Philostratus the Athenian

c. 170 CE–c. 245 CE · Athens

'Philostratus the Athenian' refers to the most famous of several closely related Greek writers named Philostratus active in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries CE, the author usually credited with the Life of Apollonius of Tyana and the Lives of the Sophists. Because several relatives bore the same name and worked in similar genres, ancient and modern scholars have struggled to assign individual works with certainty.

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AthensAttica (Greece)

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About Athens

Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.

In Athens at the same time

Alcinous, Lucian of Samosata, Julius Pollux, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Philostratus Sophista, Dexippus

Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time

See other sages who lived in Athens→

In the same place & time

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

Across the traditions

In the same tradition

Alcinous, Lucian of Samosata, Julius Pollux, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Philostratus Sophista, Dexippus, Porphyrius

The world in their lifetime

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