itter assailant of Plato's style (_ib._) On the whole, he seems to have
been a cold and uninspired critic, finding his chief pleasure in minute
verbal details, and incapable of rising to an elevated and extensive
view of his subject.

ERATOSTHENES, a native of Cyrene, born in 275 B.C.; appointed by Ptolemy
III. Euergetes as the successor of Kallimachus in the post of librarian
in the great library of Alexandria. He was the teacher of Aristophanes
of Byzantium, and his fame as a man of learning is testified by the
various fanciful titles which were conferred on him, such as "The
Pentathlete," "The second Plato," etc. His great work was a treatise on
geography (Luebker).

GORGIAS of Leontini, according to some authorities a pupil of
Empedokles, came, when already advanced in years, as ambassador from his
native city to ask help against Syracuse (427 B.C.) Here he attracted
notice by a novel style of eloquence. Some time after he settled
permanently in 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 +gorgieia schemata+, +gorgiazein+)
is built on a poetical plan (Luebker, _Reallexikon des classischen
Alterthums_). Hermogenes, as quoted by Jahn, appears to classify him
among the "hollow pedants" (+hupoxuloi sophistai+), "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 c