This paper examines the literary strategies with which Philostratusquestions, constructs and affirms a Greek universalising identity in his VitaApollonii. Despite the rapidly changing position of pagan Greeks and the riseof Christianity in the third century A.D., Philostratus constructs in hisfictionalised biography an idealised Greek identity, embodied by the protagonist,Apollonius of Tyana. This idealised identity is confirmed byApollonius' confrontation with "alterity" during his travels around the world:he finds Greece everywhere. A discussion of the issue of "Greekness" in theSecond Sophistic is revealing for Philostratus' characterisation of both hisGreek hero and the various forms of "otherness" he encounters. Perhaps themost important "other" for a Greek of the Imperial period was the Romanemperor. His dealing with the "good" emperor Vespasian is presented as aparadigmatic relationship between a Greek philosopher and a Roman emperor.His conflict, on the other hand, with the "evil" Roman emperor Domitian,whom he gloriously overcomes by his miraculous disappearance, demonstratesthe superiority of Philostratus' superhero. This ultimate divinisation of hishero reveals certain tensions between literary fiction and the historical positionof a Greek elite under Roman rule.
