HERMAGORAS, of Temnos, Greek rhetorician of the Rhodian school and teacher of oratory in Rome, flourished during the first half of the 1st century B.C. He obtained a great reputation among a certain section and founded a special school, the members of which called themselves Hermagorei. His chief opponent was Posidonius of Rhodes, who is said to have contended with him in argument in the presence of Pompey (Plutarch, Pompey, 42). Hermagoras devoted himself particularly to the branch of rhetoric known as οἰκονομία (inventio), and is said to have invented the doctrine of the four στάσεις (status) and to have arranged the parts of an oration differently from his predecessors. Cicero held an unfavourable opinion of his methods, which were approved by Quintilian, although he considers that Hermagoras neglected the practical side of rhetoric for the theoretical. According to Suidas and Strabo, he was the author of τέχναι ῥητορικαί (rhetorical manuals) and of other works, which should perhaps be attributed to his younger namesake, surnamed Carion, the pupil of Theodorus of Gadara.
See Strabo xiii. p. 621; Cicero, De inventione, i. 6. 8, Brutus, 76, 263. 78, 271; Quintilian, Instit. iii. 1. 16, 3. 9, 11. 22; C. W. Piderit, De Hermagora rhetore (1839); G. Thiele, Hermagoras Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Rhetorik (1893).