Hermogenes On Issues

...he not only provides an admirably readable translation of this 'forbidding and unattractive' text, densely littered with technicalities, but adds some eighty pages of illustrations with fresh translations of Libanius, Lucian, Sopater, Syrianus and Aelius Aristides. Dr Heath has gone to enormous pains to give readers every possible help in approaching this extremely specialised treatise on the matters 'at issue' in the court rooms of the second century AD...it provides a lucid account of some rather recondite material. The Clarendon Press is certainly doing its bit for rhetoric. * Times Literary Supplement *
an admirable coherence, which is greatly assisted by the accuracy, and the occasional necessary ingenuity, of the translation ... Heath has done a great service, following the admirable work of Wooten (1987), both in introducing Hermogenes to a wider public, and in clarifying his texts for those who, like the reviewer, have toiled with them for many years. * S. Usher, Royal Holloway, University of London, The Classical Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 2 '96 *
painstaking attention to detail and to the text qua text ... H.'s volume is a valuable aid * Yun Lee Too, University of Liverpool, Journal of Hellenic Studies *
Teachers and mature students of rhetoric must have it, and good schools will hold a copy in their libraries. * Credenda *
Hermogenes' whole treatise occupies only thirty pages, but Heath follows it with ninety pages of very helpful commentary ... Teachers and mature students of rhetoric must have it, and good schools will hold a copy in their libraries. * Ex Libris *
Students of ancient rhetoric should be very grateful that Malcolm Heath, ... has chosen to reinvent himself as an authority on rhetorical theory. heath is well-endowed with the qualities required to make progress in this subject: philological acumen, a finely-tuned and methodical attention to detail, an almost heroic patience when coping with pedantry and a resilient faith in the utility of the subject ... a thoroughly admirable book. * Ian Rutherford, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
Heath's is not the first translation of On Issues into English ... but it will become the standard one. It reads well, and it looks good, with plenty of subheadings and paragraph-breaks to ease the strain on the reader ... To reflect on the difficulties of the technical terms is to appreciate the scale of Heath's achievement. He is to be congratulated on a thoroughly worthy accomplishment. Teachers of ancient rhetoric will from now on have one excuse fewer for not including stasis-theory in their courses. * Ian Rutherford, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *