An examination of Philostratus' Bioi Sophistōn in terms of the Greek bios tradition

The emergence of biography in ancient Greek literature as a genre in the sense we know it today, and the use of the term biographia for the first time coincides with the end of Antiquity. However, the traces of a tradition that we can call the origin of biography can be found even in the Homeric poetry. In Homer, the word biotos is often used to mean "life", or more particularly "way of life"; however, bios, as a new form of epic biotos, is seen only three times in the Odyssey, and gradually became widespread after the Homeric poems. Bios appears as a term indicating a literary genre in the sense of "life story" since the Hellenistic Period. During the Roman Imperial Period, there was an increase in the number of works produced in the bios genre, and bios became a more original genre by getting rid of the influence of other literary genres. The scope of this thesis is limited to the examination of the Bioi Sophistōn (Lives of the Sophists) of Flavius Philostratus, one of the Greek writers who lived under Roman rule, in terms of the bios tradition. Although the scope of the study is limited to a single work of Philostratus, this research will be made in comparison with other biographic works of him and other authors of the Principate. In this study the Bioi Sophistōn will be examined in three main chapters to evaluate it in terms of bios writing: In the first chapter, the narrative structure of the work in question, in the second chapter its place among the sub-types of bios, and in the last chapter its historical reliability will be discussed.