Hephaestion in Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities

1. A Macedonian, celebrated as the friend of Alexander the Great, with whom he had been brought up. He died at Ecbatana, B.C. 325, to the great grief of Alexander, who ordered mourning for him throughout the whole Empire. 2. A Greek scholar, a native of Alexandria, who flourished about the middle of the second century A.D., and was tutor to the emperor Verus before his accession. He wrote a work on prosody, in forty-eight books, which he at first abridged into eleven books, then into three, and finally into one. The final abridgment, called a manual on metres (Ἐγχειρίδιον περὶ Μέτρων), has come down to us. It gives no more than a bare sketch of prosody, without any attempt at theoretical explanation of the facts; but it is, nevertheless, of immense value, since it is the only complete treatise on Greek prosody which has survived from antiquity, and quotes verses from the lost poets. Attached to it is a treatise on the different forms of poetry and composition, in two incomplete versions. The manual has a preface by Longinus, and two collections of scholia. It has been edited by Gaisford, with notes (last ed. 1856); and by Westphal (1866).