Life and times of Apollonius of Tyana, rendered into English from the Greek of Philostratus the Elder 1923

Front matter

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Preface

In the last half of the fifth century that engaging “man of letters, imperial functionary, country gentleman and bishop,” Sidonius Apollinaris, sent a copy of Philostratus’ “Life of Apollonius” to his friend Leo, the chancellor of a Frankish king at Toulouse, with this message: “Throw aside your endless labors and steal a respite from the burdens and bustle of the Court, so that you may really study this long-expected volume as it deserves. When once absorbed in it you will wander with our Tyanean over Caucasus and Indus, to the Brahmins of India and to the naked philosophers of Nubia. It describes the life of very much such a man as you are, with due respect to your Catholic faith. Courted by sovereigns, but never courting them; eager for knowledge; aloof from money-getting ; fasting at feasts; linen-clad among wearers of purple; rebuking luxury ; self-contained; plain-spoken; shock-headed in the midst of perfumed nations; revered and admired for his simplicity by the satraps of tiara-ed kings, who themselves were reeking with myrrh and malobathrum and polished with pumice-stone; taking from the flocks nothing to eat or to wear ; and notwithstanding all these peculiarities not distrusted but honored wherever he went throughout the world, and although royal treasures were placed at his disposal accepting from them merely those gifts to his friends which it suited him better to bestow than to receive. In short, if we measure and wei¢h realities, no philosopher’s biography equal to this has ever appeared in the times of our ancestors, so far as I know; and I am certain that in my time it finds a worthy reader in you.” This appreciative tribute might well stand as the prelude of our own book, but the obloquy heaped upon Apollonius ever since, and the suspicion with which he is still regarded, when he is remembered at all, seem to require a more extended introduction.

He was born in Tyana/a Greek city of Asia Minor) three years before the birth of Christ, and he lived about a hundred years, until the reign of Nerva. As with Moses, no man knoweth his g grave unto this day: Devoted to philosophy from his boyhood, he studied it after the unequalled method of those days, by listening to lectures and to disputations of rival thinkers in every market-place and from the steps of every temple. He chose as his own the philosophy of Pythagoras, and enthusiastically practiced its austerities, maintaining absolute silence for five years as a mental discipline, avoiding all relations with women, giving away his patrimony, and wearing Only linen garments. In the phraseology of today he was a vegetarian

Mee £ ft and a total abstainer. He claimed that by this mode of life his senses were made abnormally acute, so that he had a premonition of future events and became aware of the minds of men and of distant happenings ; and he successfully set up that defense when he was tried for sorcery before the emperor. He prayed_to the Sun three times a ‘day, offering incense but never sacrificing victims. He believed in the immortality of the soul, in metempsychosis, and in a supreme deity, the creator of the universe. Indeed it may be argued that in the deities whom he worshipped he saw merely phases and agencies of this supreme deity, for in referring to the gods collectively he is frequently quoted by Philostratus as using indiscriminately the words “gods” or “god;” and the Indian sage larchas with his evident approval likens the universe to a ship of which the creator is the master and the subordinate gods are petty officers. All his life long his advice and help were constantly sought by cities, temples, and rulers everywhere, and were freely given without reward. He journeyed over the known world from the Atlantic ocean to the Ganges river, and south to the Cataracts of the Nile, acquiring and imparting wisdom. In middle age, when his travels were not half completed, he told his disciples that he had already seen more of the earth’s surface that any other man had ever done. During his long and laborious life he wrought many wonders, and many men regarded him as an incarnate divinity. The kings of Persia and of India vied with each other to do him honor. After his death the emperor Hadrian built a temple and endowed a priesthood for his worship at Tyana.

