L. Egnatius Victor Lollianus

Lollia'nus

(Λολλιανός), a celebrated Greek sophist in the time of Hadrian and Antoninns Pius, was a native of Ephesus, and received his training in the school of the Assyrian Isaeus. [ISAEUS, No. 2.] He was the first person nominated to the professor's chair (Δρόνος) of sophistik at Athens, where he also filled the office of στρατηγὸς ἐπὶ τῶν ὅπλων, which, under the emperors, had become merely a praefectura annonae. The liberal manner in which he discharged the duties of this office in the time of a famine is recorded with well-merited praise by Philostratus. Two statues were erected to him at Athens, one in the agora, and the other in the small grove which he is said to have planted himself.

Works

The oratory of Lollianus was distinguished by the skill with which he brought forward his proofs, and by the richness of his. style: he particularly excelled in extempore speaking. He gave his pupils systematic instruction in rhetoric, on which he wrote several works. These are all lost, but they are frequently referred to by the commentators on Hermogenes, who probably made great use of them. The most important of these works are cited under the following titles: Τέχνη ῥητορική, περὶ προοιμίων καὶ διηγήσεων, περὶ ἀφορμῶν ῥητορικῶν, &c. (Philostr. Vit. Soph. 1.23; Suidas, s.v. Westermann, Gesch. der Griech. Beredsamkeit, § 95, 18.)

Lollianus and L. Egantius Victor Lollianus

It was generally supposed till recently, as, for instance, by Böckh, that the above-mentioned Lollianus is the same as the L. Egnatius Victor Lollianus whose name occurs in two inscriptions (Böckh, Corp. Inscrip. vol. i.. n. 377 and n. 1624), in one of which he is described as ῥήτωρ, and in the other as proconsul of Achaia. But it has been satisfactorily shown by Kayser, in the treatise mentioned below, that these inscriptions do not refer to the sophist at all; and it appears from an inscription containing an epigram of four lines recently discovered by Ross at Athens, that the full name of the sophist was P. Hordeonius Lollianus, who would therefore seem to have been a client of one of the Hordeonii. This inscription is printed by Welcker in the Rheinisches Museum (vol. i. p. 210, Neue Folge), as well as by Kayser.

Further Information

C. L. Kayser, P. Hordeonius Lollianus, geschildert nach einer noch nicht haeausgegebenen Athenischen Inschrift, Heidelberg, 1841.