Quick Facts
Born:
c. 345,, Sardis, Lydia
Died:
c. 420

Eunapius (born c. 345, Sardis, Lydia—died c. 420) was a Greek rhetorician and historiographer whose Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists is important as a source of information on contemporary Neoplatonists (edited with Latin translation by J.F. Boissonade, 1849; with English translation by W.C. Wright, Philostratus and Eunapius, 1922).

Eunapius was educated under the rhetorician Praeresius and was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. Eunapius was an ardent opponent of Christianity. He also wrote a supplement to the Chronological History of Publius Herennius Dexippus, continuing the history from ad 270 to 404. Of this work only fragments remain.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Neoplatonism, the last school of Greek philosophy, given its definitive shape in the 3rd century ce by the one great philosophical and religious genius of the school, Plotinus. The ancient philosophers who are generally classified as Neoplatonists called themselves simple “Platonists,” as did the philosophers of the Renaissance and the 17th century whose ideas derive from ancient Neoplatonism. See Platonism.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Matt Stefon.