The emperor r Aurelian vowed to do the like, calling him the most godlike, holy, and venerable of mankind, endowed with more than mortal powers, and declaring: “if I live I will publish at least a summary of his wonderful deeds, not because they need anything my words can give, but to make them as familiar to all lips as they are marvellous.” Another emperor, Alexander Severus, with questionable taste, set the image of Apollonius in his private chapel or lararium, among his tutelary deities, in company with Orpheus, Abraham, and Christ! This very history we owe to the reverence paid to his memory by the empress Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, who commissioned Philostratus to write it and supplied him with most of the materials. For two hundred years after his death Apollonius was generally acclaimed as more divine than human, until in the reign of Diocletian.a Roman pro-consul Hierocles attempted to sweep back the rising tide of Christianity by publishing his “Candid Words to Christians,” in which he drew an unfavorable comparison of Christ with Apollonius.. The nascent Church easily confuted this attack, but could not forget nor forgive it; and not content with its victory over its rash assailant it stigmatized the long-dead philosopher as a charlatan inspired and aided by the devil. This chorus of detraction has been very persistent. As

PREFACE - 5 late as the time of Charles the Second, when one Charles Blount tried to publish in England a translation of Philostratus’ biography, he complains in his preface that the clergy would only let him print the first two of its eight books, and that the Catholic priesthood was especially active in its Opposition.

It cannot be denied that the work contains many statements which tax our credulity. Its ideas of natural history and of demonology are those which were universally prevalent in the first century of our era, and which lasted with little change until the eighteenth. Apollonius’ exorcism of ghouls, satyrs, hobgoblins and plagues may perhaps have been honest selfdeception. ‘His resuscitation of the apparently dead girl in Rome is attributed to possibly natural causes by Philostratus himself. Mesmerism or ; sleight of hand may account for other. strange occurrences; but no such ,\'

ready explanation can be given of his instantaneous transits from Smyrna to Ephesus, and from Bote to Puteoli; or of his watching in Ephesus the simultaneous assassination of a RTT Ee Rome; or of his vanishing before the eyes of the emperor and of the crowded courtroom, after his trial, in proof of which Philostratus cites the court-records then extant. Apollonius either had such command of occult forces as has been claimed in modern times for his instructors, the so-called Adepts of India, or he was a singularly successful impostor,—highminded, altruistic, but an impostor. The judicious Gibbon says of him that “his life is related in so fabulous a manner by his disciples that we are at a loss to discover whether he was a sage, an impostor or a fanatic ;” and Professor Basil L. Gildersleeve in hisy Crate

“Essays and Studies” declares that to disengage the real Apollonius from the romance of Philostratus is quite impossible. We do not attempt to solve the riddle of Apollonius’ interesting personality, but we do insist that Philostratus and his predecessor Damis acted in entire good faith in portraying him. It seems unfair to hold either of them answerable for this doubt in order to acquit Apollonius. The theory that this biography is an ingenious romance like DeFoe’s “Robinson Crusoe,” composed presumably as an anti-Christian polemic, attributes to the imperial court of Rome at.

the beginning of the third century the hostility and fear which actuated Hierocles’ intemperate zeal at its close. Aside from the consideration that such a literary tour de force was foreign to the taste of classical writers, we find no historical justification for this belief, and no other conceivable motive is assigned. The third century saw the greatest expansion of the Church, and yet fifty years after Philostratus wrote the Christians in Rome constituted less than one-fifth of the population, and far less than one-fifth in power and influence. Why would the empress publish such an elaborate tract to undermine the faith of an infant sect, one of hundreds in the empire, few of whose adherents would see the book or be able to read it?

