and razed the city to the ground, founding a new town close to the hot springs (Thermae Himeraeae), 8 m. to the west. The only relic of the ancient town now visible above ground is a small portion (four columns, lower diameter 7 ft.) of a Doric temple, the date of which (whether before or after 480 B.C.) is uncertain.
HIMERIUS (c. A.D. 315–386), Greek sophist and rhetorician,
was born at Prusa in Bithynia. He completed his education at
Athens, whence he was summoned to Antioch in 362 by the
emperor Julian to act as his private secretary. After the death
of Julian in the following year Himerius returned to Athens,
where he established a school of rhetoric, which he compared
with that of Isocrates and the Delphic oracle, owing to the
number of those who flocked from all parts of the world to hear
him. Amongst his pupils were Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil
the Great, bishop of Caesarea. In recognition of his merits,
civic rights and the membership of the Areopagus were conferred
upon him. The death of his son Rufinus (his lament for whom,
called μονῳδία, is extant) and that of a favourite daughter
greatly affected his health; in his later years he became blind
and he died of epilepsy. Although a heathen, who had been
initiated into the mysteries of Mithra by Julian, he shows no
prejudice against the Christians. Himerius is a typical representative
of the later rhetorical schools. Photius (cod. 165, 243
Bekker) had read 71 speeches by him, of 36 of which he has given
an epitome; 24 have come down to us complete and fragments
of 10 or 12 others. They consist of epideictic or “display”
speeches after the style of Aristides, the majority of them
having been delivered on special occasions, such as the arrival of
a new governor, visits to different cities (Thessalonica, Constantinople),
or the death of friends or well-known personages. The
Polemarchicus, like the Menexenus of Plato and the Epitaphios
Logos of Hypereides, is a panegyric of those who had given their
lives for their country; it is so called because it was originally
the duty of the polemarch to arrange the funeral games in
honour of those who had fallen in battle. Other declamations,
only known from the excerpts in Photius, were imaginary orations
put into the mouth of famous persons—Demosthenes advocating
the recall of Aeschines from banishment, Hypereides supporting
the policy of Demosthenes, Themistocles inveighing against the
king of Persia, an orator unnamed attacking Epicurus for
atheism before Julian at Constantinople. Himerius is more of a
poet than a rhetorician, and his declamations are valuable as
giving prose versions or even the actual words of lost poems by
Greek lyric writers. The prose poem on the marriage of Severus
and his greeting to Basil at the beginning of spring are quite in the
spirit of the old lyric. Himerius possesses vigour of language and
descriptive powers, though his productions are spoilt by too
frequent use of imagery, allegorical and metaphorical obscurities,
mannerism and ostentatious learning. But they are valuable
for the history and social conditions of the time, although
lacking the sincerity characteristic of Libanius.
See Eunapius, Vitae sophistarum; Suidas, s.v.; editions by G. Wernsdorf (1790), with valuable introduction and commentaries, and by F. Dübner (1849) in the Didot series; C. Teuber, Quaestiones Himerianae (Breslau, 1882); on the style, E. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa (1898).
HIMLY (LOUIS), AUGUSTE (1823–1906), French historian
and geographer, was born at Strassburg on the 28th of March
1823. After studying in his native town and taking the university
course in Berlin (1842–1843) he went to Paris, and passed first
in the examination for fellowship (agrégation) of the lycées
(1845), first in the examinations on leaving the École des Chartes,
and first in the examination for fellowship of the faculties (1849).
In 1849 he took the degree of doctor of letters with two theses,
one of which, Wala et Louis le Débonnaire (published in Paris
in 1849), placed him in the front rank of French scholars in the
province of Carolingian history. Soon, however, he turned
his attention to the study of geography. In 1858 he obtained
an appointment as teacher of geography at the Sorbonne, and
henceforth devoted himself to that subject. It was not till
1876 that he published, in two volumes, his remarkable Histoire
de la formation territoriale des états de l’Europe centrale, in which
he showed with a firm, but sometimes slightly heavy touch,
the reciprocal influence exerted by geography and history.
