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Favorinus (c. 80 – c. 160 AD) was a Roman
sophist A sophist () was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught ''arete'', "virtue" or "excellen ...
and
skeptic Skepticism ( US) or scepticism ( UK) is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...
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 ...
who flourished during the reign of
Hadrian Hadrian ( ; ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic peoples, Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, Aelia '' ...
and 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 ...
.


Early life

He was of
Gaulish Gaulish is an extinct Celtic languages, Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, ...
ancestry, born in Arelate (
Arles Arles ( , , ; ; Classical ) is a coastal city and Communes of France, commune in the South of France, a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture in the Bouches-du-Rhône Departments of France, department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Reg ...
). He received a refined education, first in
Gallia Narbonensis Gallia Narbonensis (Latin for "Gaul of Narbonne", from its chief settlement) was a Roman province located in Occitania and Provence, in Southern France. It was also known as Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), because it was the first ...
and then in
Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
, and at an early age began his lifelong travels through Greece, Italy and the East.


Career

Favorinus had extensive knowledge, combined with great
orator An orator, or oratist, is a public speaker, especially one who is eloquent or skilled. Etymology Recorded in English c. 1374, with a meaning of "one who pleads or argues for a cause", from Anglo-French ''oratour'', Old French ''orateur'' (14 ...
ical powers, that raised him to eminence both in Athens and in Rome. He lived on close terms with
Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...
, with
Herodes Atticus Herodes Atticus (; AD 101–177) was an Athenian rhetorician, as well as a Roman senator. A great philanthropic magnate, he and his wife Appia Annia Regilla, for whose murder he was potentially responsible, commissioned many Athenian public w ...
, to whom he bequeathed his library in Rome, with
Demetrius the Cynic Demetrius is the Latinized form of the Ancient Greek male given name ''Dēmḗtrios'' (), meaning "devoted to goddess Demeter". Alternate forms include Demetrios, Dimitrios, Dimitris, Dmytro, Dimitri, Dimitrie, Dimitar, Dumitru, Demitri, Dhim ...
,
Cornelius Fronto Marcus Cornelius Fronto (c. 100late 160s AD), best known as Fronto, was a Roman grammarian, rhetorician, and advocate. Of Berber origin, he was born at Cirta (modern-day Constantine, Algeria) in Numidia. He was suffect consul for the '' nundinium' ...
,
Aulus Gellius Aulus Gellius (c. 125after 180 AD) was a Roman author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome. He is famous for his ''Attic Nights'', a commonplace book, ...
, and with the emperor
Hadrian Hadrian ( ; ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic peoples, Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, Aelia '' ...
. His great rival was
Polemon of Smyrna Marcus Antonius Polemon (; c. 90 – 144 AD) or Antonius Polemon, also known as Polemon of Smyrna or Polemon of Laodicea (), was a sophist who lived in the 2nd century. His son Attalus and great-grandson Hermocrates of Phocaea were also notable s ...
, whom he vigorously attacked in his later years. He knew Greek very well. 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. 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 Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...
also had had a statue at Athens, he might have been spared the hemlock. Hadrian banished Favorinus at some point in the 130s, to the island of
Chios Chios (; , traditionally known as Scio in English) is the fifth largest Greece, Greek list of islands of Greece, island, situated in the northern Aegean Sea, and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, tenth largest island in the Medi ...
. Rehabilitated at the ascension of
Antoninus Pius Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius (; ; 19 September 86 – 7 March 161) was Roman emperor from AD 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors from the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. Born into a senatorial family, Antoninus held var ...
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 Alexander (), nicknamed Pēloplátōn ( "Clay-Plato"), also known as Alexander of Seleucia and Alexander the Platonic, was a Greek rhetorician and Platonist philosopher of the age of the Antonines and the Second Sophistic. Early life He was the s ...
, who would later teach and serve under
Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ( ; ; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoicism, Stoic philosopher. He was a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, the last of the rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors ...
, and
Herodes Atticus Herodes Atticus (; AD 101–177) was an Athenian rhetorician, as well as a Roman senator. A great philanthropic magnate, he and his wife Appia Annia Regilla, for whose murder he was potentially responsible, commissioned many Athenian public w ...
, who also taught Marcus Aurelius and to whom Favorinus bequeathed his library. 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 Aulus Gellius (c. 125after 180 AD) was a Roman author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome. He is famous for his ''Attic Nights'', a commonplace book, ...
, who greatly admired him. He appears multiple times in Gellius'
Noctes Atticae Aulus Gellius (c. 125after 180 AD) was a Roman author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome. He is famous for his ''Attic Nights'', a commonplace book, or ...
, to the point of having been described as the "star" of the work.
Lucian Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridi ...
's ''the Eunuch'' was probably modeled on Favorinus. Hofeneder and Amato also suggest that Favorinus is identical with the "Celtic philosopher" who explains the image of
Ogmios Ogmios (sometimes Ogmius; ) is the name given to a Celtic god of eloquence described in ''Heracles'', a work of the Syrian satirist Lucian. Lucian's ''Heracles'' is a short text, intended to be read aloud before a longer public performance. It ...
in Lucian's ''
Hercules Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the Gr ...
''. 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."


