According to Philostratus in his Vitae sophistarum, the Second Sophistic 'sketched the types of poor and rich men, princes and tyrants, and handled arguments in speeches for which history leads the way'. Thus Philostratus applies the term to a style of rhetorical performance, which, he writes, was invented by the fourth-century Athenian orator Aeschines. Generally the Second Sophistic is construed as a historical period ranging from 50 to 250 CE, roughly covering the time period when this rhetorical style was popular in nearly every part of the mid-Empire. Most of those authors familiar with Plato in the Second Sophistic looked to the philosopher as a literary model. In the early first century, Philo of Alexandria was responsible for adding essential support to the Christian incorporation of Plato: the ideological connection between Moses and Plato. The tradition of the Platonic rhetor would live on after the Second Sophistic in both Plotinus' Platonism and in the work of the Christian writers.