Hermippus

This article is about the ancient Greek biographer and philosopher Hermippus. For the poet Hermippos (son of Lysis from Athens, 5th century BC) see Hermippos (Athens) .

Hermippos from Smyrna ( Greek  Ἕρμιππος ; * 289/277 BC; † 208/204 BC) was an ancient Greek biographer and philosopher .

Hermippos further developed the biography of the Peripatetic . He himself did not belong to this school, but lived in Alexandria as a pupil of Callimachus . His works have only survived in fragments, he wrote numerous biographies of important Greeks including Pythagoras , Aristotle and the Seven Wise Men of Greece . He is considered one of the most famous and most cited ancient Greek biographers, and many later ancient authors, such as Plutarch or Flavius ​​Josephus , use him. The more literary than factual narrative style of his biographies, which are provided with numerous anecdotes, earned him the accusation of a certain lack of objectivity and unreliability among historians at the beginning of the 20th century. This assessment was later revised, however, as it has meanwhile been recognized that the intentions of Hermippos and ancient Greek historiography differ from those of modern historiography and must therefore be assessed in a different context. In addition, Hermippus had always backed up his anecdotes with sources and by no means adopted random rumors.

Suetonius is said to have a similarity to Hermippos for two reasons: On the one hand, both talk and anecdotes flow into it, and on the other hand, both had extensive source material, because Hermippus was able to access the library in Alexandria, while Suetonius had access to the imperial archive at least temporarily.

Text output

• Jan Bollansée: Felix Jacoby: The fragments of the Greek historians continued. Part 4: Biography and Antiquarian Literature. Volume IV A 3: Hermippos of Smyrna. Brill, Leiden 1999, ISBN 90-04-11303-7 (critical edition with detailed commentary)
• Fritz Wehrli (ed.): Hermippos the Kallimacheer . Schwabe, Basel and Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-7965-0600-3 (critical edition with commentary)

literature

• Jan Bollansée: Hermippos of Smyrna and His Biographical Writing: A Reappraisal. Peeters, Leuven 1999, ISBN 90-429-0779-7
• Kilian Fleischer: The Complete Title of a Work of Hermippus (FGrHist 1026 39.40). In: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 206, 2018, pp. 40–46
• Stephan Heibges : Hermippos 6 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VIII, 1, Stuttgart 1912, Col. 845-852.
• Jean-Pierre Schneider: Hermippe de Smyrne. In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques . Volume 3, CNRS Éditions, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-271-05748-5 , pp. 655-658
• Fritz Wehrli , Georg Wöhrle , Leonid Zhmud: The Peripatos until the beginning of the Roman Empire. In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy . The philosophy of antiquity. Volume 3: Older Academy - Aristotle - Peripatos. 2nd edition, Schwabe, Basel 2004, ISBN 3-7965-1998-9 , pp. 493-666, here: 622 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Erler, Stefan Schorn: Greek biography in Hellenistic times: files of the international congress from 26.-29. July 2006 in Würzburg . Walter de Gruyter, 2007, ISBN 3-11-019504-6 , p. 84–87 ( online in Google Book Search).