EUNAPIUS  ,

Greek sophist and historian, was born at Sardis, A.D . 347 . In his native city he studied under his relative the sophist Chrysanthius, and while still a youth went to Athens, where he became a favourite pupil of Proaeresius the rhetorician . He possessed a considerable knowledge of medicine . In his later years he seems to have resided at Athens, teaching rhetoric . Initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, he was admitted into the college of the Eumolpidae and became hierophant . There is evidence that he was still living in the reign of the younger Theodosius (408-450) . Eunapius was the author of two works, one entitled Lives of the Sophists (Blot clAoo64wv xai vorkwr&wv), and the other consisting of a continuation of the history of Dexippus (q.v.) . The former work is still extant; of the latter only excerpts remain, but the facts are largely incorporated in the work of Zosimus . It embraced the history of events from A.D . 270-404 . The Lives of the Sophists, which deals chiefly with the contemporaries of the author, is valuable as the only source for the history of the neo-Platonism of that period .

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style of both works is bad, and they are marked by a spirit of bitter hostility to Christianity . Photius (cod . 77) had before him a " new edition " of the history in which the passages most offensive to the Christians were omitted . Edition of the Lives by J . F . Boissonade (1822), with notes by D . Wyttenbach; history fragments in C . W . Muller, Fragmenta Hist . Graecorum, iv.; V . Cousin, Fragments philosophiques (1865) .