Alcidamas - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Alcidamas, of Elaea

Elaea (Aeolis)

Elaea or Elaia was an ancient city of Aeolis, Asia, the port of Pergamum; the site is not precisely determined but is near Zeytindağ, İzmir Province, Turkey....

, in Aeolis

Aeolis

Aeolis or Aeolia was an area that comprised the west and northwestern region of Asia Minor, mostly along the coast, and also several offshore islands , where the Aeolian Greek city-states were located...

, Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

sophist and rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

ian, flourished in the 4th century BC.

He was the pupil and successor of Gorgias

Gorgias

Gorgias ,Greek sophist, pre-socratic philosopher and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger...

and taught at Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

at the same time as Isocrates

Isocrates

Isocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works....

, whose rival and opponent he was. We possess two declamations under his name: On Sophists, directed against Isocrates and setting forth the superiority of extempore over written speeches (a more recently discovered fragment of another speech against Isocrates is probably of later date); Odysseus (perhaps spurious) in which Odysseus

Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

accuses Palamedes of treachery during the siege of Troy

Troy

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

According to Alcidamas, the highest aim of the orator was the power of speaking extempore on every conceivable subject. Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

(Rhet. iii. 3) criticizes his writings as characterized by pomposity of style and an extravagant use of poetical epithets and compounds and far-fetched metaphors.

Of other works only fragments and the titles have survived: Messeniakos, advocating the freedom of the Messenians and containing the sentiment that "God has left all men free; nature has made no man a slave"; a Eulogy of Death, in consideration of the wide extent of human sufferings; a Techne or instruction-book in the art
of rhetoric; and a Phusikos logos. Lastly, his Mouseion (a word invoking the Muse

Muse

The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...

s) seems to have contained the narrative of the Contest of Homer and Hesiod

Contest of Homer and Hesiod

The Contest of Homer and Hesiod or simply Certamen is a Greek narrative that expands a remark made in Hesiod's Works and Days to recount an imagined poetical agon between Homer and Hesiod, in which Hesiod bears away the prize, a bronze tripod, which he dedicates to the Muses of Mount Helicon...

, of which the version that has survived is the work of a grammarian in the time of Hadrian

Hadrian

Hadrian , was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138. He is best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome, he re-built the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma. In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and was philhellene in...

, based on Alcidamas. This hypothesis of the contents of the Mouseion, originally suggested by Nietzsche (Rheinisches Museum 25 (1870) & 28 (1873)), appears to have been confirmed by three papyrus finds - one 3rd century BC (Flinders Petrie Papyri, ed. Mahaffy

John Pentland Mahaffy

The Rev. John Pentland Mahaffy GBE CVO was an Irish classicist and polymathic scholar.-Education and interests:...

, 1891, pl. xxv.), one 2nd century BC (Basil Mandilaras, 'A new papyrus fragment of the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi Platon 42 (1990) 45-51) and one 2nd or 3rd century AD (University of Michigan pap. 2754: Winter, J. G., 'A New Fragment on the Life of Homer' TAPA 56 (1925) 120-129 http://images.umdl.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?rgn1=apis_inv;op2=And;rgn2=ic_all;op3=And;rgn3=ic_all;c=apis;q1=2754;back=back1152510816;size=50;subview=detail;resnum=1;view=entry;lastview=reslist;cc=apis;entryid=x-1622;viewid=2754V.TIF).

Further reading