Agnon

Who is Agnon?

Agnon was an ancient Greek rhetorician, who wrote a work against rhetoric, which Quintilian calls "Rhetorices accusatio." Some modern scholars have considered this Agnon to be the same man as the demagogue Agnonides, the contemporary of Phocion, as the latter is in some manuscripts of Cornelius Nepos called Agnon. But the manner in which Agnon is mentioned by Quintilian shows that he is a rhetorician, who lived at a much later period than the 4th century BC suggested by an identification with Agnonides. Whether however he is the same as the academic philosopher mentioned by Athenaeus is still a matter of some debate.