LIBANIUS (A.D. 314-393)  , Greek sophist and rhetorician, was born at Antioch, the capital of Syria . He studied at Athens, and spent most of his earlier manhood in Constantinople and Nicomedia . His private classes at Constantinople were much more popular than those of the public professors, who had him expelled in 346 (or earlier) on the charge of studying magic.no intolerance . Among his pupils he numbered John Chrysostom, Basil (bishop of Caesarea) and Ammianus Marcellinus . His works, consisting chiefly of,orations (including his autobiography), declamations on set topics, letters, life of Demosthenes, and arguments to all his orations are voluminous . He devoted much time to the classical Greek writers, and had a thorough contempt for Rome and all things Roman . His speeches and letters throw considerable light on the political and literary history of the age . The letters number 1667 in the Greek original; with these were formerly included some 400 in Latin, purporting to be a translation, but now proved to be a forgery by the Italian humanist F . Zambeccari (15th century) . Editions: Orations and declamations, J . J . Reiske (1791-1797) ; letters, J .

C .

Wolf (1738) ; two additional declamations, R . Forster (Hermes, ix . 22, xii . 217), who in 1903 began the publication of a complete edition; Apologia Socratis, Y . H . Rogge (1891) . See also E . Monnier, Histoire de Libanius (1866) ; L . Petit, Essai sus la vie et la correspondence du sophiste Libanius (1866); G . R . Sievers, Das Leben des Libanius (1868) ; R .

Forster, F . Zambeccari and

die Briefe des Libanius (1878) . Some letters from the emperor Julian to Libanius will be found in R . Hercher, Epistolographi Graeci (1873) . Sixteen letters to Julian have been translated by J . Duncombe (The Works of the Emperor Julian, i . 303-332, 3rd ed., London, 1798) . The oration on the emperor Julian is translated by C . W . Ki;Ig (in Bohn's " Classical Library,” London, 1888), and that in Defence of the Temples of the Heathen by Dr Lardner (in a volume of translations by Thomas Taylor, from Celsus and others, 1830) . See further J . E .

Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, i . (1906), and A . Harrent, Les Ecoles d' Antioche (1898) .