[2] Writers known as members of the Second Sophistic include Nicetes of Smyrna, Aelius Aristides, Dio Chrysostom, Herodes Atticus, Favorinus, Philostratus, Lucian, and Polemon of Laodicea.
In his Lives of the Sophists, Philostratus traces the beginnings of the movement to the orator Aeschines in the 4th century BC.
But it was, to a large degree, to meet the everyday needs and respond to the practical problems of Greco-Roman society.
Thus, by the time of the Roman Empire, a sophist was simply a teacher of rhetoric and a popular public speaker.
Mirroring some of their architectural styles and adapting a similar religious cult, the Empire held the Greek culture with reverence to its customs.
“The sophist was to revive the antique purer form of religion and to encourage the cults of the heroes and Homeric gods.”[3] In this century, the Roman Emperors such as Trajan, Hadrian and numerous others, held these intellectuals in their high esteem.
The sophists and their movement provided a way for the Romans to legitimate themselves as civilized intellectuals and associate themselves with an old imperial pre-eminence.
The sophists were great lecturers and declaimers who esteemed to address various issues of political, economic and social importance.
[5] Thus, they served a vast array of positions from educational and social leaders, to ambassadors, Imperial Secretaries and high priests.
He adds that its style is more "flowery, bombastic, full of startling metaphors, too metrical, too dependent on the tricks of rhetoric, too emotional".
Two noteworthy sophists, Polemon of Laodicea and Aelius Aristides, were educated and taught in this center, attracting the respect of its citizens.
Although neither of these men called the city their birthplace, both Polemo and Aristides spent much of their time here studying the rhetoric or advocating for its people.
Many succeeding them would strive to replicate and illustrate their immense knowledge of the Hellenic classics and eloquent skills in oratory.
Herodes Atticus, at one point in time, received up to three letters a day from Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
[11] The Emperor also waited three days in Smyrna for the honor of meeting the student of Herodes and Polemo, Aelius Aristides.
“No other type of intellectual could compete with them in popularity, no creative artists existed to challenge their prestige at the courts of philhellenic Emperors, and though the sophists often show jealousy of the philosophers, philosophy without eloquence was nowhere.”[6]