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Peregrinus Proteus

Agathobulus
Agathobulus (or Agathoboulos; 2nd century) of Alexandria, who lived c. 125 AD, was a Cynic philosopher and teacher of Demonax and Peregrinus Proteus.
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Antoninus Pius
Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus (19 September 86 – 7 March 161), commonly known as Antoninus or Antoninus Pius, was Roman Emperor from 138 to 161. He was a member of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty and the Aurelii. He did not possess the sobriquet "Pius" until after his accession to the throne. Almost certainly, he earned the name "Pius" because he compelled the Senate to deify his adoptive father Hadrian; the Historia Augusta, however, suggests that he may have earned the name by saving senators sentenced to death by Hadrian in his later years.
http://wn.com/Antoninus_Pius
Aulus Gellius
Aulus Gellius (ca. 125 AD—after 180 AD), was a Latin author and grammarian, who was probably born and certainly brought up at Rome. He was educated in Athens, after which he returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office. He is famous for his Attic Nights, a commonplace book, or compilation of notes on grammar, philosophy, history, antiquarianism and other subjects, preserving fragments of many authors and works who otherwise might be unknown today.
http://wn.com/Aulus_Gellius
Herodes Atticus
Lucius Vibullius Hipparchus Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes, otherwise known as Herodes Atticus (, 101-177) was a very distinguished, rich Greek aristocrat who served as a Roman Senator and a Sophist. He is notable as a proponent in the Second Sophistic by Philostratus.
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Philoctetes
Philoctetes (, Philoctētēs) or Philocthetes according to Greek mythology, the son of King Poeas of Meliboea in Thessaly. He was a Greek hero, famed as an archer, and was a participant in the Trojan War. He was the subject of at least two plays by Sophocles, one of which is named after him, and one each by both Aeschylus and Euripides. However, only one Sophoclean play survives—the others are lost. He is also mentioned in Homer's Iliad; Book 2 describes his exile on the island of Lemnos, his wound by snake-bite, and his eventual recall by the Greeks. The recall of Philoctetes is told in the lost epic Little Iliad, where his retrieval was accomplished by Odysseus and Diomedes. Philoctetes killed three men at Troy.
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Theagenes of Patras
Theagenes (; fl. c. 160 AD) of Patras, was a Cynic philosopher and close friend of Peregrinus Proteus,.
http://wn.com/Theagenes_of_Patras

Egypt
Egypt (; , Miṣr, ; Egyptian Arabic: مصر, Maṣr, ; Coptic: , ; Greek: Αίγυπτος, Aiguptos; Egyptian:
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Greece
Greece (; , Elláda, ; , Hellás, ), also known as Hellas and officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía, ), is a country in southeastern Europe. Situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula, Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the tenth longest coastline in the world at in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at .
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km
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Rome
Rome (; , ; ) is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . In 2006 the population of the metropolitan area was estimated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to have a population of 3.7 million.
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Temple of Zeus
The Temple of Zeus at Olympia, was an ancient Greek temple in Olympia, Greece, dedicated to the chief of the gods, Zeus. It was the very model of the fully-developed classical Greek temple of the Doric order. The temple, built between 472 and 456 BC, stood in the most famous sanctuary of Greece, which had been dedicated to local and Pan-Hellenic deities and had probably been established towards the end of the Mycenaean period. The Altis, the enclosure with its sacred grove, open-air altars and the tumulus of Pelops, was first formed during the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, when the cult of Zeus was joined the already establish cult here of Hera.
http://wn.com/Temple_of_Zeus

Peregrinus (philosopher)

Peregrinus Proteus (c. 95-165 AD) was a Cynic philosopher, from Parium in Mysia. Leaving home at a young age, he first lived with the Christians in Palestine, before eventually being expelled from that community and adopting the life of a Cynic philosopher and eventually settling in Greece. He is most remembered for committing suicide by giving his own funeral oration and cremating himself on a funeral pyre at the Olympic Games in 165. By 180 CE, a statue of Peregrinus had been erected in his home city of Parium; it was reputed to have oracular powers.

Life

Lucian's satirical biography

The only detailed account of the life of Peregrinus was recorded by Lucian in his satire, The Death of Peregrinus (). Although this account is hostile to Peregrinus, the bare facts of his life can be extracted.

Peregrinus was born in Parium, c. 95 AD. At a young age he was suspected of parricide, and was obliged to leave his native home. During his wanderings he reached Palestine, he came into close contact with the Christian community, and quickly rose to a position of authority. He suffered a term of imprisonment at the hands of the Roman authorities, during which the Christians gave him much aid. He may have expected to be martyred, but the Governor of Syria released him. He seems to have become a Cynic at this point, because he returned home and renounced his inheritance, giving away all his money to the people of his home city. He resumed his wandering life, maintaining close relations with the Christians at first, but eventually he offended them in some way, and was expelled from the Christian community. He went to Egypt to study with the famous Cynic Agathobulus, where he learned the harsh asceticism of the sect. He made his way to Rome, where he began a campaign of abuse against the Roman authorities, and especially the emperor Antoninus Pius. He gained a following among the masses, and it may be at this point that Theagenes became his chief disciple. Although tolerated at first, he was eventually expelled by the City Prefect. At the Olympic games (either 153 or 157), Peregrinus abused the wealthy philanthropist Herodes Atticus, whereby the infuriated crowd attacked Peregrinus, and he was forced to take refuge at the altar of Zeus. In Athens, Peregrinus devoted himself to the study and teaching of philosophy, and obtained a considerable number of pupils, amongst them Aulus Gellius. At the Olympic Games of 161, he announced that he would publicly burn himself to death at the following Olympics:

He said that he wanted to put a tip of gold on a golden life; for one who had lived as Heracles should die like Heracles and be commingled with the aether. And I wish, said he, to benefit mankind by showing them the way in which one should disregard death; wherefore all men ought to play Philoctetes to my Heracles.

He carried out his promise: on the final night of the Olympic games in 165, he immolated himself on a funeral pyre located 20 stadia (3.7 km) east of Olympia. Lucian, who was present, witnessed the event, having heard Theagenes, Peregrinus' most ardent disciple, praise his master's intentions.

It is hard to reconstruct Peregrinus' own motivations for the events of his life, because Lucian, for general and personal reasons, presents a hostile view of Peregrinus. According to Lucian, Peregrinus strangled his father to death; became a Christian so that he could gain wealth; was imprisoned so that he could gain notoriety; gave his inheritance away so that he might gain favour among the people of his home town; studied under Agathobulus so that he could become more obscene; attacked the Romans to become famous; and killed himself to become infamous.

Gellius's account

Aulus Gellius provides a brief, but different, view of Peregrinus. He describes Peregrinus as "a man of dignity and fortitude," and Aulus would regularly visit him in his hut outside Athens where he would listen to things which were "helpful and noble":

He used to say that a wise man would not commit a sin, even if he knew that neither gods nor men would know it; for he thought that one ought to refrain from sin, not through fear of punishment or disgrace, but from love of justice and honesty and from a sense of duty.

References

Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, xii, 11.

Lucian, The Death of Peregrinus.

Category:165 deaths Category:2nd-century philosophers Category:Roman era Cynic philosophers Category:Self-immolations Category:Roman Olympia Category:Roman era philosophers in Athens Category:Ancient Anatolian Greeks Category:Hellenism and Christianity Category:Death in Greek philosophy

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