The Toppling of Favorinus and Paul by the Corinthians

What Menander had said of the Greek Corinthians, the famous Roman orator, Favorinus, would certainly have endorsed with respect to their Roman successors. The unexpected and humiliating treatment metered out to him by the leading citizens of Corinth on his third visit there, contrasted starkly with that accorded to him by those who had presented themselves as his Corinthian "friends" on his first two illustrious visits in the second decade of the second century CE. Favorinus was "the best known western sophist." He was born in Arles and, according to Philostratus in his "Lives of the Sophists", he had created a sensation with his Grek declamations in Rome. Even those who knew no Greek were "charmed by the sound of his voice, the significance of his glance, and the rhythm of his tongue." He stunned the Corinthians with the charm of his eloquence. On a third visit, however, he discovered that the ruling class, living in the most prestigious Roman colony in the East, had no compunction in toppling those whom they had previously put on a pedestal.