Works

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 Dio Chrysostom (; ''Dion Chrysostomos''), Dio of Prusa or Cocceianus Dio (c. 40 – c. 115 AD), was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD. Eighty of his ''Discourses'' (or ''Orations''; ) are ...
as Oration 37, but is nearly universally attributed to Favorinus by modern scholars. Of the very numerous other works of Favorinus, we possess only a few fragments, preserved by
Aulus Gellius Aulus Gellius (c. 125after 180 AD) was a Roman author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up in Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome. He is famous for his ''Attic Nights'', a commonplace book, ...
,
Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; , ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving book ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek ph ...
,
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 ...
,
Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...
, and in the ''
Suda The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; ; ) is a large 10th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine encyclopedia of the History of the Mediterranean region, ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas () or Souidas (). It is an ...
'', ''Pantodape Historia'' (miscellaneous history) and ''Apomnemoneumata'' (memoirs, things remembered). As a philosopher, Favorinus considered himself to be a Skeptic; 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
Pyrrhonist Pyrrhonism is an Ancient Greek school of philosophical skepticism which rejects dogma and advocates the suspension of judgement over the truth of all beliefs. It was founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE, and said to have been inspired ...
Ten Modes of
Aenesidemus Aenesidemus ( or Αἰνεσίδημος) was a 1st-century BC Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher from Knossos who revived the doctrines of Pyrrho and introduced ten skeptical "modes" (''tropai'') for the suspension of judgment. He broke with the Acad ...
were useful to those who intended to practise in the law courts. 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 Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...
’s slaves, Onesimus, arguing with Epictetus. Favorinus wrote ''On the Kataleptic Fantasy'' in which he is said to have denied the possibility of
katalepsis ''Katalepsis'' (, "grasping") is a term in Stoicism, Stoic philosophy for a concept roughly equivalent to modern ''Understanding, comprehension''. To the Stoic philosophers, ''katalepsis'' was an important premise regarding one's state of mind as ...
, the key notion of Stoic epistemology. One of the speeches of Favorinus contains the oldest example of ''
psychomachia The ''Psychomachia'' (''Battle of Spirits'' or ''Soul War'') is a Latin poem by Prudentius (348 CE - after 405 CE). Its precise date of composition is unknown. In roughly a thousand lines, the poet describes the conflict of vices and virtues as ...
'', suggesting that he may have invented the allegorical technique, which the Latin poet
Prudentius Aurelius Prudentius Clemens () was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis (now Northern Spain) in 348.H. J. Rose, ''A Handbook of Classical Literature'' (1967) p. 508 He probably died in the Iberian Peninsula some ...
later applied with so much success to the Christian soul resisting various kinds of temptation.


