HERMESIANAX  , of

Colophon, elegiac poet of the Alexandrian school, flourished about 330 B.C . His chief work was a poem in three books, dedicated to his mistress Leontion . Of this poem a fragment of about one hundred lines has been preserved by Athenaeus (xiii . 597) . Plaintive in tone, it enumerates instances, mythological and historical, of the irresistible power of love . Hermesianax, whose style is characterized by alternate force and tenderness, was exceedingly popular in his own times, and was highly esteemed even in the Augustan period . Many separate editions have been published of the fragment, the text of which is in a very unsatisfactory condition: by F . W . Schneidewin (1838), J . Bailey (1839, with notes, glossary, and Latin and English versions), and others; R . Schulze 's Quaestiones Hermesianacteae (1858), contains an account of the life and writings of the poet and a section on the identity of Leontion .