Alciphron, Aelian, and Philostratus: The Letters

Aelian offers us entertaining vignettes of rural life in twenty letters that portray the country ways of their imagined writers. This volume also contains invented letters--mostly to fictitious characters--by Alciphron and, in the same genre, the Erotic Epistles of Philostratus (probably Flavius Philostratus, author of Apollonius of Tyana).

Series No. 383 / 600 pages / ISBN 0-674-99421-3
  Volume I. Life of Apollonius of Tyana
Books 1-5

Novel and biography are joined in this literary work with a historical core. Philostratus' life of the first century mystic from Tyana was written at the request of the empress Julia Domna. It portrays a man with supernatural powers, a Pythagorean who predicts the future, cures the sick, raises the dead, and himself prevails over death, ascending to heaven and later appearing to disciples to prove his immortality. The account has a rich and varied setting: Apollonius' ministering carries him throughout the eastern Mediterranean world, as far south as Ethiopia, and eastward to India. Philostratus' Life of Apollonius was long viewed by Christians as a dangerous attempt to set up a Christ-like rival (and the edition includes Eusebius' attack on Apollonius for this).

Series No. 16 / 610 pages / ISBN 0-674-99018-8
  Volume II. Life of Apollonius of Tyana
Books 6-8. Epistles of Apollonius. Treatise

Series No. 17 / 630 pages / ISBN 0-674-99019-6
  Lives of the Sophists (Philostratus). Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists (Eunapius)

Series No. 134 / 638 pages / ISBN 0-674-99149-4