The book itself contains no allusion to Christianity, and apparently Apollonius had never heard of Christ, although he was born and bred in Asia Minor, spent much of his after-life there, visited Syria, and was insatiable in his search and study of new systems of philosophy: Ii any attack on the Church was intended by this history it was too covert to be effective, which was not a usual fault of controversial literature in those days. The internal evidence of the book is even more convincing that it is what it purports to be, a faithful and painstaking compilation from Damis’ notes, and from all other available memoirs and records, including the voluminous correspondence of Apollonius himself which had been preserved and collected. If either Philostratus or Damis consciously exaggerated the miracles of Apollonius, they must have been astounded by their own moderation, like Warren Hastings in the begum’s treasure-house. They rarely describe any exercise of his supernatural powers, and never enlarge upon them, seeming to take them for granted as being well-known. Damis was an Assyrian, a kind of Asiatic Boswell, who attached himself to Apollonius at the outset of his pilgrimage to the Sages of India. Both were young men then, and they remained inseparable companions in travel and adventure until just before Apollonius’ death. Damis’ mental attitude toward his master was that of a faithful and affectionate dog. Every night he noted down all the sayings and doings and sights of that day, in unwearying detail. This huge mass of memoranda, which he entitled “Droppings from the Manger,” became an heirloom of his family and was brought by them to Julia Domna, who employed Philostratus to condense it into a narrative, “paying especial attention to the style of composition,,’ as he tells us complacently, because the Assyrian lacked style. We are tantalized on every page by a reminder of the unconsidered trifles which he discarded in making his selections. What a storehouse of information now would be the original unstylish manuscript of Damis! Even in its pruned and abridged condition the story is the most vivid and comprehensive presentation of the daily life of the first century which has come down to us. Rome, Greece, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Spain, Egypt, Nubia, Sicily, and the islands of the A*gean Sea pass in a panorama before our eyes, with all sorts and conditions of men in their habit as they lived, and working out their own answers to the problems which still perplex us. It is a wonderful picture, and after making every allowance for error and deception the central figure remains essentially vital and dominating.

The original text employed for this version is Ant. Westermann’s edition of the text of C. L. Kayser, as published by A. F. Didot-at Paris in 1849.

Book One

PYTHAGORAS AND HIS PHILOSOPHY—ORIGIN AND SOURCES OF THIS BIOGRA- PHY—BIRTH AND EDUCATION OF APOLLONIUS—HIS MODE OF LIFE— His ELOQUENCE—RESIGNS HIS PATRIMONY—SETS OUT TO VISIT THE Macti at BABYLON AND THE BRAHMINS OF INDIA—DAMIS JOINS HIM AT NINEVEH—JOURNEY TO BABYLON—ENTERTAINED THERE BY KING V ARDANES.

|W The admirers of Pythagoras the Samian all say of him that long before his existence as an Ionian he was born in Troy as Euphorbus, and that after dying as Homer describes he subsequently came to life again in

»*isTonia. They tell of him that he wore no garments derived from animals

-subject to death and that he kept himself pure by neither eating nor sacrificing any living creature, and that he did not stain his altars ~with blood, but offered to the gods only honey-cakes and incense and hymns, being well assured that they were better pleased with such tributes than by hecatombs of victims and the sacrificial knife in the priest’s basket; for he had fellowship with the gods, and had learned directly from them what human conduct pleases them and what offends them. His eulogists also claim that he was inspired by the gods in teaching the wonders of the physical world, and that while others only guess at the divine nature and reach conflicting opinions concerning it, Apollo himself had appeared to him without disguise; and Athene and the Muses, and other gods, whose shapes and names we do not know as yet, had companied with him, though not declaring themselves. All the teachings of Pythagoras his disciples treat as laws, and they venerate him as the messenger of Zeus. They maintain scrupulous silence on the subject of divine things, for they hear many sacred mysteries which would be incomprehensible to any who had not learned that silence itself is sometimes full of meaning. Empedocles of Agrigentum is believed to have also adopted this system of philosophy, for that passage of his,

“Farewell, my friends! Henceforward I shall be A god, exempted from mortality!”

and that other line, “Once I was born a maiden; once a boy;”

and moreover the ox made of dough which he is said to have sacrificed at Olympia, all indicate his Pythagorean opinions. But I must omit other interesting accounts of the disciples of Pythagoras in order that I may take up at once my chosen subject.

