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Libanius

Libanius

c. 314 CE–c. 393 CE · Antioch

Libanius (314-c. 393 CE) was a Greek rhetorician and teacher of Antioch, one of the most celebrated orators of late antiquity and a devoted defender of traditional Greek culture and religion. A very large body of his work survives, including orations, rhetorical exercises, and over a thousand letters, making him an invaluable source for the social and intellectual life of the 4th-century eastern Roman Empire. He taught many leading figures of his day.

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AntiochSyria

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Antioch

Antioch, on the Orontes at the site of modern Antakya in southern Turkey, was founded around 300 BCE by Seleucus I, was a Seleucid capital and then capital of Roman Syria. It was a centre of Hellenistic Judaism and of Greek rhetoric, where Libanius taught. According to the New Testament, followers of Jesus were first called Christians there; Ignatius was an early bishop, John Chrysostom was born there, and the city became the seat of one of the great patriarchates. Arab forces took it in 637 for the caliphate; the Byzantines recaptured it in 969, and after Seljuk rule it was a Crusader principality from 1098 until the Mamluk sultan Baybars razed it in 1268.

Across the traditions, in Antioch at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Libanius’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Libanius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(102)