Apollonius of Tyana - The Pagan Christ of the Third Century/Section 2
II.
Apollonius was born in Tyana, a Greek city of Cappadocia, but it is not certain in what year. From several coincidences, however, in his work, we may conclude that the time of his birth was nearly identical with that of Jesus Christ. During the period which preceded his birth his mother was favoured with a kind of annunciation, sent by the god of divination and penetrative science. Proteus appeared to her, and informed her that the child of whom she was then pregnant was an incarnation of himself. When the child was born, a chorus of swans, the messenger-birds of Apollo, celebrated his birth, and a thunderbolt, after falling from heaven, was seen to reascend. This was understood to signify a salutation offered by the gods to the newly-born infant. Endowed with marvellous precocity, and with a beauty which attracted the attention of every one, Apollonius carried on his studies in the first instance at Tarsus, the birthplace of Saint Paul, under the auspices and guidance of a learned rhetorician; but the dissolute morals of the place compelled him to remove, and thence he went to Egae, where he became an ardent admirer of Æscalapius and a determined follower of Pythagoras. Of his own accord he submitted to all the strictest tests of the severe novitiate and the old spiritual exercises which the philosopher of Samos imposed rigidly upon all his disciples, and shortly after he was seen to appear in the garb and manner peculiar to the sect of the Pythagoreans, that is to say, clothed in a linen tunic, barefooted, with long hair, and abstaining from meat and wine. His ideas on the uselessness, or rather the sinfulness, of bloody sacrifices—his remarks, which were characterised by a wisdom far above his years—the excellent advice he gave to those who came to consult Æsculapius—all contributed to strike the priests of that god with astonishment; and the general admiration in which he was held was only heightened when, at the age of twenty, he gave up his patrimony for the benefit of his family, and took a vow of perpetual chastity. After a lapse of five years, which, according to Pythagorean rule, he spent in absolute silence, he began to travel about in Asia Minor, Commencing his journey at Antioch. In every place the subjects of his teaching were the precepts of true wisdom, the respect due to the gods, the true mode of worshipping them, and the necessity of returning to those rites of more ancient times which had either fallen into disuse or been strangely altered. Disciples were already following him in every place. Meanwhile, however, he did not consider himself sufficiently advanced, and desiring, as he did, to attain to higher degrees of wisdom than had been reached by Pythagoras and Plato, he left for India, intending there, amongst the Brahmins, to drink deeply of the pre-eminently pure and divine science. Passing through Babylon, he visited the Magians. It was during this voyage that he was joined by a disciple from Nineveh, named Damis, and that he was enabled, besides the knowledge he possessed of all human languages (which, by the way, he had never been obliged to learn), to understand the language used by animals amongst themselves. Delighted to entertain such a guest, the King of Babylon kept him under his roof and listened to his teaching with the most profound attention for a period of eight months.
At last Apollonius proceeded on his travels to India, and crossed "the Caucasus," says Philostratus with all gravity, whose geographical ignorance, even as compared with that of the ancients, is marvellous. It is quite true that he is only repeating, with exemplary faithfulness, the statement of the historian Damis, whose imagination is of the liveliest. It is recorded of Damis, by himself, that as he crossed the Caucasus[1] he saw the chains with which, in old times, Prometheus had been bound. We must do him the justice to say, however, that in order to sustain the character of a truthful and conscientious historian, he adds that he could not possibly tell "what metal they were made of."