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Although Apollonius lived neither long ago nor very recently, and his mode of life was similar to that of Pythagoras, and he came nearer to divine wisdom, subjecting even tyrants to his will, he is not yet properly appreciated for the true wisdom which he developed by sound and philosophical reasoning. Some, who entirely misconceive him, think of him as a wizard who learned magic by rote, because he knew familiarly the Magi, of Babylon, the Brahmins of India and the naked sages of Egypt. But Empedocles, and Pythagoras himself, and Democritus dwelt with the Magi and often wrought miracles, without ever being suspected of witchcrait. After Plato had visited Egypt he inserted in his writings many quotations from the priests and seers of that country, like a painter filling in with colors the outlines he has sketched, but for all that he was never accused of practising magic, in spite of the extreme jealousy which his wisdom excited. No more should the fact that Apollonius foresaw and foretold many events convict him of forbidden practices; unless Socrates is also to be charged with them because he claimed to foresee things by the aid of his guardian genius; and Anaxagoras as well, because of his prophecies. It is common knowledge that when drought had long prevailed at Olympia Anaxagoras came into the market-place there wrapped in a sheepskin, whereby he gave warning of the rain which came down soon after; and that he foretold that a certain house would fall down, which it actually did at the time he had appointed; and that he prophesied that the day would be turned into night, and that a shower of stones would fall from the sky at 7Xgospotami—all of which forecasts came true. We all concede to Anaxagoras that power of predicting future events by his wisdom, and yet men are unwilling to credit Apollonius with a similar gift, and say that what he did was only done by sorcery. This widespread ignorance of the man seems intolerable to me, and my purpose in this history is to investigate carefully whatever he said and did, and under what circumstances, and by what system of philosophy he acquired the reputation of an inspired and godlike being. I have collected my materials partly from those cities which cherish his memory; partly from those temples whose antique rites he restored; partly from what others have recorded of him, and partly from his letters which he used to write to kings, professors, and philosophers, to Eleans, Delphians, Indians, and Egyptians, on theology, ethics, customs and laws, in all which matters he corrected any laxity of observance; but the most accurate and detailed information has come to me in the following manner.

Book One 9 0

A certain man named Damis, from the ancient city of Nineveh, having some education, studied philosophy under Apollonius, and kept a record of many travels in which he claims to have been his companion, setting down his expressions of opinion, his conversations and his predictions ; and these commentaries, which have never before been published, some kinsman of Damis brought to the notice of the empress Julia, the consort of the emperor Septimius Severus. Because she loved and fostered all literary pursuits, and I was admitted to her circle, she commissioned me to edit that narrative, paying especial attention to the style of composition, for the man from Nineveh wrote clearly enough but with small attempt at elegance. Moreover I chanced to find a book by Maximus the f#gean containing all the doings of Apollonius in the city of Age; and the will written by Apollonius himself still exists, from which may be learned by what divine inspiration he pursued philosophy. Little credence however should be given to Moeragenes, for although he has written four volumes about Apollonius he knew very little of his history. This summary of my authorities indicates how I have collected scattered sources of information and have éndeavored to combine them in a consecutive biography. May this work bring honor to the man who is its subject, and benefit to the lovers of learning, who can certainly discover in it some things they never knew.

Apollonius was born at Tyana, a Greek city among the tribe of Cappadocians. His father, also named Apollonius, was of ancient family, descended from the founders of that city, and having unusually large property even in that wealthy community. While his mother was pregnant with him she had a vision of Proteus, the Egyptian god who turns himself into various shapes, according to. Homer. Unterrified by the apparition she asked it what her child would be, and he replied “myself!” On her asking “Who are you?” he answered: “the Egyptian god, Proteus.” I need not describe the wisdom of Proteus to those who know from the poets how subtle he was, and how many-sided and elusive, and how he seemed to know and to foreknow everything. It will be well to bear Proteus in mind, as it develops from our story how our hero was more far-seeing than he, and how he vanquished all his dangers and difficulties when they seemed most overwhelming.

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He is said to have been born in that meadow where a temple dedicated to him now stands, and the notable manner of his birth should not be passed over in silence. When his mother was near her time she was warned by a dream to go into the meadow to gather flowers; and after coming there she fell asleep on the grass, while her maids wandered about looking for blossoms; whereupon the swans which fed there formed a circle round her as she slept, and all sang together with spread wings after their fashion, while the breeze murmured gently through the grass. Waked by the singing she sprang up, and brought forth her child then and there, for anything startling may hasten birth even before the time. Those living there declare that at the moment of her delivery a lightning flash was seen to strike the earth and then to glance upward till it vanished in the sky ; whereby, as I think, the gods indicated and foreshadowed the glory of the man, and his superhuman quality, and his fellowship with the gods, and all that he would be.

