Tradition and Authority in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists

As the terms ‘authority’ and ‘tradition’ in my title suggest, in this chapter I try to ask of Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists some of the questions asked of Greek and Latin historians by John Marincola in his influential book Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography . These questions are related to ones that were asked by Thomas Schmitz in his chapter ‘Narrator and Audience in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists ’, published in 2009 but drafted several years earlier. Schmitz made a pre-publication draft available to Tim Whitmarsh when he was writing his shorter but comparably illuminating scrutiny of the narrator of the Lives , published in 2004 as part of chapter 32 of Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature .

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