Library › Greek: Lyric & Elegy › Testimonia
These are ancient testimonies about Hermesianax of Colophon, the elegiac poet of the early third century BC. A scholion on Nicander's Theriaca records that Hermesianax was a friend of Philitas and wrote the Persica and the elegies for his mistress Leontion, while also suggesting that the Hermesianax addressed by Nicander was a later namesake. A passage of Agatharchides, preserved by Photius, criticizes the frigid style of a Hermesianax who wrote in praise of Athena.
Although brief, these testimonies are much of what is known about Hermesianax's life and works, and they show ancient scholars already puzzling over poets of the same name. They are useful for dating Hellenistic poets and for understanding the literary circle around Philitas.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: FGrHist 691 T 1–2). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).