This biography of a first-century C.E. holy man has become one of the most widely discussed literary works of later antiquity. With an engaging style, Philostratus portrays a charismatic teacher and religious reformer from Tyana in Cappadocia (modern central Turkey) who travels across the known world, from the Atlantic to the Ganges. His miracles, which include extraordinary cures and mysterious disappearances, together with his apparent triumph over death, caused pagans to make Apollonius a rival to Jesus of Nazareth.

In a new two-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of Philostratus's third-century work, Christopher Jones provides a freshly edited Greek text and a stylish translation with full explanatory notes. "Apollonius of Tyana" is by far the longest biography that survives from antiquity. Jones in his Introduction asks how far it is history and how far fiction, and discusses its survival from Late Antiquity to modern times.

The "Letters" of Alciphron (second century CE) constitute one of the most attractive products of the Second Sophistic. They are fictitious compositions based on an astonishingly wide variety of circumstances, though the theme of erotic love is constantly sounded. The imagination shown by the author and his convincing realism win him a place of distinction in the early development of romantic prose. The letters, which are highly literary, owing much to the New Comedy of Menander, purport to give us a sketch of the social life of Athens in the fourth century BCE. The collection is arranged in four divisions: Letters of Fishermen; Farmers; Parasites; Courtesans. Senders and addressees are mostly invented characters, but in the last section Alciphron presents us with several attempts at historical fiction, the most engaging being an exchange of letters between Menander and Glycera.

This volume also includes twenty "Letters of Farmers" ascribed to Aelian ("c."170-235 CE) and a collection of seventy-three "Erotic Epistles" of Philostratus (probably Flavius of that name, also born "c." 170 CE). In style and subject matter these resemble those of Alciphron, by whom they may have been influenced.

This biography of a first-century C.E. holy man has become one of the most widely discussed literary works of later antiquity. With an engaging style, Philostratus portrays a charismatic teacher and religious reformer from Tyana in Cappadocia (modern central Turkey) who travels across the known world, from the Atlantic to the Ganges. His miracles, which include extraordinary cures and mysterious disappearances, together with his apparent triumph over death, caused pagans to make Apollonius a rival to Jesus of Nazareth.

In a new two-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of Philostratus's third-century work, Christopher Jones provides a freshly edited Greek text and a stylish translation with full explanatory notes. "Apollonius of Tyana" is by far the longest biography that survives from antiquity. Jones in his Introduction asks how far it is history and how far fiction, and discusses its survival from Late Antiquity to modern times.