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 sin-