After crossing the Caucasus, another king, an Indian potentate of matchless virtue—almost a Pythagorean in his mode of life—bestowed all kinds of admiration and praise upon Apollonius, and entertained him most hospitably. From this prince it was that he received his earliest information respecting the sages of India. They lived, he heard, on a mountain, from the summit of which they issued their rolling thunders, and drove back such rash mortals as attempted the ascent without their permission. The nearer you approached the mountain, the more wonderful were the things you saw. For instance, there was an insect there which distilled an oil the use of which was to burn up the walls of an enemy's town with flames that could not be extinguished. Farther up a woman might be seen who was black from the head to the waist, and white from the waist to the feet, and had been so formed designedly by Nature that she might receive the worship offered to the Indian Venus. In other places there were fields of pepper-plants, cultivated by apes, and enormous serpents, which could be caught by merely placing a red rag, inscribed with certain magic characters, over the spots they usually frequented; and in the heads of these serpents there were precious stones which possessed the same virtue as the ring of Gyges. Then you came to the holy mountain: it was surrounded by a mist which could either be thickened or dissolved at the will of the wise men. As you ascended the mountain, you met with a fire which purifies from all pollution, a well which delivers oracles, two large stone vases, which contain, the one wind and the other rain, both at the disposal of the sages, by whom it was asserted that the mountain was the navel or centre of India. There they worshipped fire, which they boasted had been brought down directly from the sun, the peculiar prerogative of Prometheus, and the symbol both to them and to him of inventive science. With his own eyes Damis saw these sages rise up into the air, to the height of two cubits, without any extraneous support and without any trickery whatsoever. The wise men do not live in houses, but when it rains they summon a cloud and shelter under it. They wear their hair long, have white mitres on their heads, and are clothed in linen garments, woven from a peculiar kind of flax which it is only lawful for themselves to gather. Their prodigious wisdom overwhelmed even Apollonius, who was not frequently astonished, They are in possession of absolute science; they know at once the past history of every one they see; they can answer all questions. When asked, "Who are you?" they answer, "We are gods." "Why?" "Because we are virtuous." The biographer of Apollonius, who, amidst all the virtues with which he has adorned his hero, has certainly omitted that of modesty, goes on to say that the latter was deeply affected by the intense wisdom of this reply. As might have been expected, Apollonius receives from the Brahmins a full, complete, and literal confirmation of the doctrines of Pythagoras. .The chief amongst them, one Iarchas, remembers having been "some other"—an ancient king or a demi-god in a country the praises of which he sings with that extreme humility which is so characteristic of the whole of that venerable corporation. Next to him we have Palamedes, one of the heroes of the Trojan war, who, in his new existence on earth, reappears as a Brahmin. It may be stated here by the way that Apollonius remembers having been a pilot in some former stage of existence, and how he had duped a number of Phœnician pirates who had tried to drag him into one of their predatory schemes. The conversations with the wise men of India are constantly interrupted by a series of events the marvellousness of which is always on the increase. At one time tripods are seen to move of their own accord; at another, vessels of brass containing a refreshing beverage present themselves to the lips of the thirsty; a cup is miraculously replenished the moment it has been emptied; there is a stone, too, which attracts all others to itself; and all this to illustrate a pantheistic doctrine, according to which the world is an animated creature, male and female in itself, in order to be self-creating, and under the government of one supreme god, who is aided by a number of subordinate gods, who form a part of the one great whole. Apollonius is soon initiated by his hosts in the science of astrology and divination. Damis was not admitted to these meetings, and as Apollonius thought fit to keep his secret knowledge to himself, Philostratus was unable to reveal the nature of the queen of sciences. At last, after five months of wonderment and study, Apollonius left the wise men who had stored his mind with such superhuman lore, and with whom he had lived on such familiar terms, and returned by way of the Erythraean Sea, the Euphrates, Babylon, and Asia Minor; then, not wishing to settle in Antioch, in consequence of the licentiousness of its morals, he directed his steps towards Ionia, and made a triumphant entry into Ephesus.
The period of initiations had now passed, and from that time Apollonius began his travels as a reformer and a prophet. Ephesus, a city notorious for its frivolity and effeminacy, was brought back by his teaching to the cultivation of philosophy and to the practice of virtue. The dissensions of Smyrna were allayed by his wisdom. After this he was recalled to Ephesus, where the plague was committing fearful ravages. In order to save the city from the visitation, he ordered an aged pauper to be stoned to death; and when the heap of stones by which he had been murdered and almost buried had been removed, a large black dog was found in the place where he ought to have been, from which circumstance it was concluded that the old pauper could have been nothing but an evil spirit. Thence he went to Greece, remaining for a short time in Troy, where he conversed with the shade of Achilles, and was informed that the fair Helen had never been in the city of Priam at all. In Lesbos he visited the temple of Orpheus, and landed at Athens, where he healed a young man who was possessed by devils, interrupting himself, in order to do this, in a sermon against the voluptuous dances of Attica. Then he visited all the oracles of Greece, proclaiming himself as a reformer and restorer of the ancient religious rites.