There is a pool called Asbama near Tyana which they say is sacred to Zeus the avenger of perjury. Its spring flows icy-cold but bubbling like a boiling kettle, and though its water is pleasant and health-giving to true men, it overtakes oath-breakers with instant punishment, for it attacks their eyes and hands and feet, and they are smitten with dropsies and wastings, so that they cannot leave the pool, but are held there wailing by the water until they confess their guilt. Now the natives assert that Apol-. lonius was the son of this Zeus, though he calls himself the son of Apollonius.

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When he was old enough to learn his letters he showed a strong memory and acute intellect. He spoke Attic Greek, uncorrupted by the local dialect, and he attracted all eyes by his remarkable physical beauty. On his reaching the age of fourteen years, his father took him to Tarsus to be taught by a well-known rhetorician, Euthydemus the Phoenician, who undertook his education. Apollonius liked his tutor, but he thought the manners of the city disgusting and unsuited to the study of philosophy, for nowhere are any people more given over to luxury, or more lightminded and insolent, and they think more of the quality of their linen than the Athenians do of knowledge. The Cydnus river flows through the city, and the indolent citizens settle along its banks like so many ducks, wherefore Apollonius wrote in a letter to them: “Stop fuddling yourselves with water!” He induced his father to send his tutor and himself to fige, a neighboring city where the quiet was more conducive to philosophizing, and the tastes of the people were more suitable for young men, and there was a temple of A¢sculapius in which the god sometimes manifested himself. There Apollonius discussed philosophy with Platonists and Stoics and Peripatetics, and listened besides to the doctrines of Epicurus, thinking

BOOK ONE 11 even them worth his study; but he embraced the teachings of Pythagoras with incredible ardor. It happened that the master of the Pythagorean school there was not of the highest type, and did not exemplify his philosophic preaching by his practice, for he was addicted to gluttony and to women, and behaved more like Epicurus than like Pythagoras; He was named Euxenus, of Heraclea in Pontus, and he had committed to memory the tenets of Pythagoras in the same way that parrots learn human speech; for those birds say the prayers “good speed to you,” and “farewell,” and “God bless you,” without understanding what they chatter, or meaning what they say, but merely because their tongues are capable of framing the words. However, as eaglets while their wings are weak stick close to their parents and learn from them how to fly, but when strong of wing they soar higher than the old birds, especially when they see them greedy and drawn to earth by the scent of carrion; so Apollonius while he was a boy gave attention to Euxenus and learned from him by listening to what he repeated by rote; but on reaching his sixteenth year he flew to the Pythagorean life winged by some higher power. Yet he did not cease to love Euxenus, for he obtained from his father a suburban villa for him with pleasant gardens and fountains, and said to him: “Live here after your own fashion, but I will live like Pythagoras.”

Euxenus remarked that it was an ambitious undertaking, and asked him how he would begin, and he replied: “as physicians do, when by purging the bowels they ward off disease from some patients, and cure others.” From that time on he abstained from animal food as unclean and dulling the mind, and he lived on dried fruits.and vegetables, declaring that whatever the earth produced from its own bosom was pure. He also pronounced wine to be a pure drink, as coming fromthe kindly vine, but inimical to mental concentration because it clouds the ether of the soul. Having thus purified his system by this diet he also decided to go barefooted, and discarding all clothing derived from animals he wore a linen ‘tobe, let his hair erow long, and spent his time in the temple; where all the inmates marvelled at him, and 7“sculapius himself told his priest that he delighted to have Apollonius present when the sick were healed. Then the Cilicians and their neighbors flocked to AXgz to see him, and the saying originated about him which is still a proverb i in Cilicia: “Where are you running? To see the lad?”

