EUNAPIUS OF SARDIS. - Pagan rhetorician, b. around 346; as a young man he was entrusted to the philosopher Chrysanthius, who initiated him into the doctrine of Iamblichus. He then studied at Athens under the rhetorician Prohaeresius and also had himself initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. Having returned to his homeland, he taught rhetoric there. D. after 414.

He wrote a historical work in 14 books, of which few fragments remain, in which he displayed all his enthusiasm for Julian the Apostate and judged all the Christian emperors severely. The Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, however, have come down to us complete, in which the principal representatives of the Neoplatonic school of the 4th century are portrayed. It is a mediocre work, without criticism, full of gossip, superstitious credulity and insipid rhetoric. In it E. manifests his hatred against Christianity and especially against the monks, accusing them of an unruly life, of fanatical fury against the monuments of paganism, of superstition and of treason toward their homeland.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: A. M. Croiset, Histoire de la littérature grecque, V. Paris 1933, pp. 385-87; P. De Labriolle, La réaction païenne, n° 1942, pp. 362-67.

Agostino Amore

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Eunapius of Sardis

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