The Greek novelist Iamblichus absorbed Babylonian learning (1)

Text
Photius, Bibliotheca (Scholia):
This Iamblichus was a Syrian by race on both his father’s and his mother’s side, a Syrian not in the sense of the Greeks who have settled in Syria, but of the native ones, familiar with the Syrian language and living by their customs. Until, as he says, a Babylonian tutor (tropheus) took charge of him, and taught him the Babylonian language and customs and stories, of which (he says) one is the tale which he is now writing down. The Babylonian had been taken prisoner at the time when Trajan invaded Babylon, and was sold to the Syrian by the dealers in spoils. He was skilled in barbarian learning, to the extent of having been one of the royal secretaries while in his native land. As for Iamblichus himself, who knew his native Syrian language, and subsequently learned also the Babylonian language, he says that he afterwards, by application and use, acquired Greek also, to the extent of becoming skilled rhetor.

Source (list of abbreviations)
Photius, Bibliotheca (Scholia)

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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