Hēracleitus (Hēraclítus): physical philosopher of Ephesus, fl. c. 515 B.C. Famous for the compression of his style, which became so cryptic that he earned the title of the ‘Obscure’. He was something of a hermit and favoured the simple vegetarian life. The ‘weeping philosopher’.
Hermíŏne: daughter of Menelaus and Helen; married to Neoptolemus (son of Achilles) and jealous of Andromache, whom she tried to put to death.
Hēródŏtus: c. 484-400 B.C.; the so-called ‘Father of History’. He travelled widely in the East and in the Grecian world, and wrote on Lydia, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, and the great Persian war. His desire is to get at the facts, but he displays a naïve fondness for story-telling and for wonders and miracles.
Hēróphȋlus: of Chalcedon; a most eminent physician and a discoverer in anatomy and physiology; fl. c. 300 B.C.
Hiero I: or the Magnificent, despot of Gelon and Syracuse (478-467 B.C.), and most powerful Sicilian of his day. Poets at one time or other associated with his court were Epicharmus, Xenophanes, Simonides, Aeschylus, Pindar, and Bacchylides.
Hierónymus: tragic and dithyrambic poet of Athens and apparently a writer on poets.
Hippócrătes: of Cos; the ‘father of medicine’; the most renowned physician and medical teacher and writer of antiquity: c. 460-357 B.C.
Hypereides (Hyperídes): Attic orator; patriot, contemporary and, for the most part, supporter of Demosthenes in his anti-Macedonian policy. Put to death by Antipater (q.v.), 322 B.C. An elegant speaker, of dubious private life.
Íbycus: of Rhegium, fl. c. 540 B.C. at the court of the despot of Samos; a lyric poet of the erotic type. The proverb, ‘the cranes of Ibycus’, arose from the story that, when being murdered by brigands near Corinth, he invoked a flock of cranes, then flying past, to avenge his death. Plutarch tells the sequel (Garrulity).
īno: or Leucóthea; a mythological personage, daughter of Cadmus and wife of Athamas. One story went that, when she leapt into the sea, she was carried to Corinth by a dolphin. Hence the allusion in the story of Arion.