Ancient Greece’s Most Influential Philosophers

In virtually all fields of human endeavor, ancient Greece was so much at the forefront of dynamism and innovation that the products of its most brilliant minds remain not only influential but entirely relevant to this day. The great philosophers of Athens, men like Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato, interrogated themselves with startling complexity about the nature of good and evil, questioned the existence of divinity, advocated intelligent design, and went so far as to argue that all life was composed of infinitesimal particles. 

Although the school of philosophy started by Socrates and championed by Plato and Aristotle continues to be the most famous, other schools of thought began to branch, including the Epicureans and Cynics. In the 3rd century B.C., Stoicism arose in response to and under the influence of these older schools, combining many of the best theories from each into a more cohesive whole. With a greater flexibility and more practical application to everyday life, Stoicism quickly became a very popular school of thought, a growth made exponential by its introduction to the Romans. 

Today, very few have heard of him, but he became a major philosophical and religious figure through the publication of his thoughts, travels, and miracles by Philostratus the Elder (c. 170-247 A.D.), written about a century after Apollonius of Tyana’s death. Philostratus the Elder’s works were based on the works of other writers (Maximus of Aegae, Damis, and Moeragenes), and miracles attributed to Apollonius were often compared to those of Jesus, who lived around the same time. Apollonius’s cult was important throughout the whole of the Pagan era and even carried on into the Middle Ages. Why such an important philosopher has been so forgotten by modern historians is in itself an interesting issue, and it is just as crucial to understand what Apollonius preached and the information he provided about his contemporary world.