SOURCE: Benediktson, D. Thomas. “Phantasia: Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Other Romans, Dio Chrsysostom, and Philostratus.” In Power, Literature and Visual Arts in Ancient Greece and Rome, pp. 185-88. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.

In the following excerpt, Benediktson explores Philostratus's ideas on the relationship between literature and the visual arts as they are expressed in Apollonius of Tyana.

The traditions of Plato, Cicero and Dio come together in Philostratus, the author of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana. … Along with his relative of the same name, who wrote the Imagines, Philostratus has received a great deal of study by art critics. The Life is a biography of a priestly man; the Imagines, … is a series of ekphrases or descriptions of paintings in a museum-guide format. Both treatises are written in Greek for a highly educated and sophisticated reader. A modern critic has tried to ground modern...