'This is much more than a 'first' book, however highly one may rank it; it is a book which masterly reveals the 'common set of culturally available strategies of self-definition' in use by both pagan pepaideumenoi and Christian intellectuals of the Imperial age.' Dimitris Karambelas, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Introduction; 1. Inclusion and identity; 2. Contesting competence: the ideal of self-determination; 3. Expertise and authority in the early church; 4. Defining the circle of sophists: Philostratus and the construction of the Second Sophistic; 5. Becoming orthodox: heresiology as self-fashioning; 6. Successions and self-definition; 7. 'From such mothers and fathers': succession narratives in early Christian discourse.