Agapius of Athens explained

Agapius (Greek, Modern (1453-);: Ἀγάπιος; 5th-6th century) was a Neoplatonist philosopher who lived in Athens. He was a notable philosopher in the Neoplatonist school in Athens when Marinus of Neapolis was scholarch after the death of Proclus (c. 485).^[1] He was admired for his love of learning and for putting forward difficult problems.^[1]

He may be the Agapius under whom John Lydus heard some lectures on Platonist philosophy, while he was studying Aristotelian doctrines in Constantinople in 511, and of whom the poet Christodorus in his work On the Disciples of the Great Proclus stated that "Agapius is assuredly the last but the first of all."^[2]

References

• Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, John Robert Martindale, J. Morris, (1971), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, pages 32–3. Cambridge University Press
• Michael Maas, (2000), Readings in Late Antiquity: A Sourcebook, page 48. Routledge

Notes and References

1. Suda, Agapios, (Damascius, Life of Isidore fr. 277, Zintzen)
2. John Lydus, De Mag. iii. 26.