~ 22 ~
accepted tradition with them in a sense, I wish to give some little discussion of the method of arrangement of the days.
Dion then proceeds to suggest explanations of the remarkable order of the planets in the week, and these I will give when we come to deal with that point. Meanwhile the passage so far contains three statements, (1) the planetary week originated in Egypt, (2) it is of recent growth, (3) it was in his time in general, indeed universal, use. Of these statements the first perhaps cannot be accepted as certain. The original source of a usage which spread so silently, as the week seems to have spread, is not an easy matter to determine for a modern and still less for an ancient observer. The second is couched in too vague language to be of much value. But the universality of the practice in his own time is a matter on which we may accept his authority as decisive, even if it were not confirmed, as it is, by contemporary evidence.
Of this evidence the most interesting item is a passage in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana[1], which is probably of almost exactly the same date as the part of Dion's history from which I have quoted. Philostratus was one of the greatest of the rhetoricians (a term which covers more or less our essayists, lecturers and preachers) of the third century. His most noteworthy work is this biography of Apollonius,
- ↑ III, 41.
