Editing Favorinus (section)

==Career==
Favorinus had extensive knowledge, combined with great [[orator]]ical powers, that raised him to eminence both in Athens and in Rome. He lived on close terms with [[Plutarch]], with [[Herodes Atticus]], to whom he bequeathed his library in Rome, with [[Demetrius the Cynic]], [[Cornelius Fronto]], [[Aulus Gellius]], and with the emperor [[Hadrian]]. His great rival was [[Polemon of Smyrna]], whom he vigorously attacked in his later years.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} He knew Greek very well.<ref>[https://topostext.org/work/208#14.1 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 14.1]</ref>

After being silenced by Hadrian in an argument in which the sophist might easily have refuted his adversary, Favorinus subsequently explained that it was foolish to criticize the logic of the master of thirty legions.<ref>''[[Historia Augusta]]'' "Life of Hadrian Chapter 15, Sections 12-13 https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Hadrian/2*.html</ref> When the 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 [[Conium|hemlock]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

Hadrian banished Favorinus at some point in the 130s, to the island of [[Chios]]. Rehabilitated at the ascension of [[Antoninus Pius]] in 138, Favorinus returned to Rome, where he resumed his activities as an author and teacher of upper-class pupils. Among his students were [[Alexander Peloplaton]], who would later teach and serve under [[Marcus Aurelius]], and [[Herodes Atticus]], who also taught Marcus Aurelius and to whom Favorinus bequeathed his library.<ref>Wytse Hette Keulen "Gellius the Satirist: Roman Cultural Authority in Attic Nights"
p119</ref> His year of death is unknown, but he appears to have survived into his eighties, and died perhaps around 160 AD.

Favorinus was a friend and mentor of [[Aulus Gellius]], who greatly admired him<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Attic_Nights_of_Aulus_Gellius/cJFfAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 | title = The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, with an English translation, by John C. Rolfe | publisher= Loeb Classical Library | volume = 1 | pages = 454}}</ref>. He appears multiple times in Gellius' [[Noctes Atticae]], to the point of having been described as the "star" of the work<ref>https://www.jstor.org/stable/1562021</ref>.

[[Lucian]]'s ''the Eunuch''<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.well.com/~aquarius/lucian-eunuch.htm | title = Translation from Lucian; with an English translation, by A.M. Harmon. In eight volumes| location = Cambridge, Mass.| publisher = Harvard University Press | date = 1947–1957 | volume = 5 | pages = 331–345}}</ref> was probably modeled on Favorinus. Hofeneder and Amato also suggest that Favorinus is identical with the "Celtic philosopher" who explains the image of [[Ogmios]] in Lucian's ''[[Hercules (Lucian)|Hercules]]''.<ref>Hofeneder (2006)</ref><ref>Eugenio Amato, "Luciano e l'anonimo filosofo celta di Hercules 4: proposta di identificazione", Symbolae Osloenses 79 (2004), 128–149</ref> Favorinus and Lucian have been grouped together by modern scholars as part of a "group of intellectuals who were of ethnically disparate origins but were endowed with a Hellenistic education and outlook."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Romeo |first1=Ilaria |title=The Panhellenion and Ethnic Identity in Hadrianic Greece |journal=Classical Philology |date=2002 |volume=97 |page=32|doi=10.1086/449565 |s2cid=161974097 }}</ref>