Attalus () was an

ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

in the

Second Sophistic The Second Sophistic is a literary-historical term referring to the Greek writers who flourished from the reign of Nero until c. 230 AD and who were catalogued and celebrated by Philostratus in his ''Lives of the Sophists''. However, some recent ...

tradition, who lived during the second century CE. He was the son of the renowned sophist Polemon of Laodicea, and grandfather of a sophist named Hermocrates of Phocaea.

Philostratus Philostratus or Lucius Flavius Philostratus (; ; 170s – 240s AD), called "the Athenian", was a Greek sophist of the Roman imperial period. His father was a minor sophist of the same name. He flourished during the reign of Septimius Severus ...

, ''Lives of the Sophists'' 2.25.2. Most of what we know about Attalus comes from a brief mention in the ''Lives of the Sophists'' of

, in which Philostratus both mentions that Attalus was a sophist and son of the famed Polemon, and also, cuttingly, that the only significant descendant of Polemon was his great-grandson, Hermocrates. On the other hand, Attalus was noteworthy enough in his time to have had coins minted with his name on them. Attalus appears on some coins of

Smyrna Smyrna ( ; , or ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek city located at a strategic point on the Aegean Sea, Aegean coast of Anatolia, Turkey. Due to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence, and its good inland connections, Smyrna ...

, which are figured in Gottfried Olearius's edition of

.Gottfried Olearius's, ''Philostratus'', p. 609 They contain the inscription ΑΤΤΑΔΟΣ ΣΟΦΙΣ. ΤΑΙΣ ΠΑΤΡΙΣΙ ΣΜΥΡ. ΔΑΟΚ., which is translated as "Attalus, the Sophist, to his native cities Smyrna and Laodicea." The latter is conjectured to have been the place of his birth, the former to have adopted him as a citizen.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Attalus Roman-era Sophists 2nd-century Romans