Themistius 317 AD – 388 AD

Themistius was a fourth-century Greek philosopher, rhetorician, and prefect of Constantinople. Committed to the Aristotelian tradition rather than to the dominant Neoplatonism of his age, he produced influential paraphrases of Aristotle's works on the soul, the physics, and the heavens that became standard introductory texts in the Byzantine, Arabic, and Latin philosophical traditions. He served four successive emperors as a public orator, defending religious toleration as a matter of philosophical principle. He was the first non-Christian to be received into the Senate of Constantinople.