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This entry is not about the Hellenistic Ionian architect Hermogenes of Priene
Hermogenes of Tarsus, was a Greek rhetorician, surnamed the polisher. He lived in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (AD 161-180).
His precocious ability secured him a public appointment as teacher of his art while he was only a boy; but at the age of twenty-five his faculties gave way, and he spent the remainder of his long life in a state of intellectual impotence.
During his early years, however, he had composed a series of rhetorical treatises, which became popular text-books, and the subject of subsequent commentaries. We still possess some sections:
- on legal issues
- on the invention of arguments
- on various kinds of style
- on the method of speaking effectively
- on rhetorical exercises.
There seems to have been yet another Hermogenes of Tarsus, who we remember for being put to death by Emperor Domitian because of some allusions in his History. (Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Loeb Classical Library 1914, 10)
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