Lives of the Sophists (Philostratus and Eunapius)

INTRODUCTION

...place of birth or the death of a sophist, "some say" this and "others" that. In the Life of Herodes, he says that he has given some details that were unknown "to others"—these were probably other biographers. Thus he arrives at what is his real aim: to celebrate the apotheosis of the New Sophistic A movement in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. focused on the revival of classical Greek rhetoric. in the persons of such men as Polemo, Scopelian, and, above all, Herodes Atticus, with whom he begins his Second Book.

Without Philostratus, we should have a very incomplete idea of the predominant influence of Sophistic in the educational, social, and political life of the Empire in the second and third Christian centuries. For the only time in history, professors were generally acknowledged as social leaders, went on important embassies, made large fortunes, had their marriages arranged and their quarrels settled by Emperors, held Imperial Secretaryships, were Food Controllers, Lollianus in the second century, and Prohaeresius in the fourth century, were appointed to the office of στρατοπεδάρχης (military commander/governor), for which "Food Controller" is the nearest equivalent. and served as high priests. They swayed the fate of whole cities by gaining for them immunities, grants of money, and visits from the Emperor; by expending their own wealth in restoring Greek cities that were falling into decay; and, not least, by attracting thither crowds of students from the remotest parts of the Empire. No other type of intellectual could compete with them in popularity; no creative artists existed to challenge their prestige at the courts of phil-Hellenic Greek-loving. Emperors; and though the sophists often showed jealousy of the philosophers, philosophy without eloquence was nowhere. But besides all this, they kept alive an interest in the...