Editing Favorinus (section)

==Works==
{{Pyrrhonism sidebar}}
Only one work by Favorinus survives, the ''Corinthian Oration'', in which Favorinus complains to the Corinthians for having removed a statue that they had previously erected in his honour, presumably delivered in the aftermath of his disgrace by Hadrian. The oration is preserved in the corpus of [[Dio Chrysostom]] as Oration 37, but is nearly universally attributed to Favorinus by modern scholars.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Konig |first1=Jason |title=Favorinus' "Corinthian Oration" in its Corinthian Context |journal=Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society |date=2001 |volume=47 |issue=47 |pages=141–171 |doi=10.1017/S0068673500000742 |jstor=44712059 |s2cid=170505999 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44712059 |issn=0068-6735}}</ref>

Of the very numerous other works of Favorinus, we possess only a few fragments, preserved by [[Aulus Gellius]], [[Diogenes Laërtius]], [[Philostratus]], [[Galen]], and in the  ''[[Suda]]'', ''Pantodape Historia'' (miscellaneous history) and ''Apomnemoneumata'' (memoirs, things remembered). As a philosopher, Favorinus considered himself to be a Skeptic;<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ioppolo |first1=Anna Maria |title=The Academic Position of Favorinus of Arelate |journal=Phronesis |date=1993 |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=183–213 |doi=10.1163/156852893321052389 |jstor=4182439 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182439 |access-date=17 January 2023 |issn=0031-8868}}</ref> his most important work in this connection appears to have been the ''Pyrrhonean Tropes'' in ten books, in which he endeavours to show that the  [[Pyrrhonism|Pyrrhonist]] Ten Modes of [[Aenesidemus]] were useful to those who intended to practise in the law courts.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

Galen devoted to a polemic against Favorinus in ''De optima doctrina'', opposing Favorinus’ thesis that the best instruction consists in the argument in which one speaks, in each particular question, in favour of opposite sides. Galen's treatise says that Favorinus wrote a work ''On the Academic Disposition'' also called "Plutarch" and a work against Epictetus named ''Against Epictetus'' staging one of [[Plutarch]]’s slaves, Onesimus, arguing with Epictetus. Favorinus wrote ''On the Kataleptic Fantasy'' in which he is said to have denied the possibility of [[katalepsis]], the key notion of Stoic epistemology.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.academia.edu/4396561|title = Favorinus versus Epictetus on the Philosophical Heritage of Plutarch. A Debate on Epistemology", in: Judith Mossman (Ed.), the Intellectual World of Plutarch, p. 17-39|last1 = Opsomer|first1 = Jan| journal=Plutarch and His Intellectual World | date=January 1997 | page=17 | doi=10.2307/j.ctvvnbvd.6 }}</ref>

One of the speeches of Favorinus contains the oldest example of ''[[psychomachia]]'', suggesting that he may have invented the allegorical technique, which the Latin poet [[Prudentius]] later applied with so much success to the Christian soul resisting various kinds of temptation.<ref>Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, "Later Greek Voices on the Predicament of Exile: from Teles to Plutarch and Favorinus", in: J. F. Gaertner (Ed.), ''Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond'', Leiden 2007 {{ISBN|9004155155}} p 104</ref>