The platonic rhetor in the Second Sophistic

This dissertation looks at four authors (all "unqualified Second Sophists") whose literary activity covers the same period in the latter half of the second century: Lucian of Samosata, Maximus of Tyre, Publius Aelius Aristides of Mysia, and Lucius Apuleius of Madaura. Though born and in general operating at the geographic periphery of the Greco-Roman world, these second-century authors wrote with profoundly acculturated voices. At the same time, there was great concern in their work to emulate the themes and language of Classical Greece, and thereby add their names to the long tradition of Greek thought. The friction between various cultural trends such as the centripetal force of Rome, the movement of the Sophists around the East, and the importance of the tradition of fifth- and fourth-century Greek letters adds a particular force to their treatment of Plato. For these authors hailing from Asia and Africa, one strategy of appealing to past Hellenic literary glory was to invoke Plato and the tradition of Platonism. This dissertation aims to describe the backbone of the Middle Platonic tradition in order to identify the significant influence Plato had on nearly all the literature from the Second Sophistic.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-366)