In Corinth he opened the eyes of one of his disciples and enabled him to see that a woman, who to all appearance was most beautiful and wealthy, and to whom he was inordinately attached, was in reality a Lamia, one of those evil spirits who seduce the affections of young men and suck out their life-blood in the night at their leisure. At Lacedaemon he restored the ancient code of laws. In Olympia he was not only present at the games, but was almost worshipped by the attendant crowds. Thence he passed into Crete, and last of all went to Rome.
Nero was emperor at the time. The sworn enemy of all philosophers, he persecuted them under the pretext that they Were magicians; accordingly the majority of the disciples of Apollonius forsook him, not daring to face the furious onslaughts of a tyrant like Nero. Apollonius, however, fearless of everything, entered the capital and spent his time in the various temples, where his religious discourses produced an immense sensation. Tegellinus, the praetorian prefect, ordered him to be arrested as a seditious person; but, astounded by his surprising replies, and thinking that he had to do with some evil spirit, and not with a man, he directed that he should be set at liberty. Apollonius at once embraced the opportunity of his being liberated to restore to life a young girl who had been dead some time; and then, as Nero, on his departure for Greece, had expelled all the philosophers from Rome, he determined to visit what was then supposed to be the far West—i.e., Spain and Africa.
There, again, he witnessed innumerable wonders; amongst others, the phenomenon of the tides, which he accounts for (in a very learned dissertation) by the action of submarine winds, which blow from caverns situated on each side of the ocean, and which form, as it were, its breathing apparatus. It is easy, in this, to trace the foundation on which the natural philosophy of the ancients rested, according to which it was held that the world was endued with life, and was, in point of fact, an animated creature. In the course of that voyage his heart rejoiced at the news that Vindex had raised the standard of revolt in Gaul. Further than this, his biographer would have us believe that Apollonius himself had prepared the movement, in concert with the Governor of Bactica. In Sicily he hears of the flight and death of Nero, and foretells the short reign of his three immediate successors. He reappears in Greece, visits Chios and Rhodes, still in the character of a reformer, and lands at Alexandria, having long wished to study Egyptian science, which was so much spoken of at that time, in the very land of its birth. There it was that Vespasian, who was aiming at the supreme power, conferred with him on the art of governing, and that Apollonius incurred the jealous hatred of Euphrates, a man who had been one of his earliest admirers, but who had now become the confidential adviser of Vespasian, wishing him to restore the old Roman commonwealth. Apollonius, however, like a true disciple of Pythagoras, is but indifferently liberal in his views. In his eyes, an enlightened despotism is the best form of government. "The rule of one man, who watches over the good of all," is the secret of true democracy. It is hardly necessary to add that Vespasian is of the same opinion.
About the same period our soothsayer and philosopher recognised the King Amasis under the form of a tame lion, and caused royal honours to be paid to him. Then he sailed up the Nile, followed by the most courageous of his disciples, and from the deck of his ship delivers a series of religious addresses. It was like an exposition of his religious belief. Eventually he reached the country of the Gymnosophists, those Egyptian philosophers who lived habitually in a state of perfect nudity, and devoted themselves wholly to the study of all heavenly truths; but he found them far inferior to a similar sect on the banks of the Ganges. Philostratus is evidently jealous of the wisdom evinced on the banks of the Nile. He allows, however, that very wonderful things are found among the Gymnosophists. They have trees, for instance, amongst them which are endured with intelligence, and bow politely to the passers-by. But in spite of these marvels, Apollonius very learnedly proves the inferiority of this branch of the sect, and does it with such success that Thespesion, who is usually as black as a raven, is seen to blush scarlet from head to foot. The mythology of Egypt is another object of his bitterest criticism. He finds fault with the grotesqueness of the Egyptian idols which represent the head of a dog and a sparrow-hawk, forgetting, no doubt, that in this respect, at least, India had but slight reason to reproach Egypt.
