6. One of the most celebrated Greek rhetoricians. He was a son of Calippus and a native of Tarsus, and lived in the reign of the emperor M. Aurelius, A. D. 161-180. He bore the surname of ξυστήρ, that is, the scratcher or polisher, either with reference to his vehement temperament, or to the great polish which he strongly recommended as one of the principal requisites in a written composition. He was, according to all accounts, a man endowed with extraordinary talents; for at the age of fifteen he had already acquired so great a reputation as an orator. that the emperor M. Amelius desired to
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hear him, and admired and richly rewarded him for his wonderful talent. Shortly after this he was appointed public teacher of rhetoric, and at the age of seventeen he began his career as a writer, which unfortunately did not last long, for at the age of twenty-five he fell into a mental debility, which rendered him entirely unfit for further literary and intellectual occupation, and of which he never got rid, although he lived to an advanced age; so that he was a man in the time of his youth, and a child during his maturer years. After his death his heart is said to have been found covered with hair. (Philostr. Vit. Soph. 2.7; Suid. Hesych. s. v. Ἑρμογένης; Eudoc. p. 165; Schol. ad Hermog. περὶ στάσεων, in Olearius's note on Philostr. l.c.) If we may judge from what Hermogenes did at so early an age, there can be little doubt that he would have far excelled all other Greek rhetoricians, if he had remained in the full possession of his mental powers. His works, five in number, which are still extant, form together a complete system of rhetoric, and were for a long time used in all the rhetorical schools as manuals. Many distinguished rhetoricians and grammarians wrote commentaries upon them, some of which are still extant; many also made abridgments of the works of Hermogenes, for the use of schools, and the abridgment of Aphthonius at length supplanted the original in most schools.