FILOSTRATO (Φιλόστρατος). — Name of four sophists of the imperial age, originally from Lemnos.
I. Son of Verus, F. of LEMNOS is said to have taught rhetoric (mid-2nd century A.D.) in Athens, under the Flavians, according to the Suda. To him is attributed the brief dialogue Nemo (Νέμων), included in the writings of Lucian, which speaks of the extravagances and cruelties of Nero.
II. Flavius F., called the ATHENIAN, b. at Lemnos ca. 179, d. under Philip the Arab (244-49 A.D.). Professor in Athens, he then came to Rome during the reign of Septimius Severus (before 211) and, at the suggestion of Julia Domna, wrote the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, in which the figure of Apollonius, shrouded in Neopythagorean mysticism, was taken by Hierocles of the 3rd century as a counterpart to Jesus. F. is also the author of the Lives of the Sophists (Βίοι σοφιστῶν), a collection of biographies, without deep insight, of the principal sophists, such as Eudoxius of Cnidus, Leon of Byzantium, Gorgias, Isocrates, Aspasius, etc. To him is also attributed, though with some uncertainty, the treatise On Gymnastics (Περὶ γυμναστικῆς), written around 219, in which he revives ancient athletics.
III. F. of LEMNOS, son of Nervianus, b. ca. 191. He taught in Athens and is said to be the author of two works more commonly attributed to the Athenian F.: the Heroicus (Ἐρωτικός), a work of natural philosophy set within a rustic frame (a vine-grower, not far from the tomb of Protesilaus, tells a Phoenician merchant of the revelations that Protesilaus made to him about the heroes of Troy); the Imagines (Εἰκόνες), a two-book collection of 64 descriptions of paintings, of rather mythical subject, executed with stylistic skill.
IV. F., nephew of the preceding, who lived in the second half of the 3rd century and is the author of a second series of Imagines (in the manuscripts 17 paintings), in which artifice takes precedence over naturalness and stylistic candor.