I.
The biography of Apollonius of Tyana, written by Philostratus of Lemnos, is one of the most curious results of this attempt to remodel and revive Paganism. Philostratus was one of the many men of letters and science who had collected together round Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus. The influence which Julia Domna exercised over the reign of her husband (A.D. 193—211), and more especially over that of his successor Caracalla, who died A.D. 217, is an acknowledged fact in history. It was in obedience to the express desire of his illustrious patroness that Philostratus wrote the biography of the learned Apollonius of Tyana, who lived, it was said, in the days of the first emperors, from Augustus to Domitian; in other words, during the whole of the first century. Other writers, as, for instance, Maximus of Egae and Maeragenes, had already touched upon the same subject. According to his own statement, Philostratus had made free use of a number of unpublished anecdotes, which had
