Apollonius of Tyana - The Pagan Christ of the Third Century/Section 4
IV.
What was the result of this attempt to effect a Pagan reformation? A mere nothing. The burden was a heavy one to raise, the arms that tried to raise it were very feeble. The idea that any one could seriously believe it possible that the star of the Christ of the Gospels should pale before the rising of Apollonius of Tyana, serves only now to raise a smile. But even supposing that history could produce a sufficient number of well-authenticated facts to prove that the worship of this paragon of inspired wisdom had lasted longer than is usually thought by those who look upon his biography as an amusing romance, we cannot admit that the scheme of reform which was incarnated in himself produced any lasting impression upon the intellects or the institutions of the period.
One great stumbling-block was thrown across the path of this work of reformation by the circumstance that the great Pagan philosophers of Alexandria, Porphyry and Iamblichus, who were equally anxious to purify the Paganism of mythology, refused to recognise the reformer introduced to them by Philostratus, although his authority would have been so eminently adapted to conform their theurgic and ecstatic doctrines. The sentiments of the biographer on the subject of the wisdom of Egypt may have led to this determination of the Alexandrian philosophers. Who knows but that Philostratus acted the part of a wise courtier to Julia Domna. when he censured, as we have seen he did, the philosophy and religion of Egypt? It appears that jokes had been rife in Alexandria respecting the daughter of the priest of Emesa, who had become an empress and a female philosopher. However, we cannot but believe that the real character of the Pagan Christ was sadly metamorphosed as it passed through the hands of Philostratus. Its interest as a channel of instruction having failed, it will be unnecessary to discuss seriously the historical value of the biography. It is more than evident that when people invent, as Philostratus has invented when he speaks of a country to which he thinks none of his readers will follow him, it is very easy to give the reins to one's imagination in a description of events which occurred a century ago. There is one detail especially which indicates a great amount of shameless effrontery, inasmuch as the truth of the matter must have been well known at the court of Septimius Severus—I mean the description which he gives of Babylon, as though the city were still in its full splendour, whereas it is an established fact that in the first century of our era Babylon was nothing but a gigantic ruin. The individual who is described as the Pagan Christ by Philostratus was not held in any esteem in his own time. Dion Cassius speaks of him as of one Apollonius of Tyana, Απολλώνιος τις Τυανεύς, and looks upon him as a mere seer or magician who lived, he says, in the reign of the Emperor Domitian. Lucian does not allude to him in a more respectful tone; in his estimation Apollonius is only a clever comedian. We find him mentioned again by Origen in his work against Celsus. Now Celsus, who attributed the miracles of Jesus to sorcery, had said that the arts of magic could have no influence except upon men who were devoid of all cultivation and morality, and that with philosophers they were powerless. Origen replies to him with the remark that in order to convince himself of the contrary he has only to read the memoirs of Apollonius of Tyana, by Maeragenes, who speaks of him as a philosopher and a magician who exercised his magic repeatedly on philosophers. Maeragenes is one of the writers mentioned by the biographer of Apollonius who lived before his time; but when we bear in mind how persistently the friend of Julia Domna exculpates his hero from the suspicion even of being connected with magic, when we find him complaining that the historians who had preceded him, more especially Maeragenes, had sadly misunderstood the actions and doctrines of Apollonius, when he adopts as almost exclusively his own the anecdotes recorded by Damis (the St. Mark, as it were, of the Pagan gospel) we cannot get rid of the suspicion that the historical reality of Apollonius consists in this, viz., that he was one of those itinerant preachers whose claims upon the public attention were partly absurd and partly real, who were at one and the same time preachers and impostors, and who were a numerous body in the two first centuries. If these preachers obtained any degree of popularity as they went about from place to place, however small it might be, they soon became the nucleus, as it were, of some legendary comet, and as soon disappeared amidst the many-tinted clouds of apocryphal history. Men whose character was so open to suspicion were quite as much exposed to satire as to panegyric. Lucian has described an itinerant prophet of this description in his Alexander Abonoteichos, one of his best compositions. Like Apollonius, Alexander is a man of prepossessing exterior and imposing appearance, witty and clever, a zealous disciple of Pythagoras, much devoted to Æsculapius, a great seer, and, moreover, a pupil of the sage of Tyana. But beyond all this he is an infamous impostor who prostitutes his natural advantages to the most shameful ends. The picture may possibly be overdrawn, as all Lucian's pictures were. He is not more personal in the case of Apollonius than he is in that of a confirmed Christian in his Peregrinus. He wished to concentrate all the dark sides of such a character in the person of an imaginary individual, but he has succeeded, meanwhile, in giving us a caricature of that same reality which Philostratus has also given us in a more than flattered form. The history of philosophy also mentions an Anaxilaus of Larissa, an itinerant Pythagorean of the Augustan period, who was not so famous for the extent of his knowledge as for his powers as a magician; he wrote on the art of magic, was quoted by Pliny, and like Apollonius was compelled to quit Italy in consequence of the imperial decree which banished all magicians from the empire. Hence all these wonder-working Pythagoreans have a suspicious mark on their very face. And, consequently, it is quite natural that, notwithstanding the efforts made by Philostratus to idealise a magician who had gained a great reputation in Asia Minor, the Pagan philosophers of Alexandria should have deemed him unfit to occupy the high position into which he was being forced, and that they should have refused to acknowledge him as their ideal of the wise friend of the gods. They chose rather to raise an opposition to the Christ of the Gospel through the instrumentality of some illustrious Pagan whose character would be less open to suspicion, and whose life and conduct were more creditable.
