SOURCE: Bowersock, G. W. “The Biographer of the Sophists.” In Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire, pp. 1-16. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.

In the following essay, Bowersock discusses Philostratus's notion of the “sophistic,” characterizing his writing as a “reliable evocation of a grand baroque age.”

Literature, illuminating the society of an age through acquiescence or dissent, must always have its place in history as a reflection of attitudes and taste. The relation of literature to politics, however, has not been uniform throughout the ages; from time to time there have developed close alliances between literature and politics,—in England, for example, in the early eighteenth century. Similarly, in the second century of the present era, literary men helped to determine the destiny of the Roman empire and never enjoyed more public renown. Their social and political eminence was not necessarily matched by superior literary attainments. The quality of...