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The biographer of a man so honored by the gods should not leave out his doings in the temple. A young Assyrian had come to A‘sculapius to be cured, but he continued his dissipation in spite of his illness, and spent or rather squandered his life in drinking, so that he suffered from a dropsy, and took no thought of reducing it, while he devoted himself to wine-drinking. For this reason Aesculapius ignored him and would not appear to him even in dreams. While he complained of this neglect one day the god showed himself and said: “Consult Apollonius and be curedy Accordingly the youth came to Apollonius and asked: “What can your wisdom do for me, for Aésculapius commands me to consult your’ The answer was: “It can help you very much. Do you wish to be well?” “By Zeus,” said the youth, “Asculapius has promised me that, but he does not perform it!” “Speak reverently,” said Apollonius; “he gives health to those who really wish it, but you on the contrary are aggravating your illness, for in abandoning yourself to dissipation you pile dainties into your soaked and exhausted stomach, and add mud to the water you have already.” And here I think he spoke more plainly than the learned Heraclitus, who said, when he was suffering from the same disease, that what he needed was something which could turn a rainstorm into a drought, an obscure and puzzling remark, whereas Apollonius cured the young man by giving him good advice which was also intelligible.

One day seeing the altar reeking with blood, and sacrifices laid upon it, and slaughtered Egyptian oxen and huge swine which were being skinned and cut up, and two golden bowls besides, inlaid with most brilliant and precious Indian rubies, Apollonius went to the priest and asked him: “What is the meaning of all this? Somebody is making a great effort to please the god!” The priest replied: “You will be all the more surprised when I tell you that this person is sacrificing so liberally without ever having prayed at this shrine, or having waited here the usual time, or having received health from the god, or having obtained any of his wishes, for he came only yesterday. And yet he sacrifices in this unstinted way, and he says that he will give still greater offerings, if A=sculapius will be favorable to him. He is a very rich man who has more property in Cilicia than all the other Cilicians put together. He asks the god to restore an eye which he has lost.” Apollonius, gazing at the ground as he used to do in later years, inquired the man’s name, and on learning it he said: “It seems to me, priest, that this man should not be admitted to the temple on any account. He comes here because he is a guilty wretch, and he has suffered that accident in no honest way. The very fact that he sacrifices so lavishly in advance of any favor from the god indicates that he is not doing it in worship, but to buy off punishment for some base and horrid crime.” Thus spoke Apollonius. That night 7Esculapius appeared to his priest and said: “Send that fellow and his gifts away, for he does not deserve to keep his or pel sh yi

BOOK ONE 13 other eye!” On making inquiries the priest learned that this Cilician’s wife had a daughter by a former husband, and that this man had a guilty passion for the girl and lay with her, not making any secret of it, and that the girl’s mother on finding them together had put out both her daughter’s eyes, and one of her husband’s, by thrusting cloak-pins into them.

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Apollonius made use of the following argument to prove that no sacrifices or offerings to the gods should exceed a moderate limit. A number of people having gathered in the temple soon after that Cilician had been driven away, Apollonius catechized the priest thus: “Are not the gods just?” he asked. “Most just, certainly,” was the reply. “And wise as well?” “Of course,” the priest replied, “for what is wiser than divine wisdom?” “Do they know the affairs of men, or do they not?’ asked Apollonius. The priest answered: “In that respect the gods excel men most of all; for by reason of our limitations we do not even understand our own affairs, but the gods know both their own and ours.” Then said Apollonius: “All you have said, priest, is quite right and entirely true; but

-since they know everything, it seems to me that a petitioner coming to the temple with a sense of what is best for himself would offer a prayer like this: ‘O ye gods! give me what I ought to have!’ For good gifts are the due of good men, and they should be denied to undeserving men. The gods, who deal justly, when they find a man upright and stainless, send him away crowned, perhaps not with golden crowns, but with every blessing. Whereas the man who is branded with crime and corrupt they leave to the punishment which he has earned, being all the more offended by his daring to bring his impurity into their temples.” Then turning to the image of the god he exclaimed: “O A®sculapius, you practice a secret science known only to yourself in not allowing rascals to enter here, even though they pile up for you the riches of India and of Sardis. For they do not make such sacrifices and offerings out of reverence for the divine majesty, but to redeem themselves from that vengeance which you, who