The youtube channel toldinstone recently posted a video on Ancient Roman serial killers in which Garrett Ryan names this bandit-hunter, but unfortunately does not spell out his name or provide further resources to read about this interesting character.
Are there any historians of roman history/ culture who can point me in the right direction? I am spelling his name phonetically because nothing on Google (with my GoogleFu skills at least) turned up the name or source.
Thanks!
Your ears have misled you. What the narrator says is "Sostratus the boeotian", but a "b" can be easily mistaken for a "d".
The only reference we have of this Sostratus the Boeotian comes from Lucian of Samosata, in his work Life of Demonax, a biography of said philosopher. This Sostratus was a philosopher of the cynical school, or at least a man who practiced some of the cynical teachings and way of life, but with a practical side, hunting down robbers, building bridges, and fixing things. This is what Lucian says of the Boeotian Sostratus, nicknamed Herakles:
It was in the book of Fate that even this age of ours should not be destitute entirely of noteworthy and memorable men, but produce a body of extraordinary power, and a mind of surpassing wisdom. My allusions are to Sostratus the Boeotian, whom the Greeks called, and believed to be, Heracles; and more particularly to the philosopher Demonax. I saw and marvelled at both of them, and with the latter I long consorted. I have written of Sostratus elsewhere, and described his stature and enormous strength, his open-air life on Parnassus, sleeping on the grass and eating what the mountain afforded, the exploits that bore out his surname — robbers exterminated, rough places made smooth, and deep waters bridged.
However, this boeotian Sostratus-Heracles can be identified with the Heracles-Agathion mentioned by Herodes Atticus, compiled in the "Lives of the sophists" of Philostratus. That Heracles-Agathion is described as having surprisingly rugged features, which would be compatible with someone living in the wild, and even expected: "eyebrows that met as if they were one", "a solidly built neck", and "clothed in wolf skins". This last mention does really help identify Heracles with Sostratus the one called Heracles. There is also a mention of a "Sosastrus" in Plutarch's "Quaestiones convivales" (4.1.660e) that can be identified with the boeotian, at least judging by the way of life of this "Sosastrus" or "Sosistratus" as described by Plutarch:
I protest, said Philo, I did not mind that Philinus designs to breed us a young Sosastrus, who (they say) never all his lifetime drank or ate any thing beside milk, although it is probable that it was some change in his constitution that made him use this sort of diet
That's what there is to know about this Sostratus, sadly.