Apsines
3. Of Gadara in Phoenicia, a Greek sophist and rhetorician, who flourished in the reign of Maximinus, about A. D. 235. He studied at Smyrna under Heracleides, the Lycian, and afterwards at Nicomedia under Basilicus. He subsequently taught rhetoric at Athens, and distinguished himself so much that he was honoured with the consular dignity. (Suidas, s.v. Tzetzes. Chil. 8.696.) He was a friend of Philostratus (Vit. Soph. 2.33.4), who praises the strength and fidelity of his memory, but is afraid to say more for fear of being suspected of flattery or partiality.
Works
We still possess two rhetorical works of Apsines:
1.
Περὶ τῶν μέρων τοῦ πολιτικοῦ λόγου τέχνη, which was first printed by Aldus in his Rhetores Graeci (pp. 682-726), under the incorrect title τέχνη ῥητορικὴ περὶ προοιμίων, as it is called by the Scholiast on Hermogenes (p. 14, but see p. 297). This work, however, is only a part of a greater work, and is so much interpolated that it is scarcely possible to form a correct notion of it. In some of the interpolated parts Apsines himself is quoted. A considerable portion of it was discovered by Rhunken to belong to a work of Longinus on rhetoric, which is now lost, and this portion has consequently been omitted in the new edition of Walz in his Rhetores Graeci.
Further Information
ix. p. 465, &c.; comp. Westermann, Gesch. d. Griech. Beredtsamk. § 98, n. 6.
2. Περὶ τῶν ἐσχηματισμένων προβλημὰτων
Περὶ τῶν ἐσχηματισμένων προβλημὰτων, is of little importance and very short.
Editions
It is printed in Aldus' Rhetor. Graec. pp. 727-730, and in Walz. Rhetor. Graec. ix. p. 534, &c.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.