Atarbius

Atarbius is known as a fourth-century correspondent within the overlapping circles of Basil of Caesarea, the emperor Julian, and the rhetorician Libanius. The best-attested figure of this name is Atarbius, bishop of Neocaesarea in Pontus, to whom Basil addressed reproachful letters complaining that he had broken off communion and grown cold toward him; Basil pressed him over both personal estrangement and doctrinal suspicion in the Trinitarian controversies of the 370s. Because the name also surfaces in the secular epistolary world of Libanius and the court of Julian, more than one individual named Atarbius may be conflated here, and the secular correspondent (likely a provincial official or man of letters in the Pontic-Cappadocian region) is otherwise thinly documented. Beyond these letters little can be said with certainty, and specific dates and offices for the secular Atarbius should not be assumed.