1. Of Colophon, a distinguished elegiac poet, the friend and disciple of Philetas, lived in
the time of Philip and Alexander the Great, and seems to have died before the destruction of
Colophon by Lysimachus, B. C. 302. (Paus.
1.9.8.) His chief work was an elegiac poem, in three books, addressed to his mistress,
Leontium, whose name formed the title of the poem, like the
Cynthia of
Propertius. A great part of the third book is quoted by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 597). The poem is
also quoted by Pausanias (7.17.5, 8.12.1, 9.35.1), by Parthenius (Erot. 5, 22), and by Antonins Liberalis (Metam. 39). We learn from
another quotation in Pausanias, that Hermesianax wrote an elegy on the Centaur Eurytion
(7.18.1). It is somewhat doubtful whether the Hermesianax who is mentioned by the scholiast on
Nicander (Theriaca, 3), and who wrote a poem entitled Περσικά, was the same or a younger poet. The fragment of
Hermesianax has been edited separately by Ruhnken (Append. ad Epist.
Crit. ii. p. 283, Opusc. p. 614), by Weston, Lond. 1784, 8vo., by
C. D. Ilgen (Opusc. Var. Philol. vol. i. p. 247, Erford, 1797, 8vo.), by
Rigler and Axt, Colon. 1828, 16mo., by Hermann (Opusc. Acad. vol. iv. p.
239), by Bach (Philet. et Phanoc. Relig. Hal. 1829, 8vo.), by J. Bailey,
with a critical epistle by G. Burgess, Lond. 1839, 8vo., and by Schneidewin (Delect. Poes. Eleg. p. 147). Comp. Bergk, De Hermesianactis
Elegia, Marburgi, 1845.