Accordingly we find (and it is another proof of the connecting link which we think we have distinctly traced between the work of Philostratus and the progress of religions thought in the third century) that the same need of an incarnation of truth and holiness in a human life, and the same realisation of the power with which such an incarnation would imbue a religious ideal, are evidenced in the minds of the illustrious Pagans of Alexandria and of the favourite of the Empress Julia. This has been admirably noticed by Dr. Baur. The time was sure to come in the West as it had come many centuries before in the extreme East, with which Philostratus pretended to be familiar, when the old natural religion would struggle to become more moral. How was it that a transformation was taking place which was so completely opposed to its fundamental principle? It was evidently being effected through those liberating and healing gods, Apollo, Æsculapius, and Hercules, all of them sun-gods. Apollo, more especially in Pagan Greece, was the god of moral as well as of physical purification. The guilty resorted to his sanctuary at Delphi to seek refuge from the avenging Furies. He himself had shown an example of penitent submission when he kept the flocks of Admetus. And consistently with this progress of ideas, there arose a great and mysterious embodiment of ancient wisdom which nearly became the Buddha of the West, and which would probably have remained so to this day, but that the appearance and triumph of Christianity caused the Western world to deviate for ever from its original course: that embodiment of wisdom was Pythagoras. If we are to believe the traditions which relate to him, he had devoted himself specially to the worship of Apollo, and his disciples in more modern times were often disposed to look upon him as the earthly incarnation of the god of light. Pythagoras not only founded a school of philosophy, but he left behind him an organised association of men, a kind of church, whose members, linked together by peculiar doctrines and initiations, sought to bring about political and moral reforms in the countries where their societies were established. There was something profoundly mystical in his religious doctrine. The universe, according to him, was one grand choir in which the creative numbers vibrated in one eternal harmony. He believed in the transmigration of souls. During the Trojan war, he had been that Euphorbus who is represented in the Iliad as so devoted to the Service of Apollo. Like Buddha, he had his own way of attaining to perfection, and that way, in opposition to the natural religion of the majority, was through an asceticism which was at enmity with the natural life, and was founded upon purifications, tastings, silence, absolute chastity, and commandments not to touch anything that had been endued with life. Pythagorism was eclipsed both by the brilliant philosophy of Plato and the severe dialectic of Aristotle, and yet it is affirmed by Aristotle that Plato, when advanced in years, returned to the profession of pure Pythagorism, just as in declining life one returns to the religious belief which had been forgotten amidst the illusions and ambitious projects of mature life. At any rate, we know from history that towards the end of the Roman republic and during the period immediately following it, Pythagorism revived with wonderful intensity of vigour. Men of great authority on such subjects (Mr. Zeller amongst others, the learned professor of Marburg) have thought lately that this revival of Pythagorism is the true source of those communities of Egyptian Therapeutae and Essenians from Palestine whose origin is wrapped up in so much obscurity. It is now quite easy to understand why all these more or less real sorcerer-philosophers were, or said they were, Pythagoreans, and hence it is not surprising that Porphyry and Iamblichus, who wished to have a Pagan Christ, should have selected Pythagoras in preference to the suspicious individual presented to their notice by Philostratus in the person of Apollonius. It is a very difficult matter in these days to realise the serious manner in which these two eminent men collected together the tales which were in circulation respecting the philosopher of Samos. What days those must have been when a writer like Porphyry could relate in perfect good faith that the "river Caucasus," when Pythagoras crossed it, was heard to say, "Welcome Pythagoras!" That Pythagoras converted a voracious bear to habits of moderation, and that he persuaded an ox, by whispering into his ear, never to eat beans again! It is strange that, just as the biography of Apollonius is in a great measure an imitation of the Gospel narrative, so the life of Pythagoras, as it is found written in the work of Porphyry and Iamblichus, is nothing more than a reproduction of the characteristic traits in the life of the hero of Philostratus. Like Apollonius, Pythagoras had made long voyages in order that he might become the receptacle of all earthly wisdom. He had his Domitian in the tyrant Phalaris. He is the son of Apollo just as Apollonius is the son of Proteus. He works countless miracles. He is magician, preacher, moralist, and reformer of political and religious abuses. In a word, it is hard to say whether the Pythagoras of the Alexandrians is not an Apollonius of an earlier date by some centuries, or whether the Apollonius of Julia Domna, besides his resemblance to Christ, is not a Pythagoras endowed with a second youth. The real truth of the matter will probably be found to lie between the two suggestions.