While the work gives evidence throughout of wide and well-directed
research, he preferred to write it in the form of a
student’s manual; but it was a manual so original that it gained
him admission to the Institute in 1881. In that year he was
appointed dean of the faculty of letters, and for ten years he
directed the intellectual life of that great educational centre
during its development into a great scientific body. He died
at Sèvres on the 6th of October 1906.
HIMMEL, FREDERICK HENRY (1765–1814), German composer,
was born on the 20th of November 1765 at Treuenbrietzen
in Brandenburg, Prussia, and originally studied theology
at Halle. During a temporary stay at Potsdam he had an
opportunity of showing his self-acquired skill as a pianist before
King Frederick William II., who thereupon made him a yearly
allowance to enable him to complete his musical studies. This
he did under Naumann, a German composer of the Italian school,
and the style of that school Himmel himself adopted in his serious
operas. The first of these, a pastoral opera, Il Primo Navigatore,
was produced at Venice in 1794 with great success. In 1792
he went to Berlin, where his oratorio Isaaco was produced, in
consequence of which he was made court Kapellmeister to the
king of Prussia, and in that capacity wrote a great deal of official
music, including cantatas, and a coronation Te Deum. His
Italian operas, successively composed for Stockholm, St Petersburg
and Berlin, were all received with great favour in their
day. Of much greater importance than these is an operetta
to German words by Kotzebue, called Fanchon, an admirable
specimen of the primitive form of the musical drama known
in Germany as the Singspiel. Himmel’s gift of writing genuine
simple melody is also observable in his songs, amongst which
one called “To Alexis” is the best. He died in Berlin on the
8th of June 1814.
HINCKLEY, a market town in the Bosworth parliamentary
division of Leicestershire, England, 1412 m. S.W. from Leicester
on the Nuneaton-Leicester branch of the London & North-Western
railway, and near the Ashby-de-la-Zouch canal. Pop.
of urban district (1901), 11,304. The town is well situated on
a considerable eminence. Among the principal buildings are
the church of St Mary, a Decorated and Perpendicular structure,
with lofty tower and spire; the Roman Catholic academy
named St Peter’s Priory, and a grammar school. The ditch
of a castle erected by Hugh de Grentismenil in the time of William
Rufus is still to be traced. Hinckley is the centre of a stocking-weaving
district, and its speciality is circular hose. It also
possesses a boot-making industry, brick and tile works, and
lime works. There are mineral springs in the neighbourhood.
HINCKS, EDWARD (1792–1866), British assyriologist, was
born at Cork, Ireland, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin.
He took orders in the Protestant Church of Ireland, and was
rector of Killyleagh, Down, from 1825 till his death on the 3rd
of December 1866. Hincks devoted his spare time to the study
of hieroglyphics, and to the deciphering of the cuneiform script
(see Cuneiform), in which he was a pioneer, working out contemporaneously
with Sir H. Rawlinson, and independently
of him, the ancient Persian vowel system. He published a
number of original and scholarly papers on assyriological
questions of the highest value, chiefly in the Transactions of
the Royal Irish Academy.
HINCKS, SIR FRANCIS (1807–1885), Canadian statesman,
was born at Cork, Ireland, the son of an Irish Presbyterian
minister. In 1832 he engaged in business in Toronto, became
a friend of Robert Baldwin, and in 1835 was chosen to examine
the accounts of the Welland Canal, the management of which
was being attacked by W. L. Mackenzie. This turned his attention
to political life and in 1838 he founded the Examiner, a
weekly paper in the Liberal interest. In 1841 he was elected
M.P. for the county of Oxford, and in the following year was
appointed inspector-general, the title then borne by the finance
minister, but in 1843 resigned with Baldwin and the other
ministers on the question of responsible government. In 1848
he again became inspector-general in the Baldwin-Lafontaine
