Apsines of Gadara (fl. 3rd century AD) was a Greekrhetor. He studied at Smyrna and taught at Athens; his fame was such that he was made a consul by Maximinus. He was a rival of Fronto of Emesa, and a friend of Philostratus; the latter praises Apsines' memory and accuracy.
Several works are extant. His Art of Rhetoric includes material of Longinus and Hermogenes, and has come down to us much-interpolated; an English translation was first published in 1997. Malcolm Heath has argued (APJ 1998) has argued that the work's attribution to Apsines is incorrect.
Viewing the significant divergence between the two primary manuscripts of Apsines as largely the result of meddling by scribes in antiquity, the editors choose the most logical reading that either source presents.
The Apsines represented in this volume, the one whose name appears at the head of the treatise in the manuscripts, has traditionally been understood to be Valerius Apsines of Gadara, mentioned in Philostratus and the Suda and born probably in the late 2nd c.
These features of shared and added material render Heath's inferences inherently unreliable: he has implicitly assumed too little contamination and too much neatness in the transmission of rhetorical subject matter for the attributions of the authorities he cites to be informative.
Feeds |
Contact