INTRODUCTION

Regarding the place of birth or the death of a sophist, he writes that “some say” this and “others” that. In the Life of Herodes, he notes that he has provided certain details unknown “to others”—these were likely other biographers. Thus, he arrives at his true objective: to celebrate the deification of the New Sophistic through the lives of men such as Polemo, Scopelian, and, above all, Herodes Atticus, with whom he begins his Second Book.

Without Philostratus, we would have a very incomplete idea of the predominant influence of Sophistic thought in the educational, social, and political life of the Empire during the second and third Christian centuries. For the only time in history, professors were widely acknowledged as social leaders. They went on important diplomatic missions, amassed large fortunes, had their marriages arranged and their disputes settled by Emperors, held Imperial Secretaryships, served as Food Controllers Lollianus in the second century and Prohaeresius in the fourth century were appointed to the office of stratopedarches, for which "Food Controller" is the closest modern equivalent. and high priests, and swayed the fate of entire cities. They achieved this by securing immunities, monetary grants, and imperial visits for these cities; by spending their own wealth to restore decaying Greek urban centers; and, not least, by attracting crowds of students from the furthest reaches 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 Emperors, and although the sophists were often jealous of the philosophers, philosophy without eloquence was nowhere. But beyond all this, they kept alive an interest in the