Why did not Philostratus seek his own ideal in the person of that venerable philosopher whose fame was so great and whose character was so unimpeachable? Probably because he was anxious to leave Christianity no ground of superiority whatever, and because he found, with his royal mistress, that Pythagoras was too old, too far removed from the events, the institutions, and the ideas of the period. The imperial policy and Pythagoras were inconsistent with each other and could not co-exist. He chose, therefore, to bring another Pythagoras to life in a form which was calculated to fall in with the views of the times in which he wrote. The powerlessness of the Alexandrians to resuscitate their own revered patron shows that on this point at least Philostratus and Julia Domna had been very clear-sighted, whilst their own powerlessness to gain belief in their transformed magician proves that they attempted an impossibility. The result was simply this, that if the Paganism of the third century attempted to find its own Christ, that Christ was never found.
There are few periods more fertile in useful and profitable lessons for the student of the philosophy and history of religion. We have seen the principle established that a religious doctrine, recently introduced, unfavourably viewed by the aristocracy, the people, the students of philosophy, and the great majority, can gain such an influence over its all-powerful enemies that almost against their will and unawares they are compelled to make the greatest of concessions—viz., that of seeking how they shall be able to make it appear to conform to the old traditional creeds which they are still anxious to retain. Christianity had already gained such an ascendency by virtue of its moral superiority that the most intelligent champions of ancient Paganism felt the absolute necessity of moralising their own system—in other words, of Christianising their religion in order to enable it to compete with its younger rival. But what a thankless task! What influence could the finest discourses of Pagan morality produce by the side of the orgies of Bacchus and the rites of Cybele, or in the face of the smiles of the Venus Pandemos and the indescribable forms under which Mercury was represented in the open streets? Such a mixture of severity of morals and shamelessness in religious rites would inevitably produce in the minds of the people of that time the same effect that was produced in our own time, when by some strange convulsion the restored theocracy of the Middle Ages was transformed but a few years since into the guardian of our civilisation and our social progress, and the revival of the Inquisition became the palladium of our modern liberties. A religious movement, however strong it may be apparently, must in reality be very weak when it is compelled to borrow the language and to copy the external forms of its opponents.
At the same time, it is easy to see how right modern critics are when they maintain that, as a general rule in ancient times, and more particularly in the three first centuries, the true meaning of historic truth, and of that which naturally depends upon it—viz., literary authenticity—was but little understood. Much abuse has been needlessly lavished upon modern criticism because the same principle has been applied to several of the canonical books. And yet we must yield to evidence. All classes in those days, both Pagans and philosophers, orthodox Christians and Christians tainted with heresy, were guilty on a large scale, and without any scruples of conscience, of that offence which was afterwards to be named by the euphuism of "pious fraud," but which, at the time we speak of, was so openly practised that we have not the heart to apply to it so offensive a name. When Philostratus drew an almost entirely imaginary picture of the character who was to stand as the ideal man of the traditional religion—when Porphyry and Iamblichus made up a legendary Pythagoras, can we say that they were impostors and men who were actuated by sinister or criminal motives? If we read their writings carefully, we shall be convinced of the contrary. With all deference, then, to the critics, we say that these men could have had no other motive than the one they avowed openly—viz., the moral and religious reform of their contemporaries. And as regards the manner in which they did their work, they would certainly never have thought of excusing themselves on the grounds which were afterwards reduced to the formula that "the end justifies the means," for the means which they employed did not seem to them to need any justification whatever. In our own sensitiveness on this point, in the severity of our judgments when a literary fraud is exposed, in our want of confidence in the general testimony of history, we may trace one of the results of our Christian training. It is one of the fruits of that passionate love of truth, and consequently of reality, which Christianity has communicated to the mind of man. Beyond the pale of the Christian world it is nowhere found in the same degree. To it may be attributed much of our intolerance, but be it remembered that on it our science is founded. That "spirit of truth" which is the result of fearless inquiry, and to which we often owe our agonies of doubt and our moments of disappointment, is nevertheless far too beautiful and far too noble an acquisition to allow of any regret for the advantages we may seem to have lost. This is the price which we have had to pay for the illimitable progress of humanity in knowledge and in power. If we understand the Gospel rightly we shall find that it has taught us more than a knowledge of certain great and vital truths; it has created in us a thirst for truth itself, and it is with truth as it is with righteousness, the blessed are not those who think they possess it, but who are continually hungering and thirsting after it.
