Hems is the Emesa, Emissa, or Hemesa of the Romans, and by Ptolemy it is assigned to the district of Apameue. Its inhabitants are mentioned among the early opponents of the Roman arms. Heliogabalus or Bassianus, declared emperor in 218 A. ι>., was a native of Emesa, and held office as a priest of the sun. It was in the neighbourhood of the town that the army of Zenobia was routed by Aurelian. The first Christian bishop is said to have been St Silvanus. About fourteen years after the Hegira Khalid bin Walid, who was to find his grave in one of its suburbs, made himself master of Hems; and from 1098 to 1187 it was in the hands of the crusaders. It was probably Saladin, by whom they were expelled, that turned the temple of the sun, which under Christian rule had been used as a cathedral, into the chief fortress of the place. In July 1831 Ibrahim Pasha, having defeated the governor of Aleppo at Hems, caused the fortress to be blown up.

The poet Ka’ab el Alιbar is buried in the town, and the people show another grave which they wrongly believe to be that of Ja’afar el Tayyar.

See Burton and Tyrwhitt Drake, Unexplored Syria, 1872.

His first work, published in 1769, was a Lettre sur la Sculpture, written, like all the others, in French. It was followed in 1770 by the Lettre sur les désirs, in 1772 by the Lettre sur l'homme et ses rapports, in 1778 by Sophyle, a dialogue on the relation between soul and body, in 1779 by Aristée, a dialogue on the existence of the Divine Being, in 1787 by Alexis ou l’âge d’or, by Simon, oudes facultés de l’âme, and by the Lettre de Dioclés à Diotime sur l’ athéisme. Collected editions of his works have been published in 1792 (2 vols. ), and more completely by Meyboom, in 1846-50 (6 vols.). See Grucker, François Hemsterhuis, sa Vic et scs Oeuvres (Paris, 1866).

HEMSTERHUIS, Tiberius (1685-1766), philologist and critic, was born on January 9, 1685, at Groningen in Holland. His father, a learned physician, recognizing the abilities of his son, gave him so good an early education that, when he entered the university of his native town in his fifteenth year, he speedily proved himself to be the best student of mathematics. After a year or two at Groningen, he was attracted to the university of Leyden by the fame of Perizonius; and while there he was entrusted with the flattering duty of arranging the manuscripts in the library. Though he accepted an appointment as professor of mathematics and philosophy at Amsterdam in his twentieth year, he had already directed his attention to the study of the ancient languages. In 1706 he completed the edition of Pollux’s Onomasticon begun by Lederlin; but the praise he received from his countrymen was more than counterbalanced by two letters of criticism from Bentley, which mortified him so keenly that for two months he refused to open a Greek book. In 1717 Hemsterhuis was appointed professor of Greek at Franeker, but he did not enter on his duties there till 1720. In 1738 he became professor of national history also. Two years afterwards ho was called to teach the same subjects at Leyden, where he died, April 7, 1766. Hemsterhuis deserves special note for reinstating the study of Greek in its honourable place among his fellow-countrymen, while he was also the founder of a laborious and useful Dutch school of criticism, of which Valckenaer, Lennep, and Ruhnken are the most famous disciples.

His chief writings are the following :— Luciaηi Colloquia et Timon, 1708; Aristophanis Plutus, 1744; Notae, <kc., ad Xenophontem Ephesium in the Miscellanea Critica of Amsterdam, vols, iii. and iv.; Observationes ad Chrysostomi Homilias; Orationes, 1784; a Latin translation of the Birds of Aristophanes, in Kuster’s edition; notes to Bernard’s Thomas Magister, to Alberti’s Hesy∙ chius, to Ernesti’s Callimachus, and to Bunnann’s Propertius. See Elogium T. Hemsterhusii (with Bentley’s letters) by Ruhnken, 1789; and Supplementa Annotationis ad Elogium T. Hemsterhusii, &c., Leyden, 1874.