Sopater
3. The younger sophist, of Apamea, or of Alexandria, is supposed to have lived about two hundred years later than the former.
Works
Historical Extracts (ἐκλογὴν τῶν ἱστοριῶν)
Suidas tells us that he wrote epitomes of numerous works, and that some ascribed to him the Historical Extracts (ἐκλογὴν τῶν ἱστοριῶν), which, we may therefore infer, others attributed to the elder Sopater. Photius (Bibl. Cod. 161) has preserved an abstract of this ἐκλογὴ, or, as he calls it, ἐκλογαὶ διάφοροι, from which it appears that the work contained a vast variety of facts and figments, collected from a great number of authors. A list of the writers quoted by Sopater is given by Fabricius (Bibl. Graec. vol. x. pp. 720-722; comp. vol. ii. p. 321, vol. iii. p. 51, vol. iv. p. 250, and Vossius, de Hist. Graec. p. 294, ed. Westermann).
Rhetorical or grammatical works
The rhetorical and grammatical works under the name of Sopater are the following :--
διαιρέσεις ζητημάτων
A classification and analysis of rhetorical themes.
Editions
Printed in the Aldine collection, Venet. 1508, folio.
a commentary on the part περὶ στάσεων of the τεχνή ῥητορική of Hermogenes
Editions
printed in the Aldine collection, Venet. 1508, folio.
Prolegomena to Aristeides
Editions
Printed from a MS. in the Bodleian Library in vol. i. of Jebb's edition of Aristeides.
Editions
All the remains of his rhetorical works are contained in vols. iv., v., and viii. of Walz's Rhetores Graeci.
Further Information
Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. vi. pp. 18, 73, 102, 138; Westermann, ad Voss. l.c..
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.