The brief summary we have now given of the state of religious inquiry as it fermented in men’s minds in the third century of our era shows us how many causes there were which combined to prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of Christianity in the reign of Constantine. In fact, the atmosphere which all thinkers breathed was full of Christian notions, even before many of them deigned to do Christianity the honour of studying its doctrines with any degree of serious attention. What a light these strivings after a Pagan reform in the third century throw upon the great effort made by Julian in the fourth! It should be noticed here that this romantic Caesar only revived the schemes of Julia Domna, Philostratus, and the Alexandrians with a little more show of ill-will to Christianity—that is to say, that he tried to introduce some of the Christian vitality into the dried-up veins of the old corpse he wished to revive, and once more it was the sun, the venerable Helios, that was presented as a symbol and as a reality to the worshipful homage of the civilised world.
How paltry the results when compared with the vastness of the undertaking! What would have been the fate of our Western world if Christianity had not baptised it with a new spirit and animated it with a new life? Let us ask ourselves the question, and I think we can solve it without presumption by the following alternative: either the condition of barbarism would have been irremediable and the brilliant Greco-Roman civilisation would have had no successor, or after a time, thanks to municipal institutions, and when the waters of destruction had found their level, a certain form of social order, a coarse copy of the society of the ancients, would have been gradually established. In the latter case it is easy to foresee to what a height of civilisation we should have attained. China is there to give us an idea of it. Hollow forms which only serve to hide, and that faintly, a state of barbarism in social habits, a hopeless want of moral vigour and taste for the infinite, a certain barrenness and incorrigible shallowness of mind, the grossest superstitions joined to the most listless indifference to religious and scientific truth—such would have been our condition. It is quite possible that under such circumstances the recollection of a human being indistinctly known by the name of Pythagoras would have floated in our memories as the Buddha of the West. We should have had our Mussulmans brought by the invasion of the Arabs, but no change would have taken place. Respect for the past and superstition would have ruled supreme amongst us, just as we see them still when decay begins its work of destruction in the social body, and men do not think that it is even possible to amend the present. I may be mistaken, but when I look at Apollonius the sage, with his everlasting maxims, the foolish Damis, and Philostratus the rhetorician, and all those emperors and empresses who, in the quietness of their domestic circles, decide how the world is to be restored to virtue—when I look at all those councils of women, and men of letters, and others well versed in the ritualisms of the age, I seem to have before me a picture of Chinese life with all its most characteristic traits. They wish to appear as though they were in earnest, they wish to look imposing, but they are simply absurd. They determine upon the regeneration of the world, and an Elagabalus tries to carry it out. Great show is made of vast learning and profound acquaintance with science, and the Caucasus is mentioned as a river when it is not thought to be a mountain by which India is separated from Persia. All this looks like mandarin science and mandarin religion: the only thing wanting is the decoration of the red or yellow button, and the Son of Heaven is there to bestow it. How pleasant it is to think that at the very time when this old comedy was being played out, the Gospel of freedom, of more intimate communion with God, of progress through holiness, truth, and charity, was already telling upon these grown-up children who were in the midst of their games playing at making gods, and that the feeble and aimless questionings of these outstripped apostles of conservatism were being answered by the fresh, clear voice which, rejoicing in the full vigour of its youth, and resting upon the immovable foundation of infinite love, proclaimed both to the individual and to society at large the sacred duty of a never-ending reform!
FINIS.
Printed by Jas. Wade, 18, Tavistock-street, Covent Garden, W.C.