After sailing up to the sources of the Nile, or rather to the great cataracts with were then mistaken for the real source of the river, he returned from these extreme limits of the world to civilised lands, and from this period may be dated what we may term the Passion of Apollonius. Domitian, a second Nero, was emperor, exceeding, if that were possible, his prototype, in wickedness. Apollonius began to travel up and down the empire, sowing everywhere the seeds of discontent and rebellion against the crowned monster. Though at a distance, he fosters in Rome itself a conspiracy in favour of the virtuous Nerva, whose imminent elevation to the throne he foresees with certainty. Having been warned of this, Domitian ordered him to be arrested, when the dauntless philosopher, taking the initiative, appears of his own free will in the very heart of Rome, in spite of the entreaties of his disciples and of Damis himself that he should not go up to the city. There he meets again with an old acquaintance, the praetorian prefect Elian, who does all he can to save him from the fury of the imperial tyrant, and who tells him that the main charge he will have to meet is that he has been guilty of cutting up a young child to pieces in the course of some magic incantation—an accusation which was all the more unjust and abominable as Apollonius had always inveighed most loudly against bloody sacrifices. When in prison, the philosopher comforts and exhorts his fellow-prisoners. He appears before the emperor, who is anxious to inquire personally into the opinions of his opponent, and as the conversation assumes a phase not very favourable to the cause of the despot, Domitian makes a sort of Ecce homo of Apollonius, orders that his beard and his hair be shaved, and that he himself be bound in chains and sent to prison in company with the vilest malefactors. Apollonius endures this ignominious treatment most meekly, and taking advantage of a few moments when he is alone with Damis, he shows him that it depends entirely upon himself and his own will whether he shall shake off his chains or remain fettered by them. "And Damis understood then that Apollonius was a god, and by nature more than man." From that time forth he no longer offers any objection to his master's wishes. The latter bids him leave Rome, join his friend Demetrius at Puteoli, and there wait for him. Meanwhile he is summoned once more to the presence of Domitian, and is questioned as to his knowledge of philosophy, his powers of divination, and his mode of life. To all these questions he gives replies which are so pertinent, that the emperor is almost inclined to release him, when all at once Apollonius disappears from the sight of all present. Although the strictest search is made and people are sent in all directions to look for him, they declare on their return that no one has seen him, and none can see him, for it is a supernatural disappearance. On the evening of the day when this miracle took place, Demetrius and Damis were conversing together at Puteoli, a small town which was about 150 miles from Rome. They had given up all hopes of again seeing the man by whose labours they thought the empire would have been saved, when suddenly a mysterious noise was heard, and Apollonius stood before them. They were forced to take him by the hand before they could fully believe that it was real flesh and blood and not a spectre they beheld. From that time his passion was ended, and the glories of his triumph begin. On his return to Greece, Apollonius finds the whole population ready to fall at his feet. But he wishes to descend into the lower world, or, in other words, to receive the only initiation which he had not undergone as yet, that which was usually sought in the cave of Trophonius. In spite of the priests, he penetrated into the cave, through the aid and encouragement of Trophonius himself, with whom he conversed for seven whole days. He entered the subterranean world at Lebadea, in Bœotia, and came out of it in Aulis. He had asked the god of the lower world which was the queen of all philosophies: like the wise men of the upper regions, the god answered, "That of Pythagoras."
Apollonius died in Asia Minor. At Ephesus he was enabled by his power of second-sight to witness the murder of Domitian as though he had been present at it, and he described it in such minute detail to the Ephesians that they could hardly believe their own ears; but they must have been compelled to believe in him fully when the news of the event reached them through the ordinary channels. Apollonius was at that time between eighty and ninety years old, and some say more than a hundred. Many rumours were circulated respecting his death, of which the faithful Damis was not a witness, as his master had intrusted him with a message to Nerva, and it was during his absence that he disappeared from amongst men. The generally-received account was, that having gone to Crete, Apollonius went into the temple of Diana Dictynna, and that he never came out of it again. Young maidens' voices were heard singing in the air, "Quit the earth, ascend up into heaven." It is added that some few years after he appeared suddenly to a young unbeliever who had ridiculed his doctrine, and who fell to the ground awe-struck by the vision, in the greatest consternation and most penitent alarm. After his death, the city of Tyana paid him divine honours, and the universal respect in which he was held by the whole of the Pagan world testified to the deep impression which the life of this supernatural being had left indelibly fixed in their minds, an impression which caused one of his contemporaries to exclaim, "We have a god living amongst us."
Such is a summary of the chief events in the life of Apollonius, as we find them recorded in his biography written by Philostratus. We shall now be in a position to make a few remarks on his miracles, his teaching, and his character generally.
