Themistius (Ancient Greek: Θεμίστιος Themistios; 317 – c. 388 AD), nicknamed Euphrades (Εὐφραδής, "eloquent"),[1] was a statesman, rhetorician and philosopher.
He flourished in the reigns of Constantius II, Julian, Jovian, Valens, Gratian and Theodosius I, and he enjoyed the favour of all those emperors, notwithstanding their many differences and the fact that he himself was not a Christian.
After passing his youth in Asia Minor and Syria, Themistius met Constantius II during the emperor's visit to Ancyra in Galatia in 347.
[9] In 364 he went, as one of the deputies from the senate, to meet Jovian at Dadastana, on the border of Galatia and Bithynia, and to confer the consulate upon him; and on this occasion he delivered an oration, which he afterwards repeated at Constantinople, in which he claims full liberty of conscience to practice any religion.
[11] In the next year he accompanied Valens to the Danube in the second campaign of the Gothic war, and delivered before the emperor, at Marcianopolis, a congratulatory oration upon his Quinquennalia, 368.
[12] His next orations are to the young Valentinian II upon his consulship, 369,[13] and to the senate of Constantinople, in the presence of Valens, in honour of the peace granted to the Goths, 370.
[21] He only held the prefecture a few months, as we learn from an oration delivered after he had laid down the office,[22] in which he mentions, as he had done even six years earlier,[19] and more than once in the interval,[23] his old age and ill-health.
[25] So great was the confidence placed in him by Theodosius, that, though Themistius was not a Christian, the emperor, when departing for the West to oppose Magnus Maximus, entrusted his son Arcadius to the tutorship of the philosopher, 387–388.
The epitomes which survive are:[30] In addition to these works, two surviving anonymous paraphrases were mistakenly attributed to him in the Byzantine era, and are now assigned to a Pseudo-Themistius:[30] His paraphrases of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Physics and On the Soul are valuable; but the orations in which he panegyrizes successive emperors, comparing them to Plato's true philosopher, and even to the Idea itself, are intended to flatter.
He held that Plato and Aristotle were in substantial agreement, that God has made men free to adopt the mode of worship they prefer, and that Christianity and Hellenism were merely two forms of the one universal religion.