Hermesianax of Colophon

Hermesianax 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, 302 BC. His chief work was an elegiac poem, in three books, addressed to a female, whose name, Leontium (Leontion) formed the title of the poem, like the Cynthia of Propertius. A great part of the third book is quoted by Athenaeus. The poem is also cited by Pausanias, by Parthenius, and by Antoninus Liberalis. We learn from another quotation in Pausanias that Hermesianax wrote an elegy on the centaur Eurytion. It is somewhat doubtful whether the Hermesianax who is mentioned by the scholiast on Nicander, and who wrote a poem called Persika, 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., vol. ii., p. 615) ; by Weston, London, 1784, 8vo ; by Ilgen (Opusc. Var.Philol.,vol. i., p. 247, Erfurdt, 1797, 8vo) ; by Rigler and Axt, Cologne, 1828, 16mo ; by Hermann (Opusc. Acad., vol. iv., p. 239) ; by Bach (Philet. Hermes, et Phanoc. Reliq., Halle, 1829, 8vo) ; by Bailey, with a critical epistle by Burges, London, 1839, 8vo; and by Schneidewin (Delect. Poes. Eleg., p. 147). Compare, also, Bergk, De Hermesianactis Elegia, Marburg, 1845.