ABSTRACT
Philostratus’ vision, which he appears to have shared with many of the people whose lives he described, was very much a vision of the second century AD. It was increasingly in disaccord with events in his lifetime. Philostratus’ intellectual framework could no more absorb a Syrian god who remained very much a Syrian god, even though his name had been Hellenized, than he could imagine that intellectual movements outside of the Roman Empire did not depend on Greek thought. Although he had to admit that a man like Bassaeus Rufus could hold high office without appreciating the virtues of great sophists, his stress on imperial offices held by sophists suggests that he felt that government was still an activity for gentlemen.1 His is an Antonine vision of a government, and the Antonine style was giving way to a government in which diverse groups of professionals were coming to dominate; the values that they brought with them were those of the bureaucrat or soldier rather than those of the urban aristocrat. A new threat from the east, and new threats from the north, were to make the army ever more influential in government. This would, in turn, bring about an increasing centralization of authority around the palace that would transform the Antonine administration, wherein senators or urban aristocrats might feel that their traditions were important, into a poorly oiled machine devoted to the emperor’s service.
