Apsines (sophist)

Apsines (Ancient Greek: Ἀψίνης) was a sophist from Athens. He was a son of Onasimus (Ancient Greek: Ὀνάσιμος), and grandson of another Apsines who was an Athenian sophist. It is not impossible that he may be the Apsines whose commentary on Demosthenes is mentioned by Ulpian,^[1] and who taught rhetoric at Athens at the time of Aedesius, in the fourth century CE, though this Apsines is called a Lacedaemonian.^[2]

This Apsines and his disciples were hostile to Julianus, a contemporary rhetorician at Athens, and to his school. This enmity grew so much that Athens in the end found itself in a state of civil warfare, which required the presence of a Roman proconsul to suppress.^[3]