Greece, wandering from city to city, and acquiring wealth and fame by practising and teaching rhetoric. We find him last in Larissa, where he died at the age of a hundred in 375 b.c. As a teacher of eloquence Gorgias belongs to what is known as the Sicilian school, in which he followed the steps of his predecessors, Korax and Tisias. At the time when this school arose the Greek ear was still accustomed to the rhythm and beat of poetry, and the whole rhetorical system of the Gorgian school (compare the phrases γοργίεια σχήματα, γοργιάζειν) is built on a poetical plan (Lübker, Reallexikon des classischen Alterthums). Hermogenes, as quoted by Jahn, appears to classify him among the "hollow pedants" (ὑπόξυλοι σοφισταί), "who," he says, "talk of vultures as 'living tombs,' to which they themselves would best be committed, and indulge in many other such frigid conceits." (With the metaphor censured by Longinus compare Achilles Tatius, III. v. 50, ed. Didot.) See also Plato, Phaedrus, 267, A.
Hegesias of Magnesia, rhetorician and historian, contemporary of Timaeus (300 b.c.) He belongs to the period of the decline of Greek learning, and Cicero treats him as the representative of the decline of taste. His style was harsh and broken in character, and a parody on the Old Attic. He wrote a life of Alexander the Great, of which Plutarch (Alexander, c. 3) gives the following specimen: "On the day of Alexander's birth the temple of Artemis in Ephesus was burnt down, a coincidence which occasions Hegesias to utter a conceit frigid enough to extinguish the conflagration. 'It was natural,' he says, 'that the temple should be burnt down, as Artemis was engaged with bringing Alexander into the world'" (Pauly, with the references).
Hekataeus of Miletus, the logographer; born in 549 b.c., died soon after the battle of Plataea. He was the author of two works—(1) περίοδος γῆς; and (2) γενεηλογίαι. The Periodos deals in two books, first with Europe, then with
