Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles
available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Hegesias of
Magnesia (in Lydia), Greek rhetorician, and historian, flourished about
300 BC. Strabo (xiv. 648), speaks of him as the founder of the florid
style of composition known as "Asiatic" (cf. Timaeus). Agatharchides,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Cicero all speak of him in disparaging
terms, although Varro seems to have approved of his work. He professed
to imitate the simple style of Lysias, avoiding long periods, and
expressing himself in short, jerky sentences, without modulation or
finish. His vulgar affectation and bombast made his writings a mere
caricature of the old Attic. Dionysius describes his composition as
tinselled, ignoble and effeminate. It is generally supposed, from the
fragment quoted as a specimen by Dionysius, that Hegesias is to be
classed among the writers of lives of Alexander the Great. This fragment
describes the treatment of Gaza and its inhabitants by Alexander after
its conquest, but it is possible that it is only part of an epideictic
or show-speech, not of an historical work.
