Hermi´one. A daughter of Mars and Venus who married Cadmus. She was changed into a serpent, and placed in the Elysian Fields.
Hermi´one. A daughter of Menelaus and Helen. She was privately promised in marriage to Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, but her father, ignorant of the engagement, gave her hand to Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, whose services he had experienced in the Trojan war.
Hermip´pus. A freedman, disciple of Philo, in the reign of Adrian, by whom he was greatly esteemed. He wrote five books on dreams.
Hermoc´rates. A general of Syracuse, who was sent against the Athenians. His lenity towards the Athenian prisoners was regarded with suspicion. He was banished from Sicily, and was murdered on his attempt to return to his country.
Hermodo´rus. A philosopher of Ephesus who is said to have assisted, as interpreter, the Roman decemvirs, in the composition of the ten tables of laws which had been collected in Greece.
He´ro. A beautiful girl of Sestos, greatly beloved by Leander, a youth of Abydos. The lovers were greatly attached to each other, and often in the night Leander swam across the Hellespont to Hero in Sestos, till on one tempestuous night he was drowned, and Hero in despair threw herself into the sea and perished.
Hero´des, surnamed the Great, followed the fortunes of Brutus and Cassius, and afterwards those of Antony. He was made king of Judæa by the aid of Antony, and after the battle of Actium he was continued in power by submission to and flattery of Augustus. He rendered himself odious by his cruelty, and as he knew his death would be a cause for rejoicing, he ordered a number of the most illustrious of his subjects to be confined and murdered directly he expired, that there might appear to be grief and shedding of tears for his own death. Herod died in the seventieth year of his age, after a reign of 40 years.
Herod´otus. A celebrated historian of Halicarnassus. He ranks amongst historians as Homer does amongst the poets and Demosthenes amongst the orators. His great work is a history of the wars of the Persians against the Greeks, from the age of Cyrus to the battle of Mycale in the reign of Xerxes; besides which it gives an account of many celebrated nations. A life of Homer is attributed to his pen, though by some the authorship is doubted.
Hesi´odus. A celebrated poet, born at Ascra in Bœotia. He lived in the age of Homer, and obtained a poetical prize in competition with him, according to Varro and Plutarch. Quintilian, Philostratus, and others, maintain that Hesiod lived before the age of Homer. Hesiod, without possessing the sublimity of Homer, is admired for the elegance of his diction.
Hesi´one. A daughter of Laodemon, king of Troy. It was her fate to be exposed to a sea-monster, to whom the Trojans presented yearly a young girl to appease the resentment of Apollo and Neptune, whom Laodemon had offended. Hercules undertook to rescue her, and attacking the monster just as he was about to devour her, killed him with his club.