Several of his miracles have been mentioned; many more might have been added. It is perfectly clear that the biographer of Apollonius relied on the unlimited credulity of his readers; but there is one feature which deserves our attention more than the strange stories recorded by Philostratus, and that is the extreme anxiety he manifests to exculpate Apollonius from the slightest suspicion of having anything to do with sorcery. The magicians of that day were a numerous body of impostors, deservedly held in contempt by all sensible people, and yet dreaded and consulted by the majority. They were in reality the sorcerers of the period; and it is quite sufficient to have read a work like the biography of Philostratus to be fully convinced of the serious mistake made by some contemporary historians when they say that magic was one of the consequences of Christianity, in this sense, viz., that it was the legitimate reaction of natural religion as opposed to priestly tyranny and oppression. It is far more reasonable to conclude, that with all its illusions and all its impostures, this magic was one of the far too numerous relics of polytheism which Christianity, even in our own day, has not been able to eradicate entirely. The magician of ancient times wrought his magic wonders, as the witch of our own days is said to do, either by the instrumentality of evil spirits, or by virtue of certain forms, ceremonies, and incantations which are of an immoral tendency. Accordingly we find that the sorcerer is a dangerous creature, whose sole aim is to secure his own personal benefit and the satisfaction of his evil passions; now the ruling power for the time being is perfectly justified in putting down such a character. Far different in nature is the wonder-worker who, like Apollonius, performs miracles by virtue of his higher knowledge and his communion with the gods. In order to attain to such a power he must practise virtue with the greatest austerity; he must be distinguished by the strictest purity of morals, and must be obedient to the severest of disciplines. Through these he is enabled to put spirits of impurity to flight, to foretell future events, to discern the secret thoughts of others, to be visible or invisible at will: in a word, Apollonius owes his power not to magic but to theurgy, and if it be said that theurgy has not more truth in it than magic, if like the latter it only denotes a gross ignorance of Nature and her irrefragable laws, at any rate it proceeds, in a moral point of view, from a much higher source.
As regards the philosophical and religious doctrine of Apollonius, we have already alluded to the theological principle which lies at the root of it. It consists of a kind of pantheism clothed in polytheistic forms, which does not seek to destroy individual responsibility by absorbing it into the great ALL, but on the contrary evinces a very decided monotheistic tendency. Apollonius seems inclined to believe that the various gods who are worshipped by the people are symbols or different representations of one and the same deity. This is the reason why he visits all the temples without distinction, and endeavors to purify the forms of worship adopted in them from every element of licentiousness which the superstition of the vulgar might have mixed up with them. Venus herself must become the goddess of pure love, free from all carnal lust. Thus will the moral sense become the means of discerning religious truth, and of rectifying with authority the most prevalent traditions. Accordingly, we frequently find that Apollonius subjects the traditional creeds and mythologies to the most fearless criticism. Like Plato, he blames the poets for having lowered the character of the gods by their fabulous descriptions. It seems absurd to him that Minos, cruel tyrant as he was, should administer justice in hell, whilst a good king like Tantalus is doomed to a frightful punishment. He laughs at the stories of the wars of the giants with the gods, and of Vulcan striking his anvil in the deep caverns of Ætna. The gods, he thinks, should only be represented under the most ideal forms, and the masterpieces of religious art are only valuable so far as they reflect in some degree the ever-beautiful. The sun is the purest and most fitting symbol of the Deity, and hence Apollouius pays homage before all others to the sun and to the sun-gods, Apollo, Æsculapius, Helios, and Hercules. His own name is an indication of his entire devotedness to the worship of the sun. The Brahmins, the wisest of men, who in reality live by his substance, worship the sun all the day long. The essence of the gods is the light of heaven. By partaking of it man becomes a god, and this is only natural in man, inasmuch as his soul is a ray of the Divine essence, imprisoned in the body for awhile, and journeying through a series of existences until the moment when it shall have been sufficiently trained in science and in the practice of virtue to gain admission into the heavenly regions. Hence arises the propriety and the absolute necessity of asceticism: in other words, of war against the flesh, which is the destructive prison-house of the soul. Apollonius and his followers, like Pythagoras and his disciples, constitute a regular order of Pagan monks, and when we bear in mind that apart from all contact with Christian churches, the Paganism of the far East has furnished a very similar instance for centuries, we cannot but wonder