HEGESIAS OF

MAGNESIA (in

See also:

• LYDIA

Lydia)  , Greek rhetorician and historian, flourished about 300 B.C . Strabo (xiv . 648), speaks of him as the founder of the florid style of composition known as "Asiatic" (cf . TIMAEUS) . Agatharchides, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Cicero all speak of him in disparaging terms, although Varro seems to have approved of his work . He professed to imitate the simple 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 . It is generally supposed, from the fragment quoted as a specimen by Dionysius, that Hegesias is to be classed among the writers of lives of Alexander the Great . This fragment describes the treatment of 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 Photius (cod . 250) that the only aim of Hegesias was to exhibit his skill in describing sensational events .

See Cicero,

Brutus 83, Orator 67, 69, with J . E . Sandys's note, ad Att. xii . 6; Dion . Halic . De verborum comp. iv.; Aulus Gellius ix . 4; Plutarch, Alexander, 3; C . W . Muller, Scriptores rerum Alexandri Magni, p . 138 (appendix to Didot ed. of Arrian, 1846) ; Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa (1898); J . B . Bury, Ancient Greek Historians (1909), pp .

169-172, on origin and development of " Asiatic " style, with example from Hegesias .