Page:EB1911 - Volume 13.djvu/492

 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 ) is uncertain.

 HIMERIUS (c. 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 , 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, 14 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 ), 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