorician}}

'''Hegesias of Magnesia'''<ref>Magnesia ad Sipylum, on the plains of [[Lydia]].</ref> ({{langx|grc|Ἡγησίας ὁ Μάγνης|Hēgēsias ho Magnēs}}) was an [[Ancient Greek]] historian and [[rhetorician]] who flourished about 300 BC. [[Strabo]] (xiv. 648) speaks of him as the founder of the florid [[Asiatic style]] of composition.

[[Agatharchides]], [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]] (''De compositione verborum'' [https://archive.org/stream/cu31924026465165#page/n109/mode/2up 18]) and [[Cicero]] all speak of him in disparaging terms, although [[Marcus Terentius Varro|Varro]] seems to have approved of his work. He professed to imitate the simplest style of [[Lysias]], 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 old [[Attic]]. Dionysius describes his composition as tinselled, ignoble and effeminate. According to [[Gualtiero Calboli]], Hegesias and his fellow Asiatics rejected Attic examples (and in particular the example of [[Thucydides]]) in favor of a return to "the models of Ionic and [[sophist]]ic prose."<ref>Roberto Nicolai, "''Ktêma es aei'': Aspects of the Reception of Thucydides in the Ancient World," in Jeffrey Rusten (ed.) ''Thucydides: Oxford Readings in Classical Studies'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=XFPghh2u-z0C&dq=hegesias%20rusten&pg=PA386 p. 386]</ref>

It is generally supposed, from the fragment quoted as a specimen by Dionysius (and cf. [[Plutarch]], ''Life of Alexander'' [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alexander*/3.html#3.6 3]), that Hegesias is to be classed among the writers of lives of [[Alexander the Great]]. This fragment describes the treatment of [[Gaza City|Gaza]] and 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 in [[Photios I of Constantinople|Photius]] (cod. 250) that the only aim of Hegesias was to exhibit his skill in describing sensational events.

==Notes==
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==References==
* {{EB1911|wstitle=Hegesias of Magnesia}}

==External links==
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=LeYGAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA1-PA138 Fragments: Greek text and Latin translation], ed. [[Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Müller]]

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hegesias Of Magnesia}}
[[Category:Hellenistic-era historians]]
[[Category:4th-century BC Greek historians]]
[[Category:Ancient Greek rhetoricians]]
[[Category:Ancient Anatolian Greeks]]
[[Category:Historiography of Alexander the Great]]
[[Category:Historians from Hellenistic Anatolia]]
[[Category:Year of birth unknown]]
[[Category:Year of death unknown]]
[[Category:Ancient Greek historians known only from secondary sources]]