HERMESIANAX, an elegiac poet of the Alexandrian school, was born at Colophon, and flourished in the time of Philip and Alexander, or a little later. He was a friend and admirer—probably also a pupil—of the gram marian and poet Philetas, whom he outlived. His chief work was a poem in three books, which he, following the example of his countrymen Mimnermus and Antimachus, inscribed with the name of his mistress Leontium (said by some to be the same as the mistress of Epicurus). Of this poem a fragment of about one hundred lines has been preserved by Athenaeus (xiii. 597); and it may serve as a specimen of the style of the school. Erotic in character, and plaintive in tone, it enumerates instances, mythological and historical, of the irresistible power of love, and redeems the monotony of its ground plan by its picturesque language, and by the alternate force and tenderness of its treatment. Hermesianax was exceedingly popular in his own times, and was highly esteemed even in the Augustan period. Propertius follows his example in dedicating the first book of his Elegies to his mistress Cynthia.

Many scholars have laboured upon the text, but it is still in a very unsatisfactory condition. See Hermann, Opuscula, iv.; Schneidewin, Deled. Poes. Eleg. ; Bergk, De Hermesianactis Elegia ; the editions of Bailey (London, 1839), &c.