Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/339

Rh PHILOSTRATUS. tratus, accompanied with a Latin translation. This edition is of little value. 2. That of Olearius, in 2 vols, folio, Leipzig, 170.9. It has the letters of ApoUonius added to the list of works contained in the edition of Morellius, the additional letters spoken of above, and a revised Latin translation. Previous to this edition, Bentley and others had contemplated an edition. Indeed Bentley had gone so far as to publish a specimen sheet. Un- happily, the design was not executed ; but he freely communicated to Olearius both his conjec- tural criticisms, and his notes of various readings. The edition is a very beautiful specimen of typo- graphy, and in spite of many faults, and the accu- sation that the editor has been guilty of gross plagiarism, which has been repeatedly brought against him, is very valuable, especially for its exegetical notes. 3. The last edition, and, criti- cally, by far the best, is that of C. L. Kayser, Zurich, 1844, 4to. It contains introductory re- marks on each book, the Greek text, and notes which are principally critical. As he has already published several of the treatises of Philostratus separately, the notices and notes are in some cases briefer than might have been desired. Philostratus seems to have occupied his attention for years, and scholars in various parts of Europe have aided him in collating manuscripts. He has retained all that Olearius has published, and has added the brief dialogue on Nero, commonly attributed to Lucian (Ed. Reiz. p. 636), which he assigns to Philo- stratus on grounds by no means convincing. Of other works of Philostratus, Photius (Cod. 150) takes notice of a Ae^iKou 'PrjTopLKov ; and he himself speaks of Aoyovs KopivdtaKovs. ( V. Ap. iv. 14.) Kayser has published as his a fragment Ilept TviivaariKiis (Heidelberg, 1840), but has not included it in the collected works. Suidas mentions epigrams among his produc- tions. Of these one only remains bearing his name, and which is probably his. The subject is a picture of Telephus wounded (Jacobs, Antliol. Graec. vol. iii. p. 108), Both Olearius and Kayser have inserted it. The works of Philostratus have been twice translated into German, by Seybold, 1776, and by Jacobs, Stuttgart, 1828—33. 3. The Lemnian. The account of the Philo- strati given by Suidas, to which it is here necessary to return, is that the son of Verus, the tirst Philo- stratus, lived in the time of Nero. His son, the second Philostratus, lived till the time of Philip. The third was the grand-nephew of the second, by his brother's son, Nervianus, and was also his son-in-law and pupil. He, too, practised rhetoric at Athens ; and he died and was buried at Lemnos. He wrote : — Ei/c Ji/a?, Ylava6r]va'iK6v^ TpwiKov^ Ua- pdcppafftv TTJs 'O^nfipov atTTr/Sos, MgAe'ras. And some attribute to him the lives of the sophists ge- nerally assigned to his grand-uncle. This account is palpably inconsistent with itself, as it makes a man who lived in the time of Nero, A. D. 54 — 68, the father of another who was alive under Philip, a. d. 244—249. Besides, the con- nection between the second and the third Philostra- tus is unintelligible, and, if we are to take every thing as it stands, is contradicted by a passage in the Et/coVes of the author last-mentioned, where he speaks of the second as Mr]TpoiTa.Twp, which Fa- bricius, following an alteration of Meursius on the text of Suidas. translates avunculus. These diffi- PHILOSTRATUS. 327 culties are rendered insuperable by the fact that the second Philostratus, in his Lives of the Sophists, though he speaks of an Egyptian and a Lemnian Philostratus, does not give the remotest hint that his father had ever practised his own art. He was sufficiently impressed with the honour of the profession, which he often magnifies ; and he shows his sense of this in his dedication of the Lives of the Sophists, in his allusion to the descent of An- tonius Gordianus the consul from Herodes Atticus, whom he there expressly names " the sophist." It is inconceivable, then, that he should never have alluded to the distinctions gained, and the works written by his own father. With regard to the third Philostratus, he repeatedly names a Lemnian of that name, whose intimate fnend he yas. But he classes him along with other intimate friends, of whom, at the close of the work, he declines to say anything, on the ground of that very intimacy, — but not a word of relationship. No shifting of the names, such as that adopted by Meursius, and fol- lowed by Vossius and others, of referring the lives of the sophists to the third and not the second Phi- lostratus, removes these difficulties, which are in- creased by the singular coincidence of three gene- rations born in Lemnos, teaching in Athens, then in Rome, then returning to Lemnos, to perpetuate Lemnian sophists. If the Et/tJz/es attributed to the third Philostratus be actually his, then jxtjt poTrdrap stares us in the face, and, to make the tale intelli- gible, we must alter the text of Suidas as Meursius does, and understand the word in an unusual sense, or disbelieve Suidas in an important portion of his evidence, as is done by Kayser. But the truth seems to be that the mention of two other Philo- strati, in the Lives of the Sophists, and the very probable occurrence of imitations of the writings of the biographer, whose works, from the unbroken chain of quotations in succeeding authors, we know to have been exceedingly popular, led Suidas into an error which has been the source of so much perplexity. We can easily believe that, finding many works ascribed to men of that name, with fictitious genealogies, purposely contrived, he carelessly assumed the truth of the title, and in- serted the name in his list without inquiry. Confining ourselves to the evidence of the bio- grapher, we find another distinguished sophist of his time, who was his intimate friend, and may have been a relation, though he takes no notice of it. He uniformly calls him the Lemnian. The first notice that we have of him is that when twenty-two years old he received instructions at the Olympic games, held A. d. 213 (see Clinton, Fasti Bom. p. 225), from the aged and magnani- mous Hippodromus ( V. S. ii. 27- § 3). He received exemption from public duties at the hands of Cara- calla, whom Philostratus calls Antoninus, the son of Julia, Trjs (piXoaocpov, — an exemption generally attached to the rhetorical chair of Athwis, but, on this occasion, withheld from Philiscus, the professor, and bestowed on Philostratus. The Lemnian was then twenty-four years old, a. d. 215 (ii. 30). He once found Aelian reading with great vehemence a declamation against an unmanly emperor (rvvvidos), recently deceased. Philostratus rebuked him, saying, " I could have admired you if you had attacked him in his lifetime ; for only a man can assail a living tyrant, any one can when dead ■" (ii. 32. § 2). Vossius and others had fallen into the error of sup- posing that this tyrant was Domitian, but Perizo- Y 4