Callistratus

Callistratus was a Greek sophist and rhetorician known for the Descriptiones (Ekphraseis), a set of fourteen rhetorical descriptions of celebrated statues, including works ascribed to sculptors such as Praxiteles, Scopas, and Lysippus. His prose belongs to the ekphrastic tradition of vivid art-description, closely modeled on the Imagines of the Philostrati. Nothing reliable is known of his life, birthplace, or exact dates; he is generally assigned to the later imperial period, perhaps the third or fourth century CE, on stylistic grounds. He is known essentially through this single surviving collection.