SOURCE: Jones, C. P. “The Reliability of Philostratus.” In Approaches to the Second Sophistic: Papers Presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, edited by G. W. Bowersock, pp. 11-16. University Park, Pa.: The American Philological Association, 1974.

In the following essay, Jones examines the reliability of Philostratus's account of the second sophistic, comparing it to other sources from the time, and contends that the value of Philostratus's text lies in the individual details preserved by the sophist, rather than the manner in which he presents them.

Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists are the principal source for the phenomenon which we know by the name he gave it, the Second Sophistic. We have indeed an abundance of other material: inscriptions, coins, allusions in such writers as Galen and Lucian, and in a few cases the works of the sophists themselves. But for our knowledge of the...