Apsines

Apsines of Gadara (Greek: Ἀψίνης ὁ Γαδαρεύς; fl. 3rd century AD) was a Greek rhetorician. He studied 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.

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 and other material from Hermogenes;

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").

• 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)