Publius Aelius Aristides Theodorus was a Greek orator and author considered to be a prime example as a member of the Second Sophistic, a group of celebrated and highly influential orators who flourished from the reign of Nero until c. 230 AD. More than fifty of his orations and other works survive, dating from the reigns of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. His early success was interrupted by a decades-long series of illnesses for which he sought relief by divine communion with the god Asclepius, effected by interpreting and obeying the dreams that came to him while sleeping in the god's sacred precinct; he later recorded this experience in a series of discourses titled Sacred Tales . In his later life, Aristides resumed his career as an orator, achieving such notable success that Philostratus would declare that "Aristides was of all the sophists most deeply versed in his art."
Aemilius Sura was an ancient Roman historian whose fragment "On the Years of the Roman People" appears in a gloss in the margin of Velleius Paterculus's Roman History. Theodor Mommsen believed that the larger work, which is now lost, was a compendium of the history of the world.
Aeneas James George Mackay was a Scottish lawyer and academic, known as a legal and historical writer.
Aeneas of Gaza was a Neo-Platonic philosopher and a convert to Christianity who flourished towards the end of the fifth century. In a dialogue entitled Theophrastus, he alludes to Hierocles of Alexandria as his teacher, and in some of his letters he mentions as his contemporaries writers whom we know to have lived at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth, such as Procopius of Gaza. He is considered part of the Rhetorical School of Gaza, which flourished in Byzantine Palaestina in the fifth and sixth centuries.
Aeneas Tacticus was one of the earliest Greek writers on the art of war and is credited as the first author to provide a complete guide to securing military communications. Polybius described his design for a hydraulic semaphore system.
Aenesidemus was a 1st-century BC Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher from Knossos who revived the doctrines of Pyrrho and introduced ten skeptical "modes" (tropai) for the suspension of judgment. He broke with the Academic Skepticism that was predominant in his time, synthesizing the teachings of Heraclitus and Timon of Phlius with philosophical skepticism. Although his primary work, the Pyrrhonian Discourses, has been lost, an outline of the work survives from the later Byzantine empire, and the description of the modes has been preserved by few ancient sources.
Aeschines was a Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators.
Aeschines of Sphettus or Aeschines Socraticus, son of Lysanias, of the deme Sphettus of Athens, was a philosopher who in his youth was a follower of Socrates. Historians call him Aeschines Socraticus—"the Socratic Aeschines"—to distinguish him from the more historically influential Athenian orator also named Aeschines. His name is sometimes but now rarely written as Aischines or Æschines.
Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.
Aesop was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales associated with him are characterized by anthropomorphic animal characters.
