PHILOSTRATUS, Flavius, was an ancient Greek author. Eusebius calls him an Athenian, because he taught at Athens; but Eunapius and Suidas always speak of him as a Lemnian; and he himself hints, in his Life of Apollonius, that when he was young he used to reside at Lemnos. He frequented the schools of the sophists; and he mentions his having heard Damianus of Ephesus, Proclus Naucrati-tas, and Hippodromus of Larissa. This seems to prove that he lived in the reign of the Emperor Severus, from 193 to 212, when those sophists flourished. He afterwards became known to Julia Augusta, the wife of Severus, and was one of those learned men whom this philosophical empress had continually about her. It was by her command that he wrote his celebrated Life of Apollonius Tyanensis, as he relates himself in the same place where hé informs us of his connections with that learned lady. Philostratus, as Cyril observes, endeavours to represent Apollonius as a wonderful and extraordinary person, rather to be admired and adored as a god, than to be honoured or considered as a mere man. Hence Eunapius, in the preface to his Lives of the Sophists, says that the proper title of that work should have been, The Coming of a God to Men; and Hierocles, in his book against the Christians, called Philalethes, and which was refiited by Eusebius in a work still extant, amongst other things instituted a comparison between Apollonius and Jesus Christ. It has always been supposed that Philostratus composed his work with a view to discredit the miracles and doctrines of our Lord, by setting up other miracles and other doctrines against them; and this supposition may be true: but that Apollonius was really an impostor and magician may not be so certain. He may, for ought we know, have been a wise and excellent person; and it is remarkable that Eusebius, though he had the worst opinion of the history of Philostratus, says nothing unfavourable of Apollonius. He concluded that that history was written to oppose the history of Jesus; and the use which the ancient infidels made of it justifies his opinion: but he draws no information from it with regard to Apollonius. It would have been improper to do so, since the sophistical and affected style of Philostratus, the sources whence he owns that his materials were drawn, and, above all, the absurdities and contradictions with which he abounds, plainly show that his history was nothing but a collection of fables, either invented, or at least embellished, by himself.

The works of Philostratus, however, have engaged the attention of some critics of the first class. Graevius intended to have given a correct edition of them, as appears from the preface of Merle Casaubon to a dissertation upon an intended edition of Homer, printed at London in 1658, 8vo. So also had Bentley, who designed to add a new Latin version of his notes; and Fabricius says that he saw the first sheet of Bentley’s edition printed at Leipzig in 1691. Both these designs, however, were dropped. But a very exact and beautiful edition was at length published at Leipzig, 1709, in folio, by Olearius, professor of the Greek and Latin languages in that university; a man who has proved himself perfectly qualified for the work he undertook, and shown all the judgment, learning, and industry, which are required in an excellent editor.

At the end of the Life of Apollonius, there are ninety-five letters which go under his name. They are not, however, believed to be his, the style of them being very affected, and like that of a sophist, whilst they bear in other respects all the marks of a forgery. Philostratus says that he saw a collection of the Letters of Apollonius in Hadrian’s library at Antium, but had not inserted them all amongst [7:17:447]these. They are short, and have in them little else than moral sentences. The Lives of the Sophists contain many things which are to be met with nowhere else. The Heroics of Philostratus are only a dialogue between a vintner of the Thracian Chersonesus and a Phoenician, in which the former draws characters of Homer’s heroes, and represents several things differently from that poet; and this is done upon the faith of Protesilaus’s ghost, who had lately visited his farm, not far from the tomb of this hero. Olearius conjectures, with much probability, that Philostratus’s design in this dialogue was secretly to criticise some things in Homer, which he durst not do openly, on account of the great veneration then paid to him, and for fear of the odium which Zoilus and others had incurred by censuring him too freely. The images are elegant descriptions and illustrations of some ancient paintings and other particulars relating to the fine arts, to which Olearius has subjoined the description of some statues by Callistratus, for the same reason that he subjoined Eusebius’s book against Hierocles to the Life and Letters of Apollonius, namely, because the subjects of these respective works are related to each other. The last piece is a collection of Philostratus’s Letters; but some of these, though it is not easy to determine which, were written by a nephew of Philostratus, of the same name, as were also the last eighteen in the book of images. This is the reason why the title runs not Philostrati, but Phi-lostταtorum quae supersunt omnia. There were many persons of the name of Philostratus amongst the ancients; and there were many other works of the Philostratus here recorded, but no others are extant except those we have mentioned.