Personal life

Favorinus is described as a
eunuch A eunuch ( , ) is a male who has been castration, castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2 ...
(εὐνοῦχος) by birth.
Polemon of Laodicea Marcus Antonius Polemon (; c. 90 – 144 AD) or Antonius Polemon, also known as Polemon of Smyrna or Polemon of Laodicea (), was a sophist who lived in the 2nd century. His son Attalus and great-grandson Hermocrates of Phocaea were also notable ...
, writer of a treatise on physiognomy, described Favorinus as "a eunuch born without testicles", beardless and with a high-pitched, thin voice, while Philostratos described him as a hermaphrodite. Mason and others thus describe Favorinus as having an
intersex Intersex people are those born with any of several sex characteristics, including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binar ...
trait. Retief and Cilliers suggest that the descriptions available are consistent with Reifenstein's syndrome (
androgen insensitivity syndrome Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) is a condition involving the inability to respond to androgens, typically due to androgen receptor dysfunction. It affects 1 in 20,000 to 64,000 XY (karyotype, karyotypically male) births. The condition result ...
). Favorinus owned an Indian slave named Autolekythos.
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'' 490


See also

*
Intersex in history Intersex, in humans and other animals, describes variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary not ...
*
Timeline of intersex history The following is a timeline of intersex history. Timeline Pre-history * Sumerian creation myths, 4000 years ago, include the fashioning of a body with atypical sex characteristics. Antiquity * Hippocrates and Galen view sex as a spectrum be ...


Notes


References

* Eugenio Amato (intr., ed., comm.) and Yvette Julien (trans.), ''Favorinos d'Arles, Oeuvres I. Introduction générale - Témoignages - Discours aux Corinthiens - Sur la Fortune'', Paris: Les Belles Lettres (2005). * Eugenio Amato (intr., ed., comm., trans.), ''Favorinos d'Arles, Oeuvres III. Fragments'', Paris: Les Belles Lettres (2010). * Ioppolo, A. M., "The Academic Position of Favorinos of Arelate," ''Phronesis'', 38 (1993), 183–213. * Gleason, M. W., Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome, Princeton (1995). * Opsomer, J., "Favorinos versus Epictetus on the Philosophical Heritage of Plutarch: a Debate on Epistemology," in J. Mossman (ed), ''Plutarch and his Intellectual World'' (London, 1997), 17–34. * Holford-Strevens, "Favorinos: the Man of Paradoxes," in J. Barnes et M. Griffin (eds.), ''Philosophia togata'', vol. II (Oxford, 1997), 188–217. * Horstmanshoff, M., Who is the True Eunuch? Medical and Religious Ideas about Eunuchs and Castration in the Works of Clement of Alexandria, in S. Kottek and M. Horstmanshoff (eds), From Athens to Jerusalem: Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature. Papers of the Symposium in Jerusalem, 9–11 September 1996 (Rotterdam, 2000) 101–118. *Andreas Hofeneder, ''Favorinus von Arleate und die keltische Religion'', Keltische Forschungen 1 (2006), 29–58. * * Mason, H.J., Favorinus’ Disorder: Reifenstein's Syndrome in Antiquity?, in Janus 66 (1978) 1–13. * Swain, Simon, "Favorinus and Hadrian," in ''ZPE'' 79 (1989), 150-158 * ''Le traité Sur l’exil de Favorinos d’Arles: papyrologie, philologie'', littérature, édité par Eugenio Amato et Marie-Hélène Marganne, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes (coll. «Interférences»), 2015. {{Authority control 80s births 160s deaths 2nd-century philosophers 2nd-century Gallo-Roman people Roman-era Sophists Roman-era Athenian rhetoricians Roman-era philosophers in Athens Intersex men Intersex history Intersex academics Intersex writers Roman-era Skeptic philosophers