Favorinus

Who was Favorinus?

Favorinus of Arelate was a Roman sophist and philosopher who flourished during the reign of Hadrian.

He was of Gaulish ancestry, born in Arelate. He is described as a hermaphrodite by birth. He received an exquisite education, first in Gallia Narbonensis and then in Rome, and at an early age began his lifelong travels through Greece, Italy and the East. His extensive knowledge, combined with great oratorical powers, raised him to eminence both in Athens and in Rome. With Plutarch, with Herodes Atticus, to whom he bequeathed his library at Rome, with Demetrius the Cynic, Cornelius Fronto, Aulus Gellius, and with Hadrian himself, he lived on intimate terms; his great rival, whom he violently attacked in his later years, was Polemon of Smyrna.

It was Favorinus who, on being silenced by Hadrian in an argument in which the sophist might easily have refuted his adversary, subsequently explained that it was foolish to criticize the logic of the master of thirty legions. When the servile Athenians, feigning to share the emperor's displeasure with the sophist, pulled down a statue which they had erected to him, Favorinus remarked that if only Socrates also had had a statue at Athens, he might have been spared the hemlock.