PHILOSTRATUS, "THE ATHENIAN" (c. the author of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, which he dedicated to Julia Domna, wife of Alexander Severus and mother of Cara calla (see APOLLONIUS OF TYANA). He wrote also Mot (Lives of the Sophists), Gymnasticus and Epistolae (mainly of an erotic character). Very little is known of his career. It is prob able that he was born in Lemnos, studied and taught at Athens, and then settled in Rome. He is said by Suidas to have been living in the reign of Philip (224-249). The common authorship of Apollonius and of the Lives of the Sophists is confirmed by inter nal evidence.
The Lives are not in the true sense biographical, but rather picturesque impressions of leading representatives. The Gymnas ticus contains interesting matter concerning the Olympic games and contests. The Letters breathe the spirit of the New Comedy and the Alexandrine poets ; portions of Letter 33 are almost liter ally translated in Ben Jonson's Song to Celia, "Drink to me only with thine eyes." The lipanK6s, formerly attributed to Philostra tus the Athenian, but probably by another Philostratus ("of Lem nos"), is a popular disquisition on the heroes of the Trojan War. His other work is the ElicovEs (Imagines), ostensibly a critical de scription of 64 pictures in a Neapolitan gallery.
See K. Miinscher in Philologus (19o7) suppl. X., pp. Of works bearing the name Philostratus there is a collected edition by C. F. Kayser (Zurich, 1844; Leipzig, 187o-71), and another by
Westermann (Paris, 1849), with Latin translation; these supersede those by F. Morel (Paris, 1608) and Olearius (Leipzig, 1709). There are separate editions of the Eikones by Schenkl and Reisch (Leipzig, 19o2) ; of the Gymnasticus by Mynas (1858), Daremberg (1858), Volckmar (Zurich, 1862), and especially Julius Jiithner (1909), with introd., comments and Ger. trans.; of 73 epistles by Boissonade (1842). The Life of Apollonius was first published by Aldus (1502) ; a French translation by Blaise de Vigenere appeared in 1596; an Eng. trans. of bks. i. and ii. was published (168o) by C. Blount, with notes by Lord Herbert of Cherbury (prohibited in England in 1693, it was reprinted on the Continent) ; a full translation appeared in 1903. Critical works on the Eikones are numerous: K. Friederichs, Die Philostratischen Bilder (186o) ; Goethe, "Philostrats Gemalde" in Complete Works (ed. Stuttgart, 1879) ; Brunn, Die Philostratischen Bilder (186o) ; A. Bougot, Une Galerie antique 0880 ; E. Bertrand, Un Critique d'art dans l'antiquite: Philostrate et son ecole (1882) ; Bergk, "Die Philostrate" in Fiinf Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie and Astronomie (1883) ; Schmid, iv. 7, on the attribution of the works, and Uberweg, Grundriss der Gesch. der Philosophie, Bd. I. (1926).