Herodes Atticus
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Date: 2022-01-22

Herodes Atticus, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=1005092 / CC BY SA 3.0

#101_births
#177_deaths
#2nd-century_Greek_people
#2nd-century_Roman_consuls
#Ancient_Greek_rhetoricians
#Claudii
#Eponymous_archons
#Greek_philanthropists
#People_from_East_Attica
#Roman_Athens
Herodes Atticus （Greek: Ἡρώδης; AD 101–177） was an Athenian rhetorician and philanthropic magnate, as well as a Roman senator.
Counted as "one of the best-known figures of the Antonine Period", he taught rhetoric to the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and was advanced to the consulship in 143.
His full name as a Roman citizen was Lucius Vibullius Hipparchus Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes.
According to Philostratus, in possession of the best education that money can buy, he was a notable proponent of the Second Sophistic.
Having gone through the cursus honorum of civil posts he demonstrated a talent for civil engineering, especially the design and construction of water supply systems.
The Nymphaeum at Olympia was one of his dearest projects.
However, he never lost sight of philosophy and rhetoric, becoming a teacher himself.
One of his students was the young Marcus Aurelius, last of the good emperors.
M.I. Finley described Herodes Atticus as "patron of the arts and letters （and himself a writer and scholar of importance）, public benefactor on an imperial scale, not only in Athens but elsewhere in Greece and Asia Minor,
holder of many important posts, friend and kinsman of emperors." Herodes Atticus was a Greek of Athenian descent.
His ancestry could be traced to the Athenian noblewoman Elpinice, a half-sister of the statesman Cimon and daughter of Miltiades.
He claimed lineage from a series of mythic Greek kings: Theseus, Cecrops, and Aeacus, as well as the god Zeus.
He had an ancestor four generations removed from him called Polycharmus, who may have been the Archon of Athens of that name from 9/8 BC–22/23.
His family bore the Roman family name Claudius.
There is a p...