Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/433

Rh HERMODORUS. beautiful altar at Parium on the Propontis. (Strab. xii. p. 487, a. ; xiii. p. 588, b.) [P. S.] HERMO'CREON ('EpMOKpeW), the author of two simple and elegant epigrams in the Greek An- thology. His time is not known. ( Brunck, Anal. vol. ii, p. 252 ; Jacobs, Anth. Graec. vol. ii. p. 229, vol. xiii. p. 902 ; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iv. p. 477.) [P. S.] HERMODO'RUS ('EpyU({S«pos). 1. Of Ephesus, a person of great distinction, but was expelled bj his fellow-citizens, for which Heracleitus censured them very severely. (Diog. Laert. ix. 2 ; Cic. Tusc. V. 36.) He is said to have gone to Rome to have explained to the decemvirs the Greek laws, and thus assisted them in drawing up the laws of the Twelve Tables, b. c. 451. (Pompon, de Orig. Jur. Dig. 1. tit. 2. s. 4.) Pliny {H.N. xxxiv. 11) further states, that the Romans expressed their gratitude towards him, by erecting a statue to him in the comitium. This story of his having assisted the decemvirs has been treated by some modern critics as a fiction, or at least has been modified in a manner which reduces his influence upon that le- gislation to a mere nothing. But, in the first place, it would be arbitrary to reject the authority of Pomponius, or to doubt the merits of Hermodo- rus, which are sufficiently attested by the statue in the comitium, and, in the second, there is nothing at all improbable in the statement, that a distin- guished Greek assisted the Romans in the framing of written laws, in which they were surely less experienced than the Greeks. In what his assist- ance consisted is only matter of conjecture : he probably gave accounts of the laws of some Greek states with which he was acquainted, and we may further believe with Niebuhr {Hist, of Rome, vol. ii. p. 3 1 0), that the share he took related only to the constitution. (Ser. Gratama, de Hermodoro Epliesio vero XII. Tabalarum Auctore, Groningen, 1818, 4to.) 2. A disciple of Plato, is said to have circulated the works of Plato, and to have sold them in Sicily, whence arose the proverb Koyoicnv 'Ep/j.6dwpos i/j.Trof)eveTai. (Suid. s. v. X6yoi<n ; Cic. ad Att. xiii. 20.) Hermodorus himself appears to have been a philosopher, for we know the titles of two works that were attributed to him, viz. Ilepl IIAa- ruvos and Ilepi fxadr]ij.dTwv. (Comp, Diog. Laert. Frooem. 8, ii. 106, iii. 6 ; lonsius, de Script. Hint. FkUos.. 10. 2.) 3. An Epicurean philosopher, known only from Lucian {Icaromenipp. 16), according to whom he committed perjury for a bribe of 1000 drachmae. 4. A lyric poet, whose songs were incorporated in the Anthology of Meleager. We still possess an epigram of his on the Aphrodite of Ciiidus (Brunck, Analeet. i. 162), but he is otherwise un- known. There is a fragment of two lines quoted by Stobaeus {Flor. tit. Ix. 2), under the name of Hennodotus, which, according to some critics, is a mistake for Hermodorus ; but nothing can be said about the matter. (Jacobs, ad Anthol. xiii. p. 902.) [L. S.] HERMODO'RUS, of Salamis, was the archi- tect of the temple of Mars in the Flaminian Circus (Cornel. Nepos, ap. Frisdan, Gr. Lat. viii. col. 792, Fr. xi.), and also, if we accept -the emendation of Tumebus (Hermodoii for Heraiodi), of the temple of Jupiter Stator in the portico of Metellus Macedonicus (Vitruv. iii. 2. $ 5, Schneider). There was also a Hermodorus of Salamis, a naval architect HERMOGENES. 419 at Rome, whom the great Antonius defended in the year of his consulship, B. c. 99. (Cicero, de Orat. i. 12.) Now Metellus triumphed over Andriscus in B. c. 1 48. These two architects, therefore, can hardly be the same. In fact, the conjecture of Tumebus is suspicious, for the very reason that it is so plausible. Schneider reads hujusmodi instead of the Hermodi of the MSS. {Comment, in Vitruv. l.c.) [P. S.] HE'RMODUS. [Hermodorus, of Salamis.] HERMO'GENES {'Ep/xoyivvs). 1. A son of Crito, the friend of Socrates, and, like his father, a disciple of Socrates. (Diog. Laert. ii. 121.) 2. A son of Hipponicus, and a brother of the wealthy Callias, is introduced by Plato in his dia- logue Cratylus as one of the interlocutors, and main- tains that all the words of a language were formed by an agreement of men among themselves. Dio- genes Laertius (iii. 6) states that he was one of the teachers of Plato, but no other writer has men- tioned this, although there was no want of oppor- tunities ; and it is further clear from the Cratylus, that Hermogenes was not a man either of talent or learning, and that he scarcely knew the elements of philosophy. Although he belonged to the great family of Callias, he is mentioned by Xenophon as a man of very little property : this is accounted for by some by the supposition that Hermogenea was not a legitimate son of Hipponicus, but only a v6dos. Plato {Cratyl. p. 391, c), on the other hand, suggests that he was unjustly deprived of his property by Callias, his brother. (Comp. Xenoph. Memor. ii. 10. § 3, Conviv. i. .3, Apol. 2 ; Groen van Prinsterer, Frosopogr. Flat. p. 225 ; C. F. Hermann, Grcsch. u. Si/stem der Flat. Fhilos. i, pp. 47, 654.) 3. A banker at Rome, who is called by Cicero {ad Att. xii, 25, 30) his debtor, in B.c, 45, If, as is commonly supposed, he is the same as Hermo- genes Clodius, who is mentioned by Cicero in a letter of the same year {ad Att. xiii. 23), he was a freedman of Clodius. 4. An architect of Alabanda, in Caria, who in- vented what was called the pseudodipterus, that is, a form of a temple, with apparently two rows of columns, whereby he efiected a great saving both of money and labour in the construction of temples. (Vitruv. iii. 2. § 6, 3. § 8.) His great object as an architect was to increase the taste for the Ionic form of temples, in preference to Doric temples. (Vitruv, iv. 3. § 1.) He was further the author of two works which are now lost ; the one was a description of the temple of Diana which he had built at Magnesia, a pseudodipterus, and the other a description of a temple of Bacchus, in Teos, a monopterus. (Vitruv. vii. Praef. § 12.) 5. A sculptor of the island of Cythera, who, ac- cording to Pausanias (ii. 2. § 7), made a statue of Aphrodite, which stood at Corinth. 6. One of the most celebrated Greek rhetoricians. He was a son of Calippus and a native of Tarsus, and lived in the reign of the emperor M. Aurelius, A. D. 161 — 180. He bore the surname of ^varijp^ that is, the scratcher or polisher, either with refer- ence to his vehement temperament, or to the great polish which he strongly recommended as one of the principal requisites in a written composition. He was, according to all accounts, a man endowed with extraordiuaiy talents ; for at the age of fifteen he had already acquired so great a reputation as an orator, that the emperor M. Aurelius desired tc