Apsines

For other uses, see Apsines (disambiguation).

Apsines of Gadara (Ancient Greek: Ἀψίνης ὁ Γαδαρεύς; fl. 3rd century AD) was a Greek rhetorician. He was a native of the Hellenised city of Gadara,^[1] whose ruins stand today at the border of Jordan with Syria and Israel. Apsines went on to study at Smyrna and taught at Athens, gaining such a reputation that he was raised to the consulship by the emperor Maximinus. He was a rival of Fronto of Emesa, and a friend of Philostratus, the author of the Lives of the Sophists, who praises his wonderful memory and accuracy.^[2]

Two rhetorical treatises by him are extant:

1. His Τέχνη ῥητορική ("Art of Rhetoric") is a greatly interpolated handbook of rhetoric, a considerable portion being taken from the Rhetoric of Longinus^[2] and other material from Hermogenes (the scholar Malcolm Heath posits this work was actually written by Aspasius of Tyre);^[3]

an English translation was first published in 1997. Malcolm Heath has argued (APJ 1998) that the work's attribution to Apsines is incorrect.

1. A smaller work, Περὶ ἐσχηματισμένων προβλημάτων ("on Propositions maintained figuratively").^[2]

Editions

• Jan Bake (1849)
• Spengel-Hammer, Rhetores Graeci (1894)
• Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy, eds., Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire (Brill, 1997)