Apsines

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Apsines of Gadara (fl. 3rd century AD) was a Greek rhetorician. He studied at Smyrna and taught at Athens, gaining such a reputation that he was raised to the consulship by the emperor Maximinus. He was a rival of Fronto of Emesa, and a friend of Philostratus, the author of the Lives of the Sophists, who praises his wonderful memory and accuracy.

Two rhetorical treatises by him are extant: [Greek: technae raetorikae], a handbook of rhetoric greatly interpolated, a considerable portion being taken from the Rhetoric of Longinus; and a smaller work, [Greek: perhi eschaematismenon problaematon], on Propositions maintained figuratively.

Editions by Bake, 1849; Spengel-Hammer in Rhetores Graeci, ii. (1894): see also Hammer, De Apsine Rhetore (1876); Volkmann, Rhetorik der Griechen und Romer (1885).

Two rhetorical treatises by him are extant:

His Τεχνη ῥτορικη ("Art of Rhetoric") is a greatly interpolated handbook of rhetoric, a considerable portion being taken from the Rhetoric of Longinus and other material from Hermogenes;

an English translation was first published in 1997. Malcolm Heath has argued (APJ 1998) that the work's attribution to Apsines is incorrect.

A smaller work, Περι εσχηματισμηνων προβληματων ("on Propositions maintained figuratively").

[edit] Editions

Jan Bake (1849)
Spengel-Hammer, Rhetores Graeci (1894)
Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy, eds., Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire (Brill, 1997)

[edit] References

Hammer, De Apsine Rhetore (1876)
Volkmann, Letorile der Griechen und Romer (1885)
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.