Lucius Flavius Philostratus

L. Flavius Philostratus (b. c. 170 ce–d. c. 240s), Philostratus II or “the younger,” is one of several related Philostrati; the division of works in the corpus among them is a vexed question (see the Question of the Philostrati). Philostratus was a sophist or rhetor, who may have received patronage from the imperial family, including Julia Domna. Probably beginning his education in Athens, where he held local offices (including hoplite general and prytanis), he was later active as a sophist, performing display oratory and teaching, in Athens, Rome, and Ionia; he has some connection with Lemnos (Life of Apollonius of Tyana [Vita Apollonii] 6.27.4), and was perhaps born there. He coined the phrase Second Sophistic to define a literary and cultural movement, in his Lives of the Sophists, a collection of short biographies of those he considered as representative of the “Second” style of Greek oratory. Its subjects are largely contemporary with his own era but begin with Aeschines in the 4th century bce; its style is contrasted with that of the “First Sophistic,” including Gorgias. He was especially influenced by Herodes Atticus, whose biography is the most important in Lives of the Sophists (VS), and whose oratory he witnessed personally. But his literary output is large and varied in both theme and genre. It encompasses more biography in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana (VA), the perhaps heavily fictionalized life of a “holy man” and “wonder worker” of the Neronian age; Platonic dialogue mixed with revision of the Homeric version of the Trojan war and cult worship of Greek heroes in the Heroikos; a collection of miniature descriptions of paintings (ekphrases) in the Imagines; a collection of literary Letters including epigram- and elegy-influenced Erotic Epistles as well as letters addressed to historical persons and other authors; and a treatise on Greek athletic history and practice, the Gymnastikos. He wrote at least one extant epigram (Planudean Anthology 110), and may also have been the author of the Pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Nero, and one of the short treatises or Dialexeis transmitted in the Philostratean corpus (these minor and doubtful works are not treated in this article). In addition, he wrote many lost works, including sophistic declamations, discussions and introductions (meletai, dialexeis, prolaliae) to be performed in public. Philostratus wrote in an Atticizing Greek that is, however, stylistically florid and quite idiosyncratic; in style, literary and narrative technique, and choice of subjects, he is one of the most original Greek literary artists of the imperial or perhaps any era, reworking the themes of the classical era in a manner far more creative than simply imitative.