Aelius Antipater

Who is Aelius Antipater?

Aelius Antipater or Antipater of Hierapolis was a Greek sophist and rhetorician.

He was a son of Zeuxidemus, and a pupil of Adrianus, Pollux, and Zeno. In his orations, both extempore and written, some of which are mentioned by Philostratus, Antipater was not superior to his contemporaries, but in the art of writing letters he is said to have excelled all others, and for this reason the emperor Severus made him his private secretary and tutor of his two sons Caracalla and Geta. This emperor adlected him to the consular rank in his early 50s by Septimius Severus and sent him to govern Bithynia and Pontus but, as Antipater used his sword too freely, he was deprived of his office, and retired to his native place, where he died at the age of 68, it is said of voluntary starvation.

His nomen is derived from the Aelia gens, which would indicate that an ancestor of his had received Roman citizenship while Trajan or Hadrian was emperor. He also wrote a lost biography of Severus.