Favorinus

Favorinus of Arelate (c. 80 – c. 160 AD) was an intersex Roman

sophist and Academic Skeptic philosopher who flourished during the
Favorinus of Arelate
reign of Hadrian and the Second Sophistic. Born Arelate
Notable work Pyrrhonean Tropes ·
On the Academic
Contents Disposition · On the
Kataleptic Fantasy ·
Early life Against Epictetus ·
Career Pantodape Historia ·
Works Apomnemoneumata

Personal life Era Hellenistic

See also philosophy

Notes Region Western philosophy

References School Academic

Skepticism
Main Epistemology
Early life interests
Influences
He was of Gaulish ancestry, born in Arelate (Arles). He received an Plutarch, Aenesidemus
exquisite education, first in Gallia Narbonensis and then in Rome,
and at an early age began his lifelong travels through Greece, Italy Influenced
and the East. Herodes Atticus, Demetrius the
Cynic, Cornelius Fronto, Aulus
Career Gellius, Hadrian, Lucian

Favorinus had extensive knowledge, combined with great oratorical 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.
He knew Greek very well.[1]

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.[2]
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 hemlock.

Hadrian banished Favorinus at some point in the 130s, to the island of Chios. Rehabilitated with 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.[3] His year of death is unknown, but he appears to have survived into his
eighties, and died perhaps around 160.
Hofeneder (2006) suggests that Favorinus is identical with the "Celtic philosopher" explaining the image of
Ogmios in Lucianus. (Eugenio Amato had suggested this identification before in "Luciano e l'anonimo
filosofo celta di Hercules 4: proposta di identificazione", Symbolae Osloenses 79 (2004), 128–149).

Lucian's the Eunuch[4] was probably modeled on Favorinus.

Works
Of the very numerous 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 an
Academic Skeptic;[5] 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 Ten Modes of Aenesidemus 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’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.[6]

One of the speeches of Favorinus contains the oldest example of psychomachia, suggesting that he may
have invented the alegorical technique, which the Latin poet Prudentius later applied with so much success
to the Christian soul resisting various kinds of temptation.[7]

Personal life
Favorinus is described as a eunuch (εὐνοῦχος) by birth.[8][9] Polemon of Laodicea, 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.[10] Mason and others thus describe
Favorinus as having an intersex trait.[11][12][13] Retief and Cilliers suggest that the descriptions available are
consistent with Reifenstein's syndrome (androgen insensitivity syndrome).[10]

Favorinus owned an Indian slave[14] named Autolekythos.[15]

See also
Intersex in history
Timeline of intersex history

Notes
1. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 14.1 (https://topostext.org/work/208#14.1)
2. Historia Augusta "Life of Hadrian Chapter 15, Sections 12-13
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Hadrian/2*.html
3. Wytse Hette Keulen "Gellius the Satirist: Roman Cultural Authority in Attic Nights" p119
 4. "Translation from Lucian; with an English translation, by A.M. Harmon. In eight volumes" (http
s://www.well.com/~aquarius/lucian-eunuch.htm). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
1947–1957. pp. 331–345.
5. "Skepticism" (http://krieger.jhu.edu/philosophy/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2013/02/Skepticism.
pdf) (PDF). Krieger School of Arts & Sciences, Johns Hopkins University.
6. https://www.academia.edu/4396561/Favorinus_versus_Epictetus_on_the_Philosophical_Herita
39
7. 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
8. Philostratus, VS 489
9. Swain (1989) 150
10. Retief, F P; Cilliers, J F G (2003). "Congenital eunuchism and Favorinus" (http://www.samj.org.
za/index.php/samj/article/viewFile/2019/1278). South African Medical Journal. 93 (1): 73–76.
11. Mason (1978)
12. Horstmanshoff (2000) 103 n. 39
13. Amato (2005) 13, n. 39
14. https://www.academia.edu/8957440/_Making_Space_for_Bicultural_Identity_Herodes_Atticus_
162
15. Philostratus Lives of the Sophists 490

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.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh,
ed. (1911). "Favorinus". Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
p. 214.
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
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Favorinus&oldid=956500717"

This page was last edited on 13 May 2020, at 18:17 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.