A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Ἀλκίφρων), a Greek sophist, and the most eminent among the Greek epistolographers. Respecting his life or the age in which he lived we possess no direct information whatever. Some of the earlier critics, as La Croze and J. C. Wolf, placed him, without any plausible reason, in the fifth century of our aera. Bergler, and others who followed him, placed Alciphron in the period between Lucian and Aristaenetus, that is, between A. D. 170 and 350, while others again assign to him a date even earlier than the time of Lucian. The only circumstance that suggests anything respecting his age is the fact, that among the letters of Aristaenetus there are two (1. 5 and 22) between Lucian and Alciphron; now as Aristaenetus is nowhere guilty of any great historical inaccuracy, we may safely infer that Alciphron was a contemporary of Lucian--an inference which is not incompatible with the opinion, whether true or false, that Alciphron imitated Lucian.

[L.S]