Libanius of Antioch, master rhetorician, teacher and self-appointed apologist for Julian the Apostate, continues to attract scholarly attention, appearing as the subject of monographs and as a central character in studies on the cultural and religious transformations in late antiquity. Rafaella Cribiore's earlier The School of Libanius in late antique Antioch (2007), investigates the man as a teacher of rhetoric to elite young men whereas she focuses in the present work on the Antiochene as someone who engaged with his contemporaries as a practitioner of the rhetorical art and philosophy. Libanius the Sophist, originally delivered as the Townsend Lectures at Cornell University, is written to be neither a standard historical biography nor a survey of the man's career and contributions. It is set out instead as a series of scholarly meditations, each of which grapples with the hermeneutical challenge of reading Libanius’ highly-stylised rhetorical corpus with the ultimate goal of coming to an historicised understanding of this influential figure.

The book's early chapters familiarise readers with Libanius’ Autobiography (Oration 1), others orations and letters, as well as the major scholarly debates surrounding their interpretation. Chapter i (‘Rhetoric and the distortion of reality’) offers a genre-analysis of the Autobiography and its genetic links with biographies such as Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana and Athanasius’ Life of Anthony, the latter translated from Greek to Latin by Libanius’ student Evagrius of Antioch. In chapter ii (‘A rhetor and his audience: the role of invective’), Cribiore explores how one may read Libanius’ works as ‘historical’ texts by suggesting that, while it is misguided to distill biographical realia straightforwardly from them, they may yet be read for an understanding of the intellectual contours and expectations of the time. In this respect, the sophist's own keen awareness of his relationship with his audience(s) represents a significant interpretive key for reading his corpus. Cribiore cites Libanius’ use of the trope of the invective to attack Proculus, comes Orientis of 383–4 (Prosopography of the later Roman Empire i. 746–7) who was executed in 392 and subjected to damnatio memoriae, as a case in point (pp. 126–31). Even though his polemical outpourings may say little about Proculus’ own personality or deeds, nor indeed even the willingness of Libanius’ readers to believe the latter's accusations, they can reveal the sophist's anticipation of his audience's emotional responses and therefore the cultural horizons that he and his readers shared.

Chapters iii (‘A man and his gods’) and iv (‘God and the gods’) examine Libanius’ responses to the rise of Christianity and Emperor Julian's religious reform programme. While a genuine believer in the gods and an indefatigable defender of Julian's legacy, the sophist sought to play a moderate and at times mediatory role between pagans and Christians, as shown by his friendliness towards one Olympus (in Oration 63), whom Cribiore identifies as a Christian. Libanius’ rôle as a champion of pagan beliefs is given various shades of nuance. His abundant invocations of classical myths and motifs reflect more convention than zealous partisanship. On the other hand, his Autobiography and letters hint at Libanius’ authentic attachments to the gods as well as his genuine anguish at their unwillingness or inability to aid his family in times of need.

The book's conclusion returns to the role of Libanius as teacher, the subject of the author's 2007 monograph. Cribiore adduces Julian's 362 edict and rescript restricting Christians from public posts in higher education and the sophist's Oration 13 in response to these measures as the book's final argument for the view that Libanius served as a moderating force in the cultural wars of the time. The book ends with a select bibliography of primary and secondary works and a subject and keyword index; there is no citation index.

Libanius the Sophist is a work that promotes a sympathetic portrayal of the sophist as a humane and well-rounded man of culture. He is presented as a complicated individual whose beliefs and practices in relation to the gods defy easy categorisation. While a committed worshipper of the gods, his words and deeds remained nuanced and reasonable particularly when read against the extremist views so commonly expressed by Christians and pagans at the time. Cribiore also stresses that Libanius was neither the hypocrite nor the dissimulator that he has been accused of being. Against detractors who have called out his duplicity in the face of power, such as his inconsistent portrayals of the high official Proculus, she attributes such discrepancies to his effort to reach diverse audiences rather than to venality or the lack of morals.

Cribiore's sympathetic reading of Libanius has much to commend it. Libanius the Sophist also has the merit of a measured responsiveness to interpretations offered by other scholars. Its incorporation of genre expectations as part of the dialectical relationship between sophist and audience pours new wine into the old skin of genre analysis. Cribiore's own readings also draw on more current intellectual strands: for example, Pierre Nola's idea of ‘sites of memory’ (‘les lieux des mémoires’) is used to argue that Libanius’ negotiation of past and present in his Pro templiis (Oration 30) draws on the memory that he shared with his audience of the past practices and grandeur of the traditional temples dedicated to the gods rather than his own personal knowledge and experience of them.

As an exercise in hermeneutics, Libanius the Sophist tantalises but does not fully convince. Against those who would like to read literary and religious texts for evidence to write social history, Cribiore heeds Elizabeth Clark's caution, as sounded in History theory texts: historians and the linguistic turn (Cambridge, Ma 2004) while also openly embracing historical positivism in places. This slippage is justified on the basis of the volume of Libanius’ surviving corpus: ‘[t]he sheer number of his [Libanius’] letters and the great quantity of evidence they provide allow such treatment; nonetheless, this search requires caution and finesse’ (p. 140), Yet why should the size of a textual collection, however large, obviate the ponderous hermeneutical issues posed by Clark and others and in turn authorise its use as ‘data’ for historical interpretation? Even if we assume that quantity has a quality of its own, how many letters or orations indeed would it need to contain to cause a literary corpus to turn into an archive that is conducive to socio-historical analysis? These necessary questions are not ones that the book addresses.

Libanius the Sophist ultimately leaves its readers with more of a sense of wonderment than a secure and comprehensive understanding of the sophist and his work, as befits a study that is less a biography than a sustained historia in the Herodotean sense. It offers itself as a set of practical exercises in how to read the stylised literary corpus of a public intellectual. In this respect, the book will be of substantial value as it can encourage further conversations regarding the scope and limits of its chosen methods. The author conducts her readers along a path that cuts through the ‘rhetorical turn’ and generally avoids the intellectual culs-de-sac introduced by postmodernist literary theories. After guiding readers over a complicated landscape, Cribiore is content to bring her tour to a close before a final destination has been reached. Still, as our author takes her leave of readers, the latter are invited to carry on the journey on their own, now equipped with several fresh ideas that their learned guide has kindly left for their consideration and use.