at the strange obstinacy of certain modern writers who assert that the monastic life is one of the chief and most characteristic institutions of Christianity. The determined efforts of Paganism to become a moral religion without any great modification of forms or of creeds are traceable both in the religious teaching and in the theurgy of Apollonius. It is no longer Nature viewed through her severer or gentler phenomena; it is no longer the hero who subdues monsters, or the formidable champion of right against wrong, who will concentrate in himself the religious veneration of the world, but it is the wise philosopher who leads all but a Divine life in the midst of his fellow-men, and who teaches them how to raise themselves to the same high level which he himself has reached. But how true it is that religion is never quite false to the principle on which it is founded! Not only does Apollonius attach an inherent efficiacy to outward rites, but even in his reformed Paganism we can see at once the error and the fundamental delusion which have given birth to every system of polytheism—viz., the confusion of the natural with the spiritual, of the visible phenomenon with the unseen reality which more or less to bear some analogy to that phenomenon. It is not easy to say with certainty whether Apollonius really worships the sun itself, or whether he look upon it as the highest manifestation of God. One thing, however, is certain—viz., that he explains the superior wisdom of the Brahmins by the circumstance that, living as they do on an exceedingly high mountain, and thus being able to breathe the pure ether, they possess all moral light, because they are constantly drawing from the true source of all physical light. Here we have the same method of reasoning as in that gross myth, the birth of Minerva, the pure light which follows the storm issuing from the cleft forehead of her father the sky. According to the myth, the physical deity became the symbol of clear and penetrating wisdom. It was hardly worth while that Apollonius should have made such a display of Pagan rationalism if he was so soon to fall again into the most complete mythological system.
A contrast, or rather an inconsistency, of the same character may be noticed in the views of Apollonius on humanity in general. On the one hand, the whole of his life and the whole of his teaching are founded on the idea that all men are called to receive and practise truth. In one sense he can say, like St. Paul, that for him there is neither Greek nor barbarian. He speaks and acts as a reformer, on the banks of the Euphrates as well as on the Nile, and in Spain as well as in Æthiopia. The highest wisdom, according to his view, is found amongst the inhabitants of India, beyond the limits of the empire. Ideas like these prove undoubtedly that that narrow-minded notion of nationality, that particularly isolated view of mankind, which had been fostered by the various religions of Paganism (which were, as might be expected, essentially local and national), had gradually yielded to the pressure of outward circumstances, and to the Roman yoke which was now borne by so many hundreds of conquered nations. We have before us a regular system of universalism—a kind of Pagan universalism; and yet we can trace through it all, and at every step, the aristocratic spirit of antiquity. Grecian pride, and the high disdain which every man born and nurtured in Grecian civilisation felt for all other nations, were ever asserting their rights. We are reminded by this of the case of the Christianised Jews in the two first centuries, who preached the doctrines of a religion which in theory was to be universal, and yet which was to retain, at all costs, the Divine and exclusive privileges of the Israelites. With them, as with the hero of Philostratus, national prejudice is found to be stronger than the new principle, of which, nevertheless, they pretend to be the apostles. Neither do we find in the Pagan gospel of Apollonius the trickling of the compassionate and sympathising tear which in the Christian Gospel is shed so constantly at the sight of the sufferings of the lowly and the poor. Apollonius heals many sick people, and does much good, but he does it coldly, correctly, and more like an artist who is trying to eliminate all sounds of discord from the great harmonies of Nature, than like one who is touched by the infirmities and sufferings of that sacred being, so great and yet so miserable, whom we call man. He can realise what it is to be called a "Son of God;" but he would neither risk his fame nor his happiness to merit the name of "son of man." Besides, in all violations of the moral law he only sees a series of evil and isolated acts which depend solely upon the free will of each individual; but, like many a modern philosopher, he is blind to that fundamental incompetency to do the good which our conscience dictates which exists in us all—that tendency to selfishness, that proneness to evil, which bears the same relation to particular and successive faults as the stem does to the branches and the leaves and the fruits of a tree. Hence his political system is even below the average. It is only when the natural selfishness of the human heart has been fully realised that a guarantee is sought against the ever-possible encroachments of an autocracy in the various methods of control extant, such as in collective representation, in publicity, in the personal