FAVORINUS (2nd century A.D.), Greek sophist and philo sopher, was born at Arles, but at an early age began his lifelong travels through Greece, Italy and the East. His extensive know ledge and great oratorical powers, raised him to eminence both in Athens and in Rome. With Plutarch, who dedicated to him his treatise IIEpi TOU 7rp6yTOv /vxpoy, with Herodes Atticus, to whom he bequeathed his library at Rome, with Demetrius the Cynic, Cornelius Fronto, Aulus Gellius, and with Hadrian himself, he lived on intimate terms. It was Favorinus who, on being silenced by Hadrian in an argument, remarked that it was foolish to criticize the logic of the master of thirty legions. Of his nu merous works, we possess only a few fragments (unless the Koptvecarcon Xoryos attributed to his tutor Dio Chrysostom is by him), preserved by Aulus Gellius, Diogenes Laertius, Philostratus, and Suidas, the second of whom borrows from his IIavro5airil laropia (miscellaneous history) and his 'A7rop.vyuoveVp.ara (mem oirs). As a philosopher, Favorinus belonged to the Sceptics, his chief work being IlvpptwvECoc rp6iroc (the Pyrrhonean Tropes) in which he endeavours to show that the methods of Pyrrho were useful to those who intended to practise in the law courts.
See Philostratus, Vitae sophistarum, i. 8; Suidas, s.v.; frags. in C. W. Muller, Frag. Hist. Graec. iii. 4; L. Legre, Favorin d'Arles (Marseilles, 1900) ; T. Colardeau, De Favorini Studiis et Scriptis