Lives of the Sophists (Philostratus and Eunapius)

INTRODUCTION

...various types in vogue, but he must not be supposed to be writing a handbook, and hence his discussions of style are capricious and superficial. He had collected a mass of information regarding the personal appearance, manners, dress, temperament, and fortune of the more successful sophists, and the great occasions when they triumphantly met some public test. He shows us only the splendeurs Original: "splendeurs" - splendors/glories, not the misères Original: "misères" - miseries/hardships of the profession. He has no pity for the failures, or for those who lost their power to hold an audience, like Hermogenes, who "moulted" too early, and from a youthful prodigy fell into such insignificance that his boyish successes were forgotten. But to those who attained a ripe old age and made great fortunes, Philostratus applies every possible superlative. They are the darlings of the gods; they have the power of Orpheus to charm; they make the reputation of their native towns, or of those in which they condescend to dwell. In fact, he failed to observe that he made out nearly every one of these gifted beings to be the greatest and most eloquent of them all. Polemo and Herodes are his favorites, and for them he gives most details, while for Favorinus he is unusually consecutive. But no two Lives show the same method of treatment, a variety that may have been designed. He succeeded in founding a type of sophistic biography, and in the fourth century, in Eunapius, we have a direct imitation of the exasperating manner and method of Philostratus. To pronounce a moral judgment was alien to this type of biography. Philostratus does so occasionally, and notably in the Life of Critias, whom he weighs in the balance. This is, perhaps, because, as a tyrant...