Joseph Marie Auguste Bidez was born 9 April 1867 in Frameries, Belgium. A classical philologist, Bidez was considered an authority on Hellenism and late antiquity, especially the third and fourth centuries. A student at the University of Liège, he earned three doctorates in philosophy, law, and classical philology by 1884. He immediately began lecturing at the University of Ghent, becoming Professor of Classical Philology and the History of Philosophy in 1907. He taught George Sarton, known as the father of the history of science.
Awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Athens, Paris, and Utrecht, he was appointed Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium in 1913. He was also Fellow of the Institut de France and the British Academy. In 1919, he founded the Union Académique International with Henri Pirenne and was President from 1931 to 1933. Important works include The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius: With the Scholia (1898), Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs (1928), La vie de l’empereur Julien (1930), and Les mages héllénises. Zoroastre, Ostanès et Hystaspe d’après la tradition grecque, published with Franz Cumo (1938).
