The Lives of the Sophists

Book excerpt: PHILOSTRATUS AND EUNAPIUS. (a) Of the distinguished Lemnian family of Philostrati, Flavius Philostratus, 'the Athenian', was a Greek sophist (professor), c. A.D. 170-205, who studied at Athens and later lived in Rome. He was author of the admirable Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Loeb Nos. 16 and 17) and Lives of the Sophists (which are really impressions of investigators alert but less fond of scientific method and discovery than of stylish presentation or things known), one part concerning some older, the other some later 'provessors'. Other extant works of this Philostratus are Letters and Gymnasticus, but the Heroicus or Heroica is apparently by another Philostratus, and the Eikones (Imagines, skilful descriptions of pictures, Loeb No. 256) were probably by two Philostrati, on being the son of Nervianus and born c. A.D. 190, the other his grandson who wrote c. AD. 300. (b) The Greek Sophist and historian Eunapius was born at Sardis in A.D. 347, but went to Athens to study and lived much of his life there teaching rhetoric and possibly medicine. He was initiated into the 'mysteries' and was hostile to Christians. Lost is his historical work (covering the years A.D. 270-404) but for excerpts and the use of it made by Zosimmus, but we have his Lives of Philosophers and Sophists mainly contemporary whth himself. Eunapius is our only source of our knowledge of Neo-Platonism in the latter part of the fourth century A.D.