Agnon

Agnon was an ancient Greek rhetorician,[1] who wrote a work against rhetoric, which Quintilian calls "Rhetorices accusatio."[2] Some modern scholars have considered this Agnon to be the same man as the demagogue Agnonides,[3] the contemporary of Phocion, as the latter is in some manuscripts of Cornelius Nepos called Agnon.[4] But the manner in which Agnon is mentioned by Quintilian shows that he is a rhetorician, who lived at a much later period than the 4th century BC suggested by an identification with Agnonides. Whether however he is the same as the academic philosopher mentioned by Athenaeus is still a matter of some debate.[5]

References

  1. ^ Schmitz, Leonhard (1867), "Agnon", in Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pp. 74, http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0083.html 
  2. ^ Quintilian, ii. 17. ยง 15
  3. ^ David Ruhnken, Hist. Crit. Orat. Graec. p. xc
  4. ^ Cornelius Nepos, Phoc. 3
  5. ^ Athenaeus, xiii. p. 602

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).