responsibility of the ruling authorities—in a word, in all the free institutions of a free state. Apollonius believed in the possibility of a well-meaning and benevolent despotism, and could not imagine a better form of government. If the despot be a bad man, he must be removed by violent means; and accordingly Apollonius is not unwilling to meddle in two conspiracies. The Roman empire had lasted a long time, and a religious thinker might have known that human nature was too weak to turn the good and virtuous characters of sovereigns into a permanent institution. However, it must be granted that a certain atmosphere of pure and true morality pervades the whole of this system of teaching. There is a well-established theory in it, that virtue is the only foundation of happiness and true piety. It is a growth which one scarcely expected to find flourishing so luxuriantly in a decidedly Pagan country. We must not forget that Apollonius is not only a philosopher, a moralist, like Epictetus or Zeno—he is at the same time a popular reformer, an initiator, a kind of universal priest; and the main idea in his biography is this, that a philosopher who is so holy is entitled to Divine honours, and, in point of fact, that he is a god in human form. But, on the other hand, even if we take for granted the statements which are made in the biography, and inquire how far we can share unreservedly in the admiration lavished upon the sage by his biographer, we shall soon find that his ideal and ours differ very widely. It is quite true that Apollonius is chaste and temperate—that he is actuated by the noble desire to know, and the still nobler desire to communicate his knowledge to mankind. He is ingenious, learned, and, generally speaking, there is a something at once lively and original in his language when he does not indulge in too long an oration—something which is admirably suited to the character of a popular reformer; but when we have admitted all this, what a strange character we have before us, and frequently how ridiculous he seems! In the midst of his attempts to reform a religion which, according to his own statement, is disfigured by foolishness and ignorance, he is himself superstitious to a degree. He believes in omens, in female vampires, in elephants who hurl javelins in battle, in the stone which eagles place in their nests to protect their young from serpents, in talismans. Pages might be filled with the enumeration of all the silly details which he records with all the seriousness of a new revelation. If his disciples admire him, they cannot exceed his admiration of himself. He is constantly in an attitude—he becomes intolerable. He is full of mannerisms, and is artificial from head to foot. Ever boastful, his controversies are more like the hectorings of a bully. He is the Don Quixote of religious and moral perfection. Damis might well be called his Sancho Panza; for the latter, notwithstanding the great pleasure he experiences in following about this brave knight-errant of truth, as though he were his shadow, is especially remarkable for the good common sense of his replies to some of his master’s sublime theories, and also for the exigencies of an excellent appetite. When Apollonius wants to deliver himself of some particularly high-flown sentiment, he usually propounds to Damis some knotty point for his solution; Damis gives an absurd reply, which furnishes our incomparable philosopher with an opportunity to exhibit his overwhelming superiority, and Damis, who is apparently a man of excellent temper and spirits, laughs at his own folly. In his longer discourses, Apollonius manifests an intolerable pedantry, and so confirmed is his habit of treating every subject as though he were delivering a rhetorical lecture upon it, that he more frequently seems to be listening to his own talking than to be attending to his thinking. Many a time, as he discourses, he forgets the severe morality which he professes, so that in one of his sermons he goes so far as to exculpate perjury.
These critical remarks must be understood to apply solely to the Apollonius of Philostratus, for before we proceed to discuss the authenticity of the man and his history, we must state at once our belief that the historian has drawn largely upon his imagination for the description of a hero whom he wished to represent, no doubt, as the ideal of human perfection. Philostratus was a man of great genius, though his style is bombastic. The society of which he was a member, and for which he wrote, contained in its ranks men of the greatest eminence in the state. Apparently, the faults which to us are so glaring, more especially in a religious reformer, were more leniently viewed by the people of the period; with this, however, we have nothing to do. What we have to do now is to give a brief historical sketch of the work which was written by the favourite of Julia Domna, and to determine its real value.
- ↑ It may he objected, in defence of Philostratus, that among the ancients the Paropamisus range (now the Hindoo Koosh) was sometimes called the Indian Caucasus. But in addition to the fact that Philostratus makes no distinction between the two ranges, his remarks on the chains of Prometheus, which were seen by Damis as he crossed the mountains which divide Persia from India, settle the question as to his real meaning; for it was always agreed that the tortures of Prometheus took place on Mount Caucasus, properly so called.