Agrippa Castor

Who is Agrippa Castor?

Agrippa Castor has been identified as "the earliest recorded writer against heresy, and apparently the only one who composed a book solely devoted to the refutation of Basilides". Little is known of him besides second-hand passing in ancient historical references.

Agrippa Castor was known by both Eusebius and Jerome as an author who provided a critique of Basilides and his twenty-four books of "Exegetics". Eusebius mentions him within the narrative of early gnostic "succession" and schools, but provides no other details of his life. Jerome mentions Agrippa Castor in a quote about Quadratus and Aristides both at Athens. He likens Agrippa Castor to being first of the Christian "apologists", like Hegesippus, and Justin Martyr.

From these small passages, it could be concluded that "Quadratus of Athens wrote when Hadrian visited Athens", that is, around the winter of 124-125 AD; "Aristides and Justin probably replied to the attack made by the rhetorician Fronto" who was consul suffectus in 143. Hegesippus is not included by modern scholarship among the "apologists," being known instead with Eusebius and Jerome as an historian, who "went to Rome in the time of Anicetus, the tenth bishop after Peter, and continued there till the time of Eleutherius", circa AD 155 and 189.