Akakios

Akakios (Greek Akakios, here in the dative Akakioi) is known chiefly as a recipient of eleven letters from the rhetorician Libanius of Antioch, written in the second half of the fourth century AD. The name was common in the Greek East, and Libanius's correspondence appears to address more than one man called Akakios, so this figure cannot be securely identified with any single attested official or sophist; the prosopography is genuinely uncertain. He was most plausibly a member of the educated provincial elite within Libanius's circle in Syria, the sort of friend, former pupil, or local notable to whom Libanius wrote on matters of patronage, friendship, and civic affairs. Beyond these letters he is otherwise little attested, and no firm dates, offices, or events can be assigned to him without inventing them.