FLAVIUS, was an ancient Greek author. He wrote the Life of Apollonius Tyanaeus, and some other things which have come down to our time. Eusebius against Hierocles calls him an Athenian, because he taught at Athens; but Eunapius and Suidas always speak of him as a Lemnian: and he hints, in his Life of Apollonius, that he used to be at Lemnos when he was young. He frequented the schools of the sophists; and he mentions his having heard Damianus of Ephesus, Proclus Nauaratitas, and Hippodromus of Larissa. This seems to prove that he lived in the reign of the emperor Severus, from 193 to 212, when those sophists flourished. He became known afterwards to Severus's wife Julia Augusta, and was one of those learned men whom this philosophic empress had continually about her. It was by her command that he wrote the Life of Apollonius Tyanaeus, as he relates himself in the same place where he informs us of his connections with that learned lady. Suidas and Hefychius say that he was a teacher of rhetoric, first at Athens and then at Rome, from the reign of Severus to that of Philippus, who obtained the empire in 244.

Philostatus's celebrated work is his Life of Apollonius; which has erroneously been attributed to Lucian, because it has been printed with some of that author's pieces. Philostratus endeavours, as Cyril observes, to represent Apollonius as a wonderful and extraordinary person; rather to be admired and adored as a god than to be considered as a mere man. Hence Eunapius, in the preface to his Lives of the Sophists, says that the proper title of that work would have been, The Coming of a God to Men; and Hierocles, in his book against the Christians which was called Philalethes, and which was refuted by Eusebius in a work still extant, among other things drew a comparison between Apollonius and Jesus Christ. It has always been supposed that Philostratus composed his work with a view to discredit the miracles and doctrines of our Lord, by setting up other miracles and other doctrines against them, and this supposition may be true; but that Apollonius was really an impostor and magician may not be so certain. He may, for what we know, have been a wise and excellent person; and it is remarkable, that Eusebius, though he had the worst opinion of Philostratus's history, says nothing ill of Apollonius. He concluded that that history was written to oppose the history of Jesus; and the use which the ancient infidels made of it justifies his opinion; but he draws no information from it with regard to Apollonius. It would have been improper to have done so; since the sophistical and affected style of Philostratus, the sources from whence he owns his materials to have been drawn, and, above all, the absurdities and contradictions with which he abounds, plainly show his history to be nothing but a collection of fables, either invented or at least embellished by himself.

The works of Philostratus, however, have engaged the attention of critics of the first class. Graevius had intended to have given a correct edition of them, as appears appears from the preface of Meric Casaubon to a dissertation upon an intended edition of Homer, printed at London in 1658, 8vo. So had Bentley, who designed to add a new Latin version of his notes; and Fabricius says that he saw the first sheet of Bentley's edition printed at Leipzig in 1691. Both these designs were dropped. A very exact and beautiful edition was published at length at Leipzig, 1729, in folio, by Olearius, professor of the Greek and Latin tongues in that university; who has proved himself perfectly qualified for the work he undertook, and shown all the judgment, learning, and industry, that are required in an excellent editor.

At the end of Apollonius's Life there are 95 letters which go under his name. They are not, however, believed to be his; the style of them being very affected, and like that of a sophist, while they bear in other respects all the marks of a forgery. Philostratus says that he saw a collection of Apollonius's Letters in Hadrian's library at Antium, but had not inserted them among these. They are short, and have in them little else than moral sentences. The Lives of the Sophists contain many things which are to be met with nowhere else. The Heroics of Philostratus are only a dialogue between a vintner of Thracian Chersonesus and a Phoenician, in which the former draws characters of Homer's heroes, and represents several things differently from that poet; and this upon the faith of Proteus's ghost, who had lately visited his farm, which was not far from the tomb of this hero. Olearius conjectures, with much probability, that Philostratus's design in this dialogue was secretly to criticize some things in Homer, which he durst not do openly on account of the great veneration then paid to him, and for fear of the odium which Zoilus and others had incurred by censuring him too freely. The images are elegant descriptions and illustrations of some ancient paintings and other particulars relating to the fine arts; to which Olearius has subjoined the description of some statues by Callistratus; for the same reason that he subjoined Eusebius's book against Hierocles to the Life and Letters of Apollonius, namely, because the subjects of these respective works are related to each other. The last piece is a collection of Philostratus's Letters; but some of these, though it is not easy to determine which, were written by a nephew to our Philostratus, of the same name, as were also the last eighteen in the book of images. This is the reason why the title runs not Philostrati, but Philostratorum quae superant omnia.

There were many persons of the name of Philostratus among the ancients; and there were many other works of the Philostratus here recorded, but no others are extant besides those we have mentioned.