Philostratus OF LEMNOS, a famous Greek sophist and rhetorician, was born probably about 170-180 A.D., studied under Proclus at Athens, and finally established himself at Rome, where he became a member of the learned circle that gathered round the Empress Julia Domna, wife of Severus. He was alive, according to Suidas, in the time of the Emperor Philip (244-249). His extant works are an idealised life of Apollonius of Tyana; the Imagines, a description of sixty-four pictures supposed to be hung in a villa near Naples; the Lives of the Sophists, a series of bright and interesting sketches; the Heroicon, a declamatory exercise on Homer's injustice to Palamedes; and a series of amatory and somewhat strained Epistles.
There is a good edition by C. E. Kayser (Zurich, 1844 et seq.); an Eng. trans. by E. Berwick (1809). On the question whether the Imagines described were real pictures or no, see, for the affirmative, E. Bertrand, Un
Critique d'Art dans l'Antiquité: Philostrate et son École (1882), and Brunn, Die Philostratischen Gemälde (1861); but for the negative, Frederichs, Die Philostratischen Bilder (1860).