Philostratus°
PHILOSTRATUS° (b. c. 172 C.E.), a native of the island of Lemnos, he studied rhetoric in Athens and later joined the literary and philosophic circle in Rome of Empress Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus. She commissioned him to write a literary life of Apollonius of Tyana, whom he presented as a divinely inspired sage, prophet, and reformer along Pythagorean lines. The work has several comments on the separateness of the Jews and on their bloody revolt against the Romans under Vespasian.
Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.