Callinicus of Petra was a 3rd-century CE Greek sophist and rhetorician from Petra. A student of the sophist Genethlius, he later taught in Athens, where he was a contemporary of Cassius Longinus. Forced to flee Athens after the Herulian sack of 267 CE, he found patronage in Alexandria under Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, dedicating a work to her son, Vaballathus.

His works, mostly lost, include the Address to Cleodora, History of Alexander, Persian Matters, and the fragmentary Foundations. Fragments also survive from The Succession of Philosophers. Callinicus exemplifies the displacement of intellectuals during the Crisis of the Third Century and the geographical reach of the Second Sophistic. His connection to Zenobia's court highlights her regime's cultural patronage, and his fragments were used by later biographers, attesting to Petra's integration